Week 9

When I think of a Labor Movement that has been influential to me in my life, I am fortunate because to me it is both  the Farm Workers Movement and my dad. In 1992, my dad was involved in the Southern California 1992 drywall Strike. It was a labor movement that I got a chance to experience. My dad, Marco Anthony Hernandez (but he goes by Tony), was one of the leaders during that strike. His Mission was to help improve the wages that the Mexican that worked in that industry was not giving. Around the beginning of the Summer in 1992, my dad, as well as other drywallers', noticed a $60 decrease in their pay checks. My father and his co-works were noticing this happened for several months, they were not being paid for there work, as well as overtime, that is when they decided to try and join the Union. Me and my family struggle to make ends met, and with the high profile that my dad was in, we kept getting our cars stolen, and then brought back with just the frame of the car. Life was tough but very exciting, we went on many marches, my dad and his co-worker went on a hunger strike, and me and my sister were celebrities at school. The ultimate experience was having the UFW join in on 'our' movement and I was fortunate to have met Cesar Chavez and Father Salandini (we knew Father Salandini as 'Father Tortilla). Though the strike lasted a little less than a year, the Dry Wallers' were not successful with stating a Dry Wall Union in San Diego. Till this day my dad is very bitter, he poured a lot of his sweat and tears in trying to bring justice to the Mexican people, and he feels that he has failed.