Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement

Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement
Marshall Ganz | 2009-05-28 00:00:00 | Oxford University Press, USA | 368 | Economics
Why David Sometimes Wins tells the story of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers' groundbreaking victory, drawing important lessons from this dramatic tale. Since the 1900s, large-scale agricultural enterprises relied on migrant labor--a cheap, unorganized, and powerless workforce. In 1965, when some 800 Filipino grape workers began to strike under the aegis of the AFL-CIO, the UFW soon joined the action with 2,000 Mexican workers and turned the strike into a civil rights struggle. They engaged in civil disobedience, mobilized support from churches and students, boycotted growers, and transformed their struggle into La Causa, a farm workers' movement that eventually triumphed over the grape industry's Goliath. Why did they succeed? How can the powerless challenge the powerful successfully? Offering insight from a longtime movement organizer and scholar, Ganz illustrates how they had the ability and resourcefulness to devise good strategy and turn short-term advantages into long-term gains. Authoritative in scholarship and magisterial in scope, this book constitutes a seminal contribution to learning from the movement's struggles, set-backs, and successes.

"A brilliant new book."-Peter Dreier, The Nation

"Why David Sometimes Wins is an exceptional book that will be of widespread interest to scholars and activists alike."-Howard Kimeldorf, American Journal of Sociology

"This book is a must read for organizers. The analysis of how a small and poor, but motivated, group of workers triggered a social movement provides invaluable lessons on what to do and not do as we struggle with the challenges of the 21st century."-Andy Stern, President, Service Employees International Union

"How does David defeat Goliath and, equally important, avoid becoming Goliath? The answer is to develop strategic capacity, an ongoing interactive process of experimentation, learning, and adapting. This fascinating book shows how Cesar Chavez and the UFW created and then lost its strategic capacity-an important lesson on leadership and organization."-Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University

"Through unforgettable and compelling stories, Marshall Ganz convincingly shows how we need not wait for the right time in history, but how we can all participate in making history together and how the resources to do so can be found in one another. Why David Sometimes Wins will enter the canon of readings on social change. Get this book. Read it. Use it!"-Gerald Torres, co-author of The Miner's Canary
Reviews
This book was required reading for a work conference of Community organizers. We were fortunate enought to have Marshall Ganz speak at our event. This is an important part of this country's history, but as we learned from Mr Ganz this issue is nowhere near being solved, by the book did ofer hope and showed the value of the "little" people working together to improve their quality of life
Reviews
I expected more insight and more of a personal account from Ganz about his relationship with Cesar Chavez and others in the movement. From someone who has basically cashed in on his proximity to Chavez to further his own career, I would expect more about what made Chavez unique, but instead the book focuses on Ganz's idea of "strategic capacity." I kept reading the book with hopes of being convinced by this idea of "strategic capacity," but it hever happened. I didn't learn anything I didn't already know from this book about organizing, strategy or even feel I had any deeper insight into Chavez's contribution to the Farm Workers Movement. There should have been a better explanation at the end of how Chavez or his movement failed to keep up the struggle for Farm Worker's Rights, or how this "strategic capacity" scheme Ganz seems to believe explains it all, failed. Could it be that everything is named after Cesar Chavez in latino communities today because there was no other public hero to represent the Chicano movement in the 60's? It doesn't sound like Chavez deserves all the honors he has been given when Ganz concludes his experience with the movement. Did anyone else ever try to continue to improve the rights of Chicanos in the fields or did America give them just one chance with Chavez? After I finished the book, I thought, how interesting, but this book has no soul, something is missing in this book. Perhaps it is watching the author objectify many years of his experience and try to give a "neutral" perspective to a story that he draws so much of his own professional identity from that makes it seem so forced. You cannot tell me Ganz dedicated a large portion of his life to this movement and had no attachment to any of the people involved. He yawns his way through the retelling without motivating the reader to even want to read the next chapter or fight for social justice. Notice how none of the key players who are still alive have anything to say about this book. How hard would it have been for Ganz to get a blurb for his book cover from at least one person he claims to have been so close to? The pictures in the book all include Ganz to prove he was actually there. Is this book really just about Ganz in the end? This story has the potential to be included in one of the major texts of Ethnic Studies, Chicano Studies, Civil Rights, but ultimately it will win no awards and end up in the Clearance bin.
Reviews
Dr. Ganz's book brings to the readers an insightful, sensitive and knowledgeable

analysis of one of the most important social/ labor movements in the US. I recommend. This book to anyone who wishes to understand o

our history or wishes to affect social change for the better in the world around them.
Reviews
Unfortunately, Ganz's book reads all too much like the Ph.D. dissertation from which it sprung. Lots of footnotes to theoretical works and a continuous effort to place the events of the early UFW days into analytical constructs. What is missing is the sort of inside tales of the early days of the farmworker movement that Ganz could share with readers. Unfortunately, there is precious little revealed regarding the strategic decisions of the UFW and the day-to-day challenges faced by the organizers. Heck, Ganz ran a number of the organizing sites himself but tells us next to nothing about the obstacles he and the other organizers faced. The first few chapters, summarizing California farm labor organizing efforts prior to the UFW are largely an effort by Ganz to place these efforts in his analytical framework - there is little original research and one feels that the historical presentation may have been molded to fit Ganz's theory. Frankly, there are plenty of books on organizing techniques and theories and Ganz offers nothing really new in this regard. Sadly, his book omits what could have been his unique contribution to the literature: an intimate portrait of the internal decision-making and strategic planning by Chavez and the other organizers during the UFW's heyday.
Reviews
A very engaging and informative documenting of one of the most important unionizing and civil rights movements of our time. Ganz's personal history and involvement make this an extraordinary scholarly analysis of effective organizing. A must read for all grass roots organizers and activist. This book puts many human faces on organizing and civil rights.

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