Saturday, November 5, 2011

Friendship House and Cesar Chavez

The Friendship House sought to organize/empower the poor so that the poor themselves could work to end poverty. In the public housing projects and in other activities, the Friendship House employees talked about various social movements. For example, in 1973, the Ellen Wilson Dwellings saw a movie about migrant workers to encourage them to join the boycott against Safeway (the nationwide boycott involving Cesar Chavez against Safeway and A&P to force them to make certain that farm workers received adequate compensation). Around the same time, African American firefighters visited Potomac Gardens to ask their support (which may have been related to the Oakland's Black Firefighters Association formed in 1973, as discussed in this PBS video). Here is a film maker seeking to make an updated version of such a film that public housing residents might have seen:


It is interesting that public housing residents seemed more politically integrated in the 1970s. Is this true? Why do you think this is?

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