Jacques Chirac Quotes

My mother was very involved with Cesar Chavez's work on behalf of the migrant farm workers in California.

The consumer boycott is the only open door in the dark corridor of nothingness down which farm workers have had to walk for many years. It is a gate of hope through which they expect to find the sunlight of a better life for themselves and their families.

Farm workers are involved in the planting and the cultivation and the harvesting of the greatest abundance of food known in this society. They bring in so much food to feed you and me and the whole country and enough food to export to other places. The ironic thing and the tragic thing is that after they make this tremendous contribution, they don't have any money or any food left for themselves

Farm workers are not agricultural implements; they are not beasts of burden to be used and discarded.

There are vivid memories from my childhood - what we had to go through because of low wages and the conditions, basically because there was no union. I suppose, if I wanted to be fair, I could say that I'm trying to settle a personal score. I could dramatize it by saying that I want to bring social justice to farm workers.

The road to social justice for the farm worker is the road of unionization. Our cause, our strike against table grapes and our international boycott are all founded upon our deep conviction that the form of collective self-help, which is unionization, holds far more hope for the farm worker than any other single approach, whether public or private. This conviction is what brings spirit, high hope and optimism to everything we do.

It's no fun to protest on an empty stomach.

Apple is a wonderful company for its customers and investors. So, too, Pixar. (NeXT, not so much...) But Apple is also an engine of misery for its subcontracted Chinese workers.

We were sharecroppers - we were a little bit of everything. We farmed and tried to make something.

In the 'Nike Economy,' there are no standards, no borders and no rules. Clearly, the global economy isn't working for workers in China and Indonesia and Burma any more than it is for workers here in the United States.

'Fast Food Nation' was boring and aimed at yuppies, and yuppies don't eat fast food.

Were the workers who sweated to put food on my table paid at least minimum wage? Did they get health benefits? Overtime? Were they unionized? Protected from pesticide exposure?

The hospital strikers have demonstrated that you don't get a job done unless you show the Man you're not afraid...If you're not willing to pay that price, then you don't deserve the rewards or benefits that go along with it.

[Defending agricultural subsidies:] France is the world's second-biggest exporter of agriculture products, and it must remain so.

There have been … totalitarian forces in our lifetime: The totalitarianism of fascism and now of capitalism.

Workers! Leave the Socialist Party. It is your enemy and ours.

“Student strike” has the same sort of emotional appeal to the French as “family farm” has in America.

Heed this cry that comes from the hearts of men. Organize the Unorganized.

Look at your [labor] strikes. They are proof that the men are desperate.

The boycott, which the bourgeoisie regards with sentimental tenderness when directed against the trade of its commercial rival, it considers as a crime when employed by the workers in defense of their livelihood.

If you athletes boycott the Olympics, it will be like a rock dropping in the water. The ripples and waves will be felt all over. You can be that rock. No one will die and that is the way to fight.

Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.

The Americans should stop insulting us, I'm not going to be an accomplice to the depopulation of the land. It's not up to the Americans to tell us how to organize our farm policy and the balance of our society. Their attitude is to treat the EC as if it had the plague and then encourage the rest of the world to join in.

if anyone was evicted it was the duty of his fellows to assemble in their thousands and reinstate him the next day

Our very lives are dependent, for sustenance, on the sweat and sacrifice of the campesinos. Children of farm workers should be as proud of their parents' professions as other children are of theirs