Reading Notes Macbeth Act 1

Remembering CESAR CHAVEZ!

Today is a very special day! CESAR CHAVEZ DAY!

Today eighty seven years ago a leader, activist, and farm worker was born. Most importantly a HUMAN BEING was born. Cesar Chavez the father of "La Causa" was born on March 31, 1927 and passed away on April 23, 1993 in his sleep. This man believed in social justice. He clearly stated "The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people." This fight is not about a race/ethnicity it is not about the strawberries, grapes or lettuce it is about social justice. This fight is not about the latino, or the filipinos who fought for social justice in the 60-70's. This fight is about anyone who is experiencing injustice.  I am very angry that I live in a world where the people who work the soil do not have basic living standards for themselves. It makes me feel disgusted with the human race! What have we come to be?! We have forgotten that those who provide our food, are human too. We have forgotten to be compassionate. 

Today I am reminded of this great leader, but I am also reminded of the so little change that has taken place after his death. The farm workers are now allowed breaks from their labor,  have running water, and porter potties, but that is not enough. Where are the chairs and tables?! What about health care and insurance. Can someone tell me where these things have gone?! The workers are exploited day-in and day-out. Minimum wage is not enough. It does not pay for the mother's, father's, and children's doctor visits. In fact most farm workers do not go to the doctor, because they are afraid of being laid off, or being fired for reporting an injury and asking for disability pay. Many of the workers do not report the injustices because they are afraid to be fired or deported. They are oppressed, and suffocated by the shadows of the boss, and of the system. The farm workers labor is so brutal on the  body that most of the farm workers live less than the average age. The list of injustices goes on...but nobody speaks of it. Nobody want to see the injustice, it hurts too bad, or it is just something we think we cannot change. We turn the other cheek because we too are afraid of getting involved. We need to educate ourselves on this cause and we need to educate the farm workers on their rights!

Article #1

Cesar Chavez Resolution Blocked by GOP:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/31/cesar-chavez-resolution-blocked-gop/ 
also a relatable article: Senate Resolution To Honor Cesar Chavez Dies After Republican Tries To Add Border Security Language http://www.buzzfeed.com/adriancarrasquillo/resolution-to-honor-cesar-chavez-in-senate-dies-after-republ

Republicans on Monday refused to allow the Senate to honor Cesar Chavez, drawing a stern rebuke from Democrats who questioned the GOP’s motives.

Republicans said they would have allowed a resolution to pass if Democrats had accepted additional language that recognized Chavez supported strict enforcement of immigration laws in order to help protect American workers’ wages. But Democrats refused to agree to those additions, leaving both sides at a stalemate. 

“It is an injustice to his memory,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who tried to force a vote and who said Republicans were trying to mix the immigration debate with a commemorative resolution.

Mr. Menendez said it was the eighth year in a row that Republicans have blocked such a resolution on Chavez’s birthday, March 31.

Mr. Menendez said this year he came to the Senate floor to deliver a speech and force Republicans to object out loud.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, did just that, arguing that Democrats were whitewashing Chavez’s stances, which backed strict enforcement of immigration laws and regularly protested farmers’ use of illegal immigrants in their fields.

Chavez helped form the United Farm Workers labor union, which organized agriculture workers.

Chavez has become a hero to many Hispanics in the U.S., and to labor union leaders. He died in 1993.

Oh! America sure can be ridiculous sometimes...
I believe Cesar Chavez was a republican...but i'm definitely not!

Article #2

New York Times Article urges GOP to block farm worker's wages hikes:

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/31/new-york-times-article-urges-gop-to-block-farmworkers-wages-hikes/

Republican legislators’ inaction on immigration may increase wages for Hispanic farmworkers in California, a New York Times article warned March 29.

“In recent years, farm owners have grown increasingly fearful of labor shortages [and] last year, the diminished supply of workers led average farm wages in the region to increase by roughly $1 an hour,” read the article, which described the agriculture sector’s threats to cut contributions until GOP legislators agree to raise the inflow of low-skill migrant workers.

“Getting higher wages! Heaven forbid,” responded Steve Camarota, the research director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

The Times’ recognition that extra immigrants will impact wages for Hispanic-Americans shows that “the interests of workers is exactly contrary to what the advocacy groups [for higher immigration] are pushing,” he added.

However, farmworkers’ salaries are too unstable to say if their wages are trending up, Camarota added. Their wages are still level with 1980’s wages, largely because the past and current inflow of illegal immigrants has provided a surplus of workers, he said.

The push for more foreign workers — who will reduce any pressure for higher wages — is being led by industry executives.

These executives include farm-owners and labor companies that supply thousands of contracted Americans farmworkers, as well as many recent immigrants and illegal immigrants, to farms during the harvest seasons. .

However, the mostly Hispanic workers aren’t joining the executives’ effort to drive down their wages, admitted the New York Times’ reporter, Jennifer Medina.

Cesar Chavez fought for better wages and now industry executives are searching for foreign workers so they can reduce the pressure for higher wages!! I am furious! This is exactly what Chavez fought for. Boy does history repeat itself. This is where Chavez was against foreign workers. He wanted to make sure that the farm workers were treated justly and had better and improved working conditions. He knew that if foreigners came and did the work that the activist farm workers stopped doing change would never come. He wanted to make sure that change came. 

  

Article #3

Farm Labor: http://labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/farm_labor.shtm

Minimum Wage Increase:
Beginning December 31, 2013, New York State’s minimum wage will increase in a series of three annual changes as follows:
$8.00 on 12/31/13
$8.75 on 12/31/14
$9.00 on 12/31/15

This is still not enough... for this

VIVA LA CAUSA

LONG LIVE SOCIAL JUSTICE

AND LONG LIVE CESAR CHAVEZ!

More articles and opinions on Cesar Chavez below...

MEET MACBETH

Macbeth is introduced by the witches who labels him to be a king. The reader notices that Macbeth is somewhat scared and taken back by the comment and does not see himself in that way. The witches also foreshadow Macbeth's and Banquo's future, and tell them they will both become kings. Shakespeare on the other hand characterizes Macbeth in a tone of darkness, simple, yet with a sting of bravado. The reader obviously knows that Macbeth is the main character but the way shakespeare brings him up in the play lets the reader know that he is a strong head character. In Macbeth the reader clearly sees bravado, and hungriness for power and success. I see these characteristics/potential themes driving Macbeth throughout the play and to his grave. Up to this point the reader does not know much about the setting, but quickly figures it out through the rest of the characters. For example, the sergeant mentions the king of Scotland and the Norweyan Lord. Wounds, battles, and executions are also mentioned by other characters in the play.

LITERATURE ANALYSIS "In The Time Of The Butterflies"

because i'm HAPPY...Happy, Happy!

HAPPY: this song never fails to make me happy. Give it a listen it will make you happy too!

Pentatonix 

Pharell Williams 

Cesar Chavez

"It's ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that fill your tables with abundance have nothing left for themselves." - Cesar Chavez

I am angry...How can a person cultivate food yet not be able to feed their own family? You see this issue is NOT about the ethnicity, or the social status of the person. This is about justice...Social Justice! 

Next time you are driving I challenge you to stop your car to the side near the fields and witness the unfairness. I challenge you to put yourself in the worker's shoes. Notice their tired faces, and dirty hands. Notice that water is unseen, notice that the bathrooms are porter potties, notice that there is no where to sit, and no where to rest. When and If you take your time to witness the injustice...notice the oppression. I challenge you to not feel pain, anger or sympathy.

The Article below has more information on Cesar Chavez make sure to check it out. Also don't miss the movie  Cesar Chavez (2014). I watched it today and am left so inspired by this man. It is definitely worth your time and money! A new and detailed biography by Miriam Pawell "The Crusades Of Cesar Chavez" just came out. make sure to check it out! Also check out the United Farm Workers website here: http://www.ufw.org/ and the Cesar Chavez Foundation website  here: https://www.chavezfoundation.org/

Jorge Ramos: CESAR CHAVEZ FINALLY GETS A PRESIDENTIAL AUDIENCE

Original Article with video here:
http://fusion.net/leadership/story/jorge-ramos-cesar-chavez-finally-presidential-audience-533305


Cesar Chavez was never invited to the White House. Before his untimely death in 1993, eight successive American presidents failed to bring the Mexican-American icon to the Oval Office for a conversation.

Perhaps Chavez, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union and led the biggest farmworker strike in American history in the 1970s, made powerful men uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because he believed so deeply in the power of protest (he even named his dogs “Boycott” and “Strike”). We’ll never know.

One of the great things about the United States is the willingness of our leaders to recognize past injustices. I am fairly certain, for instance, that someday this nation will apologize to the millions of undocumented people who came to this country, found jobs and worked hard, yet were forced to live in the shadows for decades, waiting for Congress to create a path to citizenship for them. That error will be remedied one day, just as an older mistake was fixed recently: Chavez finally went to the White House.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama invited the cast of the new film “Cesar Chavez” — including the actors Michael Peña, America Ferrera and Rosario Dawson — and the film’s director, Diego Luna, to the White House for a screening. Dolores Huerta, who was Chavez’s close ally and the co-founder of the UFW, was in attendance, along with Paul Chavez, one of Cesar Chavez’s eight children, and a dozen other relatives.

“Cesar Chavez” is, oddly enough, the first movie about this hero. In the 1970s, the actor and director Robert Redford approached Cesar Chavez about a possible movie project, but nothing resulted from that discussion. Perhaps that was for the best, since in his vibrant, inspiring film, Luna presents us with a pragmatic portrayal of Chavez. It's the story of a flawed man, a stubborn, jealous visionary, who learned how to challenge power effectively.

Luna’s interpretation was correct — that’s what Huerta and Cesar Chavez’s wife, Helen, told Dawson and Ferrera, who play them in the film. Paul Chavez, close to tears, said the same to me at the screening. It must be hard to see your father so accurately portrayed in a film, and not be able to touch or talk to him.

Cesar Chavez was extraordinary because he took it upon himself to defend and organize poor farm laborers, almost all of whom were Latinos. He convinced these extremely vulnerable, mistreated people that if they formed a union, they could speak with a single voice that would not be ignored by those in power. By doing so, he paved the way for the Hispanic community to become much more influential in the United States.

“We have seen the future,” Cesar Chavez said during a speech in 1984, “and the future is ours.” He was right. Projections indicate that by 2050, the United States’ Hispanic population could number 150 million.

I don’t often make recommendations in this column, but “Cesar Chavez” is a film that should not be missed. Also, the richly detailed biography by Miriam Pawell, “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez,” just published this month, offers further insight into his life.

The surge of interest in Cesar Chavez’s legacy can probably be attributed to the urgency of the issues that the Hispanic community faces. The status of the undocumented is increasingly pressing, yet we lack enough leaders to speak on our behalf (there are only three Hispanics in the Senate, for instance).

We have to keep in mind that while Cesar Chavez died in 1993 at the age of 66, his legacy lives on; we can fight as he did. The rallying cry of the UFW, “Si se puede!” — later adopted by Obama during his campaign for the presidency — is, in three words, an entire philosophy for achieving the impossible: Yes, we can. This is the essence of the great American dream.

Indeed, Cesar Chavez’s legacy is alive in the protests and rallies of the Dreamers — the young, undocumented immigrants whose families brought them to the United States and who are fighting to make a future for themselves in the only country that they have ever known.

His legacy endures for Hispanics who are breaking barriers every day, rising in the world of politics, succeeding in business and making names for themselves in the arts. We will remember him on the day we elect the first Hispanic president of the United States.

This column is provided to Fusion courtesy of The New York Times Syndicate.

Jorge Ramos is one of the most influential journalists in news today. He's been dubbed the Walter Cronkite of Hispanic media -- a title he's earned by taking on people in power over signature concerns like immigration, gun control and equality. Now, on Fusion, he brings that unique, raw and authentic sensibility to an English-speaking audience. "America with Jorge Ramos," airs weekly on Tuesday on Fusion at 10 p.m. EST/7 p.m. PT.