Walking Together Toward Justice

On September 8, 1965, Filipino grape pickers in Delano, California, walked off the fields. Led by Larry Itliong, these workers from the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee refused to harvest another crop at poverty wages. Eight days later, Cesar Chavez stood before members of the National Farm Workers Association and asked them to join the Filipino workers' cause. The vote was unanimous.

What followed was not just a labor dispute but an act of solidarity that reshaped a nation's conscience. Chavez, a devout Catholic who drew strength from his faith, united Mexican-American and Filipino farmworkers into a single movement. In March 1966, he led a 340-mile pilgrimage from Delano to the state capitol in Sacramento — a march deliberately patterned on the Lenten journey, with workers carrying banners of the Virgin of Guadalupe alongside union flags. For five years, millions of ordinary Americans joined the cause by simply refusing to buy grapes, standing with people they had never met.

The prophet Micah declared what the Almighty requires: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. Chavez understood that walking humbly before God meant walking alongside the vulnerable. Solidarity is not a political slogan — it is the biblical practice of binding your life to your neighbor's burden. The question Micah puts before every believer is not whether injustice exists, but whether we will cross the road to stand with those who bear it.