I have posted a review of Miriam Pawel's book, The Union of Their Dream at http://blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org
"After reading The Union of Their Dreams, Miriam Pawel’s fine account of the rise and fall of the United Farm Workers Union (UFW), I re-read an article I wrote for the Nation magazine in November 1977. In this essay, “A Union is Not a Movement,” I leveled some harsh criticisms at the union and its famous leader, Cesar Chavez. In response, the union’s chief counsel, Jerry Cohen, one of the major characters in Pawel’s book, threatened suit against the magazine. At the time I was upset, thinking that maybe I should have been more careful in what I had said. However, as The Union of Their Dreams makes clear, I need not have been, since everything I said was true. And then some.
Nearly every book written about the UFW has placed Cesar Chavez front and center, and most of them have portrayed him as a cross between Gandhi and Jesus Christ. Chavez appeared on the scene, and everything changed. He did what no one had ever managed: the building of a strong union of the poorest of the poor—migrant farm workers. Pawel’s book has the great virtue of not making Chavez its main protagonist. Instead, she uses to excellent effect the journalistic technique of telling the story of the UFW through the eyes of several key participants in the struggle to build the union, none of them Chavez. He is, as he must be, always present in the book, but by focusing on the lives and actions of others, Pawel both demythologizes Cesar and shows that he was, himself, but one of many talented and dedicated people who made UFW history. . . ."