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Dismantling Racism Resource Book

for farm workers in Oregon’s history and beat back policy attacks ranging from “driving while
brown,” to Proposition 187-style anti-immigrant legislation and renewal of the 1940s-era
“Bracero” program of indentured servitude for farm workers.

Just this February, PCUN forced NORPAC, Oregon’s grower-owned food processing
cooperative, to the negotiating table, the fruit of a ten-year boycott campaign involving
thousands of people. In the final phases of the boycott, PCUN organized dozens of campus
groups across the United States to target Sodexho (the largest food services company in the U.S.
and a major NORPAC customer), leading Sodexho to threaten cancellation of its contract unless
NORPAC negotiated. Ramírez calls the victory PCUN’s largest to date and says, “It shows how
a small organization can go up against a corporate giant and bring it down and force it to change
its policies.”

Creating the conditions for successful organizing within Oregon’s Latin@ immigrant community
has required more than union organizing. “We can’t just struggle on an economic front,” says
Ramírez. “We’ve had to provide ESL, literacy, and citizenship classes—and then build electoral
power with those who could become citizens. We’ve had to get involved in a lot of other
issues—fighting for immigrant rights, building a women’s organization so that they could
develop into leaders...” And to engage on these multiple fronts, PCUN has had to cultivate a
network of organizations that complement the work of the union. An affiliated community
development corporation builds and manages hundreds of housing units for farm workers—
creating a “liberated zone” where organizing can take place in safety. A social service agency
meets a range of basic needs and helps to coordinate Latinos Unidos Siempre, the youth arm of
the movement. There is a voter organizing project and a statewide immigrant rights coalition,
CAUSA, that organizes against policy attacks at the state and federal levels.

Accustomed to going it alone during its early years, PCUN focused on building its own power
base. The union’s independent power—in the year 2000 they mobilized over 3,000 people,
mostly Latin@s, for an amnesty rally at the state capitol—has been an important factor in its
ability to enter into coalitions with white groups from a position of relative strength. “Coalition
building is no substitute for organizing,” says Ramírez.

Ramírez attributes PCUN’s success to its clear vision, adaptability and strategy of uniting
various forces for movement building—all of which has been critical in its work with
predominantly white social justice groups. According to Ramirez, people-of-color organizations
in the Northwest have to do “double organizing.” He explains, “We have to organize our own
community, but in addition to that we have to build a larger movement because we’re small in
numbers. We’ve had to do a lot of work with our white allies, trying to educate them and trying
to get them to make our work part of their own work.”

Viva la CAUSA

PCUN has built its most effective collaborations with white social justice groups through a
statewide immigrant rights coalition created on the heels of California’s 1994 anti-immigrant
Proposition 187. When right-wing activists in Oregon laid plans for a similar ballot campaign,

Dismantling Racism Project 87 Western States Center