Yesterday U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was on hand to dedicate the headquarters of the United Farmworkers as a National Historic Landmark.
From the Bakersfield Californian:
The plot of land at Garces Highway West and Mettler Road just outside Delano was the movement's headquarters from 1968 to 1971, when it moved to La Paz in Keene. Forty Acres is where Chavez and others planned and carried out some of the most important initiatives of the farm worker movement. Chavez fasted there twice, once in 1968 to rededicate the movement to nonviolence; and again in 1988 over the pesticide poisoning of farm workers and their children.
U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy met Chavez there before the activist ended his first fast, and United Farm Workers signed its first historic labor contract at the site in 1970.
Yesterday, KQED's Rachel Dornhelm interviewed Dolores Huerta, the UFW co-founder with the late Cesar Chavez, who was also at the dedication ceremony.