Don't criticize what you can't understand...

·      60 years ago, Dylan sang that the times were a-changin’.

·      As confusing as those changes were, answers were blowin’ in the wind.

·      But we shouldn’t get too comfortable because the winds of change are constant.

 

When Cesar Chavez started organizing farmworkers, the world was a different place. The 1960s were a period that re-defined human rights and led to social and legislative changes around the concept that all people are created equal. That addressed and replaced past disparities with diversity and inclusion. In these past 60 years, the pendulum swung from one social order to another, and today it might be swinging back towards another correction of the norms by which we define our society. None of us are old enough to have lived through many of these corrections, although history tells us they’ve happened regularly throughout the life of these United States. No matter what happened during those shifts in the past, the lesson is that preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures. Passions run high in times of change, but unaltered is the fact that we are all children of G-d. Interestingly, the bastion of that thinking is in the workplace, where policies of fairness and rewards for performance prevail. Therein are the lessons that should be remembered and rekindled today.

 

Cesario Estrada Chavez (1927 – 1993): American born labor leader and civil rights activist, Navy veteran, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom award, who helped found the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union. Ideologically, his worldview combined left-wing politics with Catholic social teachings.