Get Hold Of Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, And Strategy In The California Farm Worker Movement: Leadership, Strategy And The Organization In The California Farm Worker Movement Depicted By Marshall Ganz Available As Readable Copy

for class on racial democracy with some familiarity on ufw amp delano strike from before, enjoyed the historical context on organizing wins and deep insight on building a winning multiethnic coalition on class struggle, but would have enjoyed a deeper exploration of the ufw's failures.
This was an assigned text for my grad school class, Strategic Management, The author, Ganz, is an Anglo guy who got involved with Cesar Chavez and the organization of California farm workers in thes.
Although nominally an academic study, the book is really mostly a narrative of the rise of Chavez and the UFW, with occasional asides about organizational strategy and learning.


Before reading this book I only had a cultural familiarity, in the vaguest sense, with the events that it describes.
I didn't find Ganz to be all that engaging of a writer, but I was very taken by Chavez and the ethic that formed the UFW.
Chavez drew heavily on the AfricanAmerican civil rights movement in the South that slightly preceded his work, including the ethic of nonviolence and the prominent place of religion in this case, Latin American Catholicism.
Ganz argues that the UFW succeeded where much more established organizations such as the Teamsters failed largely because of the structural commitment and accountability to their constituency that the UFW leaders maintainedsomething that the larger unions lacked.
Although I don't have any other sources for comparison, this argument seemed pretty compelling to me,

Equally interesting to me, however, was the fall of the UFW, which is shunted to a brief epilogue which was not even assigned reading for my class.
After a series of successes in the lates ands, UFW began a long decline in thes that continues through the present day.
Although the treatment is brief, Ganz makes a convincing argument that this decline is not attributable to larger forces such as a rightward shift in American politics, but that it is primarily due to the failure of UFW leadership, including Chavez himself, to stay true to the strategies that led to their initial success.
It made me quite sad to read this part, as I had placed Chavez on something of a pedestal and was thinking I would like to read a biography of him.
In fact, during the 's Chavez befriended a cult leader and introduced many of his tactics into the leadership of UFWno joke.
They sounded to me basically like Maoist tactics of group criticism pretty creepy stuff,

I wish that Ganz had spent more time on this latter era, and I'm not sure why he didn'tmaybe because he stopped being associated with UFW before the decline and so had less insight, or because he would be sad to devote a lot of space to the fall of an organization that he had been so devoted to, or maybe just because of space constraints.
But I did take away a few lessons, I think, One is the enduring and ironic significance of Chavez's own quote, "Power makes you stupid, " That seemed like an apt explanation of the failures of the Teamsters and AFLCIO, but equally of the ultimate decline of the UFW.
Another, perhaps, is the existentialist lesson that while we are alive, we are always in the process of becoming.
Great job, Marshall! Many of us who worked for the UFW could not wait to get our hands on this book.
Ganz worked for the UFW for several decades, starting as a college volunteer, moving on to become a fulltime organizer of some of the major strikes in grapes and lettuce, and eventually being elected to the executive board.
Quite a trajectory. The inside stories he tells are really worthwhile both for movement veterans, and young people who want to learn the daytoday nitty gritty work of building a viable, grassroots movement.
I would have granted him theth star, except there is a little too much sociology in there.
Otherwise, the writing is fluid and conversational, Somewhat dry at times. Good history of union organizing with the farm workers, mainly in the mid's, I had no idea at times the different unions were fighting against each other, particularly against the Teamsters.


The end of the book jumped forward quickly, Would have liked more there, The main difficulty with the book overall was the generalizations of what happened, There were moments of specifics, but more of that, more of a story, would have made for a better book.
Felt more text book like than I was looking for, But I did get a history, Probably should have read this book in March when California celebrates Cesar Chavez day, I will definitely this of this book during the next holiday, now that I know more about how Chavez helped organize the farm workers.
Interesting book that isn't rooted in history but rather principles, Not sure if I would recommend it to others, I don't believe in the idea that strategies can merely be replicated across unions to ensure the same result.
I think what UFW had and the exact conditions that ensured its success are more more worthy of examining though I appreciate the case study presented by Ganz.
This book is ultimately less about the UFW and more about the types of strategy that organizations and movements may find most successful.


"I this book, I will argue that the UFW succeeded, while the rival AFLCIO and teamsters failed because the UFW's leadership devised more effective strategy, in a fact a stream of effective strategy.
The UFW was able to

do this because the motivation of its leaders was greater than that of their rivals they had better access to salient knowledge and their deliberations became venues for learning.
These are the three elements of what I call strategic capacity the ability to devise good strategy",

I appreciated Ganz's detailed level of knowledge and personal experience, I enjoyed his contrast of social unionism and business unionism and his consideration of the differences between building a movement and building an organization.
The conclusion was the more powerful portion of the book and I wish Ganz had spent more time discussing the downfall of the UFW.


My other critique is that I often got lost in the details of the book, despite my general familiarity with the people and events discussed.
I imagine this book might be an overwhelming introduction to the UFW, I didn't find is as engaging a read as Peter Matthiesen's Sal Si Puedes , even as the information and details it provides about the UFW are invaluable.
Interesting theories on organizing. Marshall Ganz worked for many years with the farm workers in California under Cesar Chavez, This book, which I believe is Ganz's doctoral dissertation recounts and analyzes the history of the farm workers in the's when they had their greatest success.
Combining insights from both the civil rights and labor movements, the farm workers were successful because they were innovative, utilized the competencies of the people in their group and drew on their cultural and ethnic background.
While at times I got lost in the details, it was informative to see how a financially underresourced and marginalized community could be successful.


In the epilogue Ganz describes how afteror so, Chavez became very dictatorial and the things that had made the farm worker movement so successful were abandoned.
Just like the biblical David, the farm workers accomplished amazing things but then allowed their success in a sense to become their undoing.
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