Cesar Chavez Day, 2010

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Title 3--
The President

Proclamation 8487 of March 31, 2010

Cesar Chavez Day, 2010

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

The rights and benefits working Americans enjoy today
were not easily gained; they had to be won. It took
generations of courageous men and women, fighting to
secure decent working conditions, organizing to demand
fair pay, and sometimes risking their lives. Some, like
Cesar Estrada Chavez, made it the cause of their lives.
Today, on what would have been his 83rd birthday, we
celebrate Cesar's legacy and the progress achieved by
all who stood alongside him.

Raised by a family of migrant farm workers, Cesar
Chavez spent his youth moving across the American
Southwest, working in fields and vineyards, and
experiencing firsthand the hardships he would later
crusade to abolish. At the time, farm workers were
deeply impoverished and frequently exploited, exposed
to very hazardous working conditions, and often denied
clean drinking water, toilets, and other basic
necessities. The union Cesar later founded with Dolores
Huerta, the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), still
addresses these issues today.

After serving in the United States Navy, Cesar Chavez
became a community organizer and began his lifelong
campaign for civil rights and social justice. Applying
the principles of nonviolence, he empowered countless
laborers, building a movement that grew into the UFW.
He led workers in marches, strikes, and boycotts,
focusing our Nation's attention on their plight and
using the power of picket lines to win union contracts.

``The love for justice that is in us is not only the
best part of our being, but it is also the most true to
our nature,'' Cesar Chavez once said. Since our
Nation's earliest days of independence, we have
struggled to perfect the ideals of equal justice and
opportunity enshrined in our founding documents. As
Cesar suggests, justice may be true to our nature, but
as history teaches us, it will not prevail unless we
defend its cause.

Few Americans have led this charge so tirelessly, and
for so many, as Cesar Chavez. To this day, his rallying
cry--``S[iacute], se puede,'' or ``Yes, we can,''--
inspires hope and a spirit of possibility in people
around the world. His movement strengthened our
country, and his vision lives on in the organizers and
social entrepreneurs who still empower their neighbors
to improve their communities.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority
vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the
United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2010, as
Cesar Chavez Day. I call upon all Americans to observe
this day with appropriate service, community, and
education programs to honor Cesar Chavez's enduring
legacy.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
thirty-first day of March, in the year of our Lord two
thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United
States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.