Randy Shaw
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Randy Shaw is the author of the forthcoming Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century (University of California Press). Mr. Shaw is the Executive Director and Supervising Attorney of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in San Francisco. Mr. Shaw received his J.D. from Hastings College of the Law in 1982, and started the Clinic while attending law school. During the past two decades, Mr. Shaw has assisted thousands of low-income tenants and drafted several laws that have preserved and improved affordable housing. Mr. Shaw has also designed and implemented programs that have provided housing for thousands of homeless single adults, and THC is San Francisco's leading provider of permanent housing to this population. He is the author of The Activist's Handbook: A Primer (University of California Press, 2001) and Reclaiming America: Nike, Clean Air, and the New National Activism (University of California Press, 1999). His new book is Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. Mr. Shaw is also editor of the daily progressive alternative online newspaper, Beyond Chron.

About Beyond the Fields:

Cesar Chavez is the most prominent Latino in United States history books, and much has been written about Chavez and the United Farm Worker's heyday in the 1960s and '70s. But left untold has been their ongoing impact on 21st century social justice movements. Beyond the Fields unearths this legacy, and describes how Chavez and the UFW's imprint can be found in the modern reshaping of the American labor movement, the building of Latino political power, the transformation of Los Angeles and California politics, the fight for environmental justice, and the burgeoning national movement for immigrant rights. Many of the ideas, tactics, and strategies that Chavez and the UFW initiated or revived--including the boycott, the fast, clergy-labor partnerships and door-to-door voter outreach--are now so commonplace that their roots in the farmworkers' movement is forgotten.

This powerful book also describes how the UFW became the era's leading incubator of young activist talent, creating a generation of skilled alumni who went on to play critical roles in progressive campaigns. UFW volunteers and staff were dedicated to furthering economic justice, and many devoted their post-UFW lives working for social change. When Barack Obama adopted "Yes We Can" as his 2008 campaign theme, he confirmed that the spirit of "Si Se Puede" has never been stronger, and that it still provides the clearest roadmap for achieving greater social and economic justice in the United States.

Blog Entries by Randy Shaw

Labor's Missed Opportunity

Posted November 30, 2010 | 09:54:54 (EST)

In March 2009, then-SEIU President Andy Stern was optimistic about labor's progress in President Obama's first year. Stern told me that of labor's top three priorities - universal health care, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), and comprehensive immigration reform - he expected the first two to pass in 2009...

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SEIU Faces Reckoning on Eve of Kaiser Results

Posted October 7, 2010 | 10:53:19 (EST)

As the SEIU awaits the results of its Kaiser election contest with NUHW, the union faces a reckoning regardless of the outcome. If SEIU loses, it will likely have no workers under contract at major California hospitals within three years. If it wins, SEIU will be forced to reconcile the...

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SEIU Uses Fear, Lies, and Million$ to Sway Kaiser Workers

Posted September 6, 2010 | 21:02:16 (EST)

In his book, Confessions of a Union Buster, Marty Leavitt observed, "The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack." In California, SEIU faces a similar challenge: it must convince 44,000 Kaiser hospital workers that the NUHW leadership team that brought them...

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Progressive Media Bolstering Republican/Fox News Agenda

Posted August 29, 2010 | 21:40:01 (EST)

Since President Obama took office, the Republican Party's agenda has dominated the public debate. Fox News and right-wing talk radio decide what's news, and the traditional media either echoes the story or is criticized for not doing so, as occurred when the New York Times Public Editor chastised the paper...

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SEIU-UNITE HERE Settlement Reached

Posted July 27, 2010 | 12:45:49 (EST)

After an 18-month battle that began with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) believing it could affect a hostile takeover of a fellow international union and once close ally, the two unions reached a settlement today almost entirely on UNITE HERE's terms.

SEIU's raids on UNITE HERE split the labor...

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New Outrage Exposes Obama's Failure To Help Unions

Posted June 13, 2010 | 21:17:55 (EST)

On June 11, St. Joseph's Health Systems (SJHS) did something that employers have long done, but which Barack Obama's presidency was supposed to stop: It filed a frivolous NLRB appeal to delay unionization for workers who won an election.

In this case, SJHS is denying unionization to Santa Rosa...

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SEIU to "Create WWIII" to Drive NUHW Out of Hospitals

Posted May 20, 2010 | 12:59:03 (EST)

According to published minutes from an April 10, 2010 SEIU-UHW meeting, SEIU plans to "Basically create WWIII" in order to drive NUHW organizers and supporters out of California hospitals. SEIU specifically intends to closely coordinate with Kaiser Security and Human Resources Department to "remove NUHW" from hospital cafeterias and other...

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SEIU at the Crossroads

Posted April 11, 2010 | 21:11:17 (EST)

Since January 2009, SEIU has spent millions in two campaigns against rival unions. Its campaign against UNITE HERE has alienated virtually the entire labor movement, effectively destroyed the Change to Win Labor Federation, worsened SEIU's budget problems, and achieved none of the hoped-for membership gains -- yet SEIU's raids against...

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New Immigrant Rights Campaign to Mount Largest March of Obama Era

Posted March 14, 2010 | 21:41:25 (EST)

"I cannot underscore strongly enough how pissed off the base is over the lack of action." --Gabe Gonzalez, Center for Community Change

Last week, immigrant rights groups became the first major progressive constituency to issue a release publicly denouncing the Obama Administration. Blasting the White House for "escalating deportations and...

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The Decline of Organizing in the Obama Era

Posted February 7, 2010 | 23:19:40 (EST)

Since the election of our first ex-community organizer as president, organizing for progressive change has declined. The reasons range from sharply reduced funding for organizers, to complacency after Democrats' sweeping 2008 victories, to labor unions being forced to focus on protecting current workers from contract givebacks rather than organizing new...

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Why I'm Skipping Obama's State of the Union

Posted January 26, 2010 | 09:27:30 (EST)

I won't be watching President Obama's State of the Union speech. It's not that I don't enjoy his speeches -- having seen more than of all other presidents combined -- but the problem is the disconnect between Speechmaker Obama and President Obama. Speechmaker Obama is always "fighting for working families,"...

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Holding Obama Accountable

Posted January 3, 2010 | 20:06:04 (EST)

After spending 2009 mobilizing grassroots support for progressive change, activists in 2010 face a new challenge: pressuring President Obama to fulfill a progressive agenda. A new approach is clearly needed, and three steps should be taken.

First, email campaigns, protests and media events must directly target Obama, rather than...

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Obama Ignores Lessons of Community Organizing

Posted December 13, 2009 | 20:25:32 (EST)

When Barack Obama backed a Senate health reform plan that differed radically from prior proposals, he ignored the lessons he learned as a young organizer on Chicago's South Side. Obama once knew that it's wrong to bypass the community's agenda to strike a backroom deal, regardless of its potentially superior...

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Activists Are Giving Obama a Pass

Posted December 6, 2009 | 20:15:05 (EST)


As President Obama quietly watches Senators undermine health care reform, redirects over $30 billion annually from domestic programs to expand the Afghanistan war, and sounds like the Concord Coalition in prioritizing deficit reduction over job creation, we hear little activist protest. Nor have activists publicly mobilized in response...

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Has Obama Hurt Michael Moore's New Film?

Posted October 13, 2009 | 09:18:56 (EST)

After seeing the U.S. premiere, I wrote that Michael Moore's Capitalism, A Love Story, is a must-see movie and his most powerful and politically fulfilled work. Moore thought so as well, and engaged in a media blitz to encourage a massive turnout to the 962 theater opening on the October...

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Michael Moore's New Film Rocks AFL-CIO

Posted September 15, 2009 | 08:51:32 (EST)

Demonstrating his passionate commitment to progressive change and single payer health care, Michael Moore held the U.S. premiere of his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, last night in Pittsburgh in conjunction with the AFL-CIO national convention. Sponsored by the National Nurses Organizing Committee and other unions, Moore gave the...

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Obama Did Not "Punk" the Common Guy

Posted August 11, 2009 | 10:19:22 (EST)

Has Barack Obama abandoned the populist policies that got him elected, and done nothing for working people? Frank Rich of the New York Times certainly implies this, framing his August 9 column around a claim by a Virginia real estate agent that "Nothing's changed for the common guy. I feel...

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SEIU Talks Peace -- But Continues War -- on UNITE HERE

Posted July 21, 2009 | 10:52:10 (EST)

SEIU President Andy Stern issued a staff memo last week saying "we are close to putting the dispute with UNITE HERE behind us." Stern said he was optimistic that a settlement was near, and that, "We and the members of Workers United don't want more fights." But Stern's rosy assessment...

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Labor Movement Backs UNITE HERE Against SEIU Raids

Posted June 30, 2009 | 10:06:03 (EST)

In a dramatic blow to SEIU's efforts to raid UNITE HERE members and jurisdictions, 15 of the nation's leading unions pledged Monday to provide UNITE HERE with "material and moral" support. Before a wildly cheering and upbeat crowd of 700, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee denounced SEIU for the "poaching" of...

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Is Fresno SEIU's Vietnam?

Posted June 22, 2009 | 10:51:52 (EST)

SEIU defeated NUHW by 233 votes in their bitter election over Fresno's 10,000 home care workers, but now faces a situation analogous to the United States in Vietnam. It took nearly one thousand staffers and an estimated $10 million for SEIU to eke out a victory in Fresno, the labor...

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