If you don't know, your labor unions and community organizations, there's somebody you can ask to guide you. A lot of people, especially in the Latino community, they have this big ballot and all these names and propositions on it, and they say 'Oh my God'. They don't know which of these to vote for, so they don't vote.

I am happy to see that, increasingly, people care about farm workers. There is tremendous interest in where and how our food is grown.

I quit because I can’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.

We know we only have about half of our population that's voting.

Especially as a teenager, I was always being racially profiled by the police. You just see all this injustice, and you want to do something about it, but you don't know how.

Through that organization [Community Service Organization], I met Cesar Chavez. We had this common interest about farm workers. We ultimately left CSO to start the National Farm Workers Organization, which became the United Farm Workers. I was very blessed to have learned some of the skills of basic grassroots organizing from Mr. Ross and then be able to put that into practice in both CSO and the United Farm Workers.

The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized, and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the women's movement, and the equality movement for our LGBT brothers and sisters are all manifestations of these rights.