Cesar and the leaders of the NFWA believed it would be years before their fledgling union was ready for a strike. But he also knew how growers historically pitted one race against another to break field walkouts. Cesar’s union voted to join the Filipino workers’ walkouts on Mexican Independence Day, September 16, 1965. From the beginning this would be a different kind of strike.Cesar insisted the Latino and Filipino strikers work together, sharing the same picketlines, strike kitchens and union hall.He asked strikers take a solemn vow to remain nonviolent.The strike drew unprecedented support from outside the Central Valley, from other unions, church activists, students, Latinos and other minorities, and civil rights groups.Cesar led a 300-mile march, or perigrinacion, from Delano to Sacramento. It placed the farm workers’ plight squarely before The strikers turned to boycotts, including table grapes, which eventually spread across North America.

But Cesar knew the strikers’ greatest weapon was simply their decision not to quit, to persevere no matter what the odds or how long it would take. The strikers had to be prepared to risk everything—beginning with their financial security.Two and a half years into the strike, during the winter of 1967-68, some strikers, especially some young men, were impatient. There was no hope of victory any time soon. Thick Tule fog shrouded the valley, making things seem even drearier.Some young male strikers talked about violence, about striking back at the growers who abused them. By fighting back they could prove their machismo, their manliness. Cesar rejected that part of American culture that, he said, “tells our young men that you’re not a man if you don’t fight back.” He had already begun boycotting table grapes, following the tradition of his hero, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Cesar also followed Gandhi and Dr. King’s practice of militant nonviolence.

Some of the strikers equated nonviolence with inaction or even cowardice. Cesar believed exactly the opposite. He believed nonviolence is more powerful than violence, that it supports you if your cause is just. He believed nonviolence forces you to be creative–that it lets you maintain the offensive, which is crucial to winning any contest.But for Cesar, nonviolence was more than a tactic or strategy that could be discarded if it wasn’t working. He once wrote, “However important the struggle is and however much misery, poverty and exploitation exist, we know that it cannot be more important than one human life.” Cesar also quoted Gandhi, who said, “Do something! Offer your life! If you really want to do something, be willing to die for it.”He didn’t teach people by lecturing or by telling them what to do. He led by example. He planted little seeds of hope that sprouted into a renewed movement.