No Regrets

The Los Angeles Times wraps up its series on United Farm Workers with a story on a former UFW organizer who now serves as a top official in the Service Employees International Union.

If not for Cesar Chavez, [Eliseo] Medina might still be in Delano, picking grapes and shooting pool at People's bar. Instead, he is the preeminent example of a generation of activists nurtured by the UFW and its founders.

But Medina is organizing janitors and healthcare workers, not farmworkers. His life illustrates another part of the Chavez legacy: The UFW founder drove out many of the union's most committed labor leaders, who quit the fields and turned their talents to other causes.

Medina tells blogger Marc Cooper he has no regrets about the series: "This all had to be said. It was time."