Barbwire by Barbano: In search of César Chávez

   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes. Everybody knows...
Everybody knows the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows...
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   and a long red rose.
   Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

— Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
— Leon Russell, 1942-2016

In search of César Chávez
Barbwire by Andres Luis Barbáno / Expanded from the 3-28-2017 Sparks Tribune / Expansions in blue

He died in 1993 but I'm still following César Chávez's footprints.

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT

Support Don Dondero next
Note: Alas and alack, Dondero did not make it in 2015 of 2016.
Make this the year!

7-COME-11!
Barbwire wins 7th Nevada Press Association award

BRONZE 2016
4-28-2015
11-24-2015
1-19-2016

6-pack: BRONZE 2014
Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake / 4-18-2013

The 2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon / 5-30-2013

The politics of media ga-ga boosterism / 3-20-2014

We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series

Barbwire.TV
Watch NevadaLabor.com for show times. Help us get the word out.

Support the project at http://resurge.tv#donate

SUING FOR SCHOOLS
Reruns on Carson-Dayton 226

Additional programs on Boulder City cable. Go to bcnv.org and then
go to the BCTV link.

If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions — new power to the people on the public airwaves

The program premiers were available to every television set in the region because of a high-mileage media hybrid.

The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.

Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.

Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online at ReSurge.TV.

You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

Your contribution will help fund the distribution as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe.

You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass the message upward.

Thanks.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew

Click here for selected on-demand re-runs from the Barbwire.TV archives

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success
Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
Highlights from radio days
mp3 file

Tomorrow's news today —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

Long before he became an international superstar, César Chávez traveled to northern Nevada on worker issues. That's according to Reno-Sparks NAACP matriarch Dolores Feemster who met with him in the 1960s. I have been unable to find any other record but I won't stop searching.

Reno's first César Chávez Day was declared on 15 July 1986 by Mayor Pete Sferrazza when César came here to speak to trade unionists. History and photos of that day and all subsequent celebrations may be accessed along with event reservation info at CesarChavezNevada.com/

When the U.S. Postal Service issued a César Chávez first-class stamp in 2003, a local TV station turned it into an annual party. When the station changed hands, new owners let it drift but the Barbwire would not let it die.

Nevada César Chávez Celebration XV thus happens Wednesday, 29 March 2017 at Circus Circus Hotel-Casino in Reno. Doors to the Mandalay Ballroom open at 5:30 p.m., dinner at 7:00 p.m.

Food, fun, fiesta, foolishness, frolics and follytix —> Entertainment will again be provided by popular local musicians César Perez and Ángel Rodriguez. Ballet Folklorico de La Sierra is also making a repeat engagement after being the hit of the evening last year.

As always, the event will have both light and serious aspects. Past celebrations have included presentations from undocumented U.S. residents nicknamed "Dreamers" who came here as small children, and by supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (After four decades of trying, the ERA passed the Nevada Legislature last week and made waves nationally in the process.)

Local and state officials are expected as usual. NevadaLabor.com César Chávez Hall of Famers Darlene Jesperson, Joe Neal and Bob Price will also attend. The event will be digitized and segments will be used in an upcoming TV special.

Former Sen. Neal is flying up from Las Vegas. His daughter, Dina, currently serves in the State Assembly. Former Assemblymember Price's district overlapped much of Neal's in Clark County. Price and his wife, former University of Nevada Regent Nancy Price, relocated to Sparks years ago.

Jespersen was the inaugural hall of fame inductee. She made new law and garnered worldwide attention when she sued Harrah's for wrongful termination. A highly honored bartender for two decades, the corporation fired her for refusing to wear makeup to some ridiculous cookie-cutter standard. She made worldwide news and lots of lawbooks.

A new television campaign for César Chávez XV broke earlier this week on KTVN TV-2 sponsored by Laborers' International Union Local 169, the major supporter of the annual event for the past decade. The video features César Chávez meeting with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-NY, and marching with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. One segment shows Washoe County Commissioner Kitty Jung greeting Librado "Lee" Chávez at the 2008 celebration. A familiar face in Reno, Lee Chávez passed away last year, as did Mrs. Helen Chávez, César's widow. Their contributions will be remembered Wednesday evening.

Longtime Reno resident Ramon Chávez, Lee's son and César's nephew, accepted the Washoe County Commission's annual Chávez Day proclamation last week.

César Chávez's siblings lived into their 80s. He died at 66. Ramon tells me there is no doubt that the stresses of his hunger strikes and his struggles in the fields substantially shortened his life.

Nonetheless, he lives forever and we honor and continue his work Wednesday night.

¡Sí se puede!

Dio benedica l'America.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
______________
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

ONLINE EXTRAS —>

END OF TIMES SURVIVAL KIT. Defend yourself with humorous or humorless but always-peerless predictions for 2017 by subscribing to the Barbwire Confidential News Service.

Last year's dark foreshadowings unfortunately became reality. I thus suggest inoculation by signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/ It's cheap as well as enlightening entertainment

Subscribe today to get the exclusive End of Times Retrogression, a Procession for Progression, an Obsession to relieve Depression, Proselytizing Prayer for Divine Intercession at the Legislative Session. Don't wait— procrastination is the devil's dislocation. Hie thee hence to BallotBoxing.US/

THE GOOD DON. Nominations are afoot for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame. Time to ramp up for world-famous Tribune photographer Don Dondero. Here's the compelling case for his induction.

SMOKING GUNS —> Not necessarily news
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 3-21-2017 Sparks Tribune
Death Panels 2.0
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 3-14-2017 Sparks Tribune
Positively negative
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 3-7-2017 Sparks Tribune / Updated 3-9 and 3-12-2017
Equal Rights Betrayal
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 2-28-2017 Sparks Tribune / Updated 3-1, 3-3 and 3-6-2017
Reidless and Rudderless?
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 2-21-2017 Sparks Tribune
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 2-14-2017 Sparks Tribune / Updated 2-16, 2-17 and 2-21-2017
"By the 1920s, pseudo-scientists and polemicists in the 1920s popularized the notion that Italians were a separate race from Anglo- Americans. 'There’s no doubt those ideas were still around in 1942.' "

The Gorsuch Nonesuch: Poison Annie's Revenge
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 2-7-2017 Sparks Tribune
Smoot, smut and stash
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-31-2017 Sparks Tribune
The last question
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-24-2017 Sparks Tribune
Patient Zero Plagues
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-17-2017 Sparks Tribune
Democrats in Margaritaville
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-10-2017 Sparks Tribune
Regressions, Transitions and Predictions
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-3-2017 Sparks Tribune

TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY: FEEL UP YOUR FIRE METER. The Reno Gazette-Journal did big spreads on three consecutive Sundays (Sept. 14, Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, 2014) on NV Energy smart meter fires. Welcome aboard. Barbwire readers were two years ahead on the fire meter issue. (Touch a Smart Meter, Go to Jail — 11 October 2012)

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is. A thousand thanks to those who keep sending show suggestions.

I encourage you to donate to the cause at Barbwire.TV/ The medium that shapes public opinion needs at least one refuge where it is not filtered through the distorted green eye shades of prissy corporate accountants for whom profit is the only priority; where self-censorship is the journalist's normal work environment and where all sins of omission are tacitly encouraged and forgiven with the wave of a balance sheet. This is important. We've got a lot of work to do.