Why David Sometimes Wins

The United Farm Worker's (UFW) victory over the California growers in the labor struggles of the 1960's and 70's marked a significant chapter in social movement history. Marshall Ganz, a long time leader in the UFW himself, has written an insiders' unique interpretive history of the movements' struggles and its ultimate success. Strategic leadership, Ganz claims, was the key reason for the UFW's David-like triumph over the grape industry's Goliath. Ganz shows how the upstart UFW, led by Cesar Chavez, devised the most effective organizational strategy, developed a resourcefulness that compensated for its lack of resources, and established accountability and transparency to its members. Authoritative in scholarship and magisterial in scope, this book constitutes a seminal contribution to labor and social movement history.