Cesar Chavez Day is upon us, and one way of honoring the spirit of the famed labor leader locally is by helping the organization LUCHA, Living United for Change in Arizona, by participating in its Cesar Chavez Day Raffle.
See also: -Four MCSA/ACORN Members Freed after Being Arrested for Applauding -Joe Arpaio Foes Score: Acquitted Activists Win Legal Fees from County Attorney -Joe Arpaio Protesters Score Nearly $500K in Settlements from Maricopa County
LUCHA is a feisty little social justice organization run by Monica Sandschafer, one of the activists arrested by MCSO goons in the dark days of December 2008 for, get this, applauding a speaker at a Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting.
Enter LUCHA's Cesar Chavez Day Raffle.
All of the activists beat the rap, sued, and ended up scoring tidy settlements, showing once again that justice is possible, even in Marikafka County, as long as you've got a junkyard dog for a lawyer. (I'd note that these activists plowed a lot of that moolah back into the community, which is a beautiful thing.)
Formerly the state director for the Arizona chapter of the now-defunct ACORN, Sandschafer currently is the director of LUCHA, which means "struggle" en Espanol, as in the oft-heard lefty chant, "Obama escucha! Estamos en la lucha," or "Obama, listen up! We are in the struggle."
LUCHA does some cool work in Arizona, everything from fighting off attempts to do away with the minimum wage, to opposing Arpaio, to challenging Governor "GED Jan" Brewer on her bigoted policy of denying driver's licenses to DREAMers.
Also, LUCHA has been active in helping those same DREAMers apply for the federal government's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The group is not one of these huge, powerhouse progressive organizations. It is Phoenix based, and grass-roots. Even its fundraiser is relatively modest: A raffle with a grand prize of $250. Second place is $50 worth of wine.
The drawing will be Monday, so there's still plenty of time to enter, and the buy-in is pretty low: Tickets are $2 each, 3 for $5 or a book of 20 tickets for just $30.
BTW, that second place wine is produced by the United Farm Workers, so you can get plastered with your social conscience intact.
To which, I say, "Si, se puede," and pass the vino.
