Fields of Courage: Remembering César Chavéz...by Susan S. Drake, Santa Cruz Press, CA, 1999.

The author's dedication could be for those brave souls today who dare to work for lasting peace and human well-being. She wrote her dedication of this book "...to the people who plant, nurture and harvest, especially you brave ones who persist with nonviolence to make your place in the sun a healthy, safe and economically viable one."

"Planting, nurturing, and harvesting" could be metaphors for our current efforts to find solutions to today's frightening dilemmas. Are we limited to choosing between oligarchy (government by a small fraction of people), plutocracy (government in which the wealthy rule), socialism (collective or government ownership of means of production and distribution of goods), capitalism (in which production and distribution are owned privately or corporately and not regulated (the so-called free market), or democracy (in which common people are the source of political power that has principle of social quality and individual rights).

In the 1960's and 70's, Cesar Chavez fought hard to correct unjust working and living conditions for farm workers. Susan Drake's book is a memoir in poetry describing the man and his work organizing "minority races" as Community Service Organizers. They worked on one particular problem at a time: need for water, sewage, police protection and police brutality. He felt a need for some alternative to labor unions, but his efforts in organizing eventually became the United Farm Workers, AFL-CIO.

Today we are threatened by situations that drive us to irrational extremes., for we see no easy way out. We want instant answers, demand simple fixes, spout 140 character wisdom.

A self-educated man with both temper and "great compassion," his story of persistence and integrity "changed the face of California agriculture," at least in the way the farmers saw themselves. That same kind of persistence and integrity could also change the face of our future.