Why David Sometimes Wins

Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement

By: Marshall Ganz

Narrated by: Marshall Ganz

On April 10, 1966, a crowd of 10,000 farm workers and supporters gathered at the California state capitol to celebrate victory in one of the most significant strikes in American history - one that made Cesar Chavez famous as leader of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW).

In Why David Sometimes Wins, Marshall Ganz tells the story of the UFW's ground-breaking victory, drawing out larger lessons from this dramatic tale.

Since the 1900s, large-scale agricultural enterprises relied on migrant labor - a cheap, unorganized, and powerless workforce. In 1965, after successive waves of failed organizing attempts, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and the three-year-old NFWA all found themselves on the ground, recruiting members. That year, some 800 Filipino grape workers began a strike, under the aegis of the AFL-CIO. The UFW soon joined the action with some 2,000 Mexican workers. The UFW's leaders turned the strike into a kind of civil rights struggle; they engaged in civil disobedience, mobilized support from churches and students, boycotted growers, and transformed their struggle into La Causa, a farm workers' movement that eventually triumphed over the grape industry's Goliath.

Why did they succeed? How can the powerless challenge the powerful successfully? Ganz points to three elements: the greater motivation of their leaders; the diversity of their community ties, information, and skills; and their creative decision-making processes. In total, the ability, or resourcefulness, to devise good strategy and turn short-term advantages into long-term gains.

As both a longtime movement organizer and scholar, Ganz provides insight unavailable anywhere else. Authoritative in scholarship and magisterial in scope, this book constitutes a seminal contribution to learning from the movement's struggles, set-backs, and successes.

©2009 Marshal Ganz (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Why David Sometimes Wins makes pivotal contributions to social movement theory and tells a compelling story about the farm workers of the 1960s. This book is a must read for all who want to learn about strategy and resourcefulness - in real world politics and organizations as well as in the classroom." (Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, Harvard University)

Powerfully Good and Inspiring

I found this lecture to be just what I needed to help me structure a class on advocacy and what it means to build strategic capacity. Each week I used a quote that I found so powerful and inspiring that I made sure my students and my colleagues at work understand it and live by it. I appreciate Marshall Ganz’s storytelling, building upon a model, best practices, and what not to do!