Chavez to Talk At UFW Rally Today at Noon

Cesar Chavez, director of the United Farm Workers union, arrived in Boston early this morning to take part in a drive to enlist support for the UFW's boycott of non-union California lettuce and table grapes.

Chavez will appear with farm workers and other labor leaders at a rally on the steps of the State House at noon today.

Last night over 500 of the UFW's Boston-area farm workers and their supporters gathered to hear Dolores Huerta, vice president of the UFW, report from California via a telephone loud-speaker connection. Huerta spoke about the conditions facing the UFW's strikers there.

The UFW called the strike and boycott after all but two California grape growers failed to renew their UFW contracts last month. Nearly all of the growers have since signed labor contracts with the Teamsters Union.

Coordinated Effort

Nick Jones, an official of the Boston office of the UFW, told last night's meeting that the boycott, coordinated with the California strike, will force the growers to deal with the UFW.

California police are jailing over 500 strikers a day who are defying an injunction which prohibits picketing near the fields. Despite the injunction, Huerta reported that nearly 9500 farm workers and supporters are manning picket lines.

Representatives of the farm workers said that the Teamsters and growers had hired thugs to beat and harass picketing farm workers. Joseph Sprague, a representative of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, who has recently returned from a tour of the strike area, said that police beatings are a constant hazard facing the striking workers.

Sprague emphasized "the essentially religious nature of this struggle," and said that the New England Protestant establishment is behind the UFW "100 per cent"