Israel's Black Panthers
Asaf Elia-Shalev's insight into the Israel's Black Panthers, El Malcriado documentary by Brandon Lien, and a visit from Andrés Chávez and Eric Romero, along with our tribute to Wendy Brooks.
In this edition, we invite you to join the discussion on April 9 as journalist Asaf Elia-Shalev explores the impact of Israel's Black Panthers. Also, we encourage you to take a moment to watch Brandon Lien’s documentary, El Malcriado: The Voice of the Farm Worker, which traces the early years of the newspaper El Malcriado. Last month, Andrés Chávez and Eric Romero from the National Chávez Center visited the Bradley Center to discuss the Farmworker Movement Collection, where CSUN students from IntersectLA showcased their work featuring the collection. Lastly, we honor the memory of Wendy Brooks, a central figure in the Farmworker Movement, who recently passed away.
Exploring Israel’s Black Panthers: Asaf Elia-Shalev at Bradley Center
Author and journalist Asaf Elia-Shalev brings his book Israel's Black Panthers: The Radicals Who Punctured a Nation's Founding Myth to CSUN for a discussion on April 9 on the history of the Israeli Black Panthers and their impact. RSVP here.
Asaf Elia-Shalev is an Israeli-American journalist based in Los Angeles. He has worked for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a nonprofit newsroom covering issues of Jewish concern worldwide for over a hundred years. He first encountered the story of the Israeli Black Panthers as a college student exploring his Mizrahi Jewish roots and learning about the legacy of the original Black Panther Party from Oakland.
In this video clip, Elia-Shalev talks about his new book in a short interview with Keith Rice and José Luis Benavides, edited by Brandon Lien.
In his new book, Elia-Shalev tells the story of Moroccan Israeli Jews who challenged their country's political status quo and rebelled against the ethnic hierarchy of Israeli life in the 1970s. Inspired by the American group of the same name, the Black Panthers mounted protests and a yearslong political campaign for the rights of Mizrahim, or Jews of Middle Eastern ancestry. The book draws on archival documents and interviews with elderly activists to capture the movement's history and reveal little-known stories from within the group. Asaf Elia-Shalev explores the parallels between the Israeli and American Black Panthers, offering a unique perspective on the global struggle against racism and oppression. The book illuminates an obscure episode of the international influence of the Panthers and the Black Power Movement. The Bradley Center’s Drs. Karin Stanford and Keith Rice have conducted interviews for the Center’s Black Power Archives.
In this second video clip, Elia Shalev compares and highlights some differences and similarities between the Israeli Black Panthers and the original American Black Panthers.
El Malcriado: The Voice of the Farm Worker
By José Luis Benavides
Our intrepid video editor Brandon Lien took on the challenge of crafting a short documentary telling the story of the early years of El Malcriado, the non-official newspaper of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) from 1964 to 1967. By all accounts, the paper served initially as a paper focused on defending the rights of the farmworkers and introducing to its readers in California’s agricultural towns the work of the organization and its leaders. After the grape strike, the paper became more and more a tool to introduce the struggle of the farmworkers and their call for a grape boycott to a larger audience in cities across the country. But more than just focusing on this story, Brandon also used our short interview with Andy and Anita Zermeño as well as the footage we collected from Luis Valdez’s visit to our campus, to make the connection of El Malcriado and El Teatro Campesino through the cartoon characters created by Zermeño and César Chávez. “This is a wonderful resource!” wrote Oliver Rosales, a history professor at Berkeley College. “I especially love how the connection between El Malcriado and Teatro Campesino brings it all home and shows the impact beyond the publication itself. Will definitely share this resource with my students, especially in Delano!”
Andrés Chávez and Eric Romero visit the Bradley Center
By Marta Valier
Andrés Chávez, executive director of the National Chavez Center, and Eric Romero, the center’s director of archives, visited the Bradley Center to discuss our digitizing and curation process for the Farmworker Movement Collection. Students at IntersectLA, led by Professor Shally Juárez, presented a website in construction featuring the collection and other projects they are developing utilizing material from the Bradley Center (stay tuned for the forthcoming updates on our collaboration with IntersectLA). It was inspiring to see CSUN students Angel Goku Rinos and Hailey Ulrich present their work to César Chávez’s grandson, demonstrating the younger generation’s role in bringing historical records to life. CSUN’s digital service librarian, Steve Kutay, guided Eric Romero on a tour of the Special Collections, with archivist Elizabeth Peattie providing insights into the archive’s operations. This meeting united participants of varying ages, backgrounds, and skills working on similar materials, highlighting our collective commitment to preserving the heritage of this social movement. We look forward to continuing to engage with the National Chávez Center.
Remembering Wendy Brooks, a tribute to her role in the Farmworker Movement
By Marta Valier
Last week, we learned of Wendy Brooks’s passing via a Facebook post from her friend Kathy Murguia. Brooks played a pivotal role in the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) and made significant contributions to our research for the Farmworker Movement Collection, assisting us in identifying individuals and providing context for the images. Murguia also shared a message from Brooks, which included: “Live with love, and believe in the potential of every child.”
Wendy Brooks, nee Goepel, moved from Massachusetts to California in 1958 to join the California Migrant Ministry and study sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She quickly learned in what conditions the farmworkers' families were living and spent her first Californian summer working and living in different labor camps near Bakersfield in Kern County. As a student from Berkeley, she traveled to Stockton to meet Dolores Huerta and Gilbert Padilla, and after earning her master's at Stanford, she quit her Ph.D. studies to work on a new project at the California Health Department, the Farmworker Health Service. From 1963 to 1965, she led a team of survey interviewers inquiring about the health, housing, and economic conditions of migrant farmworkers living in Kern, Kings, and Tulare County and writing reports about the health status of black, Filipino, and Okie farmworkers. During these times, she met César and Helen Chávez and formed Citizens for Farm Labor, a group that included other activists and unionists such as Anne Draper and Bill Esher. Esher wanted to publish a magazine in Delano, and Brooks financed him by sending him $50 a month so that he could live and work in Delano, where he started the newspaper El Malcriado. In the winter of 1965, Brooks got a new job working at Governor Pat Brown’s office for the War on Poverty in California project. That didn't last long, and the project did not benefit the farmworkers, as the valley growers were Democrats, and the Democratic governor did not intend to upset them in a significant way. But it was during this time that Brooks got closer to Chávez. She was working on grant applications in the San Joaquin Valley for local improvement projects, one of which was for the NFWA. In September 1965, when César Chávez asked her to join the NFWA, she did not hesitate. On September 16, a day after a strike vote was called at Filipino Hall, Brooks quit her job at Farmworkers Health Services and joined Chávez. In the fall of 1965, as soon as the strike began, she was in charge of the press, working from the office in Negrito Hall in Delano, writing press releases. In the following months, she moved to Washington to develop rural health. Once again, Chávez went looking for her, asking her to help him raise money to establish a medical clinic. During this time, she met César’s new doctor, David Brooks. Together, they started a clinic for farmworkers in Woodville, California.
To see more photos of Wendy Brooks in the center’s Farmworker Movement Collection, click here. Her photos are cataloged under her maiden name, Wendy Goepel.
Thanks for supporting 'Hope and Dignity' catalog fundraiser
Thanks to everyone who donated during #CSUNGivingDay to support our fundraising efforts for the catalog for the Farmworker Movement Collection exhibition, “Hope and Dignity: The Farmworker Movement," to open August 15 at the Museum of Social Justice. You can always donate to the center using the button below.