[Federal Register Volume 75, Number 64 (Monday, April 5, 2010)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 17025-17026]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2010-7784]


 
 
                         Presidential Documents 
 
 

  Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 64 / Monday, April 5, 2010 / 
Presidential Documents  

 ___________________________________________________________________

 Title 3--
 The President

[[Page 17025]]

                Proclamation 8487 of March 31, 2010

                
Cesar Chavez Day, 2010

                By the President of the United States of America

                A Proclamation

                The rights and benefits working Americans enjoy today 
                were not easily gained; they had to be won. It took 
                generations of courageous men and women, fighting to 
                secure decent working conditions, organizing to demand 
                fair pay, and sometimes risking their lives. Some, like 
                Cesar Estrada Chavez, made it the cause of their lives. 
                Today, on what would have been his 83rd birthday, we 
                celebrate Cesar's legacy and the progress achieved by 
                all who stood alongside him.

                Raised by a family of migrant farm workers, Cesar 
                Chavez spent his youth moving across the American 
                Southwest, working in fields and vineyards, and 
                experiencing firsthand the hardships he would later 
                crusade to abolish. At the time, farm workers were 
                deeply impoverished and frequently exploited, exposed 
                to very hazardous working conditions, and often denied 
                clean drinking water, toilets, and other basic 
                necessities. The union Cesar later founded with Dolores 
                Huerta, the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), still 
                addresses these issues today.

                After serving in the United States Navy, Cesar Chavez 
                became a community organizer and began his lifelong 
                campaign for civil rights and social justice. Applying 
                the principles of nonviolence, he empowered countless 
                laborers, building a movement that grew into the UFW. 
                He led workers in marches, strikes, and boycotts, 
                focusing our Nation's attention on their plight and 
                using the power of picket lines to win union contracts.

                ``The love for justice that is in us is not only the 
                best part of our being, but it is also the most true to 
                our nature,'' Cesar Chavez once said. Since our 
                Nation's earliest days of independence, we have 
                struggled to perfect the ideals of equal justice and 
                opportunity enshrined in our founding documents. As 
                Cesar suggests, justice may be true to our nature, but 
                as history teaches us, it will not prevail unless we 
                defend its cause.

                Few Americans have led this charge so tirelessly, and 
                for so many, as Cesar Chavez. To this day, his rallying 
                cry--``S[iacute], se puede,'' or ``Yes, we can,''--
                inspires hope and a spirit of possibility in people 
                around the world. His movement strengthened our 
                country, and his vision lives on in the organizers and 
                social entrepreneurs who still empower their neighbors 
                to improve their communities.

                NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the 
                United States of America, by virtue of the authority 
                vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the 
                United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2010, as 
                Cesar Chavez Day. I call upon all Americans to observe 
                this day with appropriate service, community, and 
                education programs to honor Cesar Chavez's enduring 
                legacy.

[[Page 17026]]

                IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 
                thirty-first day of March, in the year of our Lord two 
                thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United 
                States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.
                
                
                    (Presidential Sig.)

[FR Doc. 2010-7784
Filed 4-2-10; 8:45 am]
Billing code 3195-W0-P