The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) , AFL–CIO, is a labor union representing migrant farm workers in the Midwestern United States and North Carolina.

FLOC was founded in Toledo, Ohio, in 1967 by Baldemar Velasquez. A migrant worker who had worked in the fields since he was six years old, Velasquez led his first strike at the age of 12. By the time he was 20 years old and a college student, Velasquez had already faced numerous beatings and arrests. But in 1967, with the help of his father and others, Velasquez organized FLOC among migrant field workers picking tomatoes in Ohio.

FLOC's initial organizing strategy was to focus on workers, as most unions did. FLOC organizers followed migrant workers year-round, moving south to Texas and Florida every winter to build an organizing base. By 1977, however, FLOC had only 700 members. (more...)

• ... that Tomás Rivera, a Chicano author, poet, and educator, was the first Mexican American chancellor of the University of California system?
• ... that after the first demonstration by members of Católicos por La Raza at St. Basil's Cathedral, in downtown Los Angeles, the archbishop resigned?
• ... that Chicanismo is a cultural movement by Mexican Americans to recapture their Mexican, Native American culture, which began in the 1930s in the Southwestern United States?
• ... that on Christmas Eve 1969, when California lawyer and noted political activist Ricardo Cruz was a law student at Loyola Law School, he was arrested for leading a march of several hundred demonstrators protesting the newly constructed, $4 million St. Basil's Cathedral?
• ... that the first gang injunction to make headlines was obtained by Los Angeles City Attorney James Hahn against the West Los Angeles-based street gang the Playboy Gangster Crips in 1987?
• ... that Rini Templeton created works of graphic art for the New Mexico Land-Grant movement before moving to Mexico to collaborate with the labor movement there?
• ... that the parents of Chicana fiction writer and Cornell University English professor Helena Maria Viramontes (pictured) met while working in the fields, and that the impact of César Chávez and the United Farm Workers later influenced her fiction?

2005

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Jennifer Muniz (née Jennifer Lynn Lopez; born July 24, 1969) is an American actress, author, fashion designer, dancer, producer, and singer. She became interested in pursuing a career in the entertainment industry following a minor role in the 1986 film My Little Girl, to the dismay of her Puerto Rican parents, who believed that it was an unrealistic career route for a Hispanic. Lopez gained her first regular high-profile job as a Fly Girl dancer on In Living Color in 1991, where she remained a regular until she decided to pursue an acting career in 1993. She received her first leading role in the Selena biopic of the same name in 1997. Lopez became the first Latina actress to earn over $1 million for a role the following year, with the film Out of Sight. She ventured into the music industry in 1999 with her debut studio album, On the 6, joining a select few in successfully converting from a film to a music career. (more...)

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