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Venice celery strike

Japanese American workers return to harvest celery fields in Venice after going on strike, Los Angeles, 1936 (Illustrated Daily News via UCLA Digital)

The Venice celery strike was a labor action in Los Angeles County, California, United States, from April 20, 1936,^[1] until May 27, 1936.^[2][3] A 1938 history of Asian-American and Latino/Hispanic labor action prepared by the Federal Writers' Project summarized the strike as being called by CUCOM (Confederación de Unión Campesinos y Obreros Mexicanos) "for higher wages and better hours. Attended by considerable violence."^[3]

The strikers were Mexican Americans, Filipino Americans, and Japanese Americans, organized as the Filipino Federated Workers Union, the American Agricultural Industrial Workers, and the Japanese Farm Workers Union of California.^[4] They were employed by Japanese American farmers who had no legal right to own their own land, which was held in the name of various banks (especially Bank of America) and leased to the resident alien farmers to get around the exclusion laws that prohibited Japanese American land ownership.^[4] The considerable violence was largely provided by the LAPD Red Squad, which "used brutal and violent tactics to punish strikers and their supporters,"^[4] but in Walteria on May 25, one young man reported that he "was one of 25 men who had been brought to section from Chula Vista to replace striking celery workers" and had been "set upon by Mexicans and Filipinos, none of whom he could identify".^[5]

Carey McWilliams called it "the backyard strike" in Factories in the Field, since until this strike Angelenos had only heard of strike-related violence from distant parts of the vast state, whereas this strike took place in "vacant lots" in the southern and western sections of Los Angeles County.^[1] Strikers won a modest wage increase and other concessions;^[4] that agreement was later renewed twice.^[1]

• El Monte berry strike of 1933
• Citrus Strike of 1936
• History of the Japanese in Los Angeles
• History of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles
• Strikes in the United States in the 1930s
• Celery mosaic virus

• Banh, Jenny; King, Melissa, eds. (2017). Anthropology of Los Angeles: place and agency in an urban setting. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-1-4985-2854-2.
• Bonacich, Edna; Luqian, Cheng, eds. (2023) [1984]. Labor Immigration under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States Before World War II. University of California Press. doi:10.2307/jj.2430610. ISBN 978-0-520-31781-9.
• Chi, Tsung (2005). East Asian Americans and political participation: a reference handbook. Political participation in America. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-290-5.
• Lowenstein, Norman (1940). Strikes and Strike Tactics in California Agriculture: A History. University of California, Berkeley.
• Niiya, Brian, ed. (1993). Japanese American history: an A-to-Z reference from 1868 to the present. Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, Calif.). New York: Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-8160-2680-7.

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