Fred Ross, Jr.

Fred Ross, Jr.

Fred Ross Jr. is the son of Fred Ross. He followed in his footsteps by becoming a community organizer. He retained the tactics learned from his father and worked alongside both Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Ross, Jr. played a large role in the Active Citizenship campaign, Gallo march, Salvadorian coffee boycott, and other UFW events.

Activist background

Fred Ross, Jr.’s legacy remains in the national organization he began with the help of his father, Neighbor to Neighbor. Neighbor to Neighbor was founded in 1986 to recruit and train organizers to put political pressure on Congress to stop U.S. military aid to right wing forces in Central America. Neighbor to Neighbor employed similar techniques to the UFW and provided a vital training ground for young activists to become the key organizers in the mid-to-late 1980s.

Helping Pelosi, and Slaughter

New York rep. Louise Slaughter was also the first Congressmember whose election was assisted by Neighbor to Neighbor, the national grassroots organization opposed to U.S. military aid to Central America headed by United Farmworkers veteran Fred Ross, Jr. Ross learned from the UFW how to target swing districts and representatives, and his group helped build the grassroots field campaign that brought Slaughter her narrow victory.

Less than a year after Slaughter’s election, Ross and other UFW alums helped elect Nancy Pelosi to Congress. Ross and Paul Milne used “house meetings,” a strategy that Fred Ross, Sr. taught to Cesar Chavez, who then used it to build the UFW. Pelosi attended 120 house meetings in only 60 days, and after taking office joined Slaughter in leading the fight against military aid to El Salvador’s right-wing government, and to Nicaragua’s contra rebels. (Pelosi and Ross, Jr. are pictured at a Neighbor to Neighbor meeting in my Randy Shaw's book , Beyond the Fields), and Ross later became Pelosi’s district chief of staff.

Defending Feinstein

In 1983, Fred Ross, Sr. joined his son, Fred Ross, Jr., and trained organizers to defeat the unfair Recall election of San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein who had been targeted because of her support for tough gun control regulation in the aftermath of the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk. Fred Ross Sr.’s house meeting method was instrumental in recruiting the hundreds of volunteers who turned out to defeat the Recall by an 80% margin.

UNITE HERE

Ross is an endorser of Wrong Way SEIU, a project of UNITE HERE with the intention of declaring that SEIU has gone dangerously off course.

Democratic Socialists of America

Ross is a regular contributor to Talking Union, a project of the Democratic Socialists of America Labor Network.

References

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