Excerpts from Senator Mondale's Speeches on Migrant Workers

"There is absolutely no good reason why farm workers, the most hard-working Americans and the least paid, should continue to be outside the whole framework of social and economic legislation." 91st Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record 116 (August 4, 1970) at 27315.

"I have tried to find out for myself how migrants live, and I want to help them—really help them, not urge band-aids for the deep wounds they have. It's easy to disguise the problem and talk about increased benefits for them. Sure they need medical care and schools that even half take notice of their children; but the real problem is that migrants (and maybe a lot of other people, too) are powerless, which means they have no real say in what happens to them. They don't get the protection of a whole group of laws we enacted in the thirties to protect the working man, to guarantee him collective bargaining rights and a minimum wage and unemployment compensation and all the rest." 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record 118 (January 24, 1972) at 872.

"I condemn this resort to violence. It would be unconscionable if farm workers are denied their right to choose a union of their own because of resort to physical brutality, and varied forms of threats and reprisals. The intimidation, harassment, and interference with legitimate organizing efforts in the Salinas Valley cannot be justified nor tolerated, and is a total anathema . . . to the principles of nonviolence to which Cesar Chavez and UFWOC are dedicated." 91st Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record 116 (September 24, 1970) at 33563.

"I wish that all of my colleagues could have been in the hearing room as these doctors testified, for it is impossible to recount to you the hushed silence as they enumerated their findings. It is impossible to capture today their rage at having to recount their own experiences. There were few men and women that could sit through the testimony with dry eyes, insensitive to the realities of how we are daily destroying human beings." 91st Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record 116 (October 1, 1970) at 34546.