UFW follows

⇒ Marc Cooper claims in the new LA Weekly that the Times' series on the United Farm Workers union was "directly inspired by � if not in great part derived from" his reporting and previous work by the Bakersfield Californian. But he also calls the series a "bang-up four-part takedown" and says that, despite forty years of UFW activities and the union's record wealth, "California farm workers are younger, poorer, less educated and less organized than ever in recent history."

⇒ On Cooper's blog, the former UFW activist Eliseo Medina, who cooperated with the Times, says of the paper's criticisms: "This all had to be said. It was time."

⇒ The National Latino Coalition for Justice released an open letter to the Times criticizing the series: "The Latina/o lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community is disturbed by the dismal portrayal of the United Farm Workers and the C�sar Ch�vez family described by staff writer Miriam Pawel in the Los Angeles Times. In its series, Pawel wrongly implies that the UFW cares more about same-sex marriage than about farm workers....C�sar Ch�vez and Dolores Huerta were active in the LGBT community since the early days, when it was unpopular to do so and it was considered political suicide. But this did not impede them from supporting the LGBT community because they believed it was the right thing to do."

⇒ With all the new attention to its 2004 series "Inside the UFW," the Bakersfield Californian has made links available in English and Spanish.