A Life of Meaning: Working for Social Justice with Yakima Valley Heroes

Michael J. Fox graduated from Cornell University in 1966 and the University of Virginia School of Law in 1969. He practiced law in Washington from 1969 until 1988, when he was appointed as a judge on the King County Superior Court by Gov. Booth Gardner. He served for 23 years on the court, retiring in 2011. In 2017, he served as a judge on the Tulalip Tribal Court. In his law practice, he concentrated on civil rights and labor litigation and represented the United Farm Workers, the United Construction Workers Association, the Communications Workers of America, and the Alaska Cannery Workers Association.

I turned 80 years old this year. I’ve come to realize that the meaningful life I’ve lived came about, in large part, because at age 14, I made the decision to take Spanish to fulfill my prep school language requirement. Had I taken French, as most of my classmates did, or German, or Greek, which were all offered at Loomis School, I would never have wound up working as a lawyer for Yakima Valley farmworkers eight years after graduating from prep school. I can’t remember anything said overtly, but the “buzz” from other students and some teachers was that speaking Spanish somehow had less importance and prestige than the other European languages.

That seemed nonsensical to me.

In 1970, I was in my first year as a lawyer, working as a staff attorney for Seattle Legal Services. I was learning the ropes of how to be a lawyer and got involved in some interesting and important cases on behalf of poor folks in King County. I enjoyed my work and my lawyer colleagues. My boss, Greg Dallaire, had just taken over as SLS’s new director and seemed determined to make the program better. In September 1970, he had a phone conversation with Lupe Gamboa, a University of Washington law student he’d recently met. Lupe was the first matriculated student at the UW Law School from a Yakima Valley farmworker family. He told Greg that workers at 10 Yakima Valley hops ranches had gone on strike at the height of the harvest, and that the workers needed legal assistance. He and some other UW students had volunteered to work with the strikers, virtually all of whom were monolingual Spanish speakers from Mexico. Greg knew I could speak passable Spanish and asked me to go to Granger, Washington, in the heart of the valley and see how we could help.

The strikes were the seeds that blossomed into a full-fledged social and political movement that still has a lasting impact in Washington state 54 years later.

For me, my involvement in the early days of that movement led to a rewarding career and, more importantly, a life with meaning and purpose. It also led me to friendships that I cherish these many years later. After a few months of intense work, I was becoming a “farmworker lawyer”; after a few more years, I wound up as the lawyer for other racial minority worker groups, and I came to realize that my own life’s purpose was becoming defined by my work.

As the labor organizing work in the Yakima Valley continued, I met young Mexican-Americans who became my friends: Tomas Villanueva, who was a few years older than the other Chicano activists and emerged as the “senior organizer”; Roberto and Carlos Treviño, two brothers from Granger who emerged as the movement’s leaders and became staff organizers for the United Farm Workers Union, founded by Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez; Donna and Lillian Treviño, the wives of Roberto and Carlos; Jesus Lemos, who worked tirelessly with the UFW for many years; Ricardo Garcia, who worked with various farmworker organizations after he was discharged from the U.S. Army and founded Radio KDNA, the little Granger FM station that eventually became the “Voice of the Farmworker” in Washington state; Monica Garcia, Ricardo’s wife, who was always present; and Lupe Gamboa, who dropped out of law school to work as a full-time UFW organizer for eight years and returned to graduate 10 years after the strikes.

In the last 12 years, every one of this core group of farmworker organizers, except Lupe and Donna Treviño, have died. Tomas Villanueva died in 2012; Ricardo Garcia died in 2024; Monica Garcia in 2022; Roberto and Carlos Treviño in 2023; and Jesus Lemos a few years earlier. Their deaths have caused me anguish, but have also caused me to reflect on their lives and accomplishments, and what they meant to me and my own journey through life. I first met these heroes in 1970, when they invited me to the Yakima Valley to help with the hops ranch strikes. I found myself immersed in a life-changing experience. Suddenly, my law school education became an asset to a social movement; for me personally, my life took on responsibility and meaning. I soon realized that I was working with young folks who were determined to use their lives to bring about opportunities and dignity for their people. These heroes had decided to sacrifice their own personal and professional opportunities for others.

I now understand that my relationships with them, and our work together over many years, are what led me to a life centered on achieving genuine social justice. For the next 18 years, I received this gift from their sacrifices and commitment. After my own grief over their deaths, I gradually came to realize that their lives have been for me—and many others—generous gifts that have enabled us to do what we’ve done with our own lives. We’ve been able to “keep on, keepin’ on!” I also understand that that goal has not been reached and will not be attained for many years, if ever.

But I’ve accepted that and know that my own and my friends’ work had and still has meaning, and that all of us can be proud of the lives we’ve lived.