The Mushroom Wars

A True Story Of Farmworkers, Mushrooms, and Loads of Sh*t (Both Literally And Figuratively)

Cesar Chavez speaks to striking mushroom workers near Pescadero in 1978. Photo by author.

It was Dolores Huerta who first recruited me into the United Farm Workers (UFW) when I was a sophomore at UC Santa Cruz. This was in 1976, when the banana slug logo was still an underground movement and agriculture was the dominant industry around the Monterey Bay. I took a leap of faith from my privileged background into a different world…