One large-scale event that takes place every year on the West Side will be happening in a matter of days.  Scheduled for Saturday, March 31st, the 11th Annual March for Justice in honor of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers of America will assemble beginning at 10:00 a.m. at 1321 El Paso in the Avenida Guadalupe Plaza.  The march, which ends at the Alamo, gets underway around noon.
           
I participated in the march one year, inspired by a 1953 photograph of my grandmother that showed her ceremoniously picking cherries with one of her brothers in Traverse City, Michigan.  She is wearing a harness across her back and over her shoulders, a tin bucket ready at the waist to collect the fruit.

I marched that year in honor of mamá Janie who, along with thousands of others, migrated to the West Side of San Antonio from Mexico in the early 20th century.  Many of those immigrants had to work in fields throughout the country strapped into contraptions such as the one demonstrated by my grandmother.

The memory of their struggle is one of the main reasons why locals are so passionate about the West Side.  Thus, it’s appropriate that the March for Justice begins here.