ABSTRACT
This chapter examines one of the most iconic marches of the farm workers’ movement, performed in California during Spring 1966, the “pilgrimage” from Delano to Sacramento, California. Rather than focusing on the “context” of the march or the march as “text,” this chapter focuses on the march’s material dimensions and processes of rhetorical composition undergirding its performance. First, the chapter argues for viewing the tactic of a march as an assemblage of bodies, behaviors, affects, objects, texts, and forms of movement that makes demands, performs publicity/presence, composes a collective body politic, and enacts transformation. Second, the chapter revisits the farm workers’ march and provides a new understanding of the material composition of this event. Third, the analysis helps readers understand the materiality, mobility, and eventfulness of social movements themselves. Because the march is the most iconic social movement tactic, fully assessing what makes the march rhetorically powerful also illuminates the rhetoricity of social movements. By delving into the most iconic social movement tactic—the march—through one of the most iconic social movement marches—the 1966 farm workers’ march from Delano to Sacramento—this chapter also expands conceptions of the “rhetoric” of social movement.
