Sacramento, California, United States
Marc Grossman knew Cesar Chavez the last 24 years of his life, serving most of that time as his press secretary, speechwriter and personal aide. He still serves as spokesperson for the Cesar Chavez Foundation and the United Farm Workers of America, and was technical advisor for Diego Luna’s 2014 major motion picture Cesar Chavez. Among his duties with Chavez was responsibility for the union's press relations; helping Chavez with speeches, correspondence, public statements and commentary pieces; serving as his personal aide; traveling with him across much of North America; and advancing his nationwide tours. Until Chavez's death in 1993, Grossman continued working closely with the legendary civil rights and farm labor leader on all his major speeches, writings and news events. Grossman, 75 earned a B.A. degree in American history from the University of California, Irvine in 1972, and a master’s degree in journalism at U.C.L.A. in 1973. He began his activism with the UFW in the late 1960s helping organize the grape boycott. Grossman has performed extensive research about Chavez from the perspective of the people who knew him the best—his close family and friends. It includes lengthy transcribed interviews with Chavez’s widow, Helen, and his brothers and sisters. The editors at UC Press asked Grossman to write the forward when in 2014 they re-issued Peter Matthiessen’s classic 1969 biography, Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution See: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520282506 Grossman has written more than a dozen books, including his latest, the autobiography of pioneering Latino political leader Richard Alatorre entitled, Change From the Inside: My Life, the Chicano Movement and the Story of an Era, published in 2016 by Berkeley Public Policy Press at U.C. Berkeley.
Writing and editing press work, commentary pieces, speeches, books, reports, all manner of written products.