Community Service Organization

With financial support from Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, the CSO sought to empower Mexican American communities by fighting discrimination in housing, employment, and education, promoting political engagement, and offering citizenship classes and self-help programs.

The organization trained thousands of activists who held house meetings, conducted voter-registration drives, fought against police brutality, and advocated for civil rights reforms.

Chavez quickly became one of its most dedicated organizers, traveling throughout California to register Mexican Americans to vote, assist them with immigration issues, and advocate for workers’ rights.

[6][9][7] During his time with the CSO, Chavez developed his organizing skills, engaging in door-to-door outreach, building community coalitions, and mobilizing Latino workers.

[6] In the late 1950s, Chavez was organizing CSO chapters in Oxnard, California, where farmworkers faced exploitative labor conditions due to the Bracero Program.

[6] While the CSO itself declined in prominence after the 1960s, its methods, strategies, and successes influenced later movements advocating for Latino civil rights, immigrant protections, and labor justice.

The group, which is based in Boyle Heights, has protested police killings of Chicanos and privatization of education, and promoted the environmental cleanup of Exide and legalization of the undocumented.