Exod 20:3: You shall have no other gods before me.

Exod 23:1–2, 6–9: You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness. You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing; when you bear witness in a lawsuit, you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice . . . You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits. Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and those in the right, for I will not acquit the guilty. You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Lev 19:13: You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning.

Deut 1:15–17: So I took the leaders of your tribes, wise and reputable individuals, and installed them as leaders over you, commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds, commanders of fifties, commanders of tens, and officials, throughout your tribes. I charged your judges at that time: “Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien. You must not be partial in judging: hear out the small and the great alike; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s. Any case that is too hard for you, bring to me, and I will hear it.”

Deut 16:20: Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

Deut 24:14–15: You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.

Deut 28:33: A people whom you do not know shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labor; you shall be continually abused and crushed.

Ps 37:6: He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday.

Ps 58:1–2: Do you indeed decree what is right, you mighty lords? Do you judge people fairly? No, in your hearts you devise wrongs; your hands deal out violence on the earth.

Ps 106:3: Happy are those who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times.

Prov 1:1–7: For learning about wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight, for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; to teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young—let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill, to understand a proverb and a

figure, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Prov 1:20, 32–33: Wisdom cries out in the street; in the square she raises her voice . . . “For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.”

Prov 2:9–10, 12: Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path; for wisdom will come into your heart . . . It will save you from the way of evil, from those who speak perversely.

Eccl 4:1: Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed—with no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power—with no one to comfort them.

Isa 56:1: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed.

Isa 58:3: By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living . . .

Isa 61:8: For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

Amos 2:6–7a: Thus says the LORD: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals—they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way.

James 5:4: Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your field, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

Patristics:

“You have been made a minister of God’s goodness, a steward of your fellow servants. Do not suppose that all this was furnished for your own gullet! Resolve to treat the things in your possession as belonging to others.

“Tear up the unjust contract, so that sin might also be loosed. Wipe away the debt that bears high rates of interest, so that the earth may bear its usual fruits . . . Will your purse not be buried together with you? Is not gold earth? Will it not be interred like worthless clay together with the clay of the body?” (St. Basil the Great, homilies)

Roman Catholic documents:

“Labor unions are a positive influence for social order and solidarity, and are therefore an indispensible element of social life” (Compendium on Social Doctrine of the Church)

“Among the basic rights of the human person must be counted the right of freely forming labor unions” (Gaudium et Spes, 68)

“No one may deny the rights to organize without attacking human dignity itself” (Economic Justice for All)

“Commutative justice requires the restitution of stolen goods” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2454)

UFW:

“Is 5 cents for fairness too much to ask?” (UFW slogan on strawberry crisis, 1996)

“We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure” (César Chavez)

“Talk is cheap . . . It is the way we organize and use our lives everyday that tells what we believe in” (César Chavez)

“We’re going to pray a lot and picket a lot” (César Chavez)

“People who have lost their hunger for justice are not ultimately powerful. They are like sick people who have lost their appetite for what is truly nourishing” (César Chavez)

“No household will survive without work” (M. Douglas Meeks, “God and Work”)