Solidarity Can Come From Anywhere: How a California Lowrider Club Has Been Helping the United Farm Workers Union

Solidarity is a family thing.

Here’s something that you, an automotive enthusiast, might not know: Lowriders are the best kind of car culture. No, seriously. Nothing else comes close (except maybe Dekotora trucks) to the level of artistry, attention to detail, cultural relevance and overall passion that the lowrider community shows. It’s incredible. What’s even more remarkable is when a club of lowrider enthusiasts takes all that passion and puts it towards an incredibly worthy cause.

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Si Se Puede is generally translated to English as “Yes, it can be done!” and it’s the rallying cry of the United Farm Workers (aka UFW, you know, the one made famous by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta) which has supported farmworkers’ rights for decades and which still struggles against incredibly harmful legislation, lack of awareness from the general public as well as hostility from growers all over the country. The car club that takes its name from this slogan has its roots in the communities most affected by the UFW’s work, and that’s part of what has inspired its founder and president, Andrew Rodriguez Sr., to give back.

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44-year-old Andrew Rodriguez Sr. founded the Si Se Puede Car Club in 2011 in his hometown of Corcoran, California – a town best known for the presence of a maximum security prison – as a way to get his friends and family who were already a part of the lowrider community together. The club started with five members and has since expanded to around 27, with additional chapters in Delano, Hanford, Visalia, Cutler, Fresno, Merced and Antioch.

I first became aware of the Si Se Puede club back in the summer of 2022 when members assisted UFW members on their historic walk from Delano to Sacramento in support of California Agriculture Labor Relations Voting Choice Act Assembly Bill (AB) 2183, which at the time California governor Gavin Newsom – himself a vineyard owner – was unwilling to sign, despite President Biden urging him to do so.

I heard about it through the Jorts-vine.

Friend of Jalopnik (and to the workers of the world in general), Jorts the Cat, had shared with me the 355-mile march and the work that Andrew and his club were doing to support it by providing water, food and even footwear to the marchers as they slowly made their way to the capital in the scorching summer heat.

Fast forward to early 2023, when record rainfall in California led to unprecedented flooding in communities throughout the central valley, including in Corcoran, which saw a return of the long-dried Tulare Lake. Again the UFW was out helping people in these low-income, primarily agricultural communities, and the Si Se Puede car club was, in turn, helping the UFW by providing food and other household goods to people who had lost their homes or work due to rivers overrunning their banks.

During a phone call with Andrew, I asked what drove him and his friends to go out of their way to help people they didn’t even know. Why was this work so important to him that he named the car club after it?

“So they know they’re not alone,” Rodriguez Sr. said. “It’s only right.”

UFW President Teresa Romero made honorary member of Si Se Puede Car Club