MOVEMENT #METOO
What to Do With Cesar Chavez Street?
Photograph Source: Billy Hathorn assumed (based on copyright claims) – CC BY 3.0
Cesar Chavez abused and raped women and girls for years, a New York Times investigation revealed this week.
The celebrated union organizer and leader of abused and poisoned farmworkers, stands accused of sexually assaulting two girls in the 1970s as well as Dolores Huerta, with whom he co-founded the United Farm Workers, in the 1960s, according to a five-year investigation by reporters Manny Fernandez and Sarah Hurtes.
Now, legislators in California, Texas and Arizona, are wondering what to do with annual celebrations planned in Chavez’s honor, and the streets bearing his name.
One simple solution would be for every single street with his rapist name — to be renamed after Huerta.
In a statement posted to Medium on Wednesday, she wrote: “I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.”
Describing her two separate encounters with Chavez, which happened in the 1960s, she wrote:
“The first time, I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to…. The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.”
Another solution would be to rename the celebrations after all the movement women who have defied the odds of depression, despair, disillusion, silence and self-hate and kept up the fight for what is just and right, in the UFWA, and beyond.
From the United Farm Workers, to the Movement for Black Lives, to the survivors of Epstein and his cabal; the commitment of the wounded still to lead with pounding love for others and our planet deserves celebrating now as never before.
To quote the reporting in the New York Times:
Ms. Huerta struggles to reconcile the Cesar Chavez she knew, who inspired so many and achieved so much, and the man who assaulted her and publicly humiliated her. She said she was unaware of any sexual abuse of teenage girls. Moments after some of that abuse was described to her, Ms. Huerta broke down, sobbing and wailing.
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