Within hours of explosive sexual abuse allegations against the revered labor leader César Chavez, officials at a California university took swift action: First, a black cloth over a campus statue of Chavez, later followed by a plywood box hiding it from public view. Soon, officials said, it will be taken down.
APTOPIX César Chavez Allegations
The statue at California State University, Fresno, is just one of scores of monuments, city streets and elementary schools that honorChavez's name and his labor movement legacy across the nation. The Associated Press identified more than 130 locations or objects in at least 19 states named after Chavez, including libraries, streets, community centers and public parks.
Overnight, the name has become more of a stain. Some of the institutions and local governments overseeing sites across the country bearing the Chavez name have already started the process of erasing it. Besides buildings and street signs, they also want to take steps torename César Chavez Day, a federally proclaimed holiday that falls on his March 31 birthday. Many plannedcelebrations this month have been canceled.
The allegations that Chavez sexually abused girls and women, including fellow movement leader Dolores Huerta, "call for our full attention and moral reckoning by removing his statute from our campus," said Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, president of the California State University, Fresno. It's not clear how long that will take.
It's also not clear what will happen to the César E. Chavez National Monument in Keene, California, which includes the office where some of the reported abuse took place.
A push for honoring Huerta instead
At the Cesar Chavez Student Center at San Francisco State University on Thursday, student Luca Broggi Hendryx recalled hearing stories as a child about Chavez and idolizing him. Now he says the school needs to separate itself from Chavez by changing the student center's name.
"When I first started coming here it made total sense: He was seen an icon for the Latino Civil civil rights movement," Hendryx said. "So it was almost a proud thing to have a building named after Cesar Chavez. But now it feels the opposite."
Some are calling for Chavez's namesake places to be renamed for Huerta instead.
In Phoenix, city council members said they will meet next week to vote on whether to rename the holiday as well as any buildings and streets that bear Chavez's name. Mayor Kate Gallego is urging César Chavez Day be renamed Farmworkers Day.
"We have a duty to honor the dignity of the survivors and move forward in a way that reflects our values," she said in a statement.
Denver quickly moved to rename the holiday and a park that has borne his name for more than two decades. After meeting with community leaders, Mayor Mike Johnston announced Thursday that the holiday for now would be celebrated this year as Sí, Se Puede Day. The slogan, which translates into Yes We Can, became the rallying cry for the farmworkers movement. But, discussions on what the holiday and the park should be called in the future will continue.
"We will not let the sins of one man set back the commitment of a community who has fought for decades to deliver on the fundamental belief that everyone is entitled to justice," Johnston said to applause as he announced the change outside Denver's City and County Building.
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One of people standing on the steps behind him held a sign saying "!Que viva Dolores Huerta!" meaning "long live" the labor leader.
The New York Times first reported Wednesday that it found credible evidence that Chavez groomed and sexually abused young girls who worked in the movement. One of his victims, in fact, partly felt compelled to come forward after a proposal to name a street near her home after Chavez.
Huerta, who was a labor legend in her own right and co-founded in 1962 with Chavez the National Farm Workers Association — which became theUnited Farm Workers of America— revealed to the newspaper that she was a victim of abuse by him in her 30s.
Dozens of schools and a Navy cargo ship
Among the locations and objects bearing Chavez's name is aU.S. Navy cargo shipcommemorating his service during World War II and the national monument established in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama on a 187-acre site in Central California where Chavez once lived and worked.
Most of the locations are in California but they includes sites in at least 19 states, from New York and Maryland to Oklahoma, the Great Lakes Region and Washington state.
More than half are schools with most of them located in California. In Pueblo, Colorado, Chavez shares the name of a school with Huerta.
Altering a national monument, such as changing a name, needs an act of Congress or action by the president.
There have been previous efforts to change names for government sites and institutions on a broad scale.
During the civil rights backlash that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Congress ordered a nationwide review of military posts and other assets such as roads, buildings, memorials and signs that honored Confederate leaders.Nine Army basesincluding North Carolina's Fort Bragg, named after a slave-owning Confederate general, were renamed, only to have theoriginal names restoredunder President Donald Trump's administration last year after the army found other people with the same names to honor.
Under former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland – the first Native American to hold the post -- federal officials renamedhundreds of peaks, lakes, streams and other geographical featureswith racist and misogynistic terms. It capped a yearlong process to remove the historically offensive word "squaw" from geographic names across the country.
Brown reported from Billings, Montana. Tang reported from Phoenix. from Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix, Terry Chea in San Francisco and Colleen Slevin in Denver also contributed to this story.
Within hours of explosive sexual abuse allegations against the revered labor leader César Chavez, officials at a Californ...
