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César Chávez, the legendary California farm-labor activist and Mexican-American civil rights icon, has for decades been a figure intertwined with state and national Democratic politics.
Former President Joe Biden had a bust of Chávez inside the White House. Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters a black-and-white photo of Chávez and his close ally Sen. Robert Kennedy is the first picture he sees in his house every morning.
And, in California, Chávez’s name is intertwined with day-to-day life. Dozens, if not hundreds, of public schools, boulevards, community centers and city plazas bear his name. He’s even part of California schools’ official curriculum.
Now, less than two weeks before California was to celebrate the state holiday honoring the late labor leader’s birthday, state and national Democrats are grappling with the shocking revelation that multiple women have come forward alleging that Chávez raped them. One of those women was his partner in the movement, Dolores Huerta.
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On Wednesday, The New York Times published an investigation naming three women who accused Chávez of using his position of power to sexually assault them. Two were the daughters of union leaders. They told the Times they were abused as girls.
The other was Huerta, herself a labor icon, who co-founded the farmworker union with Chávez, popularized the rallying cry of “Sí, se puede” and who remains a towering figure in Democratic politics. Huerta said in the Times story that Chávez had raped her, and that she had given birth to two children after encounters with him.
“Unfortunately, he used some of his great leadership to abuse women and children — it’s really awful,” Huerta, 95, told the Times.
The fallout from the revelations was immediate as Democratic politicians and labor activists scrambled to react to one of their heroes being forever tarnished.
“How many days I’ve marched, how many times I’ve been with students, talking about the movement, how many photographs I have in my house of Bobby Kennedy and César Chávez,” Newsom told reporters at a press conference. “It’s been hard to absorb this.”
His wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a sexual assault survivor and director of several films about gender equality, told reporters in tears that she was “shaking a little about Dolores and these young women.”
“The women are in our hearts,” she said in Spanish.
The United Farm Workers, the union that Chávez founded, called the accusations “indefensible” and cancelled its César Chávez Day events. Just four years ago, the union recreated his iconic March to Sacramento as it pushed Newsom to sign a law meant to make it easier for it to sign up members.
Really, is anyone surprised? Really … surprised???
I was in college in the 60s. We knew he was an unconvicted criminal then. He and his thugs caused untold destruction to private farmers’ property. The current stories fit a criminal mind. He enriched himself on the backs of the poor field workers. That is no secret either.
He’s dead. Why now?? Why now?? Is it because he was against illegal aliens diluting the wages and work for the migrants trying to unionize? Doesn’t fit today’s narrative?? Dems so quick to blame? Why now? There’s more going on here