Newsom signs California bill to rename Cesar Chavez Day as Farmworkers Day | California
California governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation Thursday to rename Cesar Chavez Day as Farm Workers Day, following shocking allegations that the labor leader sexually assaulted women and young girls.
The bill, which passed the state Senate early Thursday, would allow the renaming ahead of the March 31 public holiday. The state has been celebrating the holiday for more than two decades in honor of Chavez, who founded a major farmworker workers’ rights movement in the 1960s in California’s agricultural heartland.
State lawmakers took swift action after the law was enacted. New York Times Last week, he released a report in which several women, including Dolores Huerta, who led the movement with Chavez, said they were sexually harassed by the head of the United Farm Workers (UFW). The two women, daughters of fellow organisers, said they were children when he began grooming and abusing them. The Times reported that Chavez used women who worked and volunteered in his organizing movement “for his own sexual gratification.”
The allegations sparked a wave of efforts to rename or replace monuments honoring Chavez, who has long been credited with helping provide better wages and working conditions for agricultural workers. A swift and comprehensive effort to erase Chavez’s name from public life was previously unthinkable, given that Chavez’s status has only increased since his death in 1993.
Nearly 30 years ago, California was the first state to designate March 31, Chavez’s birthday, as a holiday. In 2000, the legislature passed a bill making it an official paid day off for state employees and requiring students to learn about his legacy and role in the labor movement in California. Barack Obama moved to honor Cesar Chavez on this date in 2014.
The California bill passed the legislature with bipartisan support on Monday.
“We cannot ignore wrongdoing, and we must not continue to celebrate one person when the movement itself is so large,” Councilwoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry said before Monday’s vote.
Republican councilwoman Alexandra Macedo said the change was to honor workers and their families.
“This isn’t just about a date on the calendar or a name on a building,” Macedo said. “It’s about the hands that feed this nation. It’s about the men and women who are in the orchards and fields before the sun touches the horizon, and who are still there long after the sun has set.”
Since the allegations emerged, California State University Fresno has covered up a statue of Chavez on campus, while San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento have taken steps to erase Chavez’s name from public places. Some advocated replacing Huerta’s name with Chavez’s, and some states said they would not celebrate the day.
Elsewhere, the city council in Phoenix, Arizona, voted to remove his name from city facilities and rename the day honoring him; In Texas, the state education department said it would remove it from the curriculum.
Monique Limón, president pro tempore of the California state Senate, said honoring farmworkers is especially important in the face of a series of federal raids in the state last year. Limón said a worker in his district died last summer while being chased by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.
“His death is a reminder of how much farmworkers risk every day to put food on our tables,” he said before the vote. “Our farm workers remind us that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.”
Associated Press contributed reporting
