This Friday, thousands of LAUSD students will have the day off for Cesar Chavez Day. This year will be unlike any other. A five-year New York Times investigation, published March 18, found that three women accused Chavez of sexually abusing them while he led the United Farm Workers union.
Chavez is a cultural icon whose name is spoken with the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. The pride of the Latino community is on everything from T-shirts, posters, streets, artwork, buildings and even schools.
Ever since Cesar Chavez Day became a legal state holiday in 2000, his legacy has only continued to grow. Now we must face the fact that California has spent over 25 years honoring a man now accused of sexually abusing girls and women, according to The New York Times.
The farm worker movement deserves to be honored. Cesar Chavez personally does not. The movement he led had over 100,000 workers at its peak. It was built by Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the UFW and later spoke out against Chavez. It was started by Larry Itliong, a Filipino organizer who led the Delano grape strike before Chavez joined it. It was carried forward by thousands of workers whose names never made it onto street signs. They can be celebrated without celebrating Chavez.
The movement’s most visible achievement was the Delano grape boycott, which convinced millions of Americans to stop buying California grapes for five years. The boycott led to union contracts, better pay, and safety and health benefits. It also helped pass landmark legislation: The California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, the first law in the United States that gave farmworkers the right to organize, form unions and collectively bargain with their employers.
Two of the accusers said the abuse started when they were 12 and 13. The third was Huerta, Chavez’s 95-year-old co-founder, who said Chavez assaulted her on two occasions. Both encounters led to pregnancies that Huerta kept secret for decades, according to her public statement. She arranged for the children to be raised by other families.
Huerta co-founded the UFW, led major boycotts, negotiated contracts, fought for LGBTQ rights when almost no public figures would and became the first Latina inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993, per the Dolores Huerta Foundation. Itliong, a Filipino organizer known as “Seven Fingers,” led the walkout that launched the Delano grape strike on Sept. 8, 1965, according to the National Park Service. Chavez and the NFWA joined the strike later.
Between Huerta and Itliong, the movement is not left without a figurehead. Shifting the focus away from Chavez might actually uplift activists who have been overlooked for too long.
When a school bears someone’s name, the school is making a statement. The people who have their names on streets and schools are people kids look up to. It shows what we value. I think we should value the survivors, not the man they say hurt them.
LAUSD has already acted. On March 24, the board voted unanimously to rename Cesar Chavez Learning Academies in San Fernando and Cesar Chavez Elementary School in El Sereno. Both schools are set to have new names by fall 2026. Mayor Karen Bass has also signed a proclamation renaming the city holiday to Farmworkers Day.
There is a real argument on the other side. Chavez was a symbol of Latino pride at a time when Latino voices were largely shut out of American public life. Some say the push to remove his name risks erasing Latino history, especially now, when this administration is already targeting the Latino community. That argument deserves a serious answer.
Latino history does not begin and end with Chavez. Huerta’s foundation is still fighting for farmworker rights today. California recognized Larry Itliong Day in 2015. Removing Chavez’s name from schools and holidays is not erasing history. It is choosing which part of that history we celebrate.
It is time to champion the movement not through one man, but through the people. The farmers, the activists and the culture. One man does not define a movement. The people do.
