Cesar Chavez Day has been renamed California Farmworker Day

from Nadia LathanCalMatters

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Just one week after the injury allegations of sexual abuse surfaced against iconic labor leader Cesar Chavez, California lawmakers unanimously passed a bill Thursday to rename the holiday named after him Farmworker Day, ending a series of swift actions to wipe out his legacy from public places.

The governor is expected to sign Assembly Bill 2156. It will take effect immediately, in time for the March 31 holiday.

“Our farmworkers remind us that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect,” Senate President Pro Tem Monique Lemon said in the Senate. “Their days and lives inspire us to push for a better California.”

The Senate voted 37-0, following a vote in the Assembly earlier this week.

It is the latest development in the national backlash against Chavez, who Democrats and Republicans quickly abandoned last week after New York Times investigation found that he sexually abused young girls while he was president of the United Farm Workers union in the 1960s and 1970s.

One by one, lawmakers described feeling stunned by last week’s indictments as those who once admired Chavez come to terms with his now complicated legacy.

A hush fell in the chamber as the Central Valley lawmakers spoke about their backgrounds growing up in farmworker households and the importance of those workers to the labor movement and California’s economy.

“This recognition is deeply personal to me,” Republican Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares and that her family worked as laborers in Bakersfield for years. “For generations, farm workers have been excluded from basic labor protections”

Legislative leaders began the process to rename the holiday just one day after a report in which prominent labor activist Dolores Huerta, 95, also said Chavez sexually abused her nearly 60 years ago.

Cancellation of inheritance

California was the first state in the nation to declare Cesar Chavez Day a holiday 26 years ago, making its decision to revoke his name a stunning reversal as it joined other states in revoking his legacy.

Many California cities have pledged to begin the costly process of removing Chavez’s name from plazas, libraries and street signs. Fresno City Council members approved renaming Cesar Chavez Boulevard to its original street names — Kings Canyon Road, Ventura Avenue and California Avenue — at a special meeting last week.

At Fresno State University, students covered a statue of the late organizer with a box hours after the March 18 allegations became public. And in San Jose, where Chávez spent his early days as an organizer, city leaders created a commission to examine records of the many plazas, monuments and murals that bear his image

School officials have told teachers yes reduce Chavez’s role in the civil rights movement as the state works to update its history curriculum. Lawmakers are still deciding whether that will happen before the school year starts in August.

For decades, Chávez was credited with achieving better wages and safer work practices for farm workers and was widely celebrated as one of the most prominent Latin American political figures of the last century.

Chavez, along with Huerta, co-founded the UFW and organized workers across the state. Although he died more than 30 years ago, his influence is widespread in California politics, from the physical buildings named after him to his role in launching the political careers of many Democrats.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.