Cesar Chavez Is Why We Don't Need Any More Icons
Recently, a friend asked me why it is we don’t have any clear leaders on the Left anymore, why, especially in this particular time of troubles, we are not seeing a few people elevated to the level of icon, to provide a voice for today’s social justice movements and moral clarity for all. “Where is today’s Martin Luther King, Jr?” more or less.
I thought about it for a minute, and eventually landed on the fact that this is something we have kind of just learned our lesson on. Because we do not want to find ourselves in a situation where we have made someone the face and voice of a cause we care deeply about, only to find out that they are secretly a monster. We’ve seen too many people we’ve elevated and admired, men in particular, turn out to be serial abusers, sexual harassers, friends of Jeffrey Epstein or terrible in some other way, to put that kind of faith in any one person. Better we should operate as a movement, so that no individual’s failings can get in the way of the work that needs to be done.
Which brings us to Cesar Chavez.
On Tuesday, the United Farm Workers (UFW) announced that they would not be celebrating Chavez’s birthday this year, on account of some unspecified allegations of “inappropriate behavior by Cesar Chavez with young women and minors.”
Then, this morning, The New York Times published a deeply researched and damning report on how Chavez sexually assaulted at least two young women, and also raped his most prominent ally in the movement, Dolores Huerta, who came forward about this for the first time at the age of 95.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/cesar-chavez-is-why-we-dont-need