In California, Democrats are eating one of their own.
Cesar Chavez, the late Chicano labor organizer long revered as a civil rights hero in Democratic circles, is under fire after his wife, Dolores Huerta, accused him of sexual abuse. Other women have made similar claims against Chavez, with some saying he abused them when they were underage. Huerta stated that she had kept silent over the years for fear of harming the cause.
Democratic reaction in California has been swift, with Chavez’s name and likeness quickly being removed from various locations. In the California Assembly, there is a proposal to rename Cesar Chavez Day to the generic Farmworker Day. Assemblyman Alexandra Macedo, who introduced the legislation, said, “It’s about the movement, not the individual.”
Governor Gavin Newsom, for his part, claimed to still be processing the news about Chavez’s actions, and mentioned that there are “[…] three dozen schools in the state that are named after Cesar Chavez,” alluding to the amount of schools that would possibly be renamed in the future. With commentary on the issue so far largely coming from Democratic politicians, it remains to be seen if there will be any Latino voter backlash to renaming efforts.
Ideally, Democrats might have taken this opportunity to reflect on the fact that historical figures can commit immoral acts, or not be good people as a whole, and still leave an impact on society, some to a much larger extent than Chavez. That would require questioning their past zeal for tearing down historical figures from Christopher Columbus to Thomas Jefferson, though, which is something they are incapable of doing.
Regardless of the extent of Chavez’s wrongdoing, the Democratic response is an accurate reflection of the party’s longtime shift into an organization that values feminism and cultural liberalism over all other issues. Rather than showing that the party can be “fair” and target leftists as well as conservatives, the news simply demonstrates Democrats’ continued willingness to erase any and all historical figures for crimes real or imagined. It’s a simplistic, reductive approach to American history that should be kept in check, lest we eventually see a return to 2020-era statue-smashing riots and radicalism.
