It has been a bad week for anyone who saw Cesar Chavez as a hero. Across several states, his murals are being painted over and his statues are being boxed up:
A worker boards up the pedestal where a bust of United Farm Workers union co-founder Cesar Chavez previously stood in Cesar Chavez Park as signs reading “Dolores Huerta Park” are pasted onto the wooden boards. Photo by @KevinMohatt pic.twitter.com/CExjkby7D7
— corinne_perkins (@corinne_perkins) March 19, 2026
The Grim Reaper-ification of Cesar Chavez pic.twitter.com/rYDYiEQfvz
— Peter Bonilla (@pebonilla) March 20, 2026
A mural depicting Cesar Chavez at a well‑known California home was painted over Wednesday morning, days after allegations surfaced accusing the labor leader of sexually abusing women and girls who worked in the farm labor movement. https://t.co/WoRdOA6aeo
— ABC 7 Chicago (@ABC7Chicago) March 20, 2026
City of San Fernando removes statue of Cesar Chavez https://t.co/34eTdfV0UM
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) March 20, 2026
There are literally too many to keep track of, not to mention all the street signs that will have to be replaced in various cities.
In Fresno, city leaders unanimously voted to strip Chavez’s name from a major boulevard, restoring its original designation, a dramatic reversal of a tribute that once symbolized pride in the civil rights icon…
Officials say the removals and renaming are likely to continue as more local governments and school boards review monuments, murals, and street names.
California may be witnessing one of the fastest, most widespread retractions of a public legacy in recent memory, and there’s little sign it will slow down.
Meanwhile, there was a Washington Post opinion piece yesterday arguing that Chavez is not a one-off. On the contrary, the author says she was similarly abused by progressive heroes in the 1970s. She argues that this sort of abuse of women was pretty common among leftist movements.
Look anywhere on the history of the left and you’ll spot the attitudes that undergirded this phenomenon. Eldridge Cleaver, spokesman for the Black Panther Party, told women in 1968 that they could best help the movement with their “p***y power.” Prominent anti-Vietnam War activist Abbie Hoffman announced that the only alliance he would make with feminists was in bed. Stokely Carmichael declared that the sole position for women in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was “prone.”…
Sadly, a philosophical basis for the sexual exploitation of women and girls on the left was provided by some progressive thinkers, beginning with Sigmund Freud. The Austrian founder of psychoanalysis counseled female victims of paternal sexual assault that the problem was in their heads. They “wanted” their fathers and thus falsely accused them. Biologist Alfred Kinsey thrilled the world with his 1948 book “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.” Less well remembered is his 1953 book “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,” in which he wrote that girl children would not naturally object to adult men fondling their genitals except for their mothers’ prudish Victorian values.
Her own story nearly matches that of the girls abused by Cesar Chavez:
I was 14, and then 16, when two men, celebrated local activists, initiated sex with me in 1971 and 1973. As self-proclaimed feminists, they helped me flee home at 14 to escape the working-class father who had raped me repeatedly since age 10. For me, getting away from home was real progress. I was grateful to both of these well-educated men, just as many of César Chavez’s victims were grateful to him for defending the poor. Chavez stood up for girls like them — then betrayed them. This was the price they paid for the help he gave their community…
The man who abused me the longest was a professor almost 30 years my senior. He was a campus leader of the anti-war movement in the 1960s and widely esteemed. When I first met him, he had two secret mistresses, in addition to his wife.
The author, Elizabeth Cobbs, finally told him she’d had enough in 1980. He responded by smacking her in the face.
…it has taken most of my lifetime to admit that men of such high ideals criminally exploited me. After all, they were the very first people to tell me about women’s and children’s rights.
The trigger for the Cesar Chavez story was, according to the NY Times, that someone was renaming a street for Chavez near where one of his victims lived. They decided enough was enough. Then Dolores Huerta learned that those women were coming forward and decided she would come forward as well. Now we have another woman coming forward to tell a similar tale, though she doesn’t name her abusers in the article. How many more stories like this are out there? It feels like there could be a 2nd round of “#MeToo” allegations focused on 1960s progressives. It probably helps that, as with Chavez, many of those men are long gone now.
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