Thursday, March 19, 2026

State Senator Pérez Demands César Chávez’s Name Be Stripped From Schools, Streets and State Holiday

State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, who represents Pasadena and Altadena in the California Legislature, called Wednesday for the removal of Cesar Chavez’s name from streets and schools across the state and for an end to the state holiday honoring the late labor leader, following a New York Times investigation that detailed decades of his alleged sexual abuse against women and girls.

Pérez, a Democrat whose 25th Senate District stretches from Pasadena to Rancho Cucamonga — and includes a stretch of Cesar Chavez Avenue in Monterey Park — is among a fast-growing number of California officials demanding the state sever its public tributes to the United Farm Workers co-founder. She chairs the Senate Education Committee, which oversees policy for the more than three dozen California schools that bear Chavez’s name.

“I’m shocked and disgusted to read investigative reports revealing that United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar Chavez was a pedophile and a rapist, who used his position as a labor leader to take advantage of women and girls,” Pérez said in a statement issued from Sacramento.

In her statement, Pérez identified herself as a survivor of sexual assault.

“As a survivor, I’m tremendously grateful to Huerta, Murguia, Rojas and other survivors who have come forward to share their truth, despite requests from naysayers to remain silent,” she said. “It is time for a reckoning within our movement.”

Pérez’s statement came hours after the New York Times published a multi-year investigation in which more than 60 people were interviewed and union records and documents were reviewed. Two women — Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, both daughters of farmworker organizers — told the newspaper that Chavez began sexually abusing them in the 1970s, when they were 13 and 12 years old, respectively. Rojas alleged that Chavez raped her in a motel room in 1975, when she was 15 and he was 47.

Dolores Huerta, 95, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Chavez in the 1960s and remains one of the nation’s most prominent labor leaders, said in a separate statement that Chavez sexually assaulted her twice. Both encounters led to pregnancies she kept secret for six decades, she said.

“I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for,” Huerta wrote.

Chavez, who died in 1993 at age 66, obviously cannot respond to the allegations. His family said in a statement Wednesday that they were “shocked and saddened” by the reports. Some of Chavez’s former associates rejected the allegations, according to the Times.

The fallout has been swift across California and the nation. Cesar Chavez Day, celebrated annually on March 31 as a state holiday in California, is now in question. The UFW said it would not participate in any Cesar Chavez Day activities. Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo, a Republican from Tulare County, introduced Assembly Bill 2407 to rename the holiday “Farmworker Day.” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday he is “open” to renaming the holiday and that the farmworker movement was “much bigger than one man.”

Pérez called on officials at every level of government to act. “Leaders at all levels of government must take action to remove his name from countless streets, schools, and end the state holiday bearing his name,” she said. “You cannot be a civil rights leader while abusing women and girls.”

She also sought to draw a distinction between Chavez and the movement he helped build.

“We know that the movement for Latino civil rights was never about one single man — it was about all the women and men who worked in the fields, who organized and who marched,” Pérez said. “Our movement must continue today, with an unapologetic commitment to protecting Latina women.”

Pérez’s district office is located at 215 N. Marengo Ave. in Pasadena. Her statement included links to resources for sexual assault survivors through the California Latino Legislative Caucus and the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

The senator’s call joins a national chorus. Across the country, Cesar Chavez Day celebrations have been canceled, streets are being reconsidered for renaming, and murals are being covered.

In her statement, Pérez returned to the women at the center of the story — the ones who, she said, “remained silent for decades out of shame and fear of tarnishing Chavez’s image after he had become the face of the Latino civil rights movement. They have carried the painful weight of the truth in private to protect working-class Latino communities from further racist attacks.”