Et tu, Chavez? Then fall, Cesar; #metoo hits labor – Latest News
The left constructed the late California labor chief Cesar Chavez into a hero. He’s now the most recent takedown within the #metoo period.
The man whom the United Farm Workers (UFW) and progressive pantheon spent a long time treating because the brown Martin Luther King Jr. faces chilling, and murky, allegations of sexual misconduct with ladies ––presumably involving minor ladies as properly.
It is a stunning development forward of March 31, which is Cesar Chavez Day in California.
The left constructed the late California labor chief Cesar Chavez into a hero. Bettmann Archive
For half a century, gatekeepers on the left turned Chavez into an untouchable icon. He was the co-founder of the UFW, the chief of the Delano grape strike, and a nonviolent crusader for migrant staff.
Every progressive historical past curriculum, each California road signal, each March 31 was proof that right here was a flawless champion of the oppressed. Schools had been renamed, statues erected, documentaries produced with comfortable lighting and swelling violins.
Critics who famous his anti-immigration stances within the Nineteen Seventies had been dismissed as right-wing cranks. The narrative was easy: flawless labor saint vs. evil growers.
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Yet Chavez was no open-borders progressive. He was a staunch opponent of unlawful immigration, viewing undocumented staff as strikebreakers (“scabs”) imported by growers to undercut wages and bust unions.
He used the time period “wetbacks” freely (a slur for Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande). The UFW blocked border crossings, reported hundreds of undocumented staff to the INS, and lobbied for stricter enforcement.
Chavez noticed unchecked unlawful immigration as a direct risk to the roles, bargaining energy, and dwelling requirements of the home farmworkers he represented.
He was the co-founder of the UFW, the chief of the Delano grape strike, and a nonviolent crusader for migrant staff.
This wasn’t delicate; it was core strategy.
But the left airbrushed it away, framing him as a pure civil-rights hero whereas quietly ignoring the components that didn’t match the multicultural, pro-amnesty script.
And now, whispers of “inappropriate sexual behavior” with younger ladies and minors have emerged in opposition to Chavez.
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Suddenly, the identical UFW that canonized him is “deeply shocked and saddened.” They canceled each Chavez Day occasion nationwide. San Francisco, Houston, Tucson — poof, gone.
The Cesar Chavez Foundation issued the compulsory “profoundly troubling” assertion and opened a confidential hotline for victims.
The very group Chavez constructed now treats his legacy like a stay grenade.
Overnight, the saint grew to become the abuser: We don’t have “direct reports,” however we’re additionally not internet hosting marches.
This is peak leftist gatekeeping: The similar crowd that spent a long time sanitizing Chavez’s anti-illegal-immigration document now performs ritual self-flagellation the second allegations drop.
Where was this ethical readability within the Nineteen Seventies when he was siccing Border Patrol on “wetbacks” or when rumors of different points allegedly circulated in farmworker circles?
They canceled each Chavez Day occasion nationwide.
Nowhere — as a result of till now, he has been helpful.
He delivered the precise optics, the precise ethnicity, the precise anti-capitalist model.
Now that he’s inconvenient, the purity spiral kicks in.
The hypocrisy is deliciously thick. These are the identical gatekeepers who spent years defending different left-wing icons with far more documented baggage. But Chavez? One whiff of scandal and the statues would possibly as properly come down tomorrow.
The message to each activist is evident: Your usefulness has an expiration date. Serve the narrative completely and we’ll identify a vacation after you. Step exterior the accredited script, even a long time after death, and we’ll cancel your birthday.
Meanwhile, precise farmworkers get to watch their vacation morph into generic “immigration justice and acts of service” days. How progressive.
The US Naval Ship USNS Cesar Chavez, commissioned in 2012, will definitely have its identify within the crosshairs. Although Trump sought to rename it final yr, Democratic congressmen Sam Liccardo and Gil Cisneros held it off. Will the Chavez revelations be the impetus to rethink?
This isn’t accountability; it’s ideological hygiene.
So spare us the shocked emojis. The actual scandal isn’t simply the allegations in opposition to Chavez. It’s the cynical machinery that turned a difficult, generally ugly man into a plaster saint, then smashed him the second the plaster chipped.
The left didn’t uncover his flaws right this moment. They simply determined it was lastly protected to confess they existed — as soon as he stopped being politically helpful.
Richie Greenberg is a political commentator based mostly in San Francisco.
