East San José Leaders Call for Supporting Survivors After Cesar Chavez Allegations

A coalition of South Bay leaders said the sexual abuse allegations against late labor leader Cesar Chavez should be a turning point for the community and the country.

The heads of several community organizations and elected leaders gathered in Mexican Heritage Plaza on Thursday afternoon in East San José’s Mayfair neighborhood — where Chavez himself once lived — calling for believing and supporting survivors, and for healing.

“For us here in East San José, this is personal. This is Cesar Chavez’s neighborhood. His legacy is reflected in our murals, in our public spaces and in our community memory,” said Jessica Paz-Cedillos, the CEO of the plaza.

“That proximity makes this moment more painful, but also more important. Because we don’t have the luxury of distancing ourselves from it,” she said.

The coalition, including several organizations that make up a group known as the Sí Se Puede Collective — which borrows the powerful organizing slogan originating with the farmworker movement and Dolores Huerta — said communities must actively work to create spaces and cultures where no one is above accountability.

“This is a moment of responsibility,” said Adriana Caldera Boroffice, the CEO of YWCA Golden Gate Silicon Valley. “A responsibility to listen without defensiveness, to resist the instinct to protect reputations over people, to challenge the systems that have allowed harm to go unaddressed and to stand firmly on the side of those who have carried these truths for far too long.”

Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Chavez and helped lead and organize its many historic actions and protests, said Chavez pressured her into sex and raped her in the 1960s, resulting in two pregnancies, according to a New York Times investigation published this week.

The report also contained allegations against Chavez from two women who said they were young teenagers when he sexually abused them over a period of years.

Colsaria Henderson, executive director of Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence in San José, said movements that shape history, like the farmworker movement, are not perfect and their leaders are not infallible.

“We are often told to choose between honoring a movement and confronting its flaws, but that is a false choice. We can do both. We can recognize the good that was done while refusing to excuse the harm that occurred. We can hold complexity without losing our moral clarity. In fact, this is how movements grow stronger,” Henderson said.

“At the heart of this moment are women and families, people whose voices have too often been minimized and doubted. Their experiences are not footnotes in history; they are part of it,” she said.

Gabriela Chavez-Lopez, executive director of the Latina Coalition of Silicon Valley, said that the community must model what accountability looks like as a way to honor the courage of Huerta and other survivors, and to protect others who want to share their stories.

“So that they can see, okay, if I do that, then what would happen? Well, the community will come to my side, will be there for me,” Chavez-Lopez said. “If they are harmed, there will be somebody there to support you through that, and you don’t have to go at it alone, and you don’t have to feel judged about it.”

The revelations have shattered the longstanding iconic image of Chavez around the nation, and have deep resonance in San José, where he lived for a time and where the movement he and Huerta led witnessed some of its first organizing actions.

Mexican Heritage Plaza, a community gathering space with gardens, a theater, and a school of arts and culture, opened in 1999. The site of the plaza, at the intersection of South King Road and Alum Rock Avenue, once housed a Safeway where one of the earliest grocery store pickets took place during the UFW’s grape boycotts in the 1960s.

For years, until this week, a memorial walkway at the plaza featured a sign with a photo of Chavez and information about his connection to the site. Another corridor featured a deep blue painting, depicting a close-up image of Chavez’s eyes.

By Thursday afternoon, the sign was taken down and leaned against a wall inside an administrative office. The painting was removed and replaced with an image depicting a hummingbird with flowers.

City Councilmember Peter Ortiz said the council is planning to begin “a community-driven process to review public spaces, monuments, and sites, including Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown San José,” that feature Chavez’s name or likeness, to consider changes.

“This will be an open and inclusive process, one that reflects our values and ensures we are not causing further harm to anyone,” Ortiz said.

The home where Chavez once lived, about a mile from Mexican Heritage Plaza, was purchased in 2022 by the nonprofit Amigos de Guadalupe, which has used the space for community organizing meetings and mental health programs.

Maritza Maldonado, the executive director of Amigos, said the organization bought the home to preserve it as a part of East San José history and to lift up the legacy of Chavez.

“He was a hero for all of us, from this very community, who rose to national and international status here,” she said.

Maldonado said the organization has been holding open meetings to get input on how to develop the space for community use and has been fundraising to build out that reality.

Some plans may need to change, and she said Amigos will ask for more input going forward.

“That house will remain the people’s house,” Maldonado said. “We are deciding what we’re going to name it, but it will remain a place for community organizers, a place of healing, a place of love.”