The Latinx Technology & Community Center and the University of Michigan-Flint King Chavez Parks Program have both been facing potential changes after labor and civil rights icon Cesar Chavez was recently accused in a New York Times report of the sexual abuse of minors and fellow activists, along with the rape of Delores Huerta, another labor and civil rights leader.
Some Flint organizations, by name or by association, have decided to start distancing themselves from Chavez. An upcoming event involving the collaboration of the UM-Flint Office of Educational Opportunity Initiatives and the Latinx Technology & Community Center, The Chavez & Huerta Luncheon Celebration, planned for March 28, was canceled in light of the news.
In a public statement on the Latinx Technology & Community Center website shortly after canceling the annual luncheon, Asa Ascencio Zuccaro, the organization’s executive director, wrote that the movement goes beyond Chavez.
“When we center a movement on a single icon, we risk silencing the very people the movement was meant to protect,” Zuccaro wrote. “Our loyalty must not be to a name or a face, but to the values of justice and safety for every member of our community.”
In her public statement to Medium, Huerta wrote that she had been keeping Chavez’s actions to herself for 60 years, noting that “exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.” Both Huerta and Chavez were co-founders of the United Farm Workers Union and were leaders in the labor and Civil Rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s.
The state of Michigan King Chavez Parks Initiative is a $2.5 million grant assisting students who are Michigan residents facing economic and academic barriers.
The initiative is partnered with seven private and public universities across the state — including UM-Flint — and has been funded year after year since 1986. Its position as a state appropriation, however, means that it must be renewed every year by the state legislature. John Girdwood, a manager of the UM-Flint KCP Select Student Support Services Program, said funding for the initiative could be taken away at any time.
“It’s on the chopping block every year since 1986,” Girdwood said. “So it’s this weird thing where we expect it to be funded next year, but you never know — it could be taken away.”
Girdwood also said he hopes the program will continue in some form, even if impacted by the allegations. “I can only be hopeful and optimistic that it’s an opportunity to reconfigure the grant and emphasize its true purpose,” Girdwood said. “The grant’s purpose was never to idolize a single figure or three individuals; the grant has always been to support students that face barriers.”
Andres Ochoa is a writer for The Michigan Times. He is a photographer and an A/V enthusiast, studying for a Bachelor of Arts in Music at the University of Michigan-Flint.
