Cesar Chavez led the fight for farmworker and Latino rights in postwar America. But at the same time, he was molesting and raping women.
Ana Murguia has told The New York Times that while in his 40s, Chavez trapped her behind a locked office door and pulled down her pants down. She was only 13 and attempted suicide numerous times over the next two years. Dolores Huerta, the legendary co-founder of the United Farm Workers, has also come forward and disclosed Chavez raped her.
Dozens of state legislatures, county boards and city councils are hastening to erase Chavez's name from holidays, roads, schools and parks.
And yet, while we perform a needed moral audit of a dead man, we have seen a living sexual abuser honored by the addition of his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to the United States Institute of Peace. A New York civil jury found this man liable for the sexual abuse of a woman in a New York department store. Over two dozen women have accused him of sexual misconduct. A video caught him earnestly declaring that "when you're a star" you can grab women by their private parts. He also paid $130,000 in hush money to an adult film actress.
Of course, that other sexual predator is the U.S. president, Donald J. Trump. The push for monuments to him doesn't end at the Potomac. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fl., has introduced H.R. 792, a bill to "direct the Secretary of the Interior to arrange for the carving of the figure of President Donald J. Trump on Mount Rushmore National Memorial." Not to be outdone, six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, all appointed by Trump, have approved a commemorative coin featuring a scowling likeness of the president. The Commission's vice chair expressed the desire "that you make it as large as possible."
In California, it was Republican Assemblymember Alexandra Macedo who introduced a measure to change the name of Cesar Chavez Day to Farmworkers Day. Macedo has also appeared on Fox News to advocate for Trump, whose personal history mirrors the very conduct she is using to justify stripping away Chavez's honors.
Trump has said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing any voters. I don't know if that's true, but I do know he can sexually assault a woman and still have his name placed on the Kennedy Center.
There is nothing new here. Stories of men in power violating women stretch back to ancient times. According to the biblical account, King David, who reigned 3,000 years ago, caught sight of Bathsheba bathing. He sent his men to "fetch" her and then "he lay with her." He later plotted the death of her husband Uriah, a warrior, by having his comrades abandon him in the midst of battle. Was David granted immunity by God? On the one hand, he was not allowed to build the Temple. On the other, he was promised the Messiah would be his descendant. The opening of the Book of Matthew recounts the 28 generations running from David to Jesus.
Nor is Trump the first presidential sexual predator. Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the words "all men are created equal," had children with Sally Hemings, who, as his slave, could not give free consent. The Jefferson Memorial, resplendent every spring among pink cherry blossoms, remains a major tourist attraction in the nation's capital.
In a perfect world, we would stop naming monuments, universities, parks, streets and such in honor of any person. After all, we humans are all imperfect. But we don't live in Aristophanes' Cloud Cuckoo Land. In the real world, the rich and powerful seek recognition during their lives and immorality afterward through namesake legacies.
The great medieval scholar Maimonides spelled out a ladder for philanthropy nine centuries ago. He ranked anonymous giving above giving with one's name attached, but he was realistic enough to know that a library, even if built out of vanity, is still a blessing to the public.
The ruthless union breaker Andrew Carnegie left just such a legacy where he funded the construction of over 2,500 libraries. Similarly, his contemporary, the vicious antisemite Henry Ford, co-founded the Ford Foundation which helped facilitate the end of segregation by funding civil rights organizations such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Should Chavez's name, then, be stripped from memorials? Shakespeare wrote, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." The evil that Chavez has done will indeed live after him. But what about the good done by the man the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy called "one of the heroic figures of our time"?
In the end, I must return to the words of Elie Wiesel in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
I side with the victims against Chavez. I side with them against Trump as well. Wiesel's words apply to the living as well as the dead.
A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company, and had six books published including five novels and a collection of his columns. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. You can learn more about him at keithraffel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com
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