There is a painful truth our community has carried quietly for too long. In the name of progress, we have sometimes looked away from harm. In the urgency to build movements, we have allowed the very people those movements were meant to protect, especially children, to become collateral damage.
Today, we say this clearly: No legacy is worth a child’s safety. No cause is sacred enough to require silence. No leader is above accountability.
The story of Cesar Chavez is one of extraordinary courage. He was a farmworker who stood against an empire of exploitation and won dignity for millions, leading alongside Dolores Huerta, the first successful farmworker union in the country. Yet, within the movement he built, there were shadows. There were significant issues we already recognized, such as authoritarian practices and demeaning behavior toward undocumented people and recent arrivals. Now, we are learning of even more troubling realities: sexual abuse, predatory behavior, psychological harm, and the rape of children.
People knew. From family members to union staff to co-founder Dolores Huerta, some chose or were pressured to protect an image and a body of work above the safety of children and the very people they claimed to serve.
We believe these decisions to preserve a movement’s image were often not born of malice. Instead, they grew from a belief many of us have held: that the cause is bigger than the individual and the mission must survive at all costs. But the cost was human lives.
When we protect a name instead of a person, we are no longer doing justice work. We are doing reputation management. Our community deserves better.
At the Latino Community Fund of Georgia, we hold “Protect and Build Communities” as a foundational pillar. I take this commitment seriously. This means:
-We will never sacrifice the safety of a vulnerable person to protect a leader, a brand, or a strategic position.
-We will create spaces where children, women, and those without power can speak without fear of being silenced for the sake of the greater good.
-We will hold ourselves to the same standard of accountability we demand from the systems we seek to change.
-We will name harm when we see it, especially when it comes from within our own ranks.
We honor the farmworkers’ movement and the sacrifices of those who came before us. However, we honor them best not by shielding their reputation, but by continuing and finishing what they started with greater integrity than they were able to sustain.
The Latino Community Fund in Georgia is committed to building economic power, civic presence, and access to healthcare and education. We are building a future where our children inherit not just our resilience, but also our courage to tell the truth. That future requires us to say plainly and without apology: “No movement is worth more than the people it claims to serve. No one, no matter how revered, stands above the dignity of another human.”
This is not a critique of our history. It is a promise about our future.
Gigi Pedraza
Executive Director
Responses