Julie Chavez Rodriguez, granddaughter of civil rights leader Cesar Chavez, and Fresno State emeritus faculty member Dr. Sudarshan Kapoor, place a garland around the statue of Cesar Chavez in 2018. The statue was placed in storage after it was revealed that Chavez sexually abused girls and young women.
CRAIG KOHLRUSS
ckohlruss@fresnobee.com
What do a California labor icon, a Manhattan billionaire financier and “grooming gangs” in the north of England have in common?
The answer is not the crimes themselves. It is what the surrounding institutions did next. Because what they did next followed an identical script in Sacramento, in Washington and in Westminster. Political parties decided that something they valued more than children’s safety was at stake. The children paid the price. The playbook moved on.
Saint Cesar: The movement nobody questioned
Start here, in California. On March 18, The New York Times published an investigation concluding that Cesar Chavez, the farmworkers’ saint whose name adorns more than 80 schools, streets, parks and community centers across the state, had groomed and sexually abused girls as young as 12. His co-founder of the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta, confirmed she had been coerced into sex and then raped by Chavez. She carried that for six decades. Six decades in which the movement, the union, the California political class and the Democratic Party treated this man as an icon of human dignity.
The response from Sacramento has been instructive.
Gavin Newsom said he was still processing it. Streets were renamed. At Fresno State, they covered a 9-foot-tall Cesar Chavez statue in plastic, then boarded it up with plywood, then removed it entirely and put it in storage.
Yet here is the one question those in power seem reluctant to answer: How did an entire institution know or suspect, yet decide the myth was worth more than the children?
This weekend, many of those same Californians will march across California and through SLO for the third wave of No Kings protests, outraged that Washington is shielding the powerful from accountability with no mention of Chavez.
The irony would be funny if the subject were not so grave. You cannot march against institutional impunity on Saturday and spend Sunday hoping Chavez’s statue holds up in storage long enough for the story to fade. Performative outrage is not accountability. It is its most sophisticated disguise.
Washington, DC: Different excuse, same outcome
Now add Epstein. The United States passed a transparency law and released three million pages of documents. Then the Justice Department redacted the names of the men who raped children. Trump’s name appears in the files. So does Bill Clinton’s. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick acknowledged his family visited Epstein’s private island.
Yet beyond one woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, nobody in America has faced a courtroom. The excuse is not movement solidarity, but billionaire solidarity, driven by a Republican Justice Department under a president who once called Epstein a terrific guy.
Two parties. Two protected classes. One result.
Britain: Same excuse, different postcode
On the release of said Epstein file, a prince was arrested. The ambassador to Washington sacked. The prime minister is fighting for his political life. On the surface, Britain looks like the grown-up in the room.
It is not. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was dragged kicking and screaming to fire Ambassador Peter Mandelson. Prince Andrew’s arrest came years after the first credible allegations. Britain did not act out of moral clarity. It acted because the Americans released the documents and parliamentary pressure became impossible to contain.
Look north to understand what Britain does when the pressure does not build. In three northern towns, thousands of girls as young as 12 were systematically groomed and raped by gangs of predominantly Pakistani heritage over decades. In Bradford, a third of the population is of Asian descent. In Rotherham, just 5%. Both councils looked the other way. Police told to stop investigating. Documentaries shelved. MPs silenced. The excuse was community cohesion. A national inquiry launched in December 2025 will not report for at least three years.
It turns out cowardice is the one language that needs no translation.
It’s time we all look in the mirror
Who is really responsible for all of this? It is not only Epstein, Chavez, the English councilors or the Republican Attorney General.
The disease is us.
Britain’s Labour Party knew about the grooming gangs and decided the votes were worth more than the girls.
America looked at a man bragging on tape about grabbing women without consent and gave him the presidency. Twice, if you count the party that spent years protecting a president who treated the Oval Office as a personal hunting ground and called anyone who objected a prude.
In California, Labor leader Jim Araby credits Chavez with turning California blue. Which might explain why unions and the Democratic Party treated this man as an icon too valuable to question.
Two countries. Three parties. One conclusion. When it comes to protecting the powerful from the consequences of abusing the powerless, voters on both sides of the Atlantic have shown remarkable bipartisan consistency.
The children cannot vote. They cannot lobby, donate or threaten. Which means, in the cold arithmetic of democratic politics, they never really existed at all.
Until voters in both countries decide that protecting children matters more than protecting their tribe, their icon, or their party, the playbook stays in print.
Clive Pinder hosts CeaseFire on KVEC 920AM/96.5FM and writes at clivepinder.substack.com. He believes the surest way we lose a democracy is to decide that winning matters more than who gets hurt along the way.
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