{"id":215344,"date":"2026-03-22T11:46:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T11:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/215344\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T11:46:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T11:46:28","slug":"six-dallas-council-members-move-to-strip-cesar-chavezs-name-from-city-calendar-rename-boulevard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/215344\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Dallas Council Members Move to Strip Cesar Chavez’s Name From City Calendar, Rename Boulevard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine days before Dallas was set to observe Cesar Chavez Day, six city council members issued a memo requesting the city remove the labor leader’s name from its calendar entirely\u2014a swift local response<\/a> to a New York Times investigation<\/a> alleging decades of sexual abuse by Chavez, including against United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta. “Without accountability and support, there can be no justice for any of us,” Council Member Adam Bazaldua said in a statement<\/a> Wednesday. “We must continue to foster a culture in which survivors feel seen, heard, and protected.”<\/p>\n

The Times investigation, which relied on interviews with more than 60 people and a trove of union records, named two women\u2014Debra Rojas and Ana Murguia\u2014who say Chavez molested them beginning when they were 12 and 13, alongside Huerta’s own account<\/a>, in a Medium post, of being coerced and, on a second occasion, raped. The revelations were seismic in scale but perhaps not entirely in kind: Chavez’s adultery was documented in earlier biographies, and historian Miriam Pawel, author of The Crusades of Cesar Chavez, told PBS<\/a> there had long been “suggestions that sex played a role in his efforts to control the movement” during a period she and others have compared to a cult. One alleged survivor, Esmeralda Lopez, had even posted<\/a> about the abuse a decade ago in a private Facebook group, but was told she was “jeopardizing all that had been accomplished.”<\/p>\n

What the Times provided was the scaffolding of corroboration, including names, dates, and Huerta’s own voice, that turned loud whispers into a national reckoning. “The man I thought he was, was someone else,” said<\/a> Eliseo Medina, a retired labor leader who had a decades-long friendship with Chavez.<\/p>\n

The memo, signed by Bazaldua alongside Council Members Jesse Moreno, Jaime Resendez, Laura Cadena, Paula Blackmon, and Gay Donnell Willis, proposes replacing the March 31 observance with Dolores Huerta Day on April 10 and dropping Chavez’s name from the first Monday in September, which the city currently designates as Labor Day\/Cesar Chavez Day. “City staff will continue to monitor developments and support City Council members on whatever decision they make,” a spokesperson for the city of Dallas said in a statement, confirming<\/a> that City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert would work with the council on their decision to review the holiday.<\/p>\n

The six also recommended initiating what the memo calls “a broader discussion” about renaming Cesar Chavez Boulevard, the stretch of South Central Expressway running from Pacific Avenue past the Farmers Market to Grand Avenue, a roadway the city renamed in 2010 after a years-long push to honor the Dallas Hispanic community. The allegations have already prompted action across North Texas: Fort Worth removed Chavez street toppers from Northwest and Northeast 28th Street, and the C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e1vez & Dolores Huerta Committee of Tarrant County rebranded<\/a> itself as the \u00a1S\u00ed Se Puede! Committee, canceling its annual March for Justice. “The integrity of honoring someone is not only for the present day, but it also applies to the future,” Fort Worth Mayor Pro Tem Carlos Flores said<\/a> during a press conference Thursday. “Now that we’re learning these new things about C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e1vez, we have to take appropriate action for the integrity of the process.”<\/p>\n

The next Dallas City Council meeting is on March 25<\/a>, where the calendar changes and the broader conversation about Chavez Boulevard is now widely expected. In a potshot at Democrats, Gov. Greg Abbott has separately announced<\/a> that Texas will no longer observe Cesar Chavez Day, calling the allegations grounds to “dismantle the myth of this progressive hero.” Meanwhile, Dallas ISD’s Cesar Chavez Learning Center will likely face its own renaming discussion once the district returns from spring break. “My hope is that we continue to honor Dolores Huerta and her lasting contributions while reevaluating and ultimately removing the recognition of Cesar Chavez,” Bazaldua said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine days before Dallas was set to observe Cesar Chavez Day, six city council members issued a memo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-215344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}