Students and educators at this year’s Ethnic Studies Conference at Stanislaus State did not shy away from hard conversations.
From the dismantling of DEI programs across the public education system to recent revelations about Cesar Chavez’s alleged abuse, discussions about cultural nuances and accountability matched the national moment at the ninth annual event.
Since the beginning of Trump’s second administration, programs designed to support and further diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within public schools and colleges have been slashed.
Earlier this month, communities across the country and in the northern San Joaquin Valley denounced the late labor leader Cesar Chavez, the iconic face of the United Farmworkers movement, in support of the women who’ve shared personal stories detailing his past alleged sexual assault and grooming.
San Joaquin Valley civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, who with Chavez founded the UFW in the 1960s, shared the secret of her own abuse at his hands alongside two other victims in a New York Times investigation.
Shayla Garnica, a 19-year-old public health major at Stan State, was shocked and disappointed to hear the news about Chavez.
“I’m Hispanic myself, growing up Cesar Chavez has always been such a pinnacle in our community,” she said, “so discovering…that he may have not actually been all that great of a guy was just shocking, honestly, disappointing, too.”
Garnica attended a conference workshop on “Conscious Relationship Building,” before heading to her volunteer shift at a physical therapy clinic near the school.
She said the event creates a safe space for people to discuss ethnic studies and experience perspectives from other cultures. She said that helps people have hard conversations like those ones being had about Chavez now.
“I still support the United Farm Workers movement,” she said. “Just because Cesar Chavez was the face of it, but it doesn’t mean that it can’t exist without him.”
Mary Roaf, ethics studies professor and department chair, said she’s noticed similar sentiment spreading among her students. Last month, they watched local high school students take to the streets to protest against the Trump administration and fatal shooting of American citizens by federal immigration agents.
“Now they’re seeing themselves in those high school students, in their younger siblings or cousins, and it’s igniting something in them,” Roaf said.
The collective response to immediately denounce Chavez showed her that people are ready to reclaim ownership of workers’ rights movements. That is especially true here, where the farmworker movement gained momentum thanks to the people who live and work in the Valley.
“What this is showing us is that there was always untruth, and there was always lies in what had been shared (about Chavez’s leadership), but the actions now that we’re seeing really reflects the beginning of the roots of this movement,” she said.
Roaf said several of her students are connecting the news to their own families’ first-hand experiences with social justice movements in the Valley. Students have shared family stories that show Chavez had long been known for wrongdoings, and not just against women.
“There’s pain, there’s a sense of loss, there’s anger, there’s a sense of betrayal,” Roaf said. “The way that I’ve been kind of helping myself and my students work through those emotions and not shy away from it, is to acknowledge the accountability of the community and of acknowledging the larger truth that it’s always been the community (behind the movement).”
The fight for farmworkers rights is deeply and culturally rooted in the Valley. Roaf said her students learn about advocates from Stockton like Huerta, who is still an advocate in her 90s, and Larry Itliong, the founder of the Filipino Farm Labor Union.
Stan State ethnic studies lecturer Maio Buenafe led a workshop on “Conscious Relationship Building,” and used the recent news about Chavez as a recent example of what collective accountability looks like.
She encouraged students to think about sources of power in society, and led the group through activities designed to cultivate their power.
The process takes time, Buenafe said, but once mastered it is easier to make positive change in their own communities.
Roaf said seeing the community shifting away from crediting any one person, like Chavez, for social movements is a reflection of these practices.
“I think it’s really the combination of realizing that the truth is always that it’s literally you,” she said, “it’s literally the people who are still in your family, and its young social justice movements in the Central Valley.”
Vivienne Aguilar is a reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact her at vivienne@themodestofocus.org.