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At an event celebrating César Chávez, a labor leader who helped organize farm workers alongside Dolores Huerta and Gilbert Padilla, education leaders from Fresno spoke of the activist’s impact on their lives as well as Fresno.
Fresno education leaders and community members marched together and celebrated the legacy of activist and labor leader César Chávez.
Sunday’s event was organized by El Concilio de Fresno and the Southeast Fresno Community Economic Development Association. Around 40 people started from Farber Educational Campus and marched to the Jr. Exhibits Building inside the Fresno Fairgrounds.
Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, president of Fresno State, was one of multiple education leaders who joined the march. Fresno Unified leaders in attendance included Superintendent Misty Her, Carlos Castillo, chief academic officer and Ben Drati, deputy superintendent.
“And I will say this, I would not be here as an immigrant president, were it not for Martin Luther King, Jr. and César Chávez, so all thanks to ‘la lucha’ — to the struggle for civil rights,” said Jiménez-Sandoval during the event’s keynote address after the march.
Jiménez-Sandoval explained how Chávez faced discrimination because of his ethnicity, ancestry and language. Jiménez-Sandoval shared his story of coming to the Central Valley from Mexico in 1980 as a 10-year-old and facing similar challenges.
However, the president explained that he found belonging from his father and the work he did.
“‘Since 1951, my father has been working in the fields of central California, I say to myself, ‘and his hard-earned keep and honest work give me, right here and right now, the right to say: I belong to the valley, and the valley belongs to me,’” Jiménez-Sandoval said.
Lea Ybarra, a previous chair of the Chicano studies department at Fresno State, shared her experience of Chávez’s visit to Fresno in 1966, during his march from Delano to Sacramento as part of the Delano Grape Strike.
Ybarra recalled how she and other Latino Fresno State students went to hear Chávez speak. According to Ybarra, agriculture students against the growing labor movement at the time brought boxes of grapes to his speech to eat and throw at Chávez.
For Ybarra, this was the start to her involvement in organizing and civic engagement.
“I remember that from then on, we certainly all became really aware of what was happening,” Ybarra said during the event.
After transferring to UC Berkeley, Ybarra said that she and her siblings all became involved with organizing farm workers. At one point, Ybarra and her brother were arrested in Fresno County while her sister was on a hunger strike in San Francisco.
“So my parents spent each time going to each place, right, visiting all of us in jails and so forth, but they never once said ‘Don’t do that,’ because they had been farm workers, we had been farm workers and they were proud of the fact that their children were standing up for their rights in all these different places and all these different situations,” Ybarra said.
“And they knew that if we didn’t stand up for our rights, who was going to do it?” Ybarra added.
Sunday’s celebration also featured a poem by Aideed Medina, Fresno Poet Laureate, and was capped off with entertainment from local dance and music groups.
Fresno Unified will be hosting their own event to celebrate Chávez on Wednesday.
The district’s event will feature student performances and essays at Warnors Theatre. Among the speakers are Superintendent Her and Andres Chavez, executive director of the National Chavez Center and the grandson of Chávez.
After the event, students will march from the theatre to the César E. Chávez Adult Education Center for a garlanding ceremony at the center’s bust of Chávez.
