A Midwest tour to honor labor organizer Cesar Chavez stops in Northeast Ohio this week, with events commemorating his legacy of organizing farm laborers in the state and throughout the U.S.
The capstone Northeast Ohio event will be a talk by Andres Chavez, the grandson of Cesar Chavez and the executive director of the National Chavez Center, on Thursday, October 16 at 6:30 p.m. at Orange High School in Pepper Pike. The talk is free and open to the public.
“We have an incredible opportunity to reintroduce his legacy and his values to the American public,” Andres Chavez said. “It's not just sharing history, but it's really thinking about those valuable lessons that we can learn from the past and how we can apply them to our causes today.”
Another event on Thursday morning at the main branch of Cleveland Public Library downtown is also open to the public, and will focus on how leaders can apply Cesar Chavez's teachings to their own work.
Though Cesar Chavez is perhaps most widely known in California, his work also has ties to Ohio. Chavez visited the state nearly a dozen times, including encouraging farm workers in the Toledo area to support their local Farm Labor Organizing Committee chapter in the 1970s.
The support of Ohio farmers was also vital to a nationwide grape boycott from 1965 to 1970, Andres Chavez said. The strike helped farm workers secure higher pay and the right to organize.
“It was places like Cleveland, Toledo, and Columbus that actually led to the success of the farm workers' boycott against grape and lettuce and other things that they boycotted in subsequent years,” Chavez says.
Though Cesar Chavez died in 1993, the Cesar Chavez Foundation continues his work today. The organization partners with schools in California to teach lessons about Cesar’s work and develops affordable housing for working families.
Andres Chavez said he sees many more avenues where his grandfather's approach of nonviolent action and solidarity building could be effective.
“We're seeing issues with food scarcity, we're seeing attacks on our freedom of speech, expression, the freedom of the press,” Chavez said. “I think right now it's really calling us to meet that moment and to work in solidarity to protect these very freedoms for which this country was founded on.”
Chavez said the organization is planning national programs to commemorate what would have been Cesar Chavez's 100th birthday in 2027, including a national food drive, a day of service and providing teachers with curricula on his grandfather’s legacy.
