A version of this essay first appeared in the Up First newsletter. Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one. You’ll get the news you need to start your day, plus a little fun every weekday and Sundays.
My phone kept going off on Wednesday with texts from friends — each wanting to trade thoughts on what felt like the second death of Cesar Chavez. His first death was April 23, 1993, at 66. Over 50,000 people attended his funeral in Delano, Calif., and he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.
I was in elementary school in suburban Chicago then, far from California. That’s when I first learned of Chavez and his movement’s fight for better wages and working conditions for farmworkers. As the daughter of janitors and a factory worker, I understood what better pay and the right to a union meant.
Chavez’s second death came after a New York Times investigation reported he had been accused of sexual abuse and rape. NPR has not independently confirmed the allegations described in the Times piece. The investigation included accounts from Ana Murguia, Debra Rojas and Dolores Huerta — the last a civil rights icon who co-led the United Farm Workers and helped make Chavez famous.
Before joining Morning Edition as an editor, I covered sexual violence for ProPublica. That work was often less about catching perpetrators than about listening, for long periods, to people who had been hurt. It took me to places such as Alaska and Utah where I met people assaulted in recent years and others, like Huerta, who waited decades to speak.
Consistent with national statistics, perpetrators I wrote about were often family, bosses, clergy or others in positions of power. I’ve learned there’s no set timeline for naming what was done by someone you trusted. I’ve learned that, for many survivors, justice means the world recognizing the harm done — and honoring the difficult work they do to live without being defined by it. I’ve learned people care about protecting others, and that by sharing their stories survivors often hope to prevent future harm.
This week, the survivors’ voices brought into relief the harm those they trusted could cause. I was grateful to learn Murguia’s and Rojas’ names alongside Huerta’s. My friends and I may be down a hero this week. But we gained two new heroes in Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, who, alongside Dolores Huerta, showed that it’s never too late to speak up — and that sometimes speaking up is the only way out.