DETROIT – Anyone who has driven past La SED’s headquarters on the corner of W. Vernor near Clark Park in southwest Detroit has seen it: A large, mosaic mural of the late Cesar Chavez, the co-founder of the United Farm Workers, who helped lead one of the biggest labor movements of the 20th Century.
However, after a March 18 New York Times story unearthed claims of decades of sexual abuse by Chavez, who died in 1993, against women and teenage girls, including Dolores Huerta, his longtime partner in the labor movement, the mural has taken on a different light.
“It makes us reassess our human need to place someone on a pedestal,” Mary Carmen Muñoz, La SED’s executive director, said on Friday. “I think this made us reevaluate our own actions and how responsible leaders are to not only themselves, but their community.
“To help them understand that your personal lives, although they are personal, do affect other people,” Muñoze said.
The nonprofit has been a vital part of Southwest Detroit since its founding in 1965.
They help with everything from job placement to answering immigration questions to housing and food assistance.
“We address issues pertaining to simple things like trying to find apartments, although we don’t have apartments ourselves,” Muñoz said. “We are able to have other organizations to be able to refer them to.”
“We try to assist in helping people that are qualified for benefits receive the necessary benefits to perhaps sign up for unemployment, or if someone is sick in their family, and they need to find out how to address their medical bills,” she said. “We would like to think of ourselves as an anchor in this community. We are the organization that people come to when they don’t know where else to go.”
“This community is just not one voice”
The Chavez mural is the work of Detroit artists Mary and Lisa Luevanos, and it was made with the help of seniors and other young artists back in 2010.
It was, at the time, no different than a mural of any other important civil rights figure.
Chávez’s stature among Latinos and Hispanics was often compared to that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
He became the face of the Farm Workers’ Rights movement, even as he shared much of the work with Huerta.
The fallout from the scandal has been swift, with cities and institutions across the country, from Los Angeles to New York, canceling or renaming planned Chavez celebrations and eliminating his name from buildings, streets, schools, and foundations.
Michigan State University removed Chavez’s name from a planned celebration, switching it to the “Farmworker Appreciation Commemorative Celebration.”
On Tuesday in Lansing, State House Bill 5836 passed nearly unanimously, 103-2. The bill was introduced by Republican State Rep. Josh Schriver, R-Oxford, and would repeal the March 31 State Holiday named in Chavez’s honor.
It still has to go through the Democratic-led State Senate before going to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. A Democratic amendment that would have renamed the holiday “Farm Workers Day” was rejected.
In the city, there’s the Cesar Chavez Academy, a K-through-12 group of charter schools in Southwest Detroit.
It’s run by the Okemos-based Leona Group and chartered through Saginaw Valley State University.
No change to the name has yet been announced.
As for the Mural next to La SED, Muñoz says that taking it down is not an option, but adding context is.
“We are working with other artists to bring a modification to the mural that will shed light that La SED and this community is just not one voice,” Muñoz said. “The main artist, Lisa Luevonos, unfortunately, has health issues, and this was her last big piece.
“Mary Luevanos, who assisted on the project, has given us her thoughts and inputs on how we should modify,” Muñoz added. “We are working with other artists to bring a modification to the mural that will shed light that La SED and this community is just not one voice, it’s a voice of many.”
Workers were measuring the mural on Friday afternoon, but there’s no timetable on when the modifications would be made.
Muñoz says that this will be a chance to address the elephant in the room and move forward.
“La SED is more than one person,” Muñoz said. We couldn’t have existed 61 years and thrived for 61 years if we relied on just one.”
“We cannot thrive as a community with just one voice,” Muñoz added. “We are the voice of many.”