Educators, parents and elected officials joined last week to celebrate the renaming of the Cedar Place School to the Cesar E. Chavez school, to honor the life of a true American hero. In June, the Yonkers Public Schools Board of Education adopted a resolution for the renaming, and last week, Yonkers officially became the first school in New York State named for Chavez.
Joining Superintendent Dr. Edwin Quezada, BOE President the Rev. Steve Lopez and Mayor Mike Spano was Paul Chavez, the son of Cesar Chavez and president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation.
Cesar Chavez was a civil rights advocate who championed nonviolent social change defending the rights of Latinos, farm laborers and the underserved. He was also a community organizer and social entrepreneur, a genuinely religious and spiritual figure, and a crusader for the environment and consumer rights. His commitment to social change was drawn from the nonviolent civil disobedience of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Chavez became better known across America during the 1960s, when Sen. Robert Kennedy highlighted the causes that Chavez fought for and the two formed a friendship and respect for each other.
The Cesar Chavez Foundation’s mission is to enrich and improve the lives of Latino families, meeting their essential human, cultural and community needs. In 1994, Chavez was presented posthumously with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Cesar Chavez National Monument, maintained by the National Parks Service, is located in Keene, Calif.
As a young boy in the early 1960s, Paul Chavez joined his seven brothers and sisters on weekends in Central Valley farm towns, handing out leaflets and helping his father, Cesar, organize the union that would become the United Farm Workers of America. Paul and his family endured the hardships and sacrifices of the five-year-long Delano grape strike and boycott, and the struggles that followed.
He has spent his entire life with the farm worker movement. Paul was a personal assistant to his father and a union organizer and negotiator. He managed the UFW’s direct marketing operation and was the unions lobbyist in Sacramento, and Washington, D.C.
Since 1991, Paul has led the Cesar Chavez Foundation, also founded in the ’60s. He spearheaded the growth of the Chavez foundation, impacting the lives of farm workers, Latinos and other poor working families across the Southwest.
Under his leadership, its affordable housing portfolio has grown to 42 communities with nearly 5,000 units of high-quality, amenity-intensive housing with extensive social services for low- and very-low income working families and seniors in four states. The foundation also provides after-school and summer enrichment programs, academic tutoring, and – partnering with Tostitos – the Chavez foundation administers a scholarship program that has given $500,000 to “Dreamers” in Arizona.
A mariachi band and folklore dancers, sponsored by the Mexican American Chamber of Commerce in Yonkers, helped celebrate the announcement.
For more information on Cesar Chavez and his foundation, visit chavezfoundation.org.
