Death, life, and legacy

In Tuesday's post I referenced hyperbole and United Farm Workers. 

They were separate thoughts, but there was a connecting thread that relates to how we remember the dead.

That will be another multi-post issue, but I want to tackle something a little to the side today, encouraging us to not react too quickly.

(Also yesterday's post mentioned learning from discomfort -- which I have written about before, but not recently -- so it all connects.)

Labor rights activist Dolores Huerta recently revealed that she was among the women and girls sexually abused by César Chávez. There is now a rush to cancel celebrations, rename things, and take away the honor that has accrued to this man. 

https://apnews.com/article/latino-leaders-speak-out-about-chavez-allegations-f1b24d3c6bdf71b326b63d51f80ea957 

There are the usual points being brought up: why did they wait so long to come forward and are they lying on the side of misogyny, as well as some people a little too eager to tear down the work he did, probably mostly because of racism but maybe also because of worker rights and unpopular things like that.

There are questions about whether you still give credit for the work he did; does this ruin it all?

I am writing this post because the apparent rush by some to rename the days and streets and things after either Dolores Huerta or United Farm Workers feels like a rush to get over this bad news. 

We might grow more if we don't rush. 

How much we want to honor an imperfect person is worth considering in this time of cult-like partisanship. It is not the only thing worth considering.

Chavez died in 1993; most of the honors came significantly later. Portland's own  César E. Chávez Blvd was not named that until 2009. There would be a lot of things to rename and change because historically we have not been great at honoring people who were not rich white men. Attempts to fix that may have also been a little rushed, so 

Chávez got used a lot, even though he was not the only prominent person checking his specific boxes. For some more context, Portland got Rosa Parks Boulevard in 2006, Harvey Milk Street in 2017, and Martin Luther King Blvd all the way back in 1989.

(See also https://erdavis.com/2022/04/14/only-6-streets-in-portland-are-named-after-people-of-color/.) 

I'm not saying that's not a reason to rename, but there is a pattern to the way we have done things. Changing the names will not automatically change the patterns.

Here are some other areas to ponder.

Regarding Dolores Huerta (who has done great work for decades, so honoring her is perfectly reasonable), there were two things that stuck out to me.

First, she did not know there were other victims back then. I believe her, but one sad thing I have learned by now is that as much as sexual abuse makes people feel isolated, they aren't. I hope there is enough understanding now that if he is doing it to you, he is doing it to others. That doesn't make coming forward easy, but we should know enough to make it easier; have we?  

You know we haven't. 

Secondly, one reason she did not speak up until now was her fear that it would damage the movement. Would the public back then have used it to discredit the movement? Yeah, seems likely. 

Have we progressed beyond that, where we want good things for people and progress so that we will not let the failures of one person get in the way?

For another train of thought, a few years back there was a movement to remove more Confederate memorials and memorials to people who profited from slavery. If we were to go through and remove and rename anything related to a rapist, how much would that change things? Would maps become useless? Because it's been pretty common.

Our country has twice elected a confessed sexual assaulter found liable for rape and is allowing him to delay investigation of likely evidence that he is a pedophile while wreaking havoc internationally and domestically. Maybe we should sit with that for a while.

Maybe we should abolish the tendency to look for a "great man." One individual may be very inspirational or organized or have a lot to offer, but there are always others planning and carrying out and carrying on. Focusing too much on that one minimizes the work of others and allows him a latitude that can easily cause harm.

Let's not get over this quickly. 

Related posts: 

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2022/10/three-reasons-to-embrace-discomfort.html  

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2019/02/sitting-with-uncomfortable.html