Many Latino San Franciscans saw the dedication as an acknowledgment of the farmworker movement Chavez helped build.

But after allegations surfaced this week that the civil rights icon sexually abused multiple young girls, and United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, as he led the movement in the 1960s and ’70s, politicians have quickly proposed stripping his name from dozens of streets, schools, parks and monuments, and the state holiday in his honor at the end of the month.

The revelations have raised questions about how to further the movement’s legacy, without Chavez as the figurehead.

“He was a symbol,” San Francisco State University labor historian John Logan said, “for a recognition of the farmworker movement, of the Chicano civil rights movement.”

“This [is an] incredibly important social movement and incredibly important worker movement,” he said, adding that now, it will be important “to find a way of trying to recognize those things without using his name.”

Reckoning with abuse

On Tuesday, The New York Times published an investigation revealing accounts from two women, now in their 60s, who said that they had been assaulted repeatedly by Chavez for years in the 1970s, beginning when they were 12 and 13, and he was in his 40s.

Huerta came forward with her own allegations that on two separate occasions in the 1960s, Chavez had pressured her into intercourse and later raped her.

Within hours, local officials and organizations across California launched efforts to strip Chavez’s name from public view. Sacramento’s mayor appointed city council members to rename Cesar Chavez Plaza in the state capital.

Fresno officials set a meeting for this week to remove Cesar Chavez Boulevard street signs and groups at San Francisco State and Sonoma State University announced plans to shroud his image and name on campus murals and on buildings.

Early Thursday, California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón announced legislation that would rename the state holiday honoring Chavez at the end of March to Farmworkers Day.

“This moment calls for honesty. It calls for reflection. And it calls for a renewed commitment to the values that the farmworker movement was built on,” Rivas said, speaking on the California Assembly floor on Thursday.

While San Francisco leaders haven’t taken any concrete steps to strip Chavez’s name from the street, or from the public elementary school renamed in his honor around the same time, it seems more than likely in the coming weeks.

“My office will support community efforts to remove Cesar Chavez’s name from any District 9 institutions,” said Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who represents the Mission, which includes both sites.

“I think there should be no hesitation,” said former Supervisor Susan Leal, who served from 1993 to 1997, and helped lead the renaming effort.

A divisive renaming

Leal said the decision to name Army Street after Chavez was meant to acknowledge “unrecognized work of a lot of farmworkers.”

“The meaning of having Cesar Chavez Street is that it signifies we have a place here too,” Maria Paya, a grocer in the Mission District, told the Los Angeles Times that year.

But by the time the new street signs were unveiled that April, the decision had already sparked controversy, and a campaign to repeal the name change. Opponents put a citywide measure on that year’s general election ballot to restore the road’s name to Army Street.

The battle became one of the most divisive that election cycle, according to newspaper reports at the time, pitting residents of the then-predominantly Latino Mission District, backed by thousands of United Farm Workers volunteers who traveled from as far as Bakersfield to campaign, against wealthy, majority white Noe Valley residents and small business owners who said they had an affinity for their addresses, and the 140-year-old Army Street name.

The renaming came at a time of heightened anti-immigrant sentiment, Leal said, not unlike today. The year prior, California voters passed Proposition 187, which aimed to block undocumented immigrants from accessing most health care services, public education and social services.

“If you would come up with another San Franciscan who was not of the farmworker movement, I think he might’ve gotten more support. It was not unlike Prop. 187,” Leal said.

Blair Russell and Steve Wargo kicked off their LoDo theater with a song and a dance.

It wasn’t their first production, but rather, the overly elaborate and frustrating process of getting money from the Denver Downtown Development Authority.

“By the end, it was like CC’ing just 10 people on emails, just hoping that one of the people was the right one,” Russell said.

The duo were awarded a $400,000 loan from the city affiliate last July to help them launch the Denver Immersive Repertory Theater at the corner of 15th and Blake streets. They said what ensued was months of back and forth, with redundant questioning and confusion from city staff.

“Some of them, it didn’t feel like they even knew who we were or what we were asking for,” Russell said.

The men finally got their loan last month. But they said the ordeal pushed back the theater’s opening date by at least two months.

“How do we plan to open a business when we have no idea how many more steps this is going to take, what the process is and what they really, truly expect the timeline is?” Wargo said.

DDA tasked with revitalizing downtown

The DDA has existed since 2008, when it was formed to redevelop Union Station. In the wake of the pandemic and years of construction along the 16th Street Mall, a small group of voters extended the organization’s mandate to the whole of downtown, approving $570 million in bond funding.

That money will be used for a variety of things intended to revitalize the area, from helping launch retailers to renovating parks and partially financing the conversion of offices into apartments. The money is generally expected to be repaid from the increase in taxes created by the new investments.

About $155 million has been awarded so far.

When Russell and Wargo applied for DDA funding in early 2025, their business plan was largely ironed out. The two were looking to open an “immersive” theater, where people come to participate in the play, not just watch. Its first production, “Midnight’s Dream,” will feature 11 rooms with scenes happening simultaneously — 18 hours of acting in each show.

The pair hoped to put DDA money toward the $750,000 build-out of their location at 1431 15th St. When they applied, they were under the impression that the award would be a grant.

“I think everybody went into this not knowing how the funds were going to be delivered,” Russell said. “So you just make some assumptions. And we heard that there were grant funds, we heard that there were loans — that they had different ways of implementing this.”

Ultimately, a loan is what they got. The terms: 10 years at 3% interest, better than they’d be able to get elsewhere. Mayor Mike Johnston announced July 30 that Russell and Wargo’s theater, along with nine other projects, would be awarded a combined $100 million.

“Today launches downtown Denver’s economic recovery into overdrive,” Johnston said at a news conference.

First recipients just now getting money

But as the mayor was speaking, the DDA had yet to even source the money it was awarding.

Among the funding recipients announced in July was Green Spaces, a recently shuttered RiNo coworking, event and retail space that’s opening at 16th and Welton streets.

“It wasn’t smooth, but it wasn’t a terrible, strenuous process,” Green Spaces CEO Jevon Taylor said of working with the city and DDA.

The 30-year-old entrepreneur said his opening date for Green Spaces was pushed back from spring to this summer. But he doesn’t attribute that to one party, instead saying that he faced difficulty getting everyone — the city, his landlord, his subtenants — on the same page.

“I was just playing middleman,” Taylor said.

The city approved DDA for its own loan in November, giving it the first tranche of funds to dole out. PNC Bank provided the authority with a $160 million loan expiring in July 2038 and a short-term, $50 million line of credit.

Cal Raleigh and Randy Arozarena are officially Seattle Mariners teammates again, and if you need proof, just look at the box score.

Seattle Mariners name Logan Gilbert opening day starter

The two players who were at the center of a controversy last week during the World Baseball Classic both drove in runs as the Mariners put up a six-spot on the Athletics on Thursday night in Cactus League play.

Arozarena came off the bench with runners on second and third with one out in the top of the seventh inning, and he reached on an infield single that gave Seattle its first run of the game, cutting the A’s lead to 3-1.

And Arozarena, who hit his first homer of the spring on Wednesday, wasn’t done. He then stole second, which allowed him to score the second of two runs on a Ryan Bliss single that tied the game.

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A few batters later, after a Brock Rodden single and Luke Raley hit by pitch loaded the bases, it was Big Dumper’s turn, and he delivered with a bases-clearing double off the tall wall in center field at the Athletics’ spring home, Hohokam Stadium in Mesa.

That capped the inning and the scoring for Seattle in a 6-4 victory.

Perhaps it’s a sign that the handshake that never happened when Arozarena stepped to the plate for Mexico with Raleigh catching for the USA is behind the two Mariners All-Stars. As they say, winning cures everything.

More on the Seattle Mariners

• All Mariners back from World Baseball Classic
• Mariners’ Hancock showing new weapon during strong spring
• Former Mariners UT Dylan Moore triggers opt-out clause
• Salk: Difficult to see Emerson making Mariners’ opening day roster
• Seattle Mariners’ Luke Raley showing he’s worth keeping an eye on

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