Farmworkers Day officially adopted as Phoenix’s Cesar Chavez day replacement

The Phoenix City Council officially established Farmworkers Day as a city holiday Wednesday, replacing the one that used to honor Cesar Chavez.

The council voted unanimously to permanently adopt the name following sexual abuse allegations against the labor leader, including by Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Chavez in 1962.

In March, the city council temporarily renamed the holiday to Farmworkers Day.

Mayor Kate Gallego, councilmembers Laura Pastor and Betty Guardado and city manager Ed Zuercher requested to make the change permanent in a Sept. 2 memo. They wanted to continue to honor the farm workers’ movement and their struggle for dignity, fair wages, safe working conditions and basic rights.

“That victory belonged not to any one person, but the workers whose courage, organizing and collective action made progress possible,” the leaders wrote in the memo. “We believe that Phoenix should permanently honor that legacy.”

The city is also working to rename streets, municipal buildings and parks that were named after Chavez.

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