Visión Comunitaria de Oregon (VCO) is a statewide colectivo of Latine/x/a/o leaders and organizations building a unified agenda to advance equity and wellbeing for Oregon’s diverse communities. Guided by shared values of cultural specificity, solidarity, and collaboration, our vision is of an Oregon where the diaspora is embraced, our cultural traditions are celebrated, and our collective power shapes a just future.

Below is our statement in response to sexual assault findings regarding César Chávez:

“As organizations rooted in Oregon’s farmworker, Latine, immigrant, and Indigenous communities, we are grieving and reckoning with the devastating findings reported by The New York Times that César Chávez groomed and sexually abused girls who were part of the farmworker movement.

We condemn this abuse unequivocally. Sexual violence against girls and young women is a profound betrayal of trust, power, and community. No historic contribution, public legacy, or movement status excuses abuse. No leader is above accountability.

We stand with the survivors, with all those carrying the weight of this news, and with the women and girls whose experiences have too often been minimized, doubted, or erased. We also stand with Dolores Huerta, whose leadership helped build this movement and who has now named her own experience of sexual assault by César Chávez; we reject the long pattern of sacrificing women’s truth and safety to protect power, reputation, or legacy. We also recognize that for many people in our communities, this news is not only horrifying, but deeply disorienting. Many of us were taught to honor César Chávez as a symbol of farmworker dignity and struggle. Reckoning with this truth requires honesty, care, and courage.

As a statewide colectivo, we believe this moment calls us to do more than issue statements. It calls us to act together. Across Oregon, VCO board organizations are already taking steps to realign public commemorations, rename spaces and events, repaint murals and symbols, and push institutions to engage our communities in decisions that affect how farmworker history is told. We affirm those efforts.

Our colectivo stands united around the following commitments:

• We will center survivors and the leadership of women and girls in how we respond.

• We will advance a gender-justice response that confronts abuse, silence, and harm within our movements and institutions.

• We will support truthful, community-led efforts to reconsider names, symbols, commemorations, and public narratives connected to Cesar Chavez.

• We will work to broaden the story of Oregon’s farmworker movement so it fully reflects the leadership, labor, and resistance of women, Indigenous farmworkers, immigrants, and the many communities whose contributions have been overlooked.

• We will move in solidarity across regions of the state to identify concrete next steps that honor survivors, support healing, and strengthen accountability in our own organizations and in the public institutions that claim to serve our communities.

This is not the work of one statement or one news cycle. It is the ongoing work of truth-telling, repair, and collective responsibility. We move forward together with humility, clarity, and commitment to the dignity, safety, and full humanity of our people.

En solidaridad,”

Capaces Leadership Institute

Centro Cultural of Washington County

Consejo Hispano

Farmworker Housing Development Corporation

Latino Community Association

Latino Network

Oregon Rural Action, Inc. 

PCUN

Plaza de Nuestra Comunidad

Prosperidad Oregon

The Next Door

Verde