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It’s Not Just Huerta. For Many Survivors, Silence Seems Like the Only Option. By Shannon Perez-Darby This article was originally published by Truthout Sexual abuse like the harm enacted by Cesar Chavez plagues movements because it plagues our world — both must change.
Questions about Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the larger movement for the rights and dignity of farmworkers hang heavy on the hearts and minds of many this week, following the New York Times report published earlier this month. The report, which was published on March 18, investigated extensive allegations of sexual assault and abuse against United Farm Workers of America co-founder Cesar Chavez. The allegations include at least three named survivors, Ana Murguia, Debra Rojas, and renowned civil rights leader Dolores Huerta. The experiences shared by these three women outline a pattern of abuse that included repeated sexual assaults of both Murguia and Rojas as children and Huerta as an adult. As these stories come to light, we must build our capacity to face and confront the reality of sexual violence in our movements not just in the past but in the current moment as well. Confronting the sexual violence committed by Chavez doesn’t mean we can no longer learn from the wins of UFW; the grape boycotts; the fight for better wages and working conditions; and the important wins on limiting the use of harmful pesticides. To learn from this history is to build on the legacy of broad-based farmworker struggle. The violent encounters shared by Murguia, Rojas, and Huerta are horrific. For so many, the overwhelm we experience when faced with the realities of sexual violence can cause us to freeze and shut down. Yet, sexual violence thrives in silence. The idea that sexual violence is a private matter that survivors must manage behind the scenes is the lie that allows sexual violence to thrive. For generations women have been told that to disclose the violence we experience at the hands of men in our movements for social change is to undermine the movement itself. If we care about revolution, if we care about la gente, then it’s our duty to protect the movement by privately managing the impact. In reality the secrecy forced on survivors of sexual violence is exactly what keeps our movements not only ineffectual but toxic to the very communities we are hoping to build. In her first interview after disclosing the abuse she experienced at the hands of Chavez, Huerta was asked by Latino USA host Maria Hinojosa, “We know that you stood tall and proud next to Cesar Chavez for a long time. For people who are struggling to understand the kind of fidelity and support to Chavez, how can you explain that to them now when they’re struggling to understand this?” Huerta responded: I think the only way that I can explain that is that we have to look at all of the things that we accomplished for farm workers. The fact that they have the basic human needs when they’re working, the things that they were deprived of, the bathrooms, the drinking water, the rest periods, to be treated as decent human beings out there in the fields. We’re talking about millions of farm workers. And I think my staying quiet and not revealing this, I don’t know if that contributed or didn’t contribute, but in my mind when people say why didn’t you leave? This is why. Because I felt that my coming out and saying that would have hurt the movement. I don’t shame any survivor who felt they couldn’t speak up, either for their own safety or because they believed that speaking up would harm the people around them. I grieve the reality that so many women have to choose between their bodily autonomy and the movements they have dedicated their lives to. So often we brace against the reality that someday sexual violence might happen in our movements. This is the wrong approach. The question is not if sexual violence will one day happen — we must instead build our work from the very foundation knowing that sexual violence is possible and likely. Sexual violence in our movements is common not because we are inherently violent but because we collectively have a messed-up relationship to power. Sexual violence and power are inextricably linked. As long as our movements have a distorted relationship to power, we will also have charismatic leaders abusing the power we give them. We want there to be someone smarter, stronger, and more compelling than us, someone who has all the answers. We are hungry for grounded, ethical leadership, which makes us vulnerable to people who abuse that desire. No one is coming to save us. To build movements free from sexual violence is to build movements that rely on collective power and shared, rotational leadership; it will come through millions of us building new practices step by step. The inevitability of sexual violence in our movements isn’t destiny, it’s pattern recognition. Over and over again we ignore the conditions that lead to sexual violence until brave survivors finally speak out, at a very high cost to themselves. Then we express our outrage and grief for a week until the media cycle moves on to the next horror. The first time it happens it’s shocking, being surprised after the 100th time it’s happened is willful ignorance. When we force survivors into a false dichotomy of hiding the truth about the violence they’ve experienced or destroying the movements they are giving their lives for, we are undermining the very principles of our work. We must grow ourselves to undo these dichotomies. We must build the capacity to turn and face the realities of sexual violence and change the very structures of our work to build the world we need. The survival of our movements depends on it. As long as we treat sexual violence and child sexual abuse as something rare that happens in the shadows, we will be doomed to forever repeat the pattern of shock and outrage when disclosures such as these come to light. I’m begging us to stop being surprised and to start seeing the realities of gender-based violence in our lives and movements. Let’s stop imagining sexual violence as something rare and instead see it as something that is so inextricably linked to the way we live our lives that only structural change will prevent it. By building our collective power we can cultivate thriving movements where people don’t have to trade their safety for belonging and where the world we are building is so alive in our practices that our liberation will be undeniable. This article was originally published by Truthout and is licensed under Creative Commons . Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines.How to End Family Policing: From Outrage to Action. Centering queer and trans communities of color, Shannon Perez-Darby works to create the conditions to support loving, equitable relationships and communities while focusing on issues of domestic and sexual violence, accountability, and abolition.
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