Women speak out on abuses by Cesar Chavez; organizations must have zero tolerance for sexual misconduct!

Dolores Huerta organizing marchers in Coachella, CA in 1969. (1976 George Ballis/Take Stock)

The Women’s Commission of the American Party of Labor | March 24, 2026—

The American Party of Labor takes a firm stance in support of Dolores Huerta and the other victims of Cesar Chavez’s alleged abuse. 

While Chavez was no communist, any revolutionary or proletarian organization needs to fiercely combat chauvinistic tendencies and take a strong stance against all forms of sexual misconduct by their members and allies. Sexual misconduct, abuse, and male chauvinism are reproductions of reactionary patriarchal bigotries which will have no place in the future we’re building, and as such have no place in our organizations. 

So-called “revolutionary” organizations that cover up abuses of women are enemies of the working class. They do not value women as members of their organization or of the working class, instead choosing to ally themselves with those who have committed heinous acts. Chavez is errantly upheld as the sole icon of the farmworkers’ movement, minimizing the contributions of countless others, including Dolores Huerta. Presenting the work of an organization as representative of only the leaders of that organization, rather than of the membership as a whole, is both morally repugnant and a complete breach of class unity.

Women must take prominent roles in the revolution and in the organizations that build towards that moment, as was seen with such pivotal figures of the Bolshevik revolution as Alexandra Kollontai and Nadezhda Krupskaya. Making women unsafe, making them have to choose between the movement and their own agency, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of women in the working class.

As Enver Hoxha said: “The entire party and country should hurl into the fire and break the neck of anyone who dared trample underfoot the sacred edict of the party on the defense of women’s rights.”

Liberation will be fundamentally incomplete and lacking if only half of the population is represented. Women will not achieve full liberation without communism, and the proletariat will not achieve liberation through communism without women. These are two deeply embedded struggles with the same end point. 

We stand in solidarity with Dolores Huerta and all women who have been victimized by the male leaders they trusted in liberatory movements and organizations.