El Centro de Accion Social will commemorate Cesar Chavez’s 86th birthday at the Villa-Parke Community Center beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday and concluding with its annual Peace Walk to Robinson Park on North Fair Oaks Avenue.

Chavez, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, died April 23, 1993, at age 66.

At the event, Pasadena Unified School District students will read essays written as part of the Cesar Chavez essay contest. Longtime civil rights attorney and Advancement Project co-founder Connie Rice will serve as the event’s keynote speaker.

At 11 a.m., the group will begin what organizers are calling a walk for peace, which will start at the community center on Villa Street, near Los Robles Avenue, and conclude at Robinson Park, located in the 1000 block of North Fair Oaks Avenue.

The NAACP Pasadena Branch, the Flintridge Center and other local organizations will also take part in the event.
El Centro Executive Director Randy Ertll said he hoped the walk would bring attention to a spate of recent shootings, including one which left a 4-year-old boy in critical condition.

“We have to continue being involved and working toward peace and nonviolence in the community. It is not easy work, but it is necessary work,” Ertll said.

“We have had more shootings. We need to be vigilant. When a 4-year old is shot and there is no outrage, we have a problem,” Ertll said.

Last week, the Weekly reported four people, including the child, were wounded in two of three separate recent shooting attacks, the first one involving two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies on East Orange Grove Boulevard, near Mar Vista Avenue. And that incident, in which an early release parolee was one of two men arrested in connection with a home-invasion robbery and allegedly opening fire on deputies investigating that crime, marked the third shooting in that neighborhood in less than three months, two of those separate attacks resulting in two deaths.

“People get outraged when there is a police shooting. There should be outrage across the board. A 4-year old child was shot and there was no outrage and there should be. We need to value life across the board,” Ertll said. n

For more information, call (626) 792-3148 or visit elcentropasadena.org.