Farm worker movement joins legislators and veterans at state Capitol urging removal of Sacramento swastika display

More than 40 lawmakers from both parties and all ethnic caucuses were joined on Thursday, Feb. 26 at the state Capitol in Sacramento by veterans’ leaders and the United Farm Workers in decrying a swastika display outside a home in Sacramento’s River Park neighborhood as an insult to victims of the Holocaust and the veterans who fought the Nazis during World War II. They urged the immediate removal of the display. 

Facing a bank of TV news crews, photographers and reporters, Senator Marty Block (D-San Diego), chair of the Legislative Jewish Caucus, convened the gathering and observed that, “in the face of hate and evil, good men and women must not remain silent.” Acknowledging the homeowner’s First Amendment rights, Block said, “he may have the right to leave it up, but that certainly doesn’t make it right.”
 
Two of Cesar Chavez’s cousins with whom he grew up in the North Gila River Valley outside Yuma, Arizona were Rudolph Rico and Lawrence Horta, noted UFW spokesman Marc Grossman, Cesar’s longtime spokesman and personal aide. “They died fighting with the U.S. Army to liberate Europe from the Nazi tyranny during World War II.”

Cesar’s brother-in-law, Guillermo Fabela, parachuted with the 101st Airborne Division behind German lines the night before the Normandy invasion, Grossman continued. He fought through the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded two Purple Hearts and the Bronze Star. Like countless other Latinos who also served their country during that period, Cesar, who was younger, volunteered for and served honorably in the U.S. Navy just after the war.

“This vile display does more than tarnish the memory of those American servicemen and – women or the millions of Jews and other victims of the Holocaust,” Grossman said. “The insult crosses every ethnic and racial boundary. That’s why the United Farm Workers is proud to stand with Senator Block’s call to take down the swastikas.”