Supervisor Fights To Get Sacramento County To Recognized Cesar Chavez Day
SACRAMENTO COUNTY (CBS13) — For more than a decade, Sacramento city and California state employees have commemorated the late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez with a recognized day off, but Sacramento County employees still have to go to work.
On Tuesday, 11,500 Sacramento County employees will go to work like any other day since the county doesn't recognize the holiday.
Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna is now pushing for March 31 to be an official day of service for all county employees.
"Similar to the way we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day," he said. "I think that's very important to really have the memory of Cesar Chavez reflected in our activities on a day off."
Serna says Sacramento holds a great deal of history related to Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement.
"As you recall, it was a destination of many of his marches, many of the marches of the UFW, to really shed light on the injustices that occurred in the fields across the state, across this country," he said.
And he remembers meeting Chavez as a child while his father was a longtime mayor. Those memories are part of why he went into public service.
"Some of my earliest memories of political activism were sitting atop my fathers shoulders in front of a Safeway supermarket boycotting table grapes," he said.
Serna believes the politics of the board and the fact he's the first Latino on the board of supervisors is why the county hasn't recognized the holiday.
He hopes this will be the last year county employees don't get the same chance as others to give back.