Students and faculty gather around the front of City College’s Luria Library March 31 in Santa Barbara, Calif. The SBCC flag was taken down in anticipation for the flag raising event.
On March 31 City College organizations began a week of honoring César Chávez’s legacy by picking up what he had laid down. César Chávez Day’s flag raising event hosted a range of speakers from students with immigrant roots to faculty members who personally interacted with Chávez. The United Farm Workers flag was hoisted under the overcast sky at the event’s conclusion. The remainder of the week features a food share, migrant-led poetry workshops, and activist movie screenings.
American Ethnic Studies instructor Melinda Gandara recalls her personal tie to César Chávez March 31 at the front of City College’s Luria Library in Santa Barbara, Calif. When Gandara was a child she worked with and received insight from Chávez. (Michael Lopez)Basic Needs Center program adviser Alondra Gonzalez recollects a Chicano studies class that compelled her to learn more about her family’s history. “Please do some cultural research, cultural wealth is important to us. Talk to the elders in your families, there’s so much stories that if you don’t ask you’ll never know.” Gonzalez pleaded the audience. (Michael Lopez)The United Farm Workers flag-raising event offers spanish sweetbread to attendees March 31, 2025 in front of City College’s Luria Library in Santa Barbara, Calif. The “Conchas” were provided by ¡Raíces, a program dedicated to supporting Latiné students. (Michael Lopez)¡Raíces program director Melissa Mendendez speaks about César Chávez’s legacy and the federal commemorative holiday dedicated to him on March 31 outside City College’s Luria Library in Santa Barbara, Calif. “Once change begins it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride” she quoted Chávez (Michael Lopez)
