Boyd Professor Is Keynote Speaker at Chavez Scholarship Breakfast, Named Latin Educator of the Year
Sep 28, 2009
Sylvia Lazos, Justice Myron Leavitt Professor of Law at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law, was the keynote speaker September 22 at the College of Southern Nevada’s second Cesar Chavez Scholarship Breakfast that raised funds for deserving CSN students and celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month.
In addition, Lazos will receive October 10 the educator of the year award from the Latin chamber of commerce at its 27th annual awards gala, where members who have made significant, positive contributions to the community are honored.
Titled “Cesar Chavez, Bobby Kennedy & Sonya Sotomayor,” Lazos’ presentation at the CSN scholarship breakfast pointed out, “Cesar Chavez taught us how to lead, to have compassion for those who have to labor in subhuman conditions, and to be inspired, “si se puede.”
She said, “What Chavez and [Robert] Kennedy understood is that it is the people and their ability to shape change and ask for justice that will move both the legislature and the courts.”
Similarly, because courts are important and do propel social change, Lazos explained, the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor is important to the Latino community. She said, “In Sotomayor the Latino community has become visible in one of the most important institutions of American democracy.”
She noted that Sotomayor, the daughter of immigrants, “lived a success story that resonates for millions of working class people who live in urban ‘barrios’ and whose parents struggle to buy a modern equivalent of the mythic ‘encyclopedia.’”
Although Lazos said she wasn’t precisely sure at this point how much difference Sotomayor would make on the Supreme court, she was sure that the justice would make a difference.
Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen, D-Las Vegas, sponsored legislation in March 2009 creating Cesar Chavez Day on his birthday, March 31. Although not a state holiday giving employees the day off, the law encourages schools, businesses, and the news media to recognize Chavez’s achievements on his birthday.
A leading voice for migrant farm workers, César Estrada Chávez was a Mexican American civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, later to become the United Farm Workers. The UFW upheld the ideals of non-violence practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He frequently walked picket lines with union workers in Las Vegas.
His birthday is an official state holiday in eight states, and parks, cultural centers, libraries, schools, and streets have been named in his honor.
In September 1965, NWFA joined an AFL-CIO sponsored union in a strike against major Delano area table and wine grape growers. Forging a national coalition of unions, church groups, students, minorities, and consumers, Chávez led a successful five year strike-boycott attracting millions of supporters.
In 1991, Chávez was awarded the Aguila Azteca (The Aztec Eagle), Mexico's highest honor presented to persons of Mexican heritage who have made major contributions outside of Mexico. In 1994, President William Jefferson Clinton posthumously awarded Chávez the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. He was only the second Mexican American to receive this honor.
When campaigning for president, Barack Obama endorsed the establishment of a Cesar Chavez national holiday.
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