More than 100 students, faculty and community members gathered in the Mary Idema Pew Library for the annual Cesar E. Chavez Day in 2014. This year, the event is being held on Tuesday, March 31. It is expected to draw over 234 people in the Cook-DeWitt Center on the Allendale Campus.

The event will honor the United Farmworkers, the Young Lords, Chavez and other activists who have fought to defend Latinos from being displaced. The event will also focus on the Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection, which is housed in Seidman House special collections. Launched by José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement, “The Young Lords in Lincoln Park” collection conveys the struggle for fair housing and human rights.

The event will focus on looking at the historical background of the situation and how the displacement of Latinos and the poor from prime real estate areas of cities continues today.

“We cannot repeat the same erroneous policies of Lincoln Park Chicago that destroyed a diverse neighborhood, including the entire community of the first Puerto Ricans to Chicago,” Jimenez said. “Today, it is affluent and the city makes good money on hiked up taxes for patronage – but it is 95 percent white. We are not evicting the homeless. We are evicting hardworking families who are holding two or more jobs to survive.”

The event will also include a live performance of “Elvira,” a professional play about a Mexican woman and her son who looked for safety at a Chicago church. It will look at immigration rights and the separation of families.

“’Elvira,’ the play, is important because it is another major concern among many Latino families who continue to be discriminated and scapegoated,” Jimenez said. “Many undocumented families continue to be divided and have become victims of laws that are like Jim Crow (laws) – racist. We need immigrant rights reform and we need discussion on the table, not on the back burner.”

Additionally, an awards ceremony recognizing local community activists will follow at 4:40 p.m. The awards were chosen by a committee that included Dr. Carlos Rodriguez of University Libraries and Allison Montaie of the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

“They, too, are unsung heroes. Like the unsung heroes from 1960s Lincoln Park, we wanted to link them to today locally,” Jimenez said. “It is the same protracted struggle here that it was then.”

The film, “Millie and the Lords,” will be shown following the awards ceremony. The film focuses on Puerto Rican students in New York in the 1960s who joined the Young Lords – a movement where youth challenged government decisions and looked for ways to address issues of civil rights, racism and social justice. Some of the issues faced in the movie are gangs, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender bias and domestic violence. This Young Lords movement was part of the Latino Civil Rights Movement, led by Cesar Chavez and others.

GVSU President Thomas J. Haas, Vice President of Inclusion and Equity Jesse Bernal and Dean of the Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies Anne Hiske will be in attendance to offer up what they can on the issues during the event and to observe the student-run event.

“We are students and we have the power to make change, but we cannot make change without discussion,” Jimenez said. “That is why we need this. It is why we promote the Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection about an entire community that was displaced – we celebrate Cesar Chavez. Si Se Puede.”