La Fe Preparatory School students march in honor of civil rights leader César Chávez
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Children from the Segundo Barrio’s La Fe Preparatory School, 616 E. Father Rahm Ave., honored late civil rights leader César Chávez on Friday morning by marching for community rights.
The school’s pre-K through third-grade students and their teachers took part in the 2023 La Fe Children’s César Chávez Day March, which traveled east on Father Rahm Avenue, before turning south on Ochoa Street. The children were cheered on by Segundo Barrio residents and La Fe staff members at the La Fe Central Clinic and the La Fe Child and Adolescent Wellness Center. The students then marched west on Seventh Avenue, then north on Campbell Street, before returning to school.
“Our students may be little children, but at their tender age they are already beginning to understand that their community must unite and demand their rights to a good education, a dignified home, to fair wages in a safe workplace, and to quality, affordable health care,” Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe CEO Salvador Balcorta said in a news release.
The teachers have been working with the students to teach them about the important contributions of activists like Chávez and Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, Balcorta said.
“César would have been proud to see these little ones becoming tomorrow’s leaders. They are being taught and raised to be confident, educated, and proud voices of their community. Teaching our youth what it means to be true activists and informed voters is everyone’s responsibility,” Balcorta added.
In 2014, then-President Barack Obama declared March 31, César Chávez's birthday, as a national holiday. Chávez died April 23, 1993, in Yuma, Arizona.
The La Fe Preparatory School is a public, dual-language, immersion charter school based in the heart of El Paso’s historic Segundo Barrio. It is a Texas Education Agency A-rated school with distinctions in science achievement, the news release said. The school offers its students ‒ most of whom live in the low-income community ‒ an arts, culture and technology-based curriculum.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: La Fe Preparatory School students honor civil rights icon César Chávez
