Blackhawk Group

03/23/2026

03/23/2026

Kintsugi- repairing the broken. (And seeing the abiding potential of things, and relationships, too, before repair.)

03/21/2026

March 18, 2026

Today, civil rights leader Dolores Huerta issued the following statement:

“I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.

I have encouraged people to always use their voice. Following the New York Times’ multi-year investigation into s*xual misconduct by Cesar Chavez, I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences.

As a young mother in the 1960s, I experienced two separate s*xual encounters with Cesar. The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having s*x with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to. The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.

I had experienced abuse and s*xual violence before, and I convinced myself these were incidents that I had to endure alone and in secret. Both s*xual encounters with Cesar led to pregnancies. I chose to keep my pregnancies secret and, after the children were born, I arranged for them to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives.

Over the years, I have been fortunate to develop a deep relationship with these children, who are now close to my other children, their siblings. But even then, no one knew the full truth about how they were conceived until just a few weeks ago.

I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work. The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way. I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.

I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor — of violence, of s*xual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control.

I am telling my story because the New York Times has indicated that I was not the only one — there were others. Women are coming forward, sharing that they were s*xually abused and assaulted by Cesar when they were girls and teenagers.

The knowledge that he hurt young girls sickens me. My heart aches for everyone who suffered alone and in silence for years. There are no words strong enough to condemn those deplorable actions that he did. Cesar’s actions do not reflect the values of our community and our movement.

The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual. Cesar’s actions do not diminish the permanent improvements achieved for farmworkers with the help of thousands of people. We must continue to engage and support our community, which needs advocacy and activism now more than ever.

I will continue my commitments to workers, as well as my commitment to women’s rights, to make sure we have a voice and that our communities are treated with dignity and given the equity that they have so long been denied.

I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here."

If you are a survivor or if you have been impacted by any type of s*xual violence, please visit the Dolores Huerta Foundation website, where you will find a list of resources for support. https://doloreshuerta.org/s*xual_assault_resources/

Read the full statement and Spanish-language version here: https://medium.com/p/e74c20430555?postPublishedType=initial

MEDIA CONTACT

Fenton Chief of Issue Advocacy & Crisis Management Lead Erik Olvera | eolvera@fenton.com | 415-994-3242

Lara Berthold | larabergthold@gmail.com

02/26/2025

Praying you will send a postcard to promote peaceful dispute resolution in these dangerous times - details at

October 27, 2021 Before the storm: ..... And after: ("Emmett Till's mother  sent photographs of her brutalized son around the world."                                                                                             - Reynolds and Ke...

03/25/2024

there be times I could cry like John Coffey. (Thank you, Stephen King.)

03/22/2024

Miguel, donde estas? (Lost post from 5 Nov 21) Good movie, btw!

03/18/2024

Not to single him out: Political storms, too .... borne of F3 destruction of evidence while he was OAG chief, and he may have known nothing of it; tolerance among his staff of F3 perjury; staff accessory to elder abuse. Ohio can do better. ..... “No bond is more precious than that between parent and child,
and none should be more zealously protected by the law.”
Carson v. Elrod, US Appellate Court Virginia, Richmond Division.

03/12/2024

I see you in the shadows, mom. Sending much love on this journey without end. (Rosewater brings to mind the movie Rosewood, with Vong Rhames. Hellofa important film, said the peacekeeper. https://operationstumblestone.blogspot.com/

03/03/2024

Here's to La Paz!

The Aymara women of Bolivia are using their centuries-old knitting and weaving skills to make parts to help children with holes in their hearts.

01/20/2023

http://blackhawkgroup-midwest.blogspot.com/?m=1

One incredibly abusive guardian, Ronald L. McLaughlin; disability rights; nursing homes and public corruption; justice system reform; Genevieve Gallagher-Rowan.

09/23/2018

No word yet from Governor Kasich on this:

Governor John Kasich 15 August 2018
Riffe Center, 30th Floor
77 South High Street
Columbus, OH 43215-6117
(614) 466-3555

Governor Kasich, good morning,

Something is quite seriously amiss in our Attorney General’s Health Care Fraud Unit: They are concealing the rather brutal nursing home abuse that preceded my mother’s death, (files 2 and 4, attached, and otherwise available upon request.) They are complicit in the perjury that her guardian, an attorney, committed trying to conceal his crimes from the OAG's investigators.

Context: Criminal misconduct by guardianship attorneys is so pervasive that the probate court in Franklin County has swept its house clean of them. (Columbus Dispatch, 19 July 2016: “Social workers replacing lawyers as guardians in Franklin County.")

The Health Care Fraud Unit is at odds with that welcome reform: they are rubber-stamping their investigation of a decade ago, (OAG Case # M2080079) - a sham, done under the watch of AG Marc Dann, (ousted for his own rotten behavior towards women.) And this case is still timely, not only because Cuyahoga County’s probate court continues to turn some of its wards over to the same guardian - regardless the plenitude of proof, long since provided to the court, that his conduct is aligned solely with the pecuniary interests of the nursing home industry; is unlawful; and is highly injurious to his wards and their families.

I faxed prima facie documentation of his perjury to fraud unit chief John Guthrie in 2009 - and he replied by threatening to prosecute me … “for harassment” ... if I contacted his office again.

File 1, attached, is the police report documenting that threat, and yes, that report is so pallid -- for the riptide of nursing home corruption runs deep and wide.

One measure of it is a 2002 Cincinnati Enquirer article reporting that every five days a ward of our state dies in a nursing home - because of abuse or neglect.[2]

Another: when Governor Taft empaneled a task force to address that, the commissioners found, among other systemic ills, a ‘pattern of state regulators failing to follow through on nursing homes with persistent problems.'[3]

The panel’s good recommendations, (file 5, attached,) were shut down by the nursing home lobbyists, as was expected, and that is all too evident in File 2 here, a 2017 letter from the current fraud unit chief. Her bias is illuminated in the grave disparity between Files 3 and 4.

Corruption is not inevitable, says Harvard Kennedy School’s Robert I. Rotberg, though each advance in the battle to curb it is hard-won. "Political will, usually in the form of committed national leadership, plays a major role."[4]

Such leadership - from county to federal - has yet to be seen. (MacArthur fellow and former DOJ attorney M. T. Connolly agrees.) But as baby boomers age they will be looking for leaders who will put their talents to forging serious reform of the nursing home industry and the agencies mandated to regulate it.

I turn to you, Governor, having been denied remedy in every corner. But in that search I have found that the doors to peaceful dispute resolution are too often shut fast to the average citizen, and that may explain why one awful, sinister alternative - school shootings - is on the rise.

Please lets show today’s youth a better way.

For them, for my mother, for the unfortunate ones now in her shoes, I ask you to finally bring this cause to justice.

Please appoint a special investigator, independent of both the Fraud Unit and the LTCO, to examine the complete file, which includes the report published at blackhawkgroup-midwest.blogspot.com.

I think you will find that this cause, being long mishandled, deserves your close supervision.

Yours,



Hayes Rowan

The Susanna Project

2026 W 52

Cleveland OH 44102

216 903 5201

hayesrowan@gmail.com

bookofsusanna.blogspot.com

[1] Carson v. Elrod, United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

[2] Cincinnati Enquirer, 27 March 02. (And the problem is worse than that, for their cohort included only developmentally-disabled men and women.)



[3] Plain Dealer, 5 Feb 02, B-5.



[4] Robert I. Rotberg, The Corruption Cure: How Citizens and Leaders Can Combat Graft. Princeton University Press, 2017. Professor Rotberg is the founding director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict, Conflict Prevention, and Conflict Resolution at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He has served as the president of the World Peace Foundation.

Attachments:

1 - Cleveland Police Dept., Incident Report No., 09-67688

2 – Letter of K. R. Mitchell, OAG Health Care Fraud Unit, 3 Jan 2017

3 – guardian’s email threatening 'the family law equivalent of the death penalty,' days before my mother died in severe pain.

4 – Exhibit A – The Timeline

5 - NEWSBANK - DISABILITY - ABUSE - LE edu

“No bond is more precious than that between parent and child,and none should be more zealously protected by the law.”

- Carson v. Elrod