Statement of the Hawaii Filipino Lawyers Association
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Pablo Manlapit (Source Wikipedia)
The Hawaii Filipino Lawyers Association (HFLA) acknowledges the survivors who have come forward with allegations of sexual abuse and assault against the late Cesar Chavez. We commend their courage and stand in support of all those who devoted their lives to the farmworker movement and experienced harm within it. As legal professionals, we recognize that accountability does not end with death.
One of the most painful lessons of this moment is this: when movements are embodied in a single leader, survivors are silenced by the fear that speaking truth will destroy the cause they love. Dolores Huerta stayed silent for sixty years not because her experience was insignificant, but because she correctly believed that exposing Chavez would discredit the entire farmworker movement. That is what the individualization of movements costs. It costs survivors their voice. HFLA is committed to a vision of justice that never places the protection of one person’s legacy above the dignity of those they harmed.
The farmworker movement was not built by one man. Among those most unjustly overlooked is Pablo Manlapit, Hawaii’s first Filipino lawyer and our own labor champion. Decades before Delano, Manlapit led the 1920 Oahu Sugar Strike that brought 8,300 plantation workers off the fields demanding equal pay and an eight-hour workday. In 1924 he organized again, a movement that culminated in the Hanapepe Massacre on Kauai where sixteen strikers were killed, hundreds arrested, Manlapit imprisoned and ultimately deported. The Filipino workers who survived and fled blacklisting in Hawaii brought their organizing experience to the mainland directly seeding the movement that Larry Itliong built into the United Farm Workers. Hawaii’s labor history and California’s labor history are one story.
Itliong organized Filipino farmworkers for thirty-five years before persuading a hesitant Cesar Chavez to join the 1965 Delano grape strike, forging the coalition that became the UFW. Without Itliong, there is no movement. California designated October 25 as Larry Itliong Day in 2015 and inducted him into the California Hall of Fame in 2021.
In calling for this recognition, we are not replacing one icon with others. We are restoring what was taken from a movement that always belonged to many. HFLA calls on the State of Hawaii to establish a Pablo Manlapit Day through a House bill by honoring Hawaii’s first Filipino lawyer and the workers whose sacrifice built this state. We honor Larry Itliong’s foundational role in the mainland farmworker movement as inseparable from our own history. We call on schools and institutions across Hawaii to teach both men’s contributions alongside the broader history of Filipino American labor and civil rights. And we call on the legal community to ensure that the many women and men who built these movements receive the recognition they are due, not as footnotes to one man’s story, but as the movement itself.
To the survivors: we see you, we believe you, and we stand with you.
To Pablo Manlapit, Larry Itliong, and the Manongs: Isang Bagsak, we are all connected in our fight for justice, and we rise and fall together. Your stories are finally being told.
Hawaii Filipino Lawyers Association Honolulu, Hawaii
March 2026
The Hawaii Filipino Lawyers Association (HFLA) was founded over 40 years ago to support lawyers of Filipino heritage in their efforts to make a difference in Hawaii’s legal community. HFLA is committed to professional development, legal advocacy, and serving the Filipino community across Hawaii.
