SAN DIEGO (CNS) - City, county and local offices will be closed Monday for César Chávez Day along with courts, public health clinics, family resource centers, libraries and animal shelters.
County parks, campgrounds, and neighborhood day-use parks will largely remain open, though county officials said certain facilities will be closed Monday.
Facilities set to be closed are:
-- Fallbrook Community Center;
-- Lakeside Community Center;
-- Spring Valley Community Center;
-- Spring Valley Gymnasium;
-- 4S Ranch Recreation Office only (all parks will be open);
-- community teen centers; and
-- Valley Center Community Hall and Adams Park Pool.
Law enforcement, emergency animal control response and other essential services will continue through the holiday, and normal business hours will resume at all county offices on Tuesday.
There will be no enforcement Monday in San Diego for parking meters, street-parking time restrictions, yellow zones and posted street sweeping routes. However, all other parking violations will be enforced.
Curbside trash, recyclables, and organic waste will be collected as scheduled on Monday for customers served by the city's Environmental Services Department.
The Miramar Landfill, Greenery, Recycling Center and Mattress Collection Site will be open on Monday. Container sales at 8353 Miramar Place will be closed.
San Diego public golf courses will be open until dusk. Holiday rates will apply.
There will be mail delivery because Cesar Chavez Day is a federal commemorative holiday, first proclaimed by then-President Barack Obama in 2014, and not a federal holiday.
Then-Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation in 2000 making the March 31 anniversary of Chávez's birth in 1927 a state holiday. When March 31 falls on a Sunday, as it did this year, the holiday is observed on the following Monday.
Chávez is credited with improving work and quality of life conditions for immigrant farm workers in Central California. Alongside Dolores Hureta he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers Union.
Chavez first gained prominence through a strike against table grape growers in the Kern County city of Delano, about 30 miles north of Bakersfield.
The strike was called by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, a predominantly Filipino and AFL-CIO-sponsored labor organization, on Sept. 8, 1965. The predominantly Mexican National Farmworkers Association joined the strike eight days later. The two groups merged in August 1966 to create the United Farm Workers.
The strike and boycott ended in 1970 after 26 table grape growers signed contracts with the UFW.
President Joe Biden issued a proclamation Friday proclaiming Sunday as César Chávez Day and calling "upon all Americans to observe this day as a day of service and learning with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor César E. Chávez's enduring legacy."
"On this day, we recognize that César Chávez and his fellow farm workers made progress that can never be taken back," Biden said in the proclamation. "They fought for a sacred cause that continues to beat in the hearts of the American people: Every worker -- no matter who they are, where they are from, or what they do -- deserves dignity and respect."
On his first day in office, Biden placed a bronze statue of Chávez, supplied by his children, in the Oval Office.
Copyright 2024, City News Service, Inc.
