Beware Cesar Chavez history being rewritten by the complicit

We are watching history being rewritten in real time, as those who likely knew about Cesar Chavez’s crimes are casting themselves as the heroes — condemning him, taking down his monuments, canceling his holiday.

We have seen this happen before, as the Hollywood elites who allowed discrimination against women — and horrific acts of abuse — rewrote history by championing the #metoo movement, when it became impossible to suppress.

The truth about #metoo is that many of us had been sounding the alarm for years.

In the winter of 2013, I walked into the offices of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in downtown LA and, a few months later, into those of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California.

I had a pile of evidence, and a question Hollywood had long avoided: Why were women being systematically excluded from directing film and television?

Those meetings set in motion two unprecedented events. 

After a yearlong investigation, the ACLU, one of America’s most powerful civil-rights organizations, called out Hollywood as among the nation’s worst violators of Title VII. 

Five months later, on October 2, 2015, the EEOC launched its historic federal investigation into industry-wide gender discrimination.

For the first time in history, Washington confronted Hollywood over systemic civil-rights violations against women directors.

The results were immediate.

From 2015 to 2019, the percentage of top-grossing films directed by women nearly tripled, reaching 20 percent — the highest in history.

More women were nominated for, and won, best director Oscars between 2015 and 2025 than in all prior eight decades combined.

These outcomes were not accidents. They were the direct consequence of federal scrutiny. 

But while the progress was real, so was the backlash. Hollywood’s power brokers — not conservatives, but insiders — responded not with accountability, but with narrative control.

The New York Times exposé on Harvey Weinstein appeared on October 5, 2017, two years into the EEOC’s investigation. This timing was no coincidence. Weinstein, one of Hillary Clinton’s largest donors, was no longer politically protected after the 2016 election.

The climate of scrutiny created by the ACLU and EEOC investigations gave reporters the cover they needed to publish. 

But when #MeToo erupted just 10 days after the expose, Hollywood obscured the connection to federal action. The industry quickly rebranded itself as reformer rather than defendant.

Instead of embracing accountability, the industry — amplified by the news media — offered diversions.

Three initiatives in particular came to dominate the investigation-era narrative: Time’s Up, the Hollywood Commission, and the Inclusion Rider.

These three initiatives did not address systemic Title VII violations. They protected industry power, profits, and control. Accountability became a performance.

Each of these efforts absorbed energy, quieted scrutiny, and allowed Hollywood to appear progressive while avoiding federal legal consequence.

Here is what the public rarely hears: without the EEOC and ACLU investigations, there would have been no Weinstein exposé and no #MeToo.

The legal groundwork made accountability possible. Women directors’ fight for employment access forced Hollywood’s walls to crack. 

But the media increasingly adopted Hollywood’s preferred frame: Not an industry facing civil rights liability, but one undergoing a moral awakening.

The Weinstein exposé and the nonstop promotion of #MeToo generated an unbroken stream of stories centered on sexual harassment and abuse. Each account was treated as a courageous personal revelation, while the underlying system that enabled them — and the federal investigation targeting it — quietly disappeared from view.

History can turn faster than anyone expects. 

The Cesar Chavez story reminds us that narratives of justice are not simply uncovered. They are curated, revised and, when necessary, decisively reframed by those with the authority to decide what history will remember.

The 10-year anniversary of the EEOC investigation passed last October with virtually no media attention, underscoring how effectively Hollywood has rewritten its own history. Meanwhile, female director hiring has already slipped since 2019.

Hollywood’s own recent civil-rights reckoning — the federal investigation into systemic discrimination against women directors — should not remain so conveniently buried beneath the heroic narratives of #metoo.

Today, finally, long-excluded voices — political, cultural, and ideological — are forcing open systems that thrived on gatekeeping and consensus narratives.

Hollywood no longer enjoys the same control over who speaks, who is heard, or which stories dominate.

That creates an opening — not just for women, but for truth. 

If the federal government could hold Hollywood accountable once, it can and must do so again. 

The gains made for women directors after 2015 were not gifts from Hollywood. They were victories wrested from it through pressure, persistence, and the credible threat of federal law.

As The New York Times reported earlier this month, “only 8 percent of films [last year] were made by women, and that’s a seven-year low. What do you think that says?”

What indeed?

Justice cannot stop with a few removed statues.

Real change demands accountability — and sustained pressure.

Maria Giese is an American film director, screenwriter, and longtime advocate for equity for women directors in Hollywood.

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