LOS ANGELES -- Student activists at UCLA and other schools around the state plan to cut classes Monday -- Cesar Chavez day -- to protest the failure of schools to close down on the state holiday marking the birthday of the co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America.

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UFW: About Cesar Chavez

The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary -- which calls itself BAMN -- will lead a rally and march planned by the student activists. Other rallies will be elsewhere in Los Angeles, Oakland and Sacramento, organizers said.

"On Chavez Holiday, we will be marching for dignity, equal treatment and respect," said Los Angeles BAMN organizer Hoku Jeffrey.

He called for schools to hold educational assemblies about Chavez and to close on his birthday.

Los Angeles Unified School District will remain open Monday, although some colleges and universities do close for the holiday.

Former Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation in 2000 to create the state holiday, and some schools use the day to teach students about the union organizer, who would have been 81 years old. He died in 1993.

Chavez was an American farm worker of Mexican descent who became a labor leader and civil rights activist and who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers.

He is credited with improving work and quality-of-life conditions for immigrant farm workers, famously organizing a grape boycott in the 1960s to seek higher wages for them.