Dolores Huerta: Si Se Puede!

Loud mouth women (especially of color) are the reason most of us enjoy the freedoms we take for granted today. Dolores Huerta was one of those women, unafraid to speak truth to power, relentless in her pursuit of equity and forever in service to her community. Described as a small dynamo who everyone thought would live forever thanks to her quick wit and boundless energy, her passing at 96 has left our, in much need, world one more hell-raising woman short. Her legacy has and will continue to outlive her through her tireless fight and her eponymous foundation that continues her work for equality and fairness for all. 

Growing up in the US, we got a small blurb about the United Farm Workers union in our High School text books and that blurb was mostly about [disgraceful] César Chavez and his relentless fight for agricultural laborers across the United States. Despite being a major activist fighting alongside Mr. Chavez and co-founding the United Farm Workers union, she was absent from our textbooks in the early 2000’s, much like so many other badass women in history.

Dolores grew up in Stockton California with an entrepreneurial mother and an activist father, crediting her mother for her feminist beginnings. Stockton is where her fight began. Starting her career as a teacher, she witnessed countless kids coming to school hungry and without proper clothing because their families were working long hours in the fields for poverty wages, doing the best they could to give their children an education. Bearing witness to this crisis she quickly decided she could better serve as an organizer than an educator. Although she educated all us none the less. Dolores worked tirelessly at a time when little was expected from women, let alone a Mexican-American woman, in activism and organizing. 

By 1950, a time when women couldn’t get a bank loan or hold credit cards in their own name, Dolores was in Sacramento lobbying for labor rights in a world overwhelmingly controlled by men. A formidable advocate for people who could not afford one, Ms. Huerta had legislative victories such as, allowing driver’s license examinations in Spanish, the extension of aid to families with dependent children to California farm worker families and disability insurance protection for agricultural workers. 

By 1960, she had established the Agricultural Workers Association which led to her joining Cesar Chavez to build the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. Four short years later the association merged with a Filipino-led Agriculture Worker Organizing Committee, creating the United Farm Workers, being one of the principle architects of the union’s power and the only woman in the room. 

Translating her power into action, Dolores was a leading union negotiator, securing gains beyond wages such as retirement, job security and safer working conditions. Protections that changed what workers could demand from employers and what employers could demand in return. 

In 1975 her advocacy helped win the passage of California’s landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act, giving farm workers the right to bargain and organize collectively. She rentlessly fought against pesticide exposure and sought restrictions on hazardous chemicals. 

Dolores Huerta can be called nothing less than powerful but in opposition to that great power she suffered greatly at the hands of the men around her. In 1988, she was attacked in a protest by a police officer in San Francisco. She had also been repeatedly sexually assaulted by Cesar Chavez, only speaking out about it decades later in order to protect what the farm workers movement had fought so hard to accomplish. 

Despite these life changing setbacks she continued to fight for workers rights, women’s rights and racial justice. She showed through her actions that the movements didn’t exist in their own separate bubbles but they were inherently linked. Women’s rights, racial justice and equality, fair wages, reproductive rights, immigrant rights and these groups holding political power was the way to change the whole. 

In case you weren’t feeling bad enough about your own activism (maybe you aren’t), Dolores is survived by her 14 children. A devout catholic, she never ceased to fight for LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights or seek power for the voiceless. 

Well into her 90’s Dolores was still a fixture at major rallies across the nation. If you’ve ever heard the term “Si se peude” or as Barack Obama translated it “Yes, we can”, you have Dolores Huerta to thank for that. In these rallies she was often described as selfless, approachable and it was said that she “loved being arrested”. 

She believed in the power of voting and I would say she’s damn proud of the blue tsunami that hit the US in the latest midterm election. With this article coming out on the heels of Mississippi electing their first Black senator since Reconstruction. 

A true Chicana at heart, Dolores Huerta fought for everyone. Passing away at 96 years old, some believed she would live forever because of her spunky nature, her humilty and her undeniable thirst for justice. She worked almost her entire life for change and what a change she made. She is in large part to thank for the increase in women and especially women of color and LGBTQ+ candidates in office. She alongside many other women of color fought for elections to look like this and we can only imagine how proud she’d be to see representation in government starting to reflect the people of the nation it governs.  She told us we could and so we did and we are better for it. 

If you want to learn more about Dolores Huerta or donate to her foundation and their good work go to https://doloreshuerta.org/ to find everything you need to make a change in your community.