I'm a huge fan of Abbott Elementary and this week's episode especially cracked me up when the teachers were getting themselves worked up about taking action on the charter school takeover and Jacob starts to shout "Si, se puede" before everyone shuts him down. I'm sure not too many people got the reference so since it's Women's History Month and International Women's Day just passed I decided this week's post should focus on Mexican-American civil rights activist and labor leader, Dolores Huerta.
Dolores Huerta was born in Dawson, New Mexico on April 10, 1930, to a coal miner father and entrepreneur mother. She grew up listening to her father talk about union organization when he worked as a migrant laborer harvesting beets in Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska. Dolores and her brothers moved to the farming community of Stockton, California where her mother owned a 70 room hotel and restaurant after her parents divorced. Here Dolores encountered many farmworkers and low income families who were housed sometimes for free. She was inspired by her mother to advocate for farmworkers as an adult later on.
She considered the concept of civil rights early in life having experienced prejudice herself when a teacher failed her for an assignment, accusing her of stealing a white student's work believing it to be too good to be her own. She graduated from what is now San Joaquin Delta Community College with a provisional teaching diploma but after seeing so many poor children coming to school without food or shoes she decided to quit teaching to crusade against economic injustice.
During her years as an activist, Huerta co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization that fought to improve the lives of Latino/Chicano farm workers. She co-founded the Agricultural Workers Association, setting up voter registration drives and pushing local government agencies to improve conditions in the barrios. She also co-founded what is now known as the United Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee alongside Cesar Chavez, becoming the only woman to sit on the board until 2018. Huerta negotiated a contract with Schenley Wine Company, allowing farm workers to effectively bargain with an agricultural corporation for the first time.
Citing the horrid conditions farm workers lived in such as poverty, lack of human rights and sanitary conditions, lack of education for their children, and sexual assault of women by landowners, the entity changed its dynamic to that of an agricultural workers' organization. Huerta turned her attention to the Delano grape strike in 1965, leading boycotts for consumer rights, which resulted in the grape industry of the entire state of California signing a collective bargaining agreement for three years with the United Farm Workers in 1970.
Huerta lobbied for a bill in 1960 that allowed native Spanish speakers to take the California driver's exam in Spanish, the 1962 repeal of the Bracero Program, legislation in 1963 to extend the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children to include farmworkers, and the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act.
As an outspoken Woman of Color, Huerta faced more than her share of racism, misogyny, threats, violence, and trouble with the law. She was on stage with Robert F. Kennedy when he was shot to death after delivering his victory speech after winning the California Democratic presidential primary in 1968. She was severely beaten by a cop in San Francisco while taking part in a peaceful protest against George H. W. Bush's policies in 1988. The beating, which resulted in multiple broken ribs and emergency surgery to remove her spleen, was caught on tape and broadcast on local news channels. Huerta successfully sued the city and the SFPD, forcing San Francisco to change its policies on officer discipline and crowd control, and used the proceeds to benefit farm workers.
Huerta has since shifted her focus to women's rights, running a campaign encouraging Latinas to run for political office. As a result the number of women holding office at local, state, and federal levels rose significantly. She's been arrested 22 times for her part in civil disobedience protests and strikes and continues to battle for progressive causes including People for the American Way, the Consumer Federation of California, and the Feminist Majority Foundation.
Dolores' efforts have not gone unnoticed, of course. She currently holds 15 honorary doctorates and was bestowed many high honors including:
1998 - Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights
2002 - Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship
2007 - Community of Christ International Peace Award
2008 - Planned Parenthood's "Maggie" Award
2008 - Jane Addams Distinguished Leadership Award
2012 - The Presidential Medal of Freedom
2015 - The Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico's highest decoration given to a foreign national
Schools in California, Oklahoma, Texas, and Colorado are named after Dolores Huerta as is Asteroid 6849 Doloreshuerta, which was discovered in 1979, and April 10th is officially designated Dolores Huerta Day in California.
Dolores Huerta originated the slogan "si, se puede" or "yes, it is possible" in 1972. The slogan has also been roughly translated as "yes, you can," "yes, it can be done," and "yes, we can" as popularized by President Barack Obama during his campaign as Illinois senator in 2004 and again while running for president in 2008.
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