During a hot Sunday afternoon in a public park in Lamont, California, the sounds of festive mariachi music plays while dark-eyed children dance and dart in all directions, kicking up dust.

Over 300 Latino families settle into lawn chairs, eat traditional homemade food and gather to freely speak of their week. In the center of it all, Dolores Huerta, an iconic champion and historic figure of the labor rights movement, president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, and co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), gracefully blends in.

Her natural kindness, approachability and disarming style allows her to easily move through the crowd, where she greets everyone, calling many by their first name. She makes time for all who approach her. As she finally sits down on the park bench under the shade of a tree, you begin to take notice of why she is so uniquely different and seemingly unaware of her fame.

A wide-brimmed straw hat over her raven-black hair shades a gracious face that has seen decades of sun-scorched field strikes, thousand-mile marches, protests, experienced 22 civil disobedience arrests, and in one instance, a 1989 beating at the hands of the San Francisco police – all in the name of shifting the tides of social injustices for the working poor, women and children.

Dolores Huerta has been described as a gentle giant, a masterful public speaker, an unbridled force with a bullhorn, and a strong, directed woman of faith. The core, however, of Dolores Huerta is her activism to empower those with less, and to educate and train others on how one person can effect enormous change, whether it is in his or her local neighborhood, workplace or on the national stage. Her contributions to the labor and women’s movements are legend. This Stockton native is one of the nation’s most powerful and respected Latina/Chicana leaders. She has been honored with countless community service, labor, Hispanic and women's awards.

The long lists of merits are impressive. She was the first Latino inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and named one of the “100 most influential Latinos” by People magazine and cited as one of the “100 most important women of the 20th century” by Ladies’ Home Journal.

She was awarded the United States Eleanor D. Roosevelt Human Rights Award by President Clinton. She has marched with feminist Gloria Steinem, Senator Robert Kennedy and many other notable activists and politicians, and attended the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

In Stockton, Colorado and Texas she has 7 schools dedicated in her name and has been recognized from coast to coast, with eleven honorary doctorate degrees from institutions such as Princeton and UCLA.

But for today, the park in Lamont is her stage as the Sunday festival celebrates the fifth-year anniversary of her current passion, serving as president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, where at the age of 79 she continues her life’s work. Under the directorship of the youngest of her seven daughters, Camilla Chavez, the foundation develops grassroots community leaders, promotes programs that support young girls through mentorship training, pushes important public policy and advocates for the rights of the working poor.

It is evident that after 50 years of organizing she is as vocal, as engaged and committed as ever. She is a woman that does not take credit for her achievements, nor relishes her long list of personal awards – her humble sense of home is with the people in the park.


Stockton Roots
Huerta’s foundational drive to improve the plight of the migrant farm workers was greatly influenced by the multicultural neighborhoods of downtown Stockton where she grew up. Her smile widens when reminiscing about her childhood days living on El Dorado Street, where her mother, Alicia Chavez, an activist in her own right, owned the Richards Hotel, which was also the family home.

She attended church at St. Mary’s and St. Gertrude’s, and was a proud member of the first ethnically diverse Girl Scout troop in the area. “We had Filipinos, Chinese, Chicanos and Blacks all in one troop,” she says. Today, the Modesto chapter of the Girl Scouts program recognizes Dolores with a badge of her own, while there is a movement by the Girl Scouts to expand the Huerta badge nationally.

Those early years in Stockton – where she attended Lafayette Elementary School and Stockton High School, and later obtained her teaching credential from a University of the Pacific satellite program – were pivotal to her ideology and her understanding of the race challenges faced by minorities and women. And, while Dolores describes Stockton at that time as a “multicultural treasure,” she also remembers the harassment and discrimination she experienced at the hands of the police and school teachers during the ’40s – it opened her eyes up to the realities of racial disparity.

The Start of the Farm Workers Movement
After high school, Dolores obtained her teaching credential and taught first grade, while also becoming a young mother – the first of her 11 children. As a school teacher she never forgot the children of farm workers who would attend school without proper clothing, who were cold or hungry, as they had no food. With the influence and social rights temperament of her mother, and her own evolving convictions to help others, she quickly recognized that she had the capacity to do more.

Her experiences as a school teacher – coupled with her realization that discrimination against farm workers was rampant – moved her to a new level of advocacy and organizing. As a result, Dolores Huerta started the local chapter of a national organization called Community Service Organization (CSO) in Stockton, where she led movements to battle segregation and police brutality, led Hispanic voter registration drives, pushed for improved public services, and led efforts to enact new legislation to end the “captive labor” Bracero program. One of her daughters, Lori de León, recalls the many times she heard the tip-tap of her mother’s high heels on the stairs of the family home as she would leave the house in the pre-dawn hours, walk to the Greyhound bus station – then one block away from her home on Sutter Street – and travel to Sacramento to lobby for the farm workers.

While Dolores was organizing in Stockton, she was also hearing of her counterpart who was organizing the CSO chapter in Oxnard. His name was Cesar Chavez. The connection that eventually brought Dolores and Cesar together was organizer Fred Ross, who served as the national lead organizing director for the CSOs at that time. A non-Hispanic New Yorker who led many of the early marches in support of migrant farm workers, Fred would often refer to Dolores’ talent and skill at negotiating and public speaking while praising Cesar’s genius in mobilizing farm workers – he was an amazing relationship builder. Bothe Dolores and Cesar were uniquely aware of each other’s successes in organizing, but had never met.

Their first encounter was during a meeting in Oxnard. “My mother was very beautiful and very vocal,” states her daughter, Lori, “while Cesar was very shy.” The first time they met, Dolores recalls, “He avoided me. He was quiet and humble and hard to talk to – he would run away. I guess he did not want a woman to bother him.” As the history books have penned, their magical partnership and co-leadership efforts impacted millions of migrant farm workers from that time forward. It was the first chapter of a long and life-changing story that would catapult both of them into the limelight as two of the nation’s most powerful and respected labor leaders of the century.

Dolores and Cesar were galvanized together in large part due to the increasing violence and discrimination against migrant farm workers and the oppressive Bracero program, her daughter Lori remembers. The blatant injustices towards Latinos at that time further aligned both Cesar and Dolores. And while the National Labor Relations Act provided protection and workers’ rights to all others, it “excluded the people who put the food on the table of all Americans – the farm workers.” It was during this time that Dolores and Cesar separated from the CSO organization and in 1962 began the National Farm Workers Association (later United Farm Workers Union).

The start-up of this new human rights partnership took Dolores and her children away from Stockton. She moved to Delano, California to live in the two-bedroom home of Cesar and his wife, Helen Chavez. The families combined included 13 children. Serving as both living quarters and the new organizing headquarters for their new national association, the home in Delano was the humble start of an exceptional and groundbreaking time which would eventually alter the course of history for over 1.4 million farm workers.

Their own personal sacrifices to carry the burden associated with the labor movement were significant. As Dolores recalls, her 11 children were often raised by family members and friends. Daughter Lori deLeon recalls, “We were raised on the picket lines, but it was really exciting being a child of the strikes and boycotts, even if we had to fend for ourselves at times.” Dolores would frequently be away for weeks during the boycotts and strikes, while both families lived a life of poverty, making at times only $5 per week per family, as did all the striking farm workers families.

Forfeiting a life of personal comfort, both Dolores and Cesar became rich in name as the principal architects for the migrant farm workers movement. Between Dolores’ political suaveness and Cesar’s quiet charisma, they were instrumental in passing historic legislation that changed the landscape and laws of how farm workers and their families were treated.

Their collective actions included the famous grape boycotts and field “Huelga” strikes during the ’60s and ’70s that drew national attention to UFW. One of their staunchest supporters was Senator Robert F. Kennedy, whose Senate subcommittee investigations into the working conditions of Central Valley farm workers brought Dolores and Cesar to the attention of the world stage, and set in motion greater understanding and exposure of the inhumane conditions faced by migrant workers and their families.

Dolores worked continuously to establish union contracts with growers so that work standards for farm workers would be markedly improved. Standards such as drinking water and sanitary facilities in the fields, to medical coverage, wage increases, rest periods or protection from pesticides were basic needs that she fought for. The long-standing strategic boycotts paid off. Dolores Huerta became the first person to ever negotiate a union contract between farm workers and growers; never before in the history of organized labor had such a feat been achieved.


Si Se Puede
Si Se Puede (It Can Be Done) has become the unmistakable battle cry for Latinos. When sharing the story of its origins, Dolores humbly laughs as if the discovery of the term was a simple mistake. Dolores first coined the phrase that is now a recognized slogan and anthem for UFW and was used as a major sound bite for the Obama campaign. While the slogan is trademarked, she was thrilled that the President used “Si Se Puede” as part of his campaign speeches, stating “it served him well.”

The origin of Si Se Puede has its roots in Arizona. Dolores and Cesar were both leading a recall campaign against then-governor Jack Williams whose opposition to support migrant workers rights in his home state was being compounded by Cesar Chavez’s highly publicized water-only fasts. With Cesar on his fifth day of fasting and Dolores’s steadfast political push to oust the governor, several Latino supporters became frustrated and yelled, “No se puede, it can’t be done).” Dolores’ immediate and repeated response was “Si se puede, it can be done!”

The back-and-forth slinging of words between workers and Dolores became the power brand for the UFW. From that time forward, the term grew in popularity and reach. Today Si Se Puede is synonymous with the farm workers movement, and has served as an institutional catchphrase for many groups and organizations. While those three short but memorable words have been the epitome of the farm worker movement, they have equally spilled over into her efforts to organize rights for another minority – women.


The Women’s Movement
When speaking of the women’s movement Dolores assumes a markedly different tone. “This world will not get much better until we have more women leaders,” she seriously states. “We do not need assignments to traditional tasks.”

Instead, she steadfastly encourages all women to celebrate strong women – women who have changed the world. Dolores herself is perhaps the most important Chicana activist of our time.

She proudly references the recent appointment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the first Latina to serve as a member of the Supreme Court as a watershed moment for not just Latinos but for all women.
Dolores’ work on behalf of the women’s movement includes serving as a board member of the Feminist Majority and working alongside other famous feminists like Gloria Steinem. As Dolores recalls, the women’s rights movement began during a time when the civil rights protests and the Vietnam War were swelling.

It was a sea of social confusion, and reform was just starting to take shape. For most women of that time, staying in traditional places was the norm. It was not until women began to gather, listen to each other’s stories and learn from shared experiences that change began to occur.

A targeted hope for Dolores is that women can change their power and become much more effective leaders if they are willing to depersonalize issues, avoid holding grudges, and begin to see their own value to a core cause.

She adds, “Women need to recognize their own power – just like men do.” Dissecting further, she emphasizes that the greatness of women is that they tend to be more inclusive as they lead. “They don’t fear sharing information; they just want to get the job done – they want to make things happen.”

Her own daughters are examples of Dolores’s influence and feminist penchant. Now grown, they are healthcare professionals, college graduates, executive directors of local nonprofits, advocates for public policy and social reform, while her sons are equally accomplished. Her children are leading by her example.

The future for Dolores Huerta is clear – at an age where many people would be writing their memoirs or slowing down, Dolores Huerta is not letting up as she heads toward her 80th birthday in April. She is quick and smart, and paints a vivid vision for the future of her foundation and her many projects.

Her workweek includes non-stop travel to speak at colleges, universities, national and international conferences, or to meet with politicians in Washington, DC to lobby for her causes. She is working on behalf of women in Afghanistan and other impoverished nations, while advancing the work of her own local foundation in Bakersfield, where her Vecinos Unidos program and many other grassroots initiatives are empowering whole neighborhoods to create safe environments for children, rid blocks of blight and crime, and have given individuals the tools to find the power and hope to transform themselves and the quality of life for others. Most importantly, she is grooming the next generation of leaders – both men and women.

While born into poverty and limited means, Dolores Huerta has redefined our thinking of power and possibilities. She knows that power comes from within, from a heart that knows no limits, and from a mind that will never bend from the truth. But for now, her world stage is a public park in Lamont, California, where she continues to plants the seeds of hope in her own field of dreams.