Emily Dowdle on Dolores Huerta

        Emily Dowdle is a senior American Studies and American literature double major. She has been     the Student Coordinator of the Lieben Center for since the Fall of 2013    

There’s a poster in my bedroom that hands above one of my bookcases, on it is an illustration of Dolores Huerta and underneath this illustration a banner declares “¡Si Se Puede!” For those of you who didn’t take introductory Spanish in high school nor saw the seminal Disney Channel Original Movie,Gotta Kick it Up!, “Si Se Puede”  means “Yes, it is possible” or “Yes, we can.”

            If you’re not familiar with Dolores Huerta, perhaps this doesn’t mean anything to you – so I’ll provide some background. Dolores Huerta was – and continues to be – a labor leader and a civil rights activist. Born in 1930 and raised in the California farm worker community of Stockton, California, Huerta’s mother owned a hotel where she welcomed low-wage workers with affordable (or free rooms)  - her mother’s independence and compassion was one of the primary reasons Huerta was inspired to become and active feminist. After earning her teaching degree, Huerta began teaching at an elementary school where she would see her students in class with empty stomachs and bare feet. Unable to bear seeing her students in such a condition, Dolores Huerta began what would be a lifelong crusade for economic and social justice.  Huerta served in leadership with the Stockton Community Service Organization (CSO) during this founded the Agricultural Workers Association and continually pressed for political agency for the marginalized. It was through the CSO that she would meet César Chávez whom she would launch the National Farm Workers Association with in 1962.

            Through her work in the NFWA and later the UFW she worked empower marginalized farm workers and the Latino and Chicano communities and strive to achieve economic justice for all. Using her legislative, negotiating, and lobbying skills Huerta was hugely influential in the political atmosphere of the organization and was instrumental in the passing of the Agricultural Relations Act of 1975. Even further, Dolores Huerta wasn’t just an inspiration and empowerment symbol to farm workers but to women everywhere.  Lori Flores writes that Huerta:

was arrested four times and through her demonstrations of protest as a farmworker, wife,       and mother, she brought women who might have self-identified as wives, mothers or daughters more than activists into the farmworker movement, politicizing them in a more subtle fashion. Women became the lifeblood of the union as it built its profile (source).

Dolores Huerta recognized that in order for social justice work to be truly justice work, it had to be inclusive – it was not just men marching, protesting, and boycotting but women as well.

            I bring this all up because while it’s rare to even hear about César Chávez in our classes – it’s even rarer to hear about Dolores Huerta. It is César Chávez, who gets a feature film while Dolores Huerta is relegated to a supporting role. Women are principal players in every social justice movement but seem to be the most easily forgotten. And yet, women keep fighting. Every day I wake up and look at this poster above my bookcase and see Dolores Huerta’s face. Every day I am reminded of her work and her struggle as Chicana, a woman, and an activist. I firmly believe that Dolores Huerta should be included in every history book and every classroom, but I also know that when working for social justice it isn’t for the fame or the future biopics to be made, but because it is what’s right.  And most every morning, I’ll say it to myself: Si Se Puede. Yes, it is possible.