Worker rights pioneer Dolores Huerta wanted others to feel seen

Dolores Huerta had spent decades advocating for labor rights and marginalized people when she went to a central California college and met a group of farmworkers’ descendants — many of them students who choked back tears over the then-94-year-old taking the time to listen to them.

That was the effect Huerta had on young people, said Ana Padilla, executive director of the Community and Labor Center at the University of California, Merced, which had hosted Huerta for the event.

“It was transformative,” Padilla said. “Something that I heard a lot from students in particular was just how accessible she was. That’s just what made Dolores a natural organizer, just an ability to connect immediately with really anyone.”

The activist and icon who helped improve the lives of laborers in farming and other industries died Wednesday from cancer at 96. She was surrounded by family at her home in Bakersfield, California.

While most people would spend their golden years enjoying retirement, Huerta never stopped fighting. Living up to her famous rallying cry, “Sí, se puede!" (“Yes, it can be done”), the civil rights activist marched alongside protesters, spoke on countless panels and lent her voice to progressive causes well into her 90s. And it wasn't just on issues impacting Latinos but also African Americans, the LGBTQ+ community and women. Not just an organizer, Huerta during every major election encouraged voters and endorsed candidates. She also pushed more Latinos to consider running for office.

Even after Huerta revealed in March that she was among the women and girls who say they were sexually abused by César Chavez , the labor leader she was inextricably linked to in history, admiration for her only strengthened.

Huerta once said she simply wanted encourage younger generations, particularly women, to use their voice.

“I hope that they know they have a place,” Huerta told The Associated Press in August while attending the Los Angeles premiere of the documentary, “American Pachuco.”

“Never be afraid to take the leadership,” she said.

From the United Farm Workers union to the Latino Victory Project, many groups said they would not exist if not for Huerta. She co-founded with Chavez the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. It would become the United Farm Workers of America a few years later and then join with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.

The movement fought for better wages and working conditions for agricultural workers such as fair hours and access to bathrooms. Her work has garnered her accolades including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 2012.

Her leadership has made Huerta almost a mythical figure especially in Latino households. Anabelle Sanchez, 20, of Lansing, Michigan, texted her parents when she learned of Huerta's death. Sanchez, who is Mexican American, was a child when her mother taught her about Huerta.

“I've always looked up to her. She was very civically involved throughout her life and just using her voice even when things were scary,” said Sanchez, a Michigan State University political science and public policy major who hopes to emulate Huerta's “strength and her courage.”

“She was a part of everyday life and she would always go to events like pretty much up until her last breath,” Sanchez said. “Always being an advocate, thinking of others who may not have that opportunity. That's just something that will always stay with me about her."

Irasema Coronado, director of Arizona State University's School of Transborder Studies, became friends with Huerta over 20 years ago when they met at a feminist-centered conference on a cruise ship. She remembers Huerta as someone with boundless energy who showed up for people. She recalls Huerta attending a protest in Phoenix and then leaving immediately after to make appearances at demonstrations in New Mexico and Texas.

“She was everywhere," Coronado said. “She never missed an opportunity to be on the right side of something. I never saw her with a script. It was from the heart."

During the farmworkers movement of the 1960s, Huerta put up with a great deal of sexism being the only woman in the room.

“She was expected to be quiet and stay in the background and instead, she was out in front and demanding change," said Kathy Spillar, executive director of the Feminist Majority Foundation, of which Huerta served on the board.

The two women met at a conference for the National Organization for Women in the late 1980s. Spillar approached Huerta with the idea of launching the foundation.

“It was the only way that the issues Dolores was talking about could be addressed,” Spillar said. “She said, ‘Sign me up. I’m with you.’ And that was the beginning of almost 40 years.”

Spillar met Huerta around the time that a police officer attacked and beat Huerta. On Sept. 14, 1988, while protesting outside an appearance by then-Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush in San Francisco, she was beaten with a baton. Huerta was hospitalized with broken ribs, a ruptured spleen and other injuries. She later won an $825,000 settlement from the city.

But, that ordeal also got Huerta thinking about how to help others besides farmworkers, Spillar recalls. Huerta noticed the women caring for her at the hospital as she recovered from the police assault were under-appreciated.

“They all would talk with her about the struggles that they faced,” Spillar said. “And she decided, I think then, that she was going to become very active in the feminist movement.”

Many schools in California bear the name Dolores Huerta. The state also joins Washington, Oregon and New Mexico in marking her legacy on her April 10 birthday.

However, after the revelations about Chavez's abuse, Huerta rejected pledges by some to use her name as a replacement for his on streets, schools and other sites. Instead, those places “should not be renamed after her, but the UFW martyrs, organizers, farmworkers, and families who sacrificed everything to build something bigger than any one person," a spokesperson for Huerta told The San Francisco Standard earlier this year.

Huerta used her influence when it felt needed. That's how the labor center in Merced was officially founded in 2020, Padilla said, after the labor rights pioneer lobbied state lawmakers to fund it.

Talking to students there was among Huerta's favorite things.

“She would want to spend as much time as she could with you and regardless of your standing,” Padilla said. “She treated folks the same.”

___ Associated Press writers Leslie Ambriz in Los Angeles and Fabianna Rincon in New York contributed to this report.