'People have to rev up their bravery': Dolores Huerta shares lessons from a lifetime of organizing

Yahoo

13-04-2025

Apr. 13—Dolores Huerta is a legendary labor organizer and feminist activist. In 1962, she and César Chávez cofounded the first union for farmworkers in the United States, the National Farm Workers Association, which later became United Farm Workers. Over the years, she has collaborated with women's rights organizations, including the Feminist Majority Foundation, and served as an honorary co-chair of the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C. Since 2002, she has served as president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which promotes participatory democracy, social justice and civic engagement.
On April 4, the eve of New Mexico's 32nd Annual Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta Celebration, Huerta sat down with the Albuquerque Journal at the National Hispanic Cultural Center to discuss the current political situation in the U.S. and lessons learned from a lifetime of organizing.
You are a legend. There were no farmworkers unions before you created one with César Chávez. People thought you couldn't do it, but you did. What would you say to people today who are feeling discouraged and powerless?
What I like to say to people, since I'm an elder, about to turn 95 years old (on April 10), is that I was born during the Depression, and that was a very dark time in the United States of America. The economy had collapsed. People were out of work. But out of that came the New Deal, right? We got workers' rights, the National Labor Relations Act, Social Security — things we didn't have before.
Then we had another dark period of the '60s. We had the Vietnam War. The country was divided. Students were being killed by our own National Guard. And what came out of that? We had the Civil Rights movement, the Chicano movement, the environmental movement, the LGBTQ movement, a big surge in the women's movement.
Now we're going through another dark period. So, we have to start planning for the future. What kind of future do we want? Do we, as a country, want to continue with corporate governance? Because it's not working. Now that we have seen what corporate governance looks like, we know it's something our country does not want. I think people are already saying that with the election that they had in Wisconsin recently, that we're not going to have that. So it's going to take a lot of organizing and a lot of work to make sure that we change our economic system in our country.
I feel like the last politician on the national stage who was really talking about that was Bernie Sanders. But at the time, you didn't endorse him. You endorsed Hillary Clinton.
The reason I endorsed Hillary Clinton is — well, a couple of things. Number one, I knew Hillary. Number two, she had always been out there working for immigrants' rights. Bernie had not been working for immigrants rights, so I felt she was closer to our community than Bernie was at that point in time. It wasn't that I disagreed with his economic policies at all. And I do believe Hillary would have actually carried out some of the things that Bernie wanted to see.
In practical terms today, what can people do? How should people be organizing?
What people have today in terms of organizing tools — they have the internet, they have social platforms. We didn't have that back then. When we were organizing in the '60s, it was always person to person. You know, snail mail, telephones. Now you have all of these great tools at your disposal that you can use really, really rapidly to organize.
Even as these tools are useful for activists, they're also useful for people who are trying to oppose activists. I mean, you had an FBI file, which people can read now ...
Well, it's all redacted.
But, I mean, we know they were monitoring you. And I think that's not gone away. The government is still suspicious of people who are trying to make life better for other people. How do you deal with that? I mean, how have you dealt with that in your personal life? Were you ever scared?
Well, these are things that are going to happen. You just have to kind of ignore them, and keep your eye on the prize, keep working for what we're working for.
And the other missing piece, I believe — what's missing in our society — there's just a huge lack of education. We have a country that is steeped in ignorance, where people don't know civics, and people don't understand science. And when I talk about science, I'm talking about a women's right to abortion, about transgender or LGBTQ people in our society, and about the science of global warming.
We are now in danger of destroying humanity with global warming. And I don't know why people don't get that. Because every part of our country has either been beset with horrible heat waves, wildfires, tornadoes or floods — all of these terrible weather conditions. I don't understand why people can't see that or feel that, when they're actually being affected.
It's harder to deny it when you can see and feel the physical effects impacting your daily life.
I don't know how it happened that somehow in our society it's seen as not good to be educated. That it's OK to be ignorant.
Certain people benefit when people are ignorant, right?
That's true. But you would think that the majority of people would realize, hey, there's something wrong here. But people are going to have to reckon with it when it starts affecting their daily lives.
Then again, when will they understand that the president has no control over the price of oil or gas, or the price of food, which people were upset about in the last election.
Well, he has some control, if he's going to put tariffs on all these countries.
Well, that's a whole new ball game that's coming.
He called it "Liberation Day." That's kind of ironic, right?
Yes. But we should also mention the rights of workers that have been stripped away from getting rid of the National Labor Relations Act. As it is, workers' rights have been diminished, and the laws have been weakened for workers' rights. So you have big companies like Amazon and Starbucks where workers had voted for a union, and yet they refuse to bargain with the workers. Labor laws need to be strengthened, because the majority of people in the United States are workers.
I'm originally from Florida, and I know there was a big campaign with the Immokalee Workers for a while, who were picking tomatoes. They said if they raised the price of tomatoes by just one cent, then they could actually live. It took time, but they eventually had some success.
With the United Farm Workers, we had contracts in Florida. As you know, Florida doesn't really have laws to protect the workers. Our contracts were with Coca-Cola (covering citrus workers with Coca-Cola's subsidiary, Minute Maid). But what they did is they moved the orange groves from Florida to Belize, I believe, in order to get away from the contracts.
But the workers there that were under contract have pension plans. Many of them, even though they don't have their jobs anymore, they were able to collect their pensions
It's good to remember those successes. I think if someone's a worker who doesn't have money, doesn't have privilege or if they don't have the right immigration status, they might be afraid to organize. How have you been able to convince people to risk what little they have, knowing that it could all be taken away?
When we started organizing the union, we had learned some organizing tactics from a man named Fred Ross, who had done community organizing in Los Angeles and other parts of the state of California. Fred taught us how to do basic organizing, and that is family by family, to convince the workers that unless they stood up for themselves, that nothing would ever change, and that they could not expect anyone to come in from the outside to solve their issues. They are the ones that had to do it. It took us three years of organizing, from 1962 to 1965, to convince the workers that they could fight.
It was difficult.
Yeah, it was. It was a very slow method of organizing, but it was very effective. So, when the strike happened, the delegates were ready. The workers were ready. They were ready to make those sacrifices. We would say to say to them, if you don't make this sacrifice now, nothing will ever change. And I think that's what we have to say to people here in the United States of America now. We may have to make some sacrifices for the next couple of years, until we get through this dark period, but then at the end of the day, it's going to come out better.
You're playing a long game. It's a slow process, building trust, building community.
This type of organizing is very tedious, of course. And, unfortunately, there's only, I think, a couple of states in the United States that have collective bargaining rights for farmworkers.
You knew Bobby (Robert) Kennedy, and you were there when he was assassinated. How do you think America would be different today if he had become president?
There would never have been another war. I think there would not have been a war in Iraq, and definitely no war in Afghanistan, had Bobby Kennedy lived.
It really set things back.
Yes.
His son is so different from him, right?
Very, very different. (Laughs.) But who knows what trauma he went through, with having his father killed, you know? We have to wonder why he is who he is.
But he does focus on some good issues — even in the area of medicine, about more natural, holistic types of medicine. Although I think you have to have a combination. Because you can use Indigenous types of medicine in some respects. But, as someone once said to me, you can't use Indigenous medicine to cure the ills that the colonizers brought to the Indigenous population. In order to cure things like cancer, you've got to have Western medicine.
So many farmworkers from the fields in California have cancer. So many people who are now in their 50s and 60s are coming down with cancer, because of the continuous use of pesticides out there.
You campaigned against pesticides. Weren't you responsible for getting DDT banned?
Yeah, the United Farm Workers, we were responsible for that.
Which is huge.
But we had a dozen others. We called them the "Dirty Dozen" pesticides that were bad. Unfortunately, they're still being used. And with GMOs, they even put pesticides into the seeds of the plants. So, no wonder cancer is so prolific in our society.
Sometimes when people think about these issues, it can be overwhelming. People can be overcome with anger or fear. But when I speak with great activists like you, it seems like you have such discipline. How do you deal with your own emotions? Are emotions like anger and fear useful?
I think they are, because you can take the energy of anger, and you can turn that energy into the positive energy of actually going out there and doing something about it. You know, as Michelle Obama says, "Do something."
And it comes back down to the basics, again, of people voting, of electing good people, good representation. If we can get good people into office in our Congress and our state legislatures, then we can change some of these things, like even banning some of these pesticides. We can do that through legislation. We've got to, number one, be cognizant of what's going on, then know that these are the solutions we need. These are the laws we need to pass to change things.
It comes down to basic democracy. You might say it comes down to voting. People have to understand that not only do we have the right to choose our representation, but we have a responsibility to get involved. Not only ourselves personally, but making sure that everybody — our families, friends and neighbors — understands that we cannot have a democracy unless we participate. If you don't participate, it all goes away.
But it's not just about voting. I mean, your organizing work goes beyond voting.
It's voting and advocacy. I think that the farmworker movement is a good example of that, because even though the farmworkers were on strike for five years, we didn't win. We did not win until we had a national boycott. When we had a national boycott, and you had 17 million Americans that didn't buy grapes, then we won.
Again, that shows you the power of the people — the power of the people that are united in taking collective action — and this is the way that we win.
But we have to convince people. Because I think the biggest thing is, we have apathy. As Helen Keller said, "The biggest problem that we have with people is apathy." People don't realize that they have that power.
How do you convince people that they do have power?
We would just talk to them and try to get them involved. Once people participate, then they learn, and it becomes part of them. This is what we did with farmworkers, and what we still do in my foundation today. We go into communities, we have house meetings, we get them all together once we have the meetings, and then they decide what they want to improve within their community. And once they get involved, they go, "I can do this! I don't have to have a high school education. I can still go to a school board meeting. I can go to a city council meeting. I can make sure I get somebody good elected to that position."
You know, in our foundation, one example is that, in Kern County, in Bakersfield, California, we have the largest high school district in the state of California. Well, our current high school district in Bakersfield had suspended 2,100 kids in one year, primarily kids of color. We filed a lawsuit, and from 2,100 expulsions, we got it down to 21. People got involved, and we got testimonies from people on what was happening to their kids.
I can give dozens of examples of that. People got street lights, sidewalks, gutters, swimming pools, neighborhood parks — all by just coming together.
Well, I'm amazed that it seems like you never stop. Your whole life, you've been fighting the good fight, and you're still doing it.
Well, now more than ever! And more than ever, we have to have people understand their power. We just saw that in Wisconsin, where people rejected (Elon) Musk. There's $21 million that (Musk and his affiliated groups) put in there (to flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court). But the people said, "No, you're not buying this. We're not for sale." So, people are waking up.
I don't think anyone anticipated that it was going to be this severe when (Donald) Trump took office, how many people he was going to be able to hurt. It was shock and awe. He shocked the nation. And people are kind of stunned. But people are coming out of it, and once they realize that they have the power to change it, as with the example of Wisconsin, I think that's gonna save us.
What do you think are the main issues we should be focusing on now?
Right this minute, right now, I think it's elections — getting ready for the elections in 2026 to make sure we have a stronger Congress, with more people in the Congress to counteract the actions that Trump and the Republican Party are doing right now. And then, starting to think of the future.
One thing we're seeing is that we do not want corporate governance. Something's wrong when we — the richest country in the world, the United States of America — when we do not have universal health care. There's no reason why we shouldn't have universal health care. And we don't have universal college education, which we should have. We should have pre-K daycare, as they have in the Scandinavian countries. We are the richest country in the world, and there's no reason why we can't have those benefits for the people here in the United States of America.
I feel like certain politicians have been able to convince large swaths of people in America that if we make life better for everyone, it's going to take something away from them, that it's a zero-sum game.
Well, these ugly policies that they have — the way that they have demonized immigrants, for instance, and people of color — I mean, we were making a lot of progress in terms of getting rid of racism and sexism and homophobia. But they've used all these culture wars to divide people. And that's very vicious.
I like to remind people that the true immigrants to this country were like my great-grandparents, one of them came from Spain, one of them came from England, and then on my dad's side, we were here to greet them! So, who are the true immigrants to this country? The Europeans. And every group that came to the United States was legalized. They got the legalization status to be able to vote and to participate. So demonizing people, and calling all immigrants criminals is so wrong. That is straight, outright racism, and they need to be called out.
And how they're attacking transgender people — they take the most vulnerable people in our society, and they start attacking them. That is vicious, and it's wrong.
Some people have compared Trump to the fascists in World War II. Having lived through WWII, do you see parallels?
Oh, absolutely. The word fascist means to hurt people. It's an Italian word. To hurt and to punish. ("Fascism" comes from the Latin "fascis," a weapon used to punish people.) For some reason, Trump thinks this is good.
We know that he idolizes (Adolf) Hitler, and he's following his playbook. But people have to wake up and understand that. So, a lot of work in education needs to be done right now to get people to wake up. And to understand that it's okay to be educated. It's okay to be woke. When you're woke, that means you're educated. That's exactly what that means. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, because what's the opposite of being woke? Being asleep? Being unconscious?
Right.
Is there anything I haven't asked you about that you'd like to say?
Well, one of the great things that's happening now is that our governors in our different states are fighting back. They're using their power. And we have judges and attorneys that have now become the Marines to save our democracy, you know? This is all happening, so we're not at a total loss.
I think we will be able to prevent what happened in Germany to the Jewish population. And not only the Jews. It was the gypsies, the people who were disabled, people who were gay, etc. Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted.
And when we look at Russia, the Jehovah's Witnesses are still being persecuted. LGBTQ people are still being persecuted in Russia, too. How can our president think that (Vladimir) Putin and the Russian policies are somehow something that we should imitate here in the United States of America? We're gonna call that out.
People just have to rev up their bravery. If they never participated in a protest before, now's the time to do it. If they didn't engage in organizing others for elections, now's the time to do it.
And I always brag about the fact that I'm from the state of New Mexico, because my father was an assemblyman here in New Mexico, and my grandfather was born here. And when we were kids, we would sit down and listen to (Franklin D. Roosevelt) when he did his Saturday night lectures. I'm very blessed, because I was raised in a family where we had very active civic participation. And that's what we want for everyone now. We want people to be civically involved.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the Albuquerque Journal. He covers music, visual arts, books and more. You can reach him at [e-mail].