Returning to her roots: Dolores Huerta comes home for birthday celebration

Sept. 12--STOCKTON -- She was born in New Mexico and made her name in Delano, of all places, but Dolores Huerta always has thought of Stockton as home. That's why the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union is excited to have one of her 85th birthday celebrations here.

"It's where I got my values, my political identity," Huerta said during a recent stop in Stockton, between a day in Sacramento to support the Death with Dignity bill (it passed the California Assembly on Wednesday) and a meeting the next day with members of the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

Huerta turned 85 on April 10, and celebrations have included a private family gathering, an exhibit at the Smithsonian National Gallery in Washington D.C. and a dance party in Los Angeles. The latter event benefitted the Dolores Huerta Foundation, as will Saturday's dinner/dance at Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium.

Now in its 11th year and begun with $100,000 awarded to Huerta in 2002 with the Puffin/Nation Prize for creative citizenship, the Dolores Huerta Foundation trains community members to organize and advocate for themselves.

"I kind of modeled the foundation after the earlier work we'd done with the Community Service Organization, which (formed) in Stockton in 1955. Mr. (Fred) Ross helped us organize that," Huerta said, referring to her mentor, as she often does. "We hire organizers, we train them, send them into a community and they do a series of house meetings."

Through those meetings, community leaders have emerged and Huerta can tick off accomplishments in the Kern and Tulare county towns where the foundation has worked.

Sidewalks, curbs and gutters were poured in Lamont and a community swimming pool was rebuilt. The citizens of nearby Weedpatch passed a bond to have a new gymnasium built at the middle school. In Tulare County there are street signs, stop lights, stop signs and sewer system hookups at homes replaced septic tanks. The people of Arvin passed a one-cent sales tax increase and the money has gone to increase fire and police forces.

More recently the focus has been on education and the high percentage of expulsions and suspensions of black and Latino students from Kern County high schools. Parents have filed a lawsuit against the district.

Some of the leaders who have emerged from these neighborhood groups have been elected to school boards and city councils.

"I had left the United Farm Workers in 2002, and I wanted to go back to the small, grassroots organizing," Huerta said."I wasn't sure it would work anymore. We hadn't done that model in years."

The model, it turns out, still is effective.

"One person cannot do it by themselves," Huerta said. "They have to come together, work together, take direct action. ... People think you have to have a lot of knowledge to do this work. You don't. You learn by doing."

She's living proof. She was a 25-year-old school teacher in Stockton when she started community organizing in 1955 and it led to moving to Delano where she and Cesar Chavez organized the United Farm Workers and the successful table grape boycott. With Huerta serving as legislative advocate, the union got laws passed to secure benefits for migrant workers such as disability insurance and access to public assistance.

At 85, Huerta is still a tiny bundle of energy who continues the work, undeterred by the continued racial inequality and treatment of the poor in this country.

"I was beaten up by police (she was nearly killed in 1988 by club-wielding San Francisco police at a protest against the policies of President George H. W. Bush)," she said. "I used to think when I was young and all the racism was going on, when I got to be an adult it would be gone. I'm a grandmother, a great grandmother, and my own grandchildren are harassed by the police.

"It goes on and on, but you just have to keep fighting it."

She's serene as she discusses these issues, maybe because she has seen some change.

At Stockton High School, she said, Latino kids were pushed into business classes -- typing and note taking -- and a black friend was told she'd never be a nurse and should think about domestic classes.

"My oldest son's a doctor, my second son's an attorney, my daughter Angela is an emergency room nurse and another daughter is a teacher. Another daughter went to film school and now is a director of a YWCA center," Huerta said. "I have seen the days where, when I was in college, just a handful of students were Latinos, and now I speak at graduations where over half the student body are Latinos. You see the progress that has been made."

So Huerta keeps working, keeps responding to requests from groups of various causes to lend her expertise in organizing.

"We have so much work to do, and especially now, as I get older, I think I don't' have many years left to do as much as I can, to try to improve conditions for people," Huerta said. "We're trying to organize people so they can learn how to improve their lives and their environment."

In that way she's passing on the torch that she accepted from Ross, who taught her how to be a community organizer.

She deflects credit for the accomplishments of her work with United Farm Workers and other causes.

"It wasn't just me. It was a group of us who did this," Huerta said.

She does takes credit for the amnesty gained in a 1986 bill for 1.4 million farmworkers, because "people told Cesar I was crazy and we couldn't get it done," she said.

Otherwise, she's content to share the glory and points out five people were killed during the early struggles of the United Farm Workers.

Others, though, have honored her for her work for farmworkers and civil rights. She has six schools named for her, including an elementary school in Stockton, was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2013 and received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award from President Bill Clinton in 1988.

President Obama awarded her the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2012, one community organizer to another.

A documentary, produced by Carlos Santana, is being made by Peter Bratt, brother of actor Benjamin Bratt. There's no title, yet.

"I want it to say something about organizing and leadership," Huerta said. "I hope when people see this movie, they will say, 'OK, if people come together, if they organize, work together, take direct action, we can change the world.'"

That's been her mantra for 60 years. There've been successes and failures and it's time to celebrate.

"I thought we should have something locally for her, because she has so many family members, friends and admirers here, and she was raised and educated here," said her niece, Niki Smith, who headed the committee that organized Saturday's dinner and dance.

"I'm just so amazed about how effective she is as a spokesperson for the underprivileged, and seeing how she connect swith people," Smith said.

Having a party for Huerta was her idea. Making it a fundraiser for the foundation was Huerta's.

While the Dolores Huerta Foundation has achieved some success, its founder wants to see it doing more, helping more communities.

She dreams big. It's what makes her Dolores Huerta.

-- Contact reporter Lori Gilbert at (209) 546-8284 or [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @lorigrecord

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