Brunch with Dolores Huerta

hello everyone my name is jennifer gabriel i use she her pronouns and i'm executive director at the national women's hall of fame i'm honored to welcome you to today's program brunch with the dolores huerta we have asked all our speakers to provide a visual description of themselves to aid any of our visually impaired audience members so to start things off i'm a white woman with shoulder length brown hair i'm in my mid 40s i wear glasses i am sitting in my home office which has yellow walls and there are photos of sunflowers behind me since this program is virtual and we have folks joining us from all over the world i'd like to share with you a video showcasing the national women's hall of fame and our beautiful home at the historic seneca knitting mill in seneca falls new york thank you for joining us today for what i know will be an incredibly inspirational event we hope to see you again in the future [Music] welcome to the 1844 seneca knitting mill home of the national women's hall of fame we are the first and oldest non-profit organization dedicated to celebrating the achievements of great american women we currently have 293 inductees whose stories inspire us and must be told so that all people of all genders across the nation understand their contributions to our society and our nation in september of 2022 we will induct another class of nine incredible women whose contributions and stories will stand the test of time and we are launching programming that seeks to inspire people across our nation and around our world our home is in the historic 1844 seneca knitting mill which has stood as a beacon of hope and inspiration to generations of people there's something magical about standing in our building and looking out to the banks of the kyuga seneca canal and really understanding on a deep level how important that waterway is to our entire nation the canal was a driver for so many important conversations and seneca falls was a major hub for the flow of information and for the exchange of ideas that allowed for important movements to begin from abolitionism to the women's rights movement our mission and the work we do is further enhanced because of our ability to call this historic building home the seneca knitting mill is one of the few surviving mills in this area and its history is deeply intertwined with the mission of the national women's hall of fame for 155 years the seneca knitting mill produced woolen goods owners and management did not want to support slavery and they made the decision to not use cotton for any of their products and instead sourced wool from local sheep farmers this was also one of the only businesses that employed women and immigrants so it was a place for advancement empowerment and achievement in fact two of this building's original trustees attended the first women's rights convention we consider it a privilege to steward such a historic treasure in the months and years to come and with the generosity of donors we will continue our work to renovate this building expanding our exhibits and gathering spaces into the second third and fourth floors our museum and gallery space will be a pilgrimage site for people across the world to visit and feel energy excitement and inspiration from the stories we tell about the incredible achievements of our inductees [Music] storytelling is how history comes alive i think about the little girl in wyoming the little boy in maine the professional who wants to change careers at 55 the new father who is raising triplet girls the teen who is struggling to tell their parents they are transgender the grandmother who wants to leave this world a better place for her family the national women's hall of fame has a place in inspiring all of these people and inspiring you this is a great time to get involved join us [Music] hi folks um thank you jen for such a warm welcome my name is natalie rudd and i'm the learning and engagement manager here at the national women's hall of fame um i'm gonna be your mt for the evening um my visual description i am a white woman in my late 20s i'm wearing a black and beige button up with brunette hair styled into two buns and i'm sitting in an office at the national women's hall of fame which has white walls a round table behind me as well as a poster that states our mission saying ship casing great women and inspiring all as we position ourselves to host induction weekend in september of 2022 we are creating programming like the week of women that focuses on themes that tie the work of our and priorities of our 2021 inductees uh this woman's history month the hall decided to experiment with a new program um called the week of woman the catch was that our week of women is going to take place during the first week of april um through a series of panels workshops events and the program that you're at today we are exploring a wide range of topics that are relevant to our work to host the accomplishments of great american women like dolores huerta and by hosting in april we hope that we can reinforce and share with you all that celebrating women's history can be and should be every single month not just in march today we're going to be joined by the absolutely incredible dolores huerta co-founder of the united farm workers of america 1993 inductee dolores huerta is one of the most important and influential labor movement leaders in history dolores is a civil rights activist and community organizer she has worked for labor rights and social justice for over 50 years in 1962 she and cesar chavez founded the united farm workers union she served as vice president and played a critical role in many of the union's accomplishments for four decades in 2002 she received the puffin nation one thousand dollar one thousand one hundred thousand dollar prize for creative citizenship which used to establish the dolores huerta foundation the dolores huerta foundation is connecting groundbreaking community-based organizing to state and national movements to register and educate voters advocate for education reform to bring about infrastructure improvements to low-income communities advocate for greater equality for the lgbtq community and create strong leadership development she has received numerous awards among them the eleanor roosevelt human rights award from president clinton in 1998. in 2012 president obama bestowed dolores with the presidential medal of freedom the highest civilian honor in the united states and before i hand the mic over to this incredible woman i have a few housekeeping notes we will begin our time together with a short talk from dolores who will tell us more about her life and career from her own perspective and then after jennifer gabriel will join us again with dolores to host a moderated q a and then following we'll host a live question and answer session you can submit your questions using the comment box on the right hand side of your screen or below in the comment section let us know where you're coming from what you're thinking and any questions you have for dolores today's live stream should be equipped with closed captioning you should have the power to turn those captions on or off using the closed caption button at the bottom of the video screen if you experience any technical issues during the live stream i highly recommend completely closing your page and then rejoining with the same link we are using technology today that is very new to us so we apologize in advance if there are any errors that do occur um and that being said today's event is being reported and all registrants will receive an email with a link to the reporting if you would like a copy to this recording and you aren't sure if you registered or not please email us at admin women of the hall.org that email will be put in the comments as well so you can have it easily and we'll add you to our mailing list afterwards we'll be sending the uh link as well as any resources we talk about in today's chat um and you'll be asked to fill out a brief survey telling us about your experience this is all super helpful information for us as we try to grow and improve our virtual programming and today's event is free for all to watch these virtual events are critical for our mission at the national women's hall of fame of showcasing great women and inspiring all and this includes making all of our events accessible for all learners especially those with limited physical abilities and or a financial of lack of financial needs to join us so please consider making a donation to the national men's hall of fame as a not-for-profit institution by visiting womenofthehall.org donate or clicking on the link and the event description that we'll put in the comments in just a second please show your support every dollar helps if you enjoy today's program and want to learn more consider signing up for our newsletter or follow us on social media at womenofthehaul.org we are on every social media platform including newly on tick tock where you can learn more about women like dolores in a very fun and uplifting light-hearted way that's enough housekeeping not me let's turn it over to dolores now um i'm going to bring dolores on stage um and i will hand it over to her so thank you so much for joining us today dolores i'm gonna go ahead and hand it over to you thank you for having thanks for joining us well thank you very much for having me and i'll identify myself my problems that she her hers i am a latina woman and when i say that that is kind of a mixture my grandfather's on my dad's side we're from mexico on my mother's side of the family we go back 14 generations uh in the state of new mexico uh on once i'm one side of my family were indigenous on the other side my my grandparents on my mother's side uh also were uh were the fir the first immigrants to the united states of course came from europe uh both from my great grandmother uh one of the most from spain and one of my great great grandfathers was actually his family was from england so i am your typical american mix and i also by the way i am really proud to say that i am a board member of the feminist majority foundation and two of our board board members are in the hall of fame uh peg yorkin and eleanor smile and uh as you mentioned before the founder of the united farm workers uh i am very very uh happy to be invited to speak here today because oh my gosh we have so many things that are happening around the women's issues right now we are spotlighted uh sometimes and not a very good way because we know that right now uh women are struggling to try uh to keep roe vs wade trying to get keep women's reproductive rights in place which we know uh right now are under attack in states like texas uh where in other states in the south of the united states where they are trying to criminalize a woman's right to abortion and uh of course this is something that we are not going to let them get away with because we know that uh unless a woman can control her own body then she cannot control her life she could not uh control her career and that she needs to work on for the rest of her life and you know today i believe it's today but not this week that president obama is going to be at the white house his first time and since he left the white house he has come back and they're going to be celebrating the affordable care act or as many people call it obamacare and of course this was so important uh so women throughout the united states of america could have health care although we know it's still not the type of health care that we should have like to have in other countries like in scandinavia parts of latin america where people have universal healthcare and even a teeny country like cuba where every citizen in cuba has a free health care which we do not have in the united states of america but we know that this health care is really important for uh for women and when we talk about women's reproductive rights well that is a health care issue and not only that but then we have uh i think issues with our mental health also uh which is also a very big issue that's really come to light now after the pandemic but when you think about health care when women have to face sexism and misogyny that is also a health care issue and when we think of what's happening to our lgbtq community where you have again laws that are passed like in florida or it's they're saying don't say gay i mean really and you know i do want to share a place with all of you because i think we all know some people who are not yet enlightened and do not understand the issues of reproductive rights or or gay rights and this is a from a a man a mexican president of mexico benito juarez and he had a great saying he said uh and i'm gonna say this in spanish that means respecting other people's rights is peace so we have to respect women's decisions they decide to have 11 children like i did or like my daughter juanita a a former teacher who decided not that she doesn't want her children but she loves dogs and cats which i'm sure there's a lot of people in our audience today they feel the same way that they would prefer to have dogs and cats so we have to respect those decisions and so i wanted to share that phrase with you and i want to say it again respecting other people's righteous peace because we know that those issues uh that i'm not going to call them the haters they use those issues of a woman's a right to abortion and uh and uh people's a decision to marry someone of their own sex if they so choose they use those issues to divide us and we cannot allow that to happen because we have so much work to do especially as we get women to take power and coretta scott king said that we will never have peace in the world until women take power and that's what it's all about it's about us getting women in those positions of power i'm happy to report to you that i'm sure a future member of the women's hollow plane will be patricia guerrero she is the first latina to be appointed to the state court the state supreme court the state supreme court of california and and then of course we are all waiting to celebrate uh the first black woman who will be on the supreme court of the united states of america so that does show that we are making progress but again to fulfill tereda scott's statement about not we will not have peace in the world until women take power we know that we have to do a lot more work to get women elected and right now i think we're about 35 percent in the in the us congress uh we're one of the few countries uh that has not had a woman president and although we kind of tell herself they're thinking that we are so progressive um but actually we're not so we have to do a lot more work to make sure that we have more women uh elected uh to all of our bodies we had school board city councils commissioners were the supervisors and of course the u.s congress and especially the u.s senate where we're way way short of having women representation and i like to say if there is a some kind of a decision-making board meeting somewhere in the world if we do not have 50 of the people that are sitting on that board uh to make the decisions they are going to make the wrong decision okay so that that's why it's really uh upon us so we have to work very very hard to get more women as representatives in this in the decision-making bodies of the world and so it's kind of up to us as women to get out there and make sure that we engage that we recruit as many as many people and by the way when i'm going to use the word feminist i want to use the word feminist because we know that there are many men out there that are feminists and that they support women's reproductive rights and all of these other issues that so affect women so we just got to get out there and do as much as we can in my organization at the dollar sort of foundation what we do is we do grassroots organizing we have meetings in people's homes uh little by little maybe six to eight people i like to use the word tupperware like a tupperware party and we have a meeting and then out of that meeting we get another meeting and then another meeting and another meeting until we are able to organize a group of people to come together then we decide what issues do they want to uh to change in our community then we make an action plan and then everybody you know they have to volunteer to do the work and that's where the leadership grows and we have some amazing amazing women many of these women are immigrants they never went to high school or college they speak very broken english many of them but you know what they have such incredible incredible leadership and i want to give you just one example we have this one woman her name is leticia prado an immigrant from mexico who speaks uh very little english but she became one of our volunteers too and in her community they had a big concern i am here in bridgesville california and our uh this is where a lot of the oil of poor california comes from and our air is so polluted that children could not go out for research in their middle school so what letitia proud that once she learned that she could engage in the democratic process she and her fellow neighbors went out there they went door-to-door they got petitions they passed a bond issue and they built a brand new state state-of-the-art gymnasium for their middle school the gymnasium is so great that actually there are schools from the city of bakersfield that go to this little town called wheat patch okay that's where it's at we press it that by the way that's where the grapes of wrath was filmed and uh then she got so excited after they were able to pass that bond issue to build this monkey school that she decided to run for the school board she got herself elected to the school board and at that time the principal of that of that that school district uh decided that uh that they were going they were going to eliminate the breakfast program for farmworker children can you imagine so guess what they got rid of the principal and they kept the farm worker and they get the breakfast program for the farmworker children so this kind of shows you the power of women what they can do when they get in office and they get out there and and decide to change the world and improve the world and make the world a better place and that of course is our battle cry for all of us feminists that we have to do whatever we can to make the world a better place so thank you very much and i'm looking forward to having a conversation and and having some questions from all of you seasip weather yes we can thank you dolores that was incredible that was such a powerful and touching um beginning to this conversation and really looking forward to some of the questions that we were being asked um on the live stream but i have a couple of for you to get us started for myself so you um have you have influenced and inspired generations of people that have seen your work gotten um inspired by it gotten engaged and i'm wondering who has inspired you the most in your life and why well i can only name three people i think my mother number one my mother was a businesswoman and uh she always kind of pushed me to be out there in front my mother was an incredible cook an incredible homemaker but somehow she didn't pass on those gifts to me you said she always had me going out in the public eye i was a girl scout for 10 years of my life so my girl scout leader and her name was katherine kemp was a great influence on my life and i want to say one the other person well two other people my best girlfriend charles satterfield who was african-american and i was so blessed you know charles uh i was very fortunate and i grew up in an integrated neighborhood with you know people immigrants from italy from greece uh from mexico we had children from the philippines japan and china so i i like to say i got my ethnic studies for my friends and you know this is where i learned about other cultures and and so that made it me prepared me very much for the world and then i met this well there's two other persons uh one of them i mentioned eleanor smile who has been inducted into the women's hall of fame because she helped me kind of work through the whole issue of reproductive rights for women and the right for women to have an abortion because as a catholic you know i had all of these other beliefs that abortion is a sin you're going to go to hell whatever but ellie and gloria steinem both of them really made me understand why it's important for women to have that right to abortion and that that was very you might say life-changing for me because then i can talk to other women about this and make them understand that politicians use this issue to divide us you know that and the gay marriage issue they use that to divide us and and that's been very important for me in terms of reaching out to women in the community communities of color especially latinos to make them understand that these are political my political positions that the haters used to divide it to divide us and then of course the person that taught me how to organize uh his name is fred ross senior and i maybe someone in the audience may have heard about him but he there is a book about him called the social arsenals but he's the one that taught sister chavez myself and many many other organizers how to do this grassroots organizing that i mentioned earlier about meeting with people in their homes talking about the issues making them understand that that they have to commit to make the changes that they the improvements that they want to see in their lives and in their communities and if they don't do it is that never going to happen that they can't sit back and wait for somebody to come in uh you know somebody on a white horse is going to come in and save them no they have got to challenge the issues work on the issues and make the changes if not it will never happen and what a great segue into what was my next question um which is what is your what is a piece of advice or several pieces of advice that you would give to a young activist or organizer who wants to get more engaged but doesn't know where to start well we have the perfect opportunity in this year 2022 because this is a year of elections and the best way to get involved in the political process is to go out there and volunteer for a campaign go out there and register people to vote talk to people that you don't know strangers and explain to them why it is so important for them to get engaged in the democratic process because that is what voting is and especially now when we say that our democracy is threatening there is no time like the president to we have to become the freedom warriors to save our democracy we are seeing what's happening in ukraine right now where people are fighting and dying to keep their own president to take their own government and we see that russia is trying to obliterate them just so that they can take over their country well we have seen that in our own country we have the haters that are coming out there and and they are trying to take uh control of our government and we can't let that happen but the only way that we can save our democracy is that each and every one of us has got to engage yep well said so um i want to remind our audience to please drop your questions into the chat box we will be taking audience questions in just a couple of minutes so please feel free to ask anything that you might be thinking as you listen to dolores incredible uh history and story i also want to mention that we have learned that the closed captioning has been problematic on youtube this morning for some reason so we will add closed captions to this after the event so the recording will be available for those who um who need that assistance so dolores i am wondering you talked a lot about legislation and you know some of the um really big big topics of conversation that we are having as a nation and also in washington um and i'm wondering if you had control to be able to pass one piece of legislation right now that you think would make the biggest difference what would it be well i would say the equal rights amendment for women which we know is stuck in in the u.s senate again when we talk about democracy and we and we think that there only there were only maybe two or three votes that kept us from my from having the equal rights amendment which would be the 19th amendment to the united states constitution and a lot of don't people don't understand that uh that there are only a handful of countries that have not uh have not voted to for the equal rights amendment and that the united states of america is one of them i mean that is shameful to think that our country the most powerful country in the world that this does not have the equal rights amendment for women and here it is in the u.s senate then we have these other law that you have to mention them about having accessible day care for our children this is again a law that would really really affect women and yet again that one is also stuck in the senate along with the you know the child lewis voting rights bill uh the pre-college tuition i know two preachers of college tuition that would help so many uh women as well low-income women to be able to go to college and so again this really points out that we've got to get more involved in in the democratic process and to make sure that we elect people and you know just to make sure that we get the the type of legislation that we need thank you and so now that we've talked about the present i'd love to go back in time for a second um and talk about you know you got involved in a lot of these movements and a lot of these conversations in the 60s and i'm wondering how you've seen activism and organizing change over time and what has sort of stood the test of time and what have you seen that's actually um maybe was true as a great tactic then and is not necessarily true now or vice versa um just some of you some of your thoughts around the evolution of the movement well i believe it's a lot easier now uh because uh young people you have your devices that you can message and you can get information out very very quickly we have google where you know everything can be very transparent we can mobilize very quickly as we have seen in the marches in the metoo movement and uh immigrant rights movements and the black lives matter movement so the devices have really made it so much easier that we can accelerate the organizing process you might say but the one caution i do want to say especially to young people is because sometimes they get very impatient and yet it's great to that we march and that we protest because that would bring the issues uh to the public like the occupy movement would you know started spotlighting the issues and the fact that 90 of the wealth of the united states is in the hand of 10 of the wealthy families and corporations but the one thing that young people have to understand is it has to be put into a law if it is not if it's not if it is not put into legislation that means it won't be implemented you know people could not be held accountable if it's not and these laws are not enforced and so that's why we really have to make them understand how the whole legislative process works and it starts of course with voting and we have to elect we have to elect people that are progressive and then we have to stay on top of them to make sure that they vote the right way and this is the way that we make laws and and then to make sure that the laws that we pass are are enforced you know and then of course and not also in voting we really have to make sure that the people we are voting for are who they say they are and we have a good example with christian cinema who is one of the people that whose votes we needed for the equal rights amendment and per bill better act they you know all of all the things that we talked about that we didn't have that are stuck in the senate so we have to be really informed uh to make sure that that we get the laws pass that we need yeah and i'm wondering uh if you could talk a little bit more about how you stay personally motivated um and not get frustrated by the slow process because i think that's one of the um one of the problems that we all face in trying to create change is that we want it to happen quickly and it doesn't always happen as quickly as we want and as you said so much of it needs to be really done through legislation and through laws that are passed talk a little bit about where you find your own inner strength and any advice that you have for other young activists who do feel that sense of frustration well i'm just saying look look look towards the past and see where we are at now and know that everything that we have it's because people in the past spot for what we have today and so we know that the legislative process does work the the democratic process does work but it doesn't work unless all of us engage uh to make it happen and the more of us are involved in the in the electoral process of voting and and passing laws etc then we know that that we're going to be able to win i yesterday i spoke at a college and i asked the audience how many of them knew who their state representative was not one hand was raised not one hand was raised we could ask the audience right now how many of you know who your state legislator is your state senator or your state representative uh you know how many of you know of you know who your congressional representative is your your congress person or your or your senator in the in the us congress because this is what we have to learn and but we have to incorporate this into our curriculums into civic studies so that so young people start understanding why it is important for them to know who their representatives are because our taxes pay them to work for us and if we don't even know who they are i mean that that does not sound well for all of us because the people that we're like are the ones that make the decisions of how the resources are going to be spent how much money is going to be coming into our community what local law let's take our school boards for instance we would love to have our school boards make sure that we have women's history that the national women's hall of fame is taught in every single school so that young women can get that empowerment to know that they are important yeah and what a wonderful segue to what i think is going to be my last question before we turn it over to our audience questions um you've been involved with the national women's hall of fame since you were inducted in and i'm curious as you envision where the organization might be able to grow and expand its reach over time what ideas do you have for ways that we could be more in classrooms across the nation and hopefully living rooms across the nation as well well i believe that could happen uh very easily but again again you know going out to all of the different uh school boards across the country and and start small of course so that the young women can learn about who the inductees are and what they have done and i think that would be very important i mentioned that i was on the board of the feminist majority foundation and by the way this year is the 50th year anniversary of ms magazine of ms magazine and so we get to use that also as a segway to talk about the national women's hall of fame so i think that would be so important and i imagine that we might be able to get some funding for that yeah you know to be able to put that into now that everything is done virtually it's so easy to do that and the other thing i would just ask is i i was the first latina uh you know inducted in the into the women's hall of fame and i would just appreciate it if every single year when we induct uh people into the women's hall of fame that we also always include some uh a person of color yeah i we are absolutely aligned um with you on that it is incredibly important to us that we not only honor women of color who are present day uh great americans but also looking at some of the historical gaps that we have that we can help fill and tell the stories because you're absolutely right it's the stories of our inductees that are what inspires um certainly personally me every day but also anyone that interacts with the organization so this is great we've actually um got quite a few of uh a question sort of different iterations of this of a similar question so i'm wondering if you could give us your take on the recent unionization of the long island amazon factory what do you think this means for the modern day movement mother day labor movement oh it's so important and then we always have to remind everyone that so many of the laws that we have today benefits that we have for working people uh were they they were brought to us by labor unions by the sacrifices of labor leaders we talk about the eight-hour day if i would ask everyone here how did we get the eight-hour day what happened to those labor leaders that proper data or date they were executed they were hung and we do not even know their names but without labor we would not have eight hour day we would not have weekends we would not have social security unemployment insurance disability insurance public education these are all of the benefits that working people have that were brought to us by labor leaders and labor unions and a lot again as people are so ignorant about the contributions of women to our history they are also ignorant of the contributions of labor leaders and labor unions actually create the middle class of the united states of america and if we do not have a middle class we do not have a democracy this is how inherently important labor is uh to our society great thank you so we've got a question from sarah b my grandparents were farm workers who benefited from dolores work what does she think the future of unions in our what does what does she think the future of unions is in our country with our changing economy well as i mentioned before our unions are a vital vital a part of our economy and when we can think of an organization this is what it labor union is it's an organization that right and so the workers of that organization have some representation not only on the job to protect them from unfair practices by the employers but also to represent them in the community and in our state legislators and in the us congress so this is how vital labor unions are for for the country wonderful uh gabrielle has asked we are currently working with it sounds like she's currently working with a local union to unionize staff at her organization my question how can we help amplify the voices of color involved in the union process so that they feel that their voices are heard a lot of people don't understand what a labor union is and they have kind of been smeared by the employer community uh to make it look like uh labor unions is a special interest while labor unions represent them the working people of the country the working people of the country are the majority of the population of the country so they are not special interests and all of the support that labor unions can get into a community is very very important to sort of erase that image that labor unions are bad wait a minute as we just said all of the benefits that working people have today came to us because of the sacrifice and the martyrs you know even in the united farm workers we had five people killed in fact in florida they were just memorializing then friedman who was the first martyr she was a young jewish girl from boston and she was the first martyr of the united farm workers who was killed in the sugar workers strike there in florida they just i think last sunday they just memorialized land friedman for her her we're contributing her life uh to the movement of the farm worker then we have four other people that were killed a young after nana was a young muslim nanji daipala who was killed uh here in kern county uh because he was uh fighting for the rights of farm workers and then we had three other martyrs that were killed just to get basic benefits like toilets and drinking water the right to have a union you know we lost these people who gave their lives for farmworkers wow that's that's powerful um i want to give a warm welcome to kristen s who is actually hosting a heritage spanish class right now so her students have all joined us and have a couple of questions for you what is one piece of advice that you can share with young latinas to get involved this is my my mantra my message for everyone in this important electo electoral year that we have in 2022 there are many many elections that are going to be taking place so i just want to say to everyone out there especially the young people please get involved in a campaign this is how to learn the political process by canvassing going door-to-door talking to strangers getting them to register to vote asking them to get involved in voting and so because we can our democracy will not work unless everybody participates and especially now that we have this critical so many critical elections that are happening uh many of us saw the hearings that were heard for our new supreme court justice you know the black woman uh jackson brown and uh and i'm sure that many of us were upset i have to say that when when i when i saw those hearings and the way that she was treated it was like a verbal lynching that they were doing to her i was ready to pack up and move to texas and start organizing to get rid of those senators that were so abusive to her so we know through the democratic process of voting again that we can change we can change the the the senate of the united states of america that is now keeping us from having the era and all of these important issues that we that we need so it's just a call a call to arms i think for all of us right now that we have to save our democracy and the only way we can do it is through voting you know franklin delano roosevelt said that the ballot is more powerful than the bullet the ballot is more powerful than the bullet and the other thing that we have to do is start fighting to get women's studies into all of our classrooms so that we can end the misogyny and the sexism that is directed against women and and the other thing too is we all have to engage in being anti-racist you know dr martin luther king jr said that racism is an illness it's a sickness misogyny is a sickness homophobia is a sickness so these are the things that we have to work very hard to get to get rid of these isms that we have that are making our society sick and creating all of the hatred and that hatred translates itself into violence like the 23 people that were killed in el paso texas because they were mexican and the majority of those people that were killed were mexican-american citizens of the united states of america or the asian women they were killed because they were asian or the jewish people that were killed because they're jews and the continual assassinations of our young men in the black community you know so this has all got to be part of our struggle and again let's look at those school boards let's get uh ethnic studies into our classrooms and get women's studies and the gay studies into our classroom so we can start ending all of the the hatred that exists in our society that is keeping us divided yeah let's see um did this is another question from the class did people within the group ever doubt your cause because you're a woman well very often as we all know us women and especially women of people of color and again as we get older we get we get the thirdism the ages and the that is directed at us and so why we we as women have to be really really strong and have that faith in ourselves and trust in ourselves and not let other people uh you know kind of minimize who we are or or discriminate against us and and learn how to fight that and ignore all of the discriminations that are aimed at us and how difficult is that to ignore the discriminations like have you found ways tactics personally that you have been able to employ that might be helpful for others to learn about of how to kind of push out that noise and and really be able to focus on what you're trying to accomplish well you know one thing i have to really thank my mother because early on when i was just a very young and a teenager she always told me uh when people uh try to criticize you for what you do or what you're trying to you know trying to help other people ignore them just you know put them out of your mind take those criticisms as blessings as long as you know that you're trying to do the right thing you're trying to help people and you're not trying to hurt people just ignore all of those uh those arrows that are shot at you you're doing and then the 60s there was a book called the yaki way of knowledge that everybody read that book and there was one line in that book that i remember and it said when you become a warrior then you can expect you're going you're going to have a lot of arrows that are going to be aimed at you so we just have to remember that and as long as we are true to ourselves and to to our cause then we can you know we can keep on working and not let those criticisms slow us down oh i actually got tears in my eyes and you're saying that i think that's very very true um last question from the class is actually one that was written in spanish so i will um you can see it but for our english um listeners i will ask what do you how do you feel about your accomplishments well because uh my common accomplishments are on the backs of many other people you know because when you're an organizer what you do is you organize other people to do the work and this is this is how the leadership grows so any accomplishment that i have is because so many other people were working to make that happen so i always feel very very blessed when i am recognized but i do know that is on the backs of people like nan friedman that i mentioned who was killed in that farmworker strike in florida and so so i take those uh not only in my name but in the name of all of the people that work to make whatever project that we're working on to make it happen great a question from randy i'm a hispanic woman warehouse worker from san antonio texas what advice would you give to women who work in a male-dominated field and live in a culture and society that is still male dominated well we have to try to educate the the men and i know that's not that easy i mean i i in the farmworkers union i was the only woman on the executive board for many many years and i had to buy to get more women on the executive board the good news is we always see progress today the president of the united farm workers is a woman her name is teresa romero and the majority of the board members of the united because now are women so you know we just have to again keep faith in ourselves and when it's possible educate men on when they say the cheetahs colorados we say those are kind of jokes that are aimed at about women uh correct them on it tell them that you know you're hurting my feelings the same thing when they say homophobic remarks or racist remarks we have to correct them because we have racism that exists in our communi communities of color also because sometimes uh people have lighter skin are treated better than people of darker skin and i do want to say this too right now i think this is the moment is uh people were introducing themselves and we're saying that we are white women i just want to remind everybody and this is really really important to end the racism in our society we have to remember that our we have one human race only one human race homo sapiens and our human race came from africa so you might say that you're a white woman but your roots are african and it's so important that we remember this because in order to stop the racism in our society we have to remember that we are one human race we don't have a lot of human races we have a lot of different cultures a lot of different nationalities but only one human race and so we can say to all the white supremacists out there the neo-nazis get over it your africans okay and if we were there in person i would say to you take the hand of the person next to you on both sides turn to that person and say hello relative then turn them to the person on the other side and say hello relative just remember that and share that that's a good conversation to take to your dinner table and say to the family hey family did you know that we are all africans okay and that way we can end this idiotic issue of racism oh thank you for thank you for saying that i think that's really a very important point for us as well to be thinking about as we do give our visual descriptions to make sure that you know we are reinforcing that as to and not creating more um more delineations because you're absolutely right um crystal has asked how can young progressive female labor leaders in rural midwest communities who are facing severe political divide in their communities cut the issues to overcome the party line division it's a tough one well we have to just tell people the history you know we can say that the haters are the ones that brought us the iraq war okay uh the haters are the ones that are attacking gay people in florida the haters are the ones that are attacking women in texas and passing all these laws to criminalize a woman's right to abortion tell them what the history of the haters is and so that way we can start educating people on which political party that they might want to belong to and the importance of them engaging in the electoral political process because this is the only game in town this is the only game in town we saw that there was an insurrection where they were trying to stop the democratic election of the president of the united states of america and explain to them what fascism what fascism is fashion is fascism is what caused so the millions of jews that were killed in in germany and and you know even the genocides that have happened in our own country you know and we don't need to have this this is why we have to have women take power as good as scott king said because you know but but it's not going to happen by itself but we're at such a critical moment and you know there are many electives in fact i have a friend of mine who just lost her election by seven votes seven votes we know in the state of virginia uh not not this not this election but prior election where the whole thing changed by one vote by one vote yeah so just importantly like this is our savior democracy this is the dream that the founders of our government had i don't see our country okay because our country was brown when all the immigrants came here okay but the founders of our government had this dream of democracy and we are living it we are living that dream and i liken it to liking this to a football game we have one team that shows up the other team doesn't show up who wins the team that shows up so our team our justice team has to show up wow that's great i'm going to go a little off script for a second because i do have a question um that i'm wondering about because you've touched on sort of the um the what i call the scary side of activism which is the potential for for violence and we've seen that play out in several ways in the last few years especially and i know that you had your own experience um of of being attacked when you were protesting then uh i believe it was candidate george bush's policies and i'm curious how you view violence how you view violence and how you how you were able to overcome that to continue your work knowing that that was something that not only could happen but did happen well when i first met cesar chavez i think the one thing that we had in common is that we had both read gandhi and we were very devoted to the issue of gun violence and when we started the united farm workers we knew that almost every effort to organize farm workers had failed and they had failed because of the violence that was you know instituted at that time so we may we know we said when when we form this union it's going to be a non-violent movement and it was great because we did have people killed and so we had to say to the farmer because we're going to continue working and we're not going to react with violence and that's the only way that we're going to win and of course it happened and so i think that violence is a very not only it's a spiritual force and it gives people that courage and and uh that faith that you're going to be able to win even if it takes longer to win and and then that's the only way that you can win we know that during the 60s that there was a lot of violence and a lot of people were killed a lot of people were hurt and now we see a lot of violence that's helped that's happening also in our communities and so we have to look and see how can we stop the violence but not stop the work that we're doing we have to continue to work and look at those methods of non-violence that people can use and i think that we in in the long run and i think by the way that women are the best uh generals uh in the army uh when you have in our army social social justice movement uh when we work with through non-violence so i think we have time for probably two more questions um so i so lisa has written in my daughter is a sixth grader she's writing a paper about how you use diplomacy skills to lead the farmworkers rights movement what is your strongest diplomacy skill well i think if we see uh the people on the other side of the table or the other side of whatever project that we're doing and to see them as human beings and try to reach uh you know to try to reach a points of agreement that we can agree on and then from there we can you know go to the more contentious uh issues that we have to talk about but trying to see them from their perspective if you possibly can trying to get them to to understand i would in my negotiations with a lot of the agricultural employers because in california we have like agri businesses plantations and to make them understand the way that their workers were being treated and so that they could kind of experience experience that as it was happening to them kind of paint a picture for them and to see what people are going through or what the issue isn't and how they can relate to that issue and kind of humanize human eyes and understand that they we don't want to hate the other side of the table but we want to get them to understand why it is uh that we want this particular issue solved yeah i think finding those commonalities is so critical no matter what no matter what we're trying to accomplish it's really is a is a great tactic um okay finally so um nationally v my five-year-old daughter cassile is a girl scout and has is learning about you in kindergarten her first hero project is about you what advice can you give her to become a leader and a powerful woman well we learned so much of the girl scouts you know i was a girl scout for 10 years of my life and uh just to be strong and not to be afraid always use your voice and stand up for people and another bit of advice that my mother gave me that i used to this day and i know that this is also the mantra of the girl scout to be of service to others and my mother always said if you see someone that needs help you have an obligation to help them even if they don't ask you for help and the other thing is don't expect any kind of reward for the help that you give people or recognition because if you do if you do expect some compensation then you are taking away the grace of that act that you did to help people i think that's very very important and and also and we mentioned this before when people criticize you don't let that stop you and whatever project you're working on you know keep at it because the only time that you lose is when you quit as long as we keep going forward and understand that sometimes things take a lot longer than when we would expect and this is for especially for young people because we kind of have a makman top mentality that we want things to happen very fast and sometimes things just take a lot longer to accomplish yeah what a wonderful wonderful way to end this i think all of your advice has been so uh helpful to so many on this call i personally have just really enjoyed the last hour i want to thank you again for being a part of this and i think natalie's going to pop back in and and send us off but dolores again i want to behalf of all of us who have joined you today i really want to express my sincere gratitude to you for all you've done am i if i could end with a chant okay and i i don't know if people can mute themselves or not but i'd like to end my talks with with two questions and one question is uh i asked the audience who's got the power and of course the answer is we've got the power and then we say what kind of power and we say people power and in this case we can say feminist power okay so anyway i can ask the question who's got the power what kind of power eminence power yes feminist power and so are we going to use our power yes but to make the world a better place we say yes yes we can or in spanish thank you we've got a lot of folks responding in the comments uh with your chant dolores so thank you once again thank you so much if anybody uh dolores i encourage you to go to the comments we've gotten so much love from folks today thank you so much um for all that you do and for inspiring all of us thank you thank you um thank you again for joining us today um any of the books and resources that we talked about today are going to be included in a post event email like i said if you want to receive that host event email which will include information about the dolores huerta foundation and the national hall of fame send us your email at admin womanofthehall.org just mention that you are at the brunch with dolores huerta and we will get you signed up for our newsletter um and this project was made in part by the institute of um uh museum and library services um the museum associations of new york as well of the support of our many 2021 and 2022 sponsors um and remember that even though women's history month is over we can learn about women's history year round here at the national women's hall of fame we aim to share incredible stories like dolores says every single day um join us tomorrow during the week of women to hear from 2015 inductee jean kilbourne where she's going to teach all about advertising and how advertising has shaped our minds has shaped many generations and how she is aiming and has been for the last few decades and has changed the advertising industry and how it depicts women um and how it's affected many generations to come so please follow along with the hall.org and if you can please donate so we can keep doing free programs like this if you liked what you saw today and once again thank you thank you thank you dolores for joining us and thank you all for coming and watching um so thank you and have a great rest of your day bye

Channel: National Women's Hall of Fame

Views: 1,193

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Id: f_eX4vj-kEM

Length: 64min 27sec (3867 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 05 2022