Commentary: The Dolores Huerta I'll remember

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Set us as preferred The rambunctious teenagers crammed into a lecture hall suddenly went quiet when a woman old enough to be their great-grandmother, and smaller in stature than many of them, approached the podium.Dolores Huerta was about to speak.At the summer conference for Latino high school students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the early 2010s, I was the keynote speaker, with a hell of an opener before me.Huerta didn’t talk for long, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an audience as mesmerized.She said little about her distinguished life.

Nothing about her many awards, her decades fighting to improve conditions for farm workers across the U.S., her unlikely trajectory from the daughter of a coal miner to one of this country’s premier labor leaders and a Latina civil rights titan with few peers.No, Huerta focused on the young people before her.She challenged them to better themselves — that’s how communities improve, she argued.

She made them laugh, she made them cheer, she brought tears to the eyes of some and concluded with the rebel chant long associated with her that we shouted in unison — sí se puede.It can happen.

The students gathered around her afterward for a group photo, and then she left as unceremoniously as she had arrived.Politics The emotional compass of the United Farm Workers of America for decades, Huerta attained singular stature as godmother of the Chicano power movement and doyenne of American labor.Afterward, I asked the organizers why they didn’t have Dolores — everyone in my world called her by her first name, even if we didn’t know her personally, because that’s how much she was a part of our lives — speak for a full hour, as I did.

They said she had other things to do but wouldn’t miss out on a chance to talk to students, charging a pittance compared to her ...