Two days a week, I travel north to Coachella to teach at a COD off-campus site.   Along the way, I pass acres and acres of vineyards.  At 6:00 in the morning, I see farmworkers pruning vines and irrigating fields.  It’s already getting hot.  I keep the windows rolled up to prevent dust to blow through the car.  Many of my students come from farm-working families.  Their parents have worked these very fields   This is why I look for reading assignments to connect my students with their past.  We read and write about immigration reform, racial profiling, deportation, DACA.  50 years ago, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta spent considerable time organizing their grape boycott at nearby UFW headquarters in Mecca.  They were bold.  They were committed.  My students need to know about the sacrifices that were made for them. This week, the documentary “Dolores” hit the big screen, so I read the anthology A Dolores Huerta Reader  edited by Mario T. Garcia.

Inside, I highlighted the following quote from Dolores in multiple neon colors: “Don’t be a Marshmallow,’ she yells. “Walk the street with us into history.  Get off the sidewalk.  Stop being vegetables.  Work for justice.”  I’ll read this passage in class.  If Dolores can’t get you off your ass, no one can.  Dolores Huerta was the co-founder of the union that became known as the UFW.  Everyone talks about Cesar Chavez, but without her there would be no union.  She was a dedicated and fierce community activist.  She dedicated her life to protecting the rights of farmworkers, women, and immigrants. She grew up in Stockton, California – in a world where agricultural workers were cheated, mistreated, and exploited.  Their working conditions and standards of living were shamefully well below the poverty level.   In 1960, Cesar called her up.  He needed her.  He said, “We’ve got to start the union.  If we don’t do it. No one else will.”  It was Dolores that came up with the slogan, "¡Sí se puede!“

In the early seventies Dolores was at the forefront of the Coachella Grape Boycott.  Her efforts to protect and organize farmworkers were beginning to pay off. There were now water jugs, work breaks, bathrooms where none had ever been before. Women were placed in higher-paying jobs.  Young people were given opportunities for training and advancement. But that was before the Teamsters came to town.  They threatened UFW strikers with violence. These Teamsters were big guys.  They were thugs.  Criminals with tattoos, heavy biker boots, and sticks!  They would beat on anyone who looked remotely connected to the UFW.   In the Spring of 1972, Coachella became a war zone.  It was the UFW against the Teamsters. Dolores and Cesar had to find a  a way to keep the peace and advance the cause.  They were attacked from all sides. 

Whenever we talk about great civil rights leaders we talk about Cesar Chavez, but we don’t speak about Dolores Huerta.  She was very tough, competitive and independent woman.  Because of that, she intimidated many of the men she tried to lead.  Because Cesar was a man, most farmworkers looked to him for direction.  But that doesn’t mean Dolores wasn’t a critical part of the union.  She was a skilled negotiator.  Cesar might have been in front of the cameras, but Dolores was always in front at the table in union negotiations with the growers.  She did the dirty work.  She got right in their faces.

When I head home from Mecca,  I’m left with a two-hour drive to develop ideas for my next day of instruction.  I pass the same fields, vineyards, date palms.  The workers are still out there. I’ve already prepared the standardized, accelerated assignments and activities, but here on the road,  I think of ways to foster inclusion in my classroom.    What would Dolores do?  Before she became an activist, she was one of the country’s first bilingual teachers.  She taught for a year in Stockton.  For Dolores, it wasn’t about preaching to her workers; it was about changing attitudes.  It wasn’t so much about building a union.  It was about building commitment. 

I worry about my students who go along to get along.  Most of them are the first members of their family to reach college level, but they should all raise their sights on higher goals.   To get this far, they know the system, but do they know how to challenge themselves?  Do they know how to engage?  Do they want to make a difference in their community?  Some of them are “dreamers, ‘ so Trump’s recent decision to rescind DACA hovers over us like a dark cloud.  In class discussions, we discuss the ramifications.    I hope our reading of Dolores Huerta will inspire my students to jump into their work with both feet. Their writing  will give them a voice . 

The story of Dolores Huerta is the story of a fighter.  In fact, she is often called la Pasionaria.  The passionate one.  She must be 85 years old, and she is still working for the causa.  I read somewhere that during the Mexican Revolution, there were a group of women soldiers that followed Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa into battle.  They were fierce woman warriors. The people called them Soldaderas.  This might be a good title for a student research paper:  Dolores Huerta: Soldadera for the Farmworkers Movement.