Union leaders and lawmakers honor Dolores Huerta after her death at 96

Dolores Huerta, the United Farm Workers co-founder who died at 96 on October 28, was honored by union leaders, lawmakers and civil rights advocates across the United States, The Guardian reported. Their tributes focused on her decades of organizing for farmworkers and on the wider movements shaped by her call, ‘Sí, se puede.’

United Farm Workers president Teresa Romero said Huerta ‘fought for farm workers to the very end of her life.’ Romero called for the union Huerta helped found to keep growing, saying the greatest tribute would be to continue its organizing work. The tributes are a new development following NewsJaws’ report on Huerta’s death and life.

Tributes emphasize organizing and political change

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Huerta kept organizing for working people, women and immigrants for decades after the Delano grape strike. She pointed to Huerta’s belief that ordinary people acting together could change history, and called for workers to be treated with dignity regardless of race, gender or economic status. The Guardian also reported that lawmakers praised Huerta’s efforts to promote women candidates for public office.

How the grape boycott shaped Huerta’s legacy

Huerta helped organize the 1965 Delano grape strike in California’s Central Valley and a national boycott of table grapes, The Guardian reported. Reuters reported that Huerta and César Chávez began a series of strikes and boycotts against California grape growers that lasted five years and later spread to lettuce growers. Growers eventually signed contracts with the United Farm Workers, making collective bargaining a central part of the movement remembered in the tributes.

Reuters reported that Huerta’s work also helped bring about California’s 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which it described as the first US law to give farmworkers collective bargaining rights. The law provides context for Romero’s emphasis on continuing the union’s work: Huerta’s organizing helped secure protections that extended beyond the original grape boycott.

Recognition of Huerta’s work continued long after the strikes. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, according to Reuters. California declared April 10, her birthday, Dolores Huerta Day in 2018, The Guardian reported. Those honors reflect the public standing of an organizer whose supporters now say her work should continue through the movements she helped build.