Welfare Warriors

Fall 2007

MW Voice FEATURE

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Mothers news from around the world

Victories

  Fall 2007

Editor Meets her Heroine:
Famous Organizer and Mother

Milwaukee Nov 3, 2007:   Dolores Huerta, my heroine, came to  Milwaukee! She spoke about non-violent action at the Call To Action conference for activist Catholics. I was inspired by her description of the power of non-violent resistance. And I was awed at her ability to educate on crucial current issues while urging action.

Dolores Huerta raised 11 children. She also co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. She reminded us that you don’t need huge numbers to take action. She was a divorced single mom of seven children the day, in Helen’s kitchen (Helen was Cesar’s wife), Cesar said to her,

“Dolores, you and I have to organize the farmworkers. If we don’t, no one else will.”

She laughed because she thought he was kidding. There were just the three of them. But that was the start of their successful organizing of millions of farmworkers.

In 1935 when the Congress passed the National Labors Relations Act to protect workers, the nation’s farmworkers were excluded from minimum wage laws, overtime etc. When asked why, a Congressman said, “Because they’re all Mexicans and Coloreds.”

Dolores had been an elementary school teacher before organizing the most oppressed, yet most necessary workers. “It is the farmworkers who keep us alive by putting food on our tables everyday.”  She left teaching because she was tired of seeing her students, children of farmworkers, hungry and shoeless.

Chavez and Huerta used Non-Violent tactics to win union contracts with owners who barely recognized the farmworkers as human beings. This was in the sixties and there were people who insisted that non-violence would never work. They said violen ce was the solution. Huerta and Chavez had to resist their influence and help the workers to see the power they had. What power was that? They had no money, no privilege, not even homes. Yet each had their own personal power as a human being.

Huerta told the audience of church people that non-violence requires you to have faith. You can’t see an immediate result like you would if you use violence.

The farmworkers used marches and pickets and faced routine arrest for their legal protests. Huerta was arrested 22 times. At one meeting a lawyer asked if they had considered boycotts. That was the beginning of using boycotts against the owners to force them to sign contracts. At the height of their grape boycott, there were 40 million people worldwide who refused to buy grapes.

Using non-violent tactics including marches, pickets, fasting, and lobbying, Huerta and Chavez have helped millions of farmers to win union contracts, access to toilets, less exposure to poisons and a safer life.  But the battle is far from over. The UFW is still struggling for economic justice for farmworers and needs our support.

Huerta asked us, “How many human races are there? Just one, right? And where did the human race begin? In Africa, right?….I always feel like telling those Klu Kluxers and Minutemen, ‘You’re African, get over it!’

“I am so worried about the raids and deportations of our immigrants. They are being treated like criminals. Yet all they do is WORK to feed us and WORK to care for our children, and WORK to cook our food and wash our dishes, and WORK to clean our houses. They come here to work and leave their own homes to do it.

“But people say, ‘Why don’t they go back where they belong?’”

But it is the US economic system that forces millions of people to leave the land they love, their home and families. Since NAFTA allowed big business to cross the border and set up businesses without paying tariffs or taxes, Mexico’s people are under economic attack. 85% of Mexican businesses are SMALL businesses. They can not compete with billionaire companies. One Wal-Mart wipes out hundreds of small businesses.

Two million Mexican farmers provided the corn that Mexicans eat at every meal. But after NAFTA allowed into Mexico the US billionaire agri-business’ corn, the Mexican farmers were destroyed. They could not compete with the prices of billionaire businesses whose products are subsidized by the US government.

“Where do you think those 2 million farmers are now? Working in this country.”

Huerta urged us to get involved in pressing issues our country faces. “Paper ballots are essential to our democracy right now. We need to work to make sure all states have back-up paper ballots.”  In Florida a candidate lost by 450 votes, but 18,000 votes were not counted. In her town, Bakersfield a similar voting machine corruption occurred. One of their poll workers testified that the corruption was even worse than what she saw as a poll worker in the south in the fifties. In those days the poll workers were told to “make sure no coloreds win.” Again the voting machine corruption usually results in African Americans and Latinas losing.

Huerta and others recently fought for and won paper ballots in Bakersfield.

This mama of eleven children visited the Cesar Chavez middle school in her town. She discovered the students marching around in army uniforms and even carrying rifles! Horrified, she asked why. The principal answered, “For discipline.”

“Instead of teaching the children meditation, conflict resolution, peace history classes for discipline, they are teaching them violence. Get involved in your schools. Join the school board. Help our children and our democracy.” 

Huerta wants all schools to teach peace history and the truth about the one human race in classes from kindergarten to college. “All of our children need to know about this country’s genocide to remove the Native Americans and the hundreds of years of violence against the African Americans. And they need to know that neither group has received any reparations.”

Huerta suggested that the official religion of America is violence. The media covers mainly violence, even the so called entertainment shows focus on violence. And most of our money goes to support violence.

“Non-violence is natural for the human race. We have to be taught violence.”

When Latin American leaders got together to protect their resources from the US government, we threaten violence to remove them.  “Chavez in Venezuela has the nerve to believe that the oil in Venezuela belongs to the people of Venezuela, not the US. He has used the oil profits to eliminate illiteracy and support small businesses ( Ed:and pay momswho are homemakers).  Our response is to demonize Chavez and spend billions to overthrow him.”

The government attacks on gays and lesbians are a violation of their privacy. “Don’t we have a right to choose who we love? The simple right to privacy is another human right.”

Dolores said she had to talk about women’s rights before ending her speech. In one area she makes an exception to her firm stand on non-violence. She believes all girls and women should be taught self-defense from kindergarten to college.  “Everyday we pick up a paper and hear about another women murdered, raped, beaten. Why do we ignore it and accept it as routine?”  She insists that women and girls need to learn physical, emotional, and sexual self-defense. Only then will women gain our human rights.

After her speech, I hung around to say hi to the amazing and inspiring Dolores Huerta. I wanted to give her the copy of MWV where we printed her article, “Good Mothers, Great Mothers.”  Despite having traveled all day, despite it being 10:30 at night, despite being 77 years old, Ms Huerta continued to answer questions and pose for pictures. When I mentioned the awful suffering of too many single moms under welfare deform, she became thoughtful. 

“You know, we need a symbol for the fight against poverty. We have symbols for the farmworkers’, women’s, and African Americans’ struggles. But no symbol for the struggles of the poor to end the war on the poor.”

Did I say Dolores Huerta is my hero?

Pat Gowens, Editor MWV
Milwaukee, WI