In episode 17 of the Equality Talks podcast, host Elisa Parker introduces us to legendary civil rights activist, Dolores Huerta, president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation. At 93 years old, Huerta is almost as old as the 100 year movement to publish the Equal Rights Amendment and she is determined to make sure that happens within her lifetime. As the co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association along with Cesar Chavez and a leader of the feminist movement, she continues to transform communities and challenge systems to better serve the people most often underrepresented, especially the rural latino community, women and youth. Her passion is contagious as she reminds all of us, si se puede. Yes we can! Elisa speaks with Huerta about her history co-founding a movement in the 1960's when women's recognition as civic leaders was often challenged and how that might have shifted with a feminist lens. She discusses how the ERA would support true equality in our country, where her courage to show up for herself stems from and how she supports other women to engage in public service. Her mission, following in the words of former Mexico President, Benito Juarez is that "respect for the rights of others is peace". Hosted by nationally acclaimed radio host and Equal Voices/ERA Coalition, Elisa Parker, Equality Talks bridges the intersections of equality, justice, and social activism to unify as a collective and change the status quo. Equality Talks focuses on the key facets of equality across all communities, including everything from gender, racial, economic and reproductive justice, to labor, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ rights. For more information on Equality Talks go to www.ERACoaltion.org and www.EqualVoice.org. Moving from silos to solidarity. The ERA Coalition was founded in 2014 to bring concerted, organized action to the effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA Coalition has a sister organization, the Fund for Women’s Equality, which promotes public education and outreach on the need for constitutional equality. Composed of more than 290 organizations across the country representing millions of people, the Coalition is a movement of movements focused on overall equality in the United States. While the effort to amend the constitution to include sex equality began nearly a century ago, our renewed efforts are centered on women of color (African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Latina, and Native American), gender-nonconforming and transgender women and girls, and nonbinary people – those who are most impacted by systemic inequities. www.eracoalition.org | www.fundforwomensequality.org About Dolores: Co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association, Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta is one of the most influential labor activists of the 20th century and a leader of the Chicano civil rights movement. Born on April 10, 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico, Huerta was the second of three children of Alicia and Juan Fernandez, a farm worker and miner who became a state legislator in 1938. Her parents divorced when Huerta was three years old, and her mother moved to Stockton, California with her children. Huerta’s grandfather helped raise Huerta and her two brothers while her mother juggled jobs as a waitress and cannery worker until she could buy a small hotel and restaurant. Alicia’s community activism and compassionate treatment of workers greatly influenced her daughter. Discrimination also helped shape Huerta. A schoolteacher, prejudiced against Hispanics, accused Huerta of cheating because her papers were too well-written. In 1945 at the end of World War II, white men brutally beat her brother for wearing a Zoot-Suit, a popular Latino fashion. Huerta received an associate teaching degree from the University of the Pacific’s Delta College. She married Ralph Head while a student and had two daughters, though the couple soon divorced. She subsequently married fellow activist Ventura Huerta with whom she had five children, though that marriage also did not last. Huerta briefly taught school in the 1950s, but seeing so many hungry farm children coming to school, she thought she could do more to help them by organizing farmers and farm workers. In 1955 Huerta began her career as an activist when she co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO), which led voter registration drives and fought for economic improvements for Hispanics. She also founded the Agricultural Workers Association. Through a CSO associate, Huerta met activist César Chávez, with whom she shared an interest in organizing farm workers. In 1962, Huerta and Chávez founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), the predecessor of the United Farm Workers’ Union (UFW), which formed three year later. Huerta served as UFW vice president until 1999. Despite ethnic and gender bias, Huerta helped organize the 1965 Delano strike of 5,000 grape workers and was the lead...
