Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta is currently the President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation dedicated to Community Organizing.She co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar E. Chavez and holds the emeritus positions of the UFW as Secretary Treasurer and First Vice President Emeritus. She is also an active member of the Fund for the Feminist Majority.As the legislative advocate for the Community Service Organization and the United Farm Workers Union, she was instrumental in passing historic legislation: Disability Insurance for farm workers, Voting ballots in the Spanish language, Driver’s License Tests in the driver’s native language, Eligibility for Public Assistance for resident immigrants, the end of the infamous bracero program, and legalization for 1 million farm workers under the Immigration Reform Act of l984-85.As the main negotiator for the United Farm Workers, she obtained many “firsts” that had been denied to farm workers: toilets in the fields along with soap, water and paper towels, cold drinking water with individual paper cups, the Robert F. Kennedy medical plan that covered farmworker families, the Juan de la Cruz pension fund (paid for by employers), job security, seniority rights, rest periods, paid vacations and holidays, and protections from pesticides in union contracts..There are four elementary schools in California, one in Fort Worth, Texas, and a high school in Pueblo, Colorado named after Dolores Huerta.She has received numerous awards among them the Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award from President Clinton in l998, Ms. Magazine’s one of the three most important women of l997, Ladies Home Journal’s 100 most important woman of the 20t Century, Puffin Foundation award for Creative Citizenship Labor Leader Award 1984, Kern County’s Woman of The Year by California State legislature,the Ohtli award from the Mexican Government, Smithsonian Institution - James Smithson Award, and Nine Honorary Doctorates from Universities throughout the United States.