Dolores Huerta, the legendary labor organizer, feminist and civil rights icon who spent decades fighting for the rights of migrant workers, died Wednesday.
“I haven’t really processed or had time to sit down and reflect,” Workforce Development Placement Manager Veronica Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez explained that the Labor Center’s activities are housed under her area of placement services that connects students to jobs for Long Beach City College.
“It’s definitely a loss to the community, and just LBCC in general and the work we are doing in the labor center will make sure that she is honored,” Rodriguez said .
The Labor Center is housed in Room 206 in the LL Building at the Trades, Technology, and Community Learning Campus, and offers workshops that include presenters on union development and organizing.
Huerta’s death, announced by her family through the Bakersfield-based Dolores Huerta Foundation, sparked an immediate wave of mourning across the nation and at LBCC.
Huerta was the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union who famously coined the rallying cry “Sí, se puede!”
Over a lifetime of nonviolent civil disobedience, Huerta was arrested more than 25 times.
In 1988, Huerta suffered life-threatening injuries when a San Francisco police officer beat her with a baton during a peaceful protest.
Huerta used the subsequent legal settlement to fund efforts benefiting migrant workers.
The logo for LBCC’s Dolores Huerta Labor Center is displayed at Trade Tech and Community Learning Campus on Wednesday, Oct. 28. The LBCC Board of Trustees voted April 3 to rename and dedicate the Labor Center in honor of civil rights and labor leader Dolores Huerta. (Diosa Hippolyta)
Following a wide-ranging media investigation into historical patterns of sexual abuse within the early farmworker movement, Huerta courageously broke a 60-year silence, revealing that she had been sexually assaulted by UFW co-founder César Chávez in the 1960s.
The news regarding Dolores Huerta’s disclosures about Cesar Chavez came out on March 18, following a multi-year investigation by The New York Times.
In April, the LBCC Board of Trustees voted unanimously to rename the Labor Center at TTC in honor of Huerta.
The center was permanently rededicated to cement Huerta’s influence on future generations of workers.
Though widely celebrated as a Chicana icon, Huerta’s early labor organizing was deeply intertwined with California’s Filipino community.
Raised in a multicultural neighborhood in Stockton, CA, an area she described as a melting pot of Mexican, Filipino and East Asian working families, Huerta developed a lifelong understanding of cross-cultural solidarity.
Huerta’s defining breakthrough came in September 1965 during the historic Delano Grape Strike. The movement was ignited not by Mexican laborers, but by Filipino farmworkers organized under the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, led by Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz.
Recognizing that growers routinely exploited ethnic divisions to break strikes, Huerta and Itliong spearheaded a historic alliance.
Huerta’s National Farm Workers Association voted to join the Filipino picket lines, effectively merging the two groups to form the United Farm Workers (UFW).
Huerta met U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy of Massachusetts during his visit to Delano, CA in 1968 and became a volunteer on his presidential campaign, registering Mexican Americans in California to vote.
Huerta was on stage with Kennedy after he won the California primary and he publicly thanked her moments before he was shot.
The assassination devastated Huerta, but she kept organizing for the rights of farmworkers.
Huerta is survived by 13 children, 24 grandchildren, 23 great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren. Memorial services and public viewings are expected to be announced by her foundation in the coming days.
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