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Empowering Latino Communities: Dolores Huerta's Fight for Equality and Justice · The Lawtino™

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Latino Podcast, where we discuss the intersection of law and our Latino communities with legal, political, and community leaders and visionaries.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get started.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, it's John Gomez, everyone.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to this edition of the Latino Podcast, where we have guests on and we discuss the relationship between the law and the Latino communities.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: We invite on leaders in law, lawyers, judges, legislators, and activists to join us for a little bit of their background, a little bit where they come from, a little bit of their values, and then to talk about this relationship between the law and our Latino communities.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: This edition of the Latino podcast is brought to you by your sponsor, Gomez Trial Attorneys, one of our nation's largest Latino-founded personal injury employment and consumer rights law firms.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: I want to turn it over now to our my co-host and another lawyer here at the firm, Jessica Luhan.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: She in turn will introduce today's guest host and our amazing special guest.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: So take it away, Jessica.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you, John.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a pleasure.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I have the pleasure of introducing you to my um co-host today, Agustin Peña.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: He is the president of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just very fitting to have him help me co-host this amazing episode today.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, Agustin, why don't you introduce yourself and maybe introduce our special guest?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you, thank you.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_04: Good afternoon, everybody.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_04: Good afternoon, Ms.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_04: Suerta.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_04: My name is Agustín Peña.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_04: I am the current president of San Diego La Rasa Lawyers, and I, ladies and gentlemen, have the laboring or of introducing the one and only Miss Dolores Huerta, who really needs no introduction.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_04: So, Dolores Huerta, as we all know, is a trailblazer in the Latino community.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: She is a pillar, she is a fixture, uh, and has been so for decades.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, she co-founded the United Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chavez.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_04: She organized the Delano Grape Strike in 1965.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_04: And since then, she has been uh a trendsetter.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_04: She has been an advocate and an activist in education and equal rights and voting.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_04: And what else can I say?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_04: I can keep going on for hours and hours about the wonderful, incredible work that Ms.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_04: Dolores Huerta has done.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_04: But who better to talk about all those things but Miss Dolores Huerta herself?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_04: Please, ladies and gentlemen, welcome her with a welcome at the warm applause, Dolores Huerta.
• 3:00
  unknown: And Ms.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Huerta, let's just start from the beginning.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell us a little bit about where you're from?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm from the Southwest.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um obviously that's been very important for me, you know, growing as a Latina, moving from El Paso, Ciudad Juarez, to now San Diego.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us about where you're from and how did that shape you and your activism.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um not too far away from you.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was actually born in uh New Mexico, right, in a coal mining town in northern New Mexico, and um lived in uh New Mexico until I was about six years old, uh almost seven, and then moved to California.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: My parents divorced, so my mother brought us to California.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then I was raised in Stockton, California.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Stockton is between Sacramento and San Francisco.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then from Stockton, I moved to Delano when we started the Farm Workers Union back in 63, 64.
• 3:51
  unknown: Awesome.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: So Southwest and then California.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was seeing do you have any questions for Ms.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Huerta?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_04: Where do I start?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_04: Where do I begin?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_04: So many so we're gonna share.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna share time.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you know, a lot along the way, Miss Huerta, I imagine there have been a lot of inspirations, a lot of things along your trajectory.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_04: It can you pinpoint one person, one incident, or something that really ignited that fire in you to become the amazing advocate that you would eventually become.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_04: Was there something or somebody that really uh inspired that?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I think Ms.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Lujan will uh will uh agree with me on this because uh the Southwest uh of uh the United States of America, uh the New Mexico, the Texas area, um I think parts of Arizona, there was a this tradition, at least in New Mexico, the uh the the the devotion to Saint Francis of Xavier, Saint Francis of Assisi, about that you had to help people, that you have an obligation to help people.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you see someone that needs help, and if there's any way that you can possibly help them, that you have an obligation to do so, even if they don't ask you.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing behind that is that not to expect any kind of compensation or reward or even gratitude.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: That you do this just for the act of being able to make somebody's life better.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is kind of the philosophy that our family grew up with, that my mother always taught us as kids, you know.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so you always have that already in in implanted in in your in your brain, you know, and in your conscience that this is what you're supposed to do.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's very interesting.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: My dad's actually uh deacon in the Catholic Church, so I grew up Catholic around those Catholic principles as well.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And not just Catholic, but it's, you know, do unto others as you would have them do, and then at the same time, you know, just help others in need.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very interesting.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um so along with that, you know, growing up in the Southwest, I know for me personally, a lot of times I feel I was blinded to a lot of discrimination and racism because I just grew up in a in an environment where everybody looked like me.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't until I ended up in Indiana um for college that someone told me, they said, You're Mexican?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: You don't look Mexican.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: You don't look like all the Mexicans.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what does that mean?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: So what have been your experiences?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, was there anything that kind of opened your eyes to, you know, maybe um just implicit bias or discrimination, um, prejudice, anything like that where you where you just realized, oh, okay, so we have these tensions in our society.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think the discrimination hit me hard when I was in high school um because uh our teachers were so uh some of the teachers were so racist.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was denied opportunities that were given to other students because I happened to be a Latina.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh also them trying to use me uh as a Latina, you know, and uh that was very, very hurtful.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I uh recently hit uh uh uh did uh it's got going to this, it's gonna come out in CBS, but they wanted to focus on the fact that one of my teachers, my English teacher, accused me of plagiarism, because of plagiarism, because I got straight A's on all my papers, on my term papers, and then she said, uh, well somebody else was must be writing your papers.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that was crushing to me because I spent so much time.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then um, you know, just seeing the way that the Latino uh and black kids, the Filipino, the Asian kids were treated uh in our school compared to the way that the white kids were treated.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and then not only not only in the school, but off of the school grounds, when you we would we we would be coming back home from a football game or a basketball game, and the police would stop us and they would search us and we were you know, we weren't doing anything wrong.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then seeing some of the kids that were getting beaten up by the cops, you know, when they weren't doing anything wrong.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So then it's just it hits you full force that you are being treated differently because you happen to be a Latino.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_04: That's very unfortunate to to hear and and it's something that we we uh see, we hear about this, we read this in articles and books all too often, and to meet somebody who's gone through these injustices is is um it's it's unbelievable to to hear these things.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_04: And my next question is a little bit about what you mentioned earlier.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_04: You you were raised in a house of principles, of of altruism and and helping people, not expecting anything in return.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_04: My question to you is with all these injustices that you were not only witnessing but going through yourself, you could have reacted a number of ways.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_04: You could have latched out, you could have uh uh done so many things.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_04: But you tr you chose to to advocate, you chose a path of justice.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_04: Why was that your route?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_04: Why did you choose that as opposed to all the other alternatives that you could have chosen?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think I was just very fortunate in that I met uh and I should have mentioned his name earlier, his name is Fred Ross Sr.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Fred Ross Sr.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: was a uh teacher at uh USC, University of Southern California.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he learned how to organize and uh during the uh Grapes of Wrath period and and teaching uh working with the Oakies actually that came to Bakersville.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: But uh he learned how to organize and he went into East Los Angeles and actually helped get the first Latino elected to the city council, Eduardo Roybal, and who became the first Latino person to go to the Congress.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he learned this method of grassroots organizing, of teaching people that they had power and that that they could actually make a difference in their community.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was very fortunate to meet him in Stockton, California when I was twenty five years old.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had belonged to a lot of different organizations, women's organizations, you know, we had dances and we raised money and we gave out baskets, you know, food baskets at at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and then he thought you were doing something great, but nothing changed, you know.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I belonged to all these different organizations, nothing changed, everything stayed the same.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: But then when I learned that if you organize at the grassroots level, at the community level, that that's where you make the changes.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And to me that was uh I say like finding the pot of the a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is how you make it happen.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta get the people together, you gotta take direct and nonviolent action, and this is how you make the changes.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta get people to register to vote, you gotta get people to vote, you gotta elect good people to represent you, and this is how you do it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was magic.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And speaking of grassroots, I mean, you know, that's one of the purposes of just spreading information and podcasts and just trying to communicate to others.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: So in the room, you know, we have young professionals, we have, you know, the future, we have um law students, we have legal, we have attorneys, uh, just people who are trying to make a difference, who care about the the community of San Diego.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: So do you have a message that you want to, you know, share with the people here today?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just a message as to how can we how can we help?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know we talked a little bit about voting and um, but you know, the this grassroots, how how else can we help?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: How else can we become involved?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: What's something you could say that would inspire those here?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, number one, I just want to thank everybody that makes that uh decides to dedicate their life uh to public service, because this is a public service where we're talking about, you know, because we we know that that's gonna make the difference.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I it's not eas it's not an easy uh decision to make because some it's sometimes it's easier to make.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna make a decision that I want to live a comfortable life.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make a lot of money, right?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So when you say I'm gonna dedicate myself to public public service, you know that's that that that to me is is like a higher calling.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like people going into the priesthood, like you were talking about.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: We just talking about going uh into the community to make the democracy work and to and to help change things to m to help make a better world.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is that if you don't do it, it's not gonna happen.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna happen without you.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to thank all of those people that that have made that decision.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and not only that, but you set up the example, you set up for other people uh to let them know that this is the way that that that you make the changes, right?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Without you it it will not happen.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really, really important uh that we set w we set that kind of an example for uh for others.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_04: The the message about public service, uh that's that's certainly something ingrained here in San Diego.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_04: Uh when you go to the county offices, the the government offices in San Diego County about ten or so minutes from here up north, there's a a sign at the entrance.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm gonna butcher what it says, but it's something along the lines of uh service to the public is the is the greatest calling.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_04: And that message resonates here locally.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_04: The the message that you helped start and communicate uh way back when in the nineteen sixties throughout the state of California, uh all the way from Central Valley.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_04: You mentioned earlier off the podcast that you have local ties here in San Diego with helping you said twelve hundred individuals uh register to vote.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_04: And sixteen thousand.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_04: I was a little off.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_04: I was a little off.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_04: Sixteen thousand.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_04: But but the the message of public service and commitment resonates even to today.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, one of our attendees, Lorena Slominton, who is in the back, she had relatives who were, I believe, involved in the she's right there in the back.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_04: Uh who were involved as well with the with the strikes and uh were were uh were a part of that big movement as well.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so she's here, she'll uh get to meet you later on.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh speaking of the grave strikes, what uh what do you think was the most memorable?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_04: What was the most uh memorable part of about doing such a pivotal critical movement uh that really turned the entire movement in in in your favor?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I don't I give a shout out to the gonzalez family, you know, and the Ibarra family for all of the work the work that they did for the farm workers union.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well I I think the the greatest lesson of the uh of the movement was the fact that you were able to get the you might say the people that were the most discriminated, you know, uh the farm workers that were take take on the higher powers uh uh again of the agribusiness industry, you know, the the again the banks, the uh the governor of California, Ronald Reagan, the president uh Richard Nixon, and win, you know, and uh able to win.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And but and the fact that they were able to win by reaching out to all of the American public to support them, which shows that we have all of the goodwill uh in people and people are willing to help us.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to figure out a way to reach out to them and invite them to come into the struggle.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now the other thing I thing I want to say, I think that the way to be successful is that we've gotta make the connections.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, right now we know we're we're still finding the racial discrimination uh in our schools.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we've also gotta start connecting attorneys with teachers, okay?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because teachers are out there fighting on their own, making sure that we get good school board members, uh trying to stop the school to prison pipeline.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we need to have uh these connections to uh to to make our so that we can consolidate our forces and and make our power a lot stronger.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because some of these issues we've been living with them now for decades.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yes, Temple.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's time that we we put a halt to all of this and we end all of this stuff.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not gonna happen and the teachers can't do it alone.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the attorneys can't do it alone.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but attorneys and teachers together and connecting with with the business community also.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times our business community, we have our Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, for instance.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna call them out, okay?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and instead of uh and and so when they think of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, what they represent a lot of small independent uh businesses.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: They don't represent the corporate the major corporations, but they go along with the policies of the major corporation against their own people, you know.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean we've gotta uh do more of a deep dive in terms of uh getting agreement on what our policies are, on the things that we're gonna be fighting for, and then fight together as a movement, not as an individual organization.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Miss Huerta, thank you so much for accompanying us today.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, CCP that you just embody strength, uh you embody hope, which I think is something that a lot of disenfranchised communities, you know, we look for, we strive for.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: We need hope.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thank you again for your message.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's empowering, it's beautiful, and uh, we want to support um your foundation.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I know John Gomez has a message and an announcement that he wants to make um just to show you a little bit of our gratitude.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, John.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: Let's first share a little bit about the foundation for the podcast.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us about uh the your foundation.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: I know we can find you at the Loreshuerta.org, uh, but tell us uh about the great work that you do.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're working primarily in the Central Valley of California, you know, where all the food comes from everybody, okay?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the people that feed you and uh trying to empower those communities uh to make sure we have a uh a better education for all of our kids.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Just stopping the school of prison pipeline for one of them, you know, one of the things that we're working on, uh to make sure that we have better health health again for the people in the uh Central Valley because they are exposed to pesticides, uh bad air pollution, the heat, et cetera, et cetera.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: You might say we have the worst health uh uh attributes that you can imagine, and we're trying to change that.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but again, the people are the ones that are fighting to make this happen uh for themselves again, and we need your help to support them so that they can uh make things a lot better in their communities.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're doing the work out there, and we just need your support to to to uh to help them.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's that's amazing uh work.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh thank you so much, Miss Huerta.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: I want to thank our amazing co-hosts, um Jessica Luhan and Agustin Peña.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: On behalf of, I want to announce uh a donation on behalf of uh the Latino Podcast, and we're gonna do it jointly.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be a donation on behalf of the Latino Podcast, the San Diego La Rasta Lawyers Association, and Gomez Trial Attorneys.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to donate$10,000 to help you uh continue the great work that you're doing.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so if if you're uh on the podcast, you may well have surmised that we have a live audience.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: This is a live audience podcast, which I think is rather unique in the podcast world.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so um it's been a great treat.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh for those of you who are not here um and listening, you you may um you may uh care to know that you know we're we're sitting here, we have maybe, I don't know, uh 80, 100 people here, all really um committed to uh activism, all committed to improving our communities.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we some of us gathered for lunch before.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: We heard comments from Ms.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Huerta to the uh audience as a whole.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: We did this live podcast, and then some of us are gonna break and uh have refreshments and commune and get to know each other and and pledge, you know, um a continued fight for these very important issues that you identified out here in the courtyard.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so um this concludes uh this episode of the Latino.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um we think it's uh gonna be one of the epics, one of the classics, one of the re-watch and re-listen to.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: And we're greatly humbled, you know, that we were joined by really uh one of the icons, one of the heroes of virtually everyone that cares about good people and good causes and good fights.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so thank you for being here.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: Until next time, uh we look forward uh to hooking up with you next time on the Latino.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much, everyone.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to the Latino podcast.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.