Delores Huerta. Courtesy photo.
OXNARD — National civil rights activist, labor leader, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Dolores Huerta will speak at the Latino Issues Forum (LIF) “su voto primero” (Your Vote First) rally at Plaza Park in Oxnard at 10:30 a.m. Saturday Oct 27. The event elected officials and community leaders from throughout Ventura County, organizers reported in a media release.
A prominent leader in the national Latino community, Huerta has dedicated her life to correcting injustice.
In 1960 Huerta and César Chávez co-founded the National Farm Workers Association which would later become the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOK). Huerta’s organizing skills propelled the growth of this organization into the current United Farm Workers (UFW) union.
In 1965, Huerta directed the UFW’s national boycott during the grape strike in Delano, Ca., taking the plight of farm workers directly to American consumers. Five years later the boycott resulted in the entire table grape industry signing a three-year labor agreement with the UFW.
On June 5, 1968, Huerta stood beside Senator Robert F. Kennedy on a speaker’s platform at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as he delivered a victory statement to supporters shortly after winning the California Democratic presidential primary election. Only moments after the candidate finished his speech, Huerta was a safe distance behind Kennedy as he was fatally shot.
In 1997, Dolores Huerta was named one of the three most important women of the year by Ms. Magazine.
In 1998 Huerta was an inaugural recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights from President Clinton. That same year, Ladies Home Journal recognized her as one of the 100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century, along with such women leaders as Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, Rosa Parks and Indira Gandhi.
The forum is presented by SEIU Local 721, the Central Coast Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Clinicas del Camino Real, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Santa Paula Town Hall.
