Report on Dolores Huerta Event

Dolores Huerta, co founder of the United Farm Workers Union, a national
Chair of DSA, and a leading advocate for social justice gave a rousing
performance to over 800 students and community members at California State
University Sacramento on March 26,2004.

The event, co-sponsored by the Women's Resource Center and the Feminist
Majority Coalition was a part of the campus celebration of Women's History
Month.

Huerta asserted that women and young women needed to get elected to
office and into the board rooms of corporations. She encouraged the
substantially female audience to get active politically.

As a Vice President of the United Farmworkers, Huerta became famous in
the 1970's both for her role as a contract negotiator, and for her
development of the slogan Si se puede! as a union chant.
Dolores held a conversation with the mostly college age crowd rather
than giving them a lecture. She dealt with immediate concerns which the
students faced- such as child care. She asserted that women needed to
teach men to take care of themselves - such as cooking, laundry, etc. rather
than doing the work for the men.


She drew mass applause with her arguments that women- particularly young
women should take part in the political process and voting. She noted that
all of the European nations, and Cuba and Costa Rica had free health care
for all while the U.S. lacked such universal care. She called upon young
women to get involved and demand a universal health system.
Huerta used the current California budget cuts as examples of why young
people had to get involved and to vote. She said that the current Bush
Administration was carrying out a war against unions and she called for a
legalization program for immigrants not a bracero program.

Over and over Dolores pleaded with the energized audience to get
involved in politics and urged them to participate in the April 25th.
national march on Washington, D.C. for Women's Rights. The audience
responded enthusiastically to her pleas and pledged to join the fight for
unions and social justice.