Portside

Chavez was the public figure, but Huerta and farmworkers across America, including in Illinois, carried the farm labor movement. Metro Chicago has more agricultural workers than other parts of Illinois — they tend nurseries and landscape or mow lawns

Dolores Huerta has long been a champion for women using their voices to speak truth to power. But her silence on Cesar Chavez is a reminder of the stakes for women in movements.

With the horror of the revelations of his sexual predations, an already tarnished icon collapses.

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“I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences,” she wrote.

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Huerta’s approach to activism is to take it day by day, victory by victory. Building a movement is the work of a lifetime; it takes time, commitment and hope.

Dolores Huerta has contributed to movements for union rights and social justice since the of the United Farm Workers (UFW). Working with Cesar Chavez, Philip Vera Cruz and others, she helped found what became the UFW. Today, now 86, she works in supporting union democracy, civic engagement and empowerment of women and youth in disadvantaged communities. The UFW changed the nature of labor organizing in the Southwest contributing to the growth of Latino politics in the US