NEW AMERICA MEDIA

May 13, 2007

Mother of 11 With a Cause

By Ray Estrada

Most mothers get to rest on Mother's Day. But for farm worker union co-founder Dolores Huerta, it will likely be another day on the road as a lifelong community organizer.

How do the children of perhaps the most famous Latina mother -- who has rubbed shoulders with the Kennedy clan and President Clinton -- honor their mom on her special day? What gift could she possibly want after 77 years of a still very active life?

Huerta's 11 children honor her year-round by serving on her foundation's board of directors or by their involvement in its pursuits. Three work in the office and many of the others have served on the foundation's board of directors. The foundation is to "dedicated developing indigenous leadership through community organizing."

The best way to honor a parent on Mother's Day, Huerta said, is to do something with them, "not necessarily buying something for them.

"Giving of your time is the most important thing you can do for your parents," said Huerta, who celebrated her 77th birthday last month at her foundation with family and friends.

As the grandmother of 14 and great grandmother to five, Huerta said she's probably going to spend Mother's Day this year organizing more children's marches similar to one she worked on at Olvera Street in Los Angeles on April 29.

An entire section of her foundation's Web site, www.doloreshuerta.org, is devoted to parenting. Huerta is not afraid to discuss her strident views on parenting.

Huerta's own mother, Alicia, was a strong role model. Huerta's mother brought her and her two brothers to Stockton to raise them and start a business. "My mother was what I call a Renaissance woman," she said. "She had a very acute business sense," running a restaurant and later a hotel in Stockton.

"In addition to that, she was an incredible cook," Huerta recalled. "She could cook up a banquet whenever Fred Ross and César Chavez came into town."

Not only that, Huerta said, her mother could sew, paint and wallpaper. Her mother learned very young how to do for herself. The one thing she couldn't do was teach Huerta to cook, but one of Huerta's sons, Vince, did become a chef.

"We need people to be involved and engaged, especially women," she said. "When women are not involved and engaged, it really sets a tone for the entire family because they traditionally spend more time with children. And when women are engaged and involved, the kids are engaged and involved."

She said parents should never leave their children behind, but take them to whatever cause they are working on because they will learn more.

Through her many years of organizing boycotts and demonstrations, Huerta remembers the times she was arrested -- sometimes with her children.

"My son Fidel, who is a doctor now, went to jail during the Gallo boycott while we were organizing the workers," she said. "My son Emilio, who is now an attorney, was arrested when he was working to get Tom Hayden elected to the state Senate. My daughter Juanita, who is now a teacher, was taken to jail when she was just three months old because the police stopped me, they said, because my tires were too thin."

Through the years, Huerta's activism has inspired many other parents and grandparents.

"I remember when I go to speak someplace and these kids walk up to me and say, 'My mother took me to march with César (Chávez),'" Huerta said. "Even when these kids might have been babies, they have that sense of pride and it really opens the door for them to think of what they can do to help other people."

She offers this advice for today's Latino parents: "I think children need discipline," she said. "One of the problems especially poor people make is when they start getting a little bit better off, they think that they have to shower their kids with presents. That's the worst thing to do."

Huerta said her children grew up with poor farm workers. Most of their toys were old or what friends had given them. The old toys did not get thrown out.

"A lot of parents think they have to buy their kids everything, and that's the worst thing that they can do," she said. "(The children) won't know what it's like to be rejected or have somebody deny them something, and this is life, you know, life is hard."

Too many toys may make children believe "the world owes them something," Huerta said. "They have to know you've got to work for it."

That type of upbringing, she said, teaches children "to learn to be resourceful and to do for himself or herself and not have somebody do so many things for them."

Huerta said while children are growing up, parents must instill the value of doing things for other people.

"It's not about how much you get, but it's about how much you give," she said. "And that is true happiness because when people really give to others, they find joy. In order to give to others, you've got to be strong and healthy, which means you cannot indulge in alcohol or abuse drugs because that makes you weak, and if you're weak you can't do your best at helping others."

As a former Girl Scout, Huerta encourages today's Latinas to get involved in that program to build strength and character.

"We raise our young women to be weak," she said. "We tell them someone's going to protect you, someone's going to support you, someone's going to take care of you. We teach our young women to be defenseless, and it makes them very easy to be dominated, to be manipulated and later on to be assaulted or raped because they do not know how to defend themselves physically or emotionally."

Huerta said all young women should learn to value themselves.

"Mothers have to raise their boys so that they learn to cook for themselves and do all their own laundry and their own cleaning," she said. This is so boys won't think of women as servants.

This will allow society to hear more women's voices and help get them elected to political and corporate offices, Huerta said. "We need women as decision makers, and they can't do this if they are just busy doing something for someone else," she said.

"If mothers were to get paid for all that they do, it would raise our Gross National Product; it would double it.

"Mothers have to take these lessons to heart," Huerta said. She said things like sharing housework might create some conflicts. "But it is like Ghandi said, 'When there are conflicts, there are truths that are there, and in resolving conflicts the truths come out.'"

Don't look for Huerta to shy away from the current conflicts that are most important to her and the struggles they may bring.

Her most recent activism involves a postcard-writing campaign to the White House to demand President Bush halt deportation raids on farm workers by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Some of those raids have occurred in the past few months in Mendota, Firebaugh, Madera and Kerman where parents of U.S.-born children were deported. As a mother, Huerta said she is keenly interested in this family issue since it shows the tremendous need for immigration reform, another cause she has been involved with most of her life.

Huerta said she hopes another measure will replace the currently debated "STRIVE Act," proposed by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.

"Hopefully, there will be another better bill introduced," she said. "Of course they all have to go to conference committee and shake it all out." She said the bill criminalizes immigrants and mobilizes the border.

Expect to see Huerta on the front lines of that battle, where she has always been and where she expects more Latinas to be in the future

After years of staring down growers while negotiating labor contracts and working as a lobbyist, she said, "The women are always at the front of every movement, (but) when history gets written, the women already get left out of the history."

Of her mom, daughter Alicia Huerta said: "My mother is a good example, there is no excuse! Follow your dreams. For my mother it is giving to the community and her country.

"Sometimes our family communication was relayed via a long-distance phone call; but that is what it takes. She has given us the ‘Si Se Puede’ attitude. My mother inspires me even today when I hear her speak publicly.

"Over the years she has opened her heart to workers, students and women providing inspiration. It is an honor for me to view my mother's work first-hand and be a part of her family," Alicia Huerta said. "She has passed on family traditions and shared her knowledge of our family history so we can be proud and pass it on to our children."

Dr. Fidel Huerta said his mother gave her children unique opportunities and a chance to meet many famous people such as Dr. Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other labor leaders. "She gave us an education, but paid the price," the Bakersfield family physician said. "Because she was traveling, she wasn't around and my sisters made the meals."

As for his arrest with his mother, Dr. Huerta said his mother gave him the choice to go with her to pass out union election leaflets to workers in the field. He knew it might be dangerous because they had to walk by a "No Trespassing" sign. "She told me what could happen. It was kind of scary," he said.

But he learned something from his mother. She taught he and his siblings the importance of helping people. Today, as a physician, his life is filled with helping others.