Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers to speak Tues March 11 at St. Mary's College

(Passing this news along: Dolores Huerta will be speaking at 6:30pm in Carroll Auditorium of Madeleva Hall on the campus of St. Mary's College - KJH)

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It is an honor for Saint Mary's College to bring Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), to our campus and community.

Dolores has played a major role in the American labor, environmental, women's and civil right's movement, and has been arrested 22 times for non-violent peaceful union activities. Dolores served a key role in the early years of farm worker organizing, and she spoke out early and often against toxic pesticides that threaten farm workers, consumers, and the environment.

She directed the UFW's national grape boycott taking the plight of the farm workers to the consumers. If the UFW organizing efforts gave birth to boycotts as a means of nonviolent action in the marketplace, then Dolores Huerta can quite rightly be considered the midwife of that movement.

In 1993 Dolores was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. That same year she received the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award, and the Eugene V. Debs Foundation Outstanding American Award. In 1998 she was one of three Ms. Magazine's, "Women of the Year", and the Ladies Home Journal's, "100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century".

Dolores still works long hours for the union she co-founded and nurtured. Many days she is in cities across North America promoting "La Causa" and women's rights, and most recently, she has been traveling the country, speaking at marches on behalf of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States and advocating for the Dream Act.

Born in 1930 in New Mexico, today she is the mother of 11 children, 14 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.