In Balmy Alley, a group of several dozen gathered for a vigil Wednesday evening to honor Dolores Huerta, the legendary labor organizer, who died earlier in the day at the age of 96.
Earlier this year, said Brooke Oliver, a friend and legal advocate of Huerta’s, Huerta had been in Rome, meeting the pope. In an interview with PBS in August, Huerta reported that she had asked Pope Leo XIV “When are we going to have women priests?” According to Huerta, the pope responded, “Slowly, but slowly.”
“He didn’t say no,” Huerta said. “So that’s hope, right?”
At the vigil, Joshua Arce, a longtime fixture in local politics and friend of Huerta’s, recalled how Huerta spent hours in his home in Balmy Alley last year, calling state assembly members and persuading them to put Proposition 50 to redraw Congressional lines on the 2025 ballot. After five hours of making calls, Arce recalled, Huerta told him one holdout remained.
“I said, ‘now what?’” Arce recalled. “She said, ‘I’m going to get on the road to Sacramento. I’m going to go to their office.’”
Her involvement in the Chicano movement came at a personal cost. Earlier this year, the New York Times published a bombshell report five years in the making that Cesar Chavez had sexually abused at least two underaged girls. Huerta also told the Times on the record that Chavez sexually assaulted her twice — and that two of her children were, secretly, his. “She took a lot of pain into her soul in favor of the movement,” said Oliver, “hiding things that had happened to her that were incredibly painful.”
Many speakers were teary-eyed as they shared other memories of Huerta. They spoke of her humility and her love of dance and tequila. They recounted how she trained community organizers through the Dolores Huerta Foundation and how nothing could stand in the way of her activism.
“She’s the greatest Chicano organizer ever,” Oliver said. “She’s the matriarch of the Chicano movement.”
Eva Vidaurri Royale worked with Huerta at United Farm Workers and on other campaigns for nearly five decades. She told the story of how, in 1988, Huerta was handing out pamphlets outside the St. Francis Hotel, and was beaten so badly by an SFPD officer that she wound up in the hospital. “Nothing happened to the officer,” Vidaurri Royale said.
But a reporter who had been interviewing Huerta that day got footage of the officer who attacked her. Huerta ultimately received a settlement of $2,000 dollars a month for the rest of her life, which Huerta described as “my retirement fund from the San Francisco Police Department.” It subsidized Huerta’s activism for the rest of her life, Vidaurri Royale said.
“These positions she took were incredibly risky,” said Michael Rouppet, political action officer of the San Francisco Latino Democratic Club. “I remember when she stood in solidarity with HIV activists.”
“What we can’t lose in our activism is that sense of solidarity,” Rouppet continued. “When we organize, we win — and she exemplified that. Today is an incredible loss, but also a celebration of everything she brought to the world.”
“Dolores said, the most important day of your life is not your birthday. It’s election day,” Vidaurri Royale continued. “You need to vote. Please, for Dolores Huerta, get out the vote. Sí, se puede!”
“Sí, se puede!,” the crowd echoed, using the phrase Huerta is credited with developing into a chant that became the mantra of not only the United Farmworkers, but many an opposition group.
