In May 1972, César Chávez was fasting inside Santa Rita Hall in Phoenix in protest of a new Arizona law against farmworker unions. Dolores Huerta had spent the day asking prominent Latino leaders for help, and they told her it could not be done in Arizona. She answered, “Sí se puede en Arizona,” and was still thinking about the exchange when she got to Mass in the hall that night and told the other activists about it. They stood up and started clapping the words.
\n\nHuerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers and coined that rallying cry, has died at 96. Her family announced her death on Wednesday in a Facebook post. The Arizona law stayed on the books anyway, while the phrase was taken up by unions, protest movements and, decades later, a presidential campaign.
\n\nShe was born Dolores Clara Fernández in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico. Her father was a miner and union activist who later won a seat in the state legislature. After her parents divorced, her mother took the children to California, and Huerta grew up in Stockton, a farmworker community in the San Joaquin Valley. She began teaching in rural California in 1954 and quit…
Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle
