In this episode of Who Cares!, SEIU 2015 President Arnulfo De La Cruz sits down with legendary labor leader and feminist Dolores Huerta. They reflect on her work co-founding the United Farm Workers and how that experience applies to the challenges to workers rights and well-being faced by workers today.
Transcript
Arnulfo De La Cruz: Welcome to Who Cares!, the podcast from SEIU Local 2015, the largest union of long term care workers in the United States. My name is Arnulfo De La Cruz, President of SEIU 2015. On this show, we talk with leaders and caregivers about the fights that shape our lives and our democracy.
Today, we’re honored to be joined by a legendary voice in labor and civil rights, a co-founder, along with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers and a lifelong feminist in the force behind what we all know today as “Si Se Puede”, Dolores Huerta. Welcome, Dolores.
Dolores Huerta: Oh, thank you. Arnold, so thank you for inviting me to join you in this wonderful podcast.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: Yeah, we’re so happy to have you. And Dolores, on every episode of Who Cares, we start with the story about care. Can you share a time when you were giving or receiving care? Maybe in your family, maybe in the movement that shaped how you think about social justice?
Dolores Huerta: Well, I had an aneurysm in the year 2000 and I was disabled for seven months where I could not even talk, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t write, and I was fed with a tube. You know, during all of that period of time, had it not been for the people that were able to take care of me, I don’t think I would not be alive today. I never thought I would be able to walk again or talk again, but the kind of care that I received, I was just very, very fortunate, and I was really lucky.
I’m luckier than most people, because I do have a doctor, my son, Fidel. My daughter who’s a doctor and MD, my daughter Angela, who’s a nurse, and my granddaughter Karina, who’s a nurse. So that was very fortunate. Most people are not that fortunate to have that many caregivers in their family.
But just recently, we had one of our good friends who just recently died of cancer, and you know, but the caregiving that he received during that period of time, it was just so important so that he was able to be comfortable until the last moment of his days. So caregiving is essential for life. It literally brings life to people like myself, that I was able to recover, and now I’m able to travel, I’m able to work, able to do all of these things because of the care that I received.
And this was such an important, you might say, a social need that we have, a health need that we have right now in our society. God bless all of the caregivers, because I can imagine, you know, what they have to go through, because I’m sure that not all patients are very compliant, and you have to be able to help them, even though sometimes they may be resisting, or sometimes they may feel like myself. I used to like to feel I can take care of myself. I don’t need anybody to take care of me, but people know that they can’t, and so it’s always good to make them feel that they’re important, even though they’re needy. And this is what caregivers do.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: What a powerful story. And I’m gonna sit with that: caregiving is essential to life. I don’t know that anyone’s ever described it in such a powerful way. Dolores, I remember when you were sick and you came back stronger than ever. So thank you for grounding us in that, and I’m sorry to hear about the passing of your dear friend. Care is where we find our strength.
And you know, Dolores, you helped lead historic boycotts that brought power through collective action to workers that had long been underpaid and mistreated by their employers because of that, while we still have a long way to go, workers receive better pay, they got union contracts, they were able to join a union. They got better working conditions.
And I tell a lot of the caregivers, there are some similarities between farm workers and caregivers. Both workers were kind of left out of the New Deal and these basic American protections until this day, the 750,000 caregivers in California still have no retirement, if we can imagine that, because of a lot of the federal rights and protections that they were left out of. So I think there’s a lot of lessons we can learn from you and the experience of building power for a group of workers who most of America couldn’t see.
I’m reminded that caregiving, like you said, has also worked behind closed doors. It happens in people’s homes and their bedrooms. How do you see your work with the United Farm Workers and your life’s work of justice living on today?
Dolores Huerta: Well, it’s always good to know, as you mentioned, that the farm workers that do have a union agreement, that they do have a pension as part of that labor agreement, and to know that, yeah, these farm workers who work their entire life–and it’s very hard, physical work, as we know, to work out there in those fields–and to know that they’re taken care of, that they have a pet. Pension check in addition to the Social Security that they receive. Well, it’s probably not as much as they should be able to have in terms of their pension, but God knows that it does help a lot.
And I, you know, I keep running into farm workers all the time who tell me that they are getting that pension check, or run into their sons and daughters, and they tell me, yeah, my dad was a member of the Union, and he gets that pension check every year. This is really so important.
You know, both of these occupations that we’re talking about, the farm workers nourishing all of us. You know, they pick the food. And I like to say that they’re very essential workers, just like the healthcare workers are very essential workers. We know that even though the work that they had done is essential to life, but we know that they do not get the same kind of pensions and the same kind of salaries that say policemen get or firemen get, and I think that’s part of our job is to kind of raise the level of recognition and respect that they deserve so that they will get treated equally, because their work is just, you know, firemen go out there to put on a fire to save a life, and that’s what health care givers do. And then the farm workers, of course, nourishing life every single day while they’re out there working. So we have to keep working very hard to raise both occupations, farm workers and caregivers, to the level of respect that they deserve.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: I know that a big part of earning respect and building the power to be recognized. I wish it was easy in this country to just sign a union card and then you start negotiating a contract, but we know far too many workers that’s not the case, and I know that strikes and boycotts were some of the most powerful tools that you used as a leader in the movement. I don’t know if I’ve said this to you, the Lord is before in this way, but I do attribute your leadership. I don’t know that my family, you know, my family, could have had a life of poverty if you didn’t recruit my father into the movement. And you taught so many organizers and people who build power for workers how to use powerful tools to build power for themselves and so, particularly with strikes and boycotts, do you still consider those in this moment where SEIU and workers across the country are trying to imagine, how in such a difficult moment To still be powerful. Would you still consider those powerful tools for workers?
Dolores Huerta: Yeah, and I’ve seen, I think we’ve seen the impact of boycotts just recently, and with the Jimmy Kimmel firing, you know, on on ABC, when the Disney company took him off the air, and then you had over a million people, almost 2 million people that cancel their subscriptions to the Disney Channel and the Disneyland vacations, and that was such an immediate impact. Within a week, you know, they had to put them back on the air.
So we see that impact of people power, of people using their power to say, boycott and just withholding, you know, their money to give to these very powerful channels like Disney. And we saw that actually, with a target boycott, a lot of people that stopped buying at Target because they took away their diversity, their equity and inclusion policies. And people said, well, we’re not going to buy there anymore. If they don’t respect us, we’re not going to give them our money.
And so we see that boycotts still work, and we know that strikes also still work, we saw labor conflicts that have been held recently, that people actually won. The big one, of course, was when the entertainment industry. They had this really, really long strike, but the people held out, and eventually they were able to settle. And so these are very, very powerful weapons that we have, but we think of boycotts and we think of strikes.
This is what we’re talking about: people power. People Power. And that’s the one thing that we really have to constantly remind people that they do have the power. And we’ve seen these very, very dramatic examples just in recent days, that they do work.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: Yes, that’s right. I actually remember Dolores, we spoke a while ago about Target and all the great work that was happening in the Midwest. And you know, another thing I want to say, probably over 90% of the long term care workforce in California and across the country is done by women, right? The caregivers are the vast majority are women. We estimate nearly half of them in California, roughly, are immigrant women as well. What role do you think women and caregivers play in shaping the future of the labor movement?
Dolores Huerta: Well, we have seen many women that have come out as leaders. I think the SEIU is a really good example. You have. Your national president is a woman, April. You know, we’ve seen–and I guess, actually, the president before April,was also a woman–and they led this SEIU to become, I think, probably the largest labor organization in the country. I think I’m saying that correctly. I didn’t, but this was led by women.
And of course, in the California Labor Federation, now led by a Latina woman, Lorena Gonzalez. And then the other great thing, we have women that come out of the labor movement, and then they run for office, and then they’re elected. And then, you know, when we have women like that, that they are champions for the labor movement in Sacramento or in Washington, DC, and then we have that very strong I’m going to say it’s a bedrock, because working people are the majority of the population.
Unfortunately, working people don’t always have the greatest representation that they should have in our state legislatures, in our Congress. So when we see labor leaders come out, and then they run for political office, then we know that this is not only the strength, you might say, for the people that work, but it’s a strength for the whole country, because people that come out of labor unions have very, very strong values about not only for the working people themselves, but also for their families. And so I think it’s always a really, really good sign when we have a lot of women that, you know, they get those very important leadership positions in the Union itself, but then also in the legislature or in the school board or city councils, etc,
Arnulfo De La Cruz: That’s wonderful. Entonces para todas Mujeres las que es tan cuidando personas en sus casas ya escucholas SEIU Dolores dijo que sei se puede que viva la mujer. And we really appreciate you sharing that, Dolores.
I’m going to shift a little bit to immigration and advocacy. You know, in SEIU 2015, and all of our meetings, like our board meetings, we hold our meetings in eight different languages, so we have simultaneous translation. We’re having one conversation in all of the languages that reflect California, because caregivers obviously don’t just speak English, right? And they’re a beautiful reflection of the diversity of California. And I do think that’s a unique space where you have so many different people speaking so many languages, building power with a common set of values and goals.
And I know that workers and immigrants are often pitted against each other, especially in this moment, in the fight for good wages, for fair treatment and worker protections. And we know in fact, the opposite is true: the same people who attack immigrants are also often the ones who are attacking workers. Why do you think worker and immigrant rights are inseparable?
Dolores Huerta: We just have to remember this, that when we’re fighting for workers rights, we are really trying to do away with the legacy of slavery, because under slavery, people were supposed to work their entire lives to make other people wealthy without having anything for themselves or for their families. What changed that picture were labor unions, where people got together and they demanded, you know, better working conditions and better benefits, and they had to fight very hard to get this.
You know, a lot of times people don’t know the history of how hard labor leaders had to fight. I even talk about the eight hour day. A lot people don’t. When you say to people, how did we get the eight hour day? Well, we got the eight hour day because labor leaders in Chicago at the turn of the last century, not even this century, they fought there to get that eight hour day.
And then we say, what happened to those people? What happened to them? They were executed. They were hung because they fought for the eight hour day. And all of us take that now as a given that our work day should be eight hours, but we don’t know how we got there.
So when we think of the sacrifices that the labor leaders have had to make to be able to get those benefits, and we know, again, a lot of the workers that populated our day, they were also immigrants, just like the people that we see today. And when we see that, the people are being disparaged and they’re having this horrible treatment right now, because there’s this war, we might call it like it’s an ethnic war, because primarily targeted on people of color, whether they’re black, brown or Asian, and considered as outsiders, even though they’ve been here for generations. We know that this is really, really wrong, but you know, these are, as you say, they are one and the same, and we’ve all got to continue our fight.
The other thing too, this is a dark period that we’re going through, but we know that it’s going to pass, and so that we have to start planning. What is it that we want in the future? You know, again, we want universal health care. We want universal health care for everyone, like they have in Europe, like they’ve had in England since after World War Two, and we want, again, a universal daycare for everyone, and we also want wage increases and benefits for our home care workers. These are the things that we have to start fighting for right now.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: I’m going to just highlight everything you say. There’s so much to unpack, but in SEIU 2015, we do talk about the history of slavery, connection between the history of slavery and caregiving. And you said that the expectation in slavery was that you would work your entire life to make someone else rich, and the labor union was what broke that cycle.
It just is such a powerful way to describe what we’re up against, especially as caregiver workers, to break a cycle of poverty, and that it’s not work that’s supposed to enrich other people, but it’s enriching people’s lives to be able to live in their own homes with dignity. So I just really appreciate you sharing that in this moment where we see it seems like every day, not just United States citizens, right? It could be just how you look, right, just on the language that you speak, the color of your skin, United States citizens, people who are undocumented, legal permanent residents. TPS, they’re being pulled over. They’re being taken away, detained. We know a couple of stories already in California where literally, immigrants have lost their lives out of fear running from ICE. How can unions in labor in this moment show solidarity with immigrant families facing deportations or exclusion, or in this moment where literally, our community is under attack?
Dolores Huerta: Well, one of the things that people have been doing, and I think it’s wonderful to see how many people that are not people of color, but there are angles that will come out to support the immigrant community, where they’re joining the protests and the marches and the demonstrations all over the country, like they’ve been doing on No Kings Day, where you had millions of people that showed up to kind of show that they were not in agreement with what the Trump administration is doing.
The other thing that we have to do in our community is help those families who have had members of their family deported, help them. We know that they need food, they need rental assistance, and again, people need a lot of information on how to protect themselves when they do get accosted.
But also we know, as I said before, that this moment will pass. And so we know that we have seen this in the past, where we have mass deportations. And then guess what? They need the workers, so bring everybody back in, okay?
And this happened in the ‘30s. It happened in the ‘40s. It happened in the ‘50s, and more recently. And so after these deportations, and we come back and we see, well, we once we get a new Congress and a new president, we’ll get another amnesty program, just like we did in 1986 and like we did back when the Bracero Program ended in the 40s.
So we can look forward to that, it’s going to happen, but we have to try right now as much as we can, to just stay as vigilant as we can. And the main thing too, is that we do not answer this horrible treatment that people are receiving, that we do not respond with violence, because this is exactly what they would like. They would like us to respond with violence. Because that way, you know, the President would love to declare martial law on the whole country, you know. So we’ve got to be really, really careful, as angry as we are.
But now we have an opportunity in California to vote on Proposition 50, which is going to be on the ballot on November the fourth. And I think the ballots are going to start arriving next week, I think on October the sixth or something. If we vote Yes on Proposition 50, then we can change the Congress, and then we can change the Congress, because this is a Congress that is using our tax dollars, our money to fund ICE and to do all of these terrible things that are happening to our communities of color.
So we have an opportunity to say, I’m going to say this in Spanish, tenemos que sei Cara los wayas es del Congreso. All of those donkeys that you know, voted to give this money to ICE–our money, our tax dollars, $147 billion to ICE and to reopen these, these centers where people are suffering, in these detention centers. And as you said, people have been killed. We don’t know how many, but we know recently in Chicago, another man was killed after he dropped his children off at school. These terrible things that are happening to our community. So we have to stay very, very strong.
I like to quote the poet Pablo Neruda, who said, you know, “they can cut all the flowers, but they can’t hold back the spring.” Pueden cortado la flores, pero no pueden de tener la primavera.
We are the spring, the working people, the home care workers, the farm workers, the janitors, the auto workers, the hotel workers, everybody out there in the health industry. We are the spring, and we’re going to be here when all of this terrible stuff is gone.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: “They can cut down the flowers, but they can’t stop the spring.” So everyone listening, caregivers, allies, the public, we are the spring. That’s such powerful words from Dolores Huerta.
You got into Proposition 50 and Dolores, I feel like I don’t know anyone as much as you who knows every ballot initiative. Sometimes I’ll talk to you about a city council race in a small city in LA and you know who’s running. You are a living example of what it means to be civically engaged, and I know how much of your life’s work has been building political power and civic engagement and participation.
Speaking of Proposition 50 and voting rights playing a critical role in protecting workers, voting, as you have always taught us, is the way that workers can hold elected officials accountable, and Proposition 50 is a way that California does our granito de arena right. We make our contribution to protecting our democracy and leveling the playing field while other states try to rig their elections. And you know that I’ve worked in Texas, the Texans are incredible people, but it was a group of elected officials in Texas. They didn’t take it to the voters like we do here in California. Why is voting and showing up and participating so essential to the labor movement?
Dolores Huerta: Well, the reason voting is important is because we, by voting, we elect the people that are going to govern us. We elect the people that are going to pass the laws that we have to live by. And when we’re talking about the labor movement, and this is why I mentioned earlier, this is so important to get labor people in the legislature and in the Congress.
Because the corporations are very, very powerful, as we’re seeing right now, how powerful the corporations are, and the only way that we can push back against them is by getting people to pass laws that will contain them and hold them back a little bit, and pass laws that will help working people, but we can only do that if we vote. If we don’t vote, then the bosses have their way, and the workers don’t, don’t have any voice at all.
And the one good thing about belonging to a labor union, then you have a body of people, and then you can educate them on their rights, because otherwise it’s really hard to do that. We know civic engagement has been taken out of our schools. They don’t teach it anymore. It was a Republican President, I think it was either Reagan or Bush that took civic engagement out of our schools, and so people are not taught the importance of voting anymore.
When I went to school way back in the ‘30s, you know, elementary school, we were taught that. So now, like belonging to a labor union, this is one way that you can learn because our Constitution of the United States of America says, “for the people, by the people”, and that means it is the legislatures, the people that we elect, the public officials: they are supposed to work for the people. But then we, by the people, are the ones that elect them.
So it’s absolutely crucial that every single person understand why voting is important and why they need to vote, and how the whole legislative process works, okay? A lot of people don’t know. They come out of college and they don’t understand, you know, how the legislative process works. So it’s really important in our unions, this is a one way that people can be taught that,
Arnulfo De La Cruz: You know, Proposition 50, we’re getting mail every day. You see TV ads. There’s millions and millions of dollars spent. Maybe there’s a lot of confusion. What role do ballot initiatives like Proposition 50 play in protecting fair representation for our communities?
Dolores Huerta: Well, ballot propositions give us an opportunity to maybe bypass the legislature, and we can take it directly to the people, and that’s what we’re doing. Although, in California, the state legislature had to approve that they were going to bypass the Independent Commission, but only temporarily. Because the Independent Commission that draws the voting districts that will still be in place until in 2030 I believe.
But right now, we’re bypassing the independent commission, and the reason we’re bypassing them is because we have an emergency! We have a crisis! We have all of our tax dollars that are being spent to do all of these terrible things against our community. And so we can’t wait until 2030 because by that time, conditions will only become worse. They won’t become any better. So this is our one opportunity that we can change our voting districts so that we can elect more Democrats, more people that care about working people to the Congress and get some of those bad people out.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: That’s right. I always, when I’m speaking to young people, I share with them something that you’ve always told me, which is, if you look at the history of the United States, the only thing that has changed conditions or movements have been when young people decide to take action. For a young person who says, “why?” You know, “politics is for older people,” or “why does my vote matter?” What message would you have for our young caregivers or young people listening?
Dolores Huerta: Yeah, and I’ll share with them, Arnulfo, the message that you were referring to. Because if we look at the history of our country, and we see when the big changes have been made, it’s always been made when they step out.
You know, women got the right to vote because women fought for so many years, and it was the young women that were at the forefront. The Vietnam War had the whole country divided, until the young people took to the streets, and they demanded that the war be ended. And it did, you know, the war ended. The Civil Rights movement was the same thing. People in the south, black people were denied the right to vote. Well, again, it was mostly the young people that went out there, and they were beaten up. They were arrested. They had fire hoses turned on them, and you know what? They won, and they finally got the right to vote.
And the same thing happened with the environmental movement. It was young people again that took to the streets and said, We’ve got to form an environmental movement. The LGBTQ movement, demanding respect for their own gender that they had, the third gender, we call it, but they won that respect. And we know some of those battles are still continuing, and it’s been a pushback, but it’s always been the young people that have made history, including the labor movement,
Arnulfo De La Cruz: Just shifting gears a little bit. As we think about the political challenges and the attacks on workers–not just workers, but also just unions as organizations for workers to build power–This administration has repeatedly attempted to roll back worker protections and labor rights, which are connected to these broader attacks on immigrants and women in communities of color. As you mentioned, despite these attacks, working people continue to move forward. They continue to organize and build resilience, build cross racial solidarity, even in a moment where there’s enormous political pressure. What gives you hope when you see working people continuing to organize despite how big the challenges are right now?
Dolores Huerta: Well, we know that the labor movement is still alive. We know that we still have a lot of challenges, but we know that the only people that can solve this whole issue of anti labor sentiment is the people themselves. We cannot wait for somebody else to come in and do it for us. The working people have to stand up for their own rights, because that’s what builds us. The strong foundation of the labor movement is when people stand up for their own rights, and they don’t wait for somebody else to come in and do it for them.
So I believe that that sentiment is growing, and we see a young people in the labor force that are actually standing up for their own rights, like even people that work at Starbucks, people that work at Amazon, all of these other places where people still don’t have labor union that they’re standing up right now and they’re fighting but we know that in order, again, going back to the voting issue, in order to strengthen the arms and legs and in the body of the labor movement, we have to elect more people to the Congress and to the state legislatures to give the working people the tools that they need to be able to have the kind of a strong organizations that they need to represent them.
Because the corporations are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. They’re getting richer and richer and richer. So it’s putting all these obstacles to the working people to get the contracts. So even oftentimes, even though they vote for representation, they don’t get the contracts, because the corporation will stall and stall and stall. We have a really good example with the United Farm Workers who won an election at this big company called Wonder. This company there has billionaires. They’re not millionaires, they’re billionaires, and yet they refuse to give their workers a union contract, even though they have had two workers that were killed not too long ago, the conditions are so unsafe for that company. And when you have a labor agreement, you have the union steward that is out there making sure that the workers are safe. So just even for safety reasons we need to have stronger unions
Arnulfo De La Cruz: Thinking about the future, looking towards the future, SEIU 2015, we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary. That’s where we get our name, right. 2015 was the year that the statewide Long Term Care Workers Union was formed before it was four different locals in different parts of California, and 2015 was the year that created one caregiving organization literally almost in every county across California, and that that that’s been 10 years of fighting for caregivers all over the state of California. 10 years of fighting for standards and dignity and respect for caregivers. 10 years of fighting for more resources for the people we take care of and also in solidarity and fighting for our communities. What can we learn in the caregivers movement from the farm workers movement that would apply to our next 10 years of our fight for today’s long term care workers?
Dolores Huerta: I think I have seen that already. I know, Arnulfo, under your leadership, that you reach out to everybody to support the caregivers. You know, it’s not just labor, but you reach out to other people in the community, public officials, other organizations. Because caregivers, you know, they take care of everybody, and no matter what walk of life they live in, or what walk of life they come from, caregivers are there for everybody, and you have done just exactly that.
You have reached out to everybody, other professional organizations, other nonprofit organizations, all you all come because all of you are being assisted and supported by caregivers, and now we need you to also come and support and so these really big manifestations that we have seen in Orange County and Fresno and other places, when you bring all the community together to say, “you’ve got to stand here with with the home care workers.”
You know, this is what I think has made the difference, because now people respect your organization, because they know if you’re going to mess with a home care workers, you’re going to mess with everybody in the community, all right, because you, everybody here has your back.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: Yeah, and we’re so grateful for you. What you just said, you’ve demonstrated yourself personally, standing with caregivers all over the state of California, and we’re so grateful for all of the work that you’ve done on behalf of caregivers as part of the broader movement. It’s been an incredible journey, and I know that so many caregivers from across California have such wonderful memories of standing next to you in their fight for justice.
You know, sometimes we’ll have a caregiver who’s a union member, and they say we did all this work, knocking on doors, making phone calls for this candidate. And look, we put them in power, and they’re not doing what we want them to do. Sometimes, that’s a common sentiment, right? Maybe for those who aren’t always involved in politics, but they say, “we elect people, we put them in office, and they’re not doing what they have committed to do on the campaign.” How do we ensure the hard work of long term care is respected by elected officials?
Dolores Huerta: Well, I think one thing we have to do is stay on top of them, because what happens once they get elected? They get all of these pressures from these lobbyists like the corporations have to have so much money they can hire two or three people up in Sacramento or up in Washington, DC to constantly, constantly be on top of these people that are in the public officials of the legislature.
So we have to do the same thing. We have to be constantly on vigil, constantly in touch with them, and not just saying we want you to do this or that, but also to say, send them a thank you, and thank you very much for voting on this particular piece of legislation, because this is something that our comms community needed.
And maybe it does not always have to do with the workplace, but maybe I’m on the board of the Consumer Federation of California, And we know that a lot of the bills are not directly union related, but they do affect the membership of the Union. And so we want to say thank you also for standing up for our workers. They get so much pressure once they get elected from the corporate side, and they hardly hear from our side, except when we have a particular piece of legislation that we’re trying to pass, so it’s important.
And also bring them to the meetings. Bring them to our labor meetings. Okay, we want to, we want to hear from you have candidate forums before they run and and then put their feet to the fire if they voted the wrong way, we have to say to them, okay, you voted against labor, and then you can say and not endorse them if they do, even if, sometimes even our Democrats. You know my son, Rick, he coined a new word, and he said, Mom, you got to be careful, because some of these Democrats are really MAGAcrats. Okay, they’re MAGAcrats. They’re not true Democrats, and to be ready to pull our endorsements and then, you know, not endorse them again and let them know why.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: That’s right. You know, Lawrence, I remember being a young boy in the farm workers and you all were always working on different campaigns, but there was a campaign I forget if it was the La Torre, but you even had these heating pads where you would, you know, with the hot plate, it was like you would be able to put the plate on it so it didn’t burn the table and it had the candidate’s name on it. And I just remember how many campaigns you have worked on over your your journey, and it’s just so powerful to hear you share with our members how we hold elected officials accountable, but also build relationships with them, understanding that we’re constituents and elected officials have multiple issues that they’re working on in their districts as part of who they represent, and it’s important that we stay connected not just with our issues but the issues of the communities and. Lastly, Dolores, just what do you hope for the next 10 years of 2015, but not just us, the next decade of caregiving and worker organizing? What do you hope that it looks like?
Dolores Huerta: Well, number one, going back to the political candidates, the litmus test for them is, are you pro labor or not pro labor? And that’s got to be a litmus test. Because even I have heard some stories about people that I endorse, and they were saying, “Well, labor is getting too strong.” Now, hey, wait a minute, there is no such thing as labor getting too strong. Labor needs to get a lot stronger, because there are so many things that working people do not have, as you mentioned, the home care workers, that they don’t have a pension plan. If anybody needs a pension plan, the home care workers need a pension plan. So we’ve got to continue organizing, bringing in more allies.
And the other thing too, I know the SEIU has been really, really great in terms of supporting women’s right to abortion, women’s health care. SEIU has also been really good about supporting our LGBTQ and our transgender community, and SEIU can help with other labor unions that are still kind of wobbly on that issue and that are not as supportive as they should be.
And this, by the way, also impacts the voting, because unfortunately, we have many people in our brown and black community that are still not convinced on those issues, and that also affects their vote. They might be good union members, but when it comes to voting, they will vote on these cultural issues. Okay? And so I think a lot more education has to continue to be done on that. And because we do have the body of workers that are organized, then it’s a really, really good way that we can bring education to them.
And also about taxes, you know, people kept saying, these corporations keep that drumming up and saying, taxes are bad. No taxes are good. This is how we get we’re able to pay for increases, for healthcare workers, okay, by people paying taxes. So kind of bringing all of that information to our working people, continuing the education of our membership to make them strong, because we know that our members of labor unions are the ones that are most dedicated and be the most organized, and the persons that are willing to get out there and do the job.
So we are the vision of the future. The working people are the vision of the future more than any other organization. They’re the ones that know what we need for our country, and not only what we need, but they also know how to get it Okay, so labor, labor is got. It’s in the forefront of justice for our country. And again, they know how to achieve that, that democracy that we so badly need, and that is now in jeopardy.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: There you have it, folks: Dolores Huerta. Dolores. We love you. We are so grateful for your leadership, for all it means to so many caregivers, our families, our communities, that you’ve touched, that you’ve stood side by side with, that you’ve been arrested with in our fight for justice, and we look forward to continuing to work with you and all of your allies in our fight for justice. Any last words you’d like to share?
Dolores Huerta: Well, I just want to say to all of the home care workers that they are so fortunate to have you as a leader, because it was a legacy of your grandparents who are great organizers. Your parents were great organizers. Your dad, Bobby De La Cruz, and your mom was a great organizer. God bless her. She’s so humble and so beautiful and so strong. So you’ve chosen to continue that legacy, because with your degree that you have Arnulfo, so you could have gone in any other direction, and you didn’t, you know. And so God bless you so much and and thank you so much for being the leader that you are.
And to all the home care workers. Well, we’re going to stand together, we’re going to work together, and we’re going to bring justice to our land. Si Se Puede.
Arnulfo De La Cruz: Si Se Puede, que viva. Dolores Huerta. Thank you so much, Dolores and again, folks listening, I’m Arnulfo De La Cruz. This has been another very special episode of Who Cares from SEIU Local 2015, with the wonderful Dolores Huerta. Until next time, take care of yourselves and take care of each other.