Introduction by Film Producer, Writer and Director Peter Bratt
Dolores Huerta, now 93 and still going strong, is a genuine living legend, one of the most influential labor activists in U.S. history as well as a foundational leader of the Chicano civil rights movement. Huerta’s 7 decades of activism have included co-founding the world-renowned United Farm Workers’ Union with César Chávez, leading major strikes and consumer boycotts, negotiating contracts, and tirelessly advocating for safer working conditions (including the elimination of harmful pesticides) and for unemployment and healthcare benefits for agricultural workers. Today she will draw from her decades of experience to share her thoughts on the critical importance of organizing unions in all sectors of the economy to fight for a fairer society, and on how to build more unity between labor, social, racial, gender, and climate justice movements.
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March 28th | 10:05 am to 10:27 am
Keynote
President and Founder
Dolores Huerta Foundation
Dolores Huerta is a world-renowned civil rights activist and community organizer who has worked for labor rights and social justice for 50+ years. In 1962 she and Cesar Chavez founded the United Farm Workers union, in which she served as Vice President and played a critical role in many of the union’s accomplishments for four decades. In 2002 she received the Puffin/Nation $100,000 prize for Creative Citizenship that she used to establish the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF), which connects groundbreaking community-based organizing to state and national movements to register and educate voters; advocate for education reform; bring about infrastructure improvements in low-income communities; advocate for greater equality for LGBT people; and create strong leadership development. She has received numerous awards including The Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award and The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.
Introduced by
Film Producer, Writer and Director
Peter Bratt is a Rockefeller Fellow, Peabody Award winner and Emmy-nominated film producer, writer and director (including of the award-winning documentary, Dolores, about the legendary activist Dolores Huerta). Peter, raised by an Indigenous single mother from Peru, has a decades-long history of highlighting and participating in Indigenous and civil rights struggles, including working with the International Indian Treaty Council, Amazon Watch, Friendship House Association of American Indians, H.O.M.I.E.S., Instituto Familiar De La Raza, and the San Francisco American Indian Cultural District.