Kickass Women in History: Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta passed away today, 28 October 2026. We are resurfacing this post to celebrate her life. This post was originally published on 8 June 2019. … This month in Kickass Women, we raise a glass to Dolores Huerta, the labor and civil rights leader who became nationally known for her work with the United Farm Workers in the 1960s and who continues to kick ass today. It was Dolores who coined the slogan “Si se puede,” (loosely translated as “Yes we can” or “Yes you can”) a phrase often misattributed to Cesar Chavez and later adopted by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign. Dolores was born in 1930 in Arizona. She spent most of her childhood in Stockton, California, where her mother raised her to value community activism, education, and hard work. She became an elementary school teacher but quit to focus full time on economic justice when she saw farm workers struggling with low wages, unsafe working and living conditions, and lack of resources: I couldn’t tolerate seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children. Once Dolores discovered community and labor organizing,...