Interview with activist dolores huerta -- aarp viva

A: Not really, because anybody who knew Casar knew that we were just very blessed to know someone like him and to be able to work with someone like him. When he did his first fast, he went

five days without eating. "Oh, Casar, bless his fasting," I thought. I told him, "I feel so bad when I fight with you."He said, "Don't ever stop. Don't

ever stop fighting with me. You're the one that really helps me think." You know, he was just a person, not a saint. He was a great person, but he was a human being, and he would

make mistakes like other people. Casar was always the one who was important. For Casar, that was also painful. When he first started organizing, he said one of us would have to be out there

in front. He was uncomfortable with that role, you know. One time we were going into a meeting, with all the workers yelling, "Viva Chaivez!"And he had this really pained look on

his face. I said, "What's the matter Casar?" He said, "I remember some of these people that wouldn't even give me a meeting when we started." He was a very

practical person in terms of his own image. He wouldn't let us put his pictures on posters for a long time. When he was in jail one time we made this button and he got really mad at us

because "as he was being dragged off to jail "he said, "Boycott the hell out of them!" So we put that on the button. Ooh! He was so mad. We had to change it to

"Non-Violence Is Our Strength." While he was in jail, a whole month, his cousin started running him for governor. We had bumper stickers all over the state. He was very upset. He

was not into the glory thing. It's kind of interesting now because there are all these streets and everything named after him. That was not Casar; he wanted people to get the work done,

to work hard. He's buried right near the entrance to headquarters. I said he wanted to make sure people were coming early and leaving late. He worked very hard and set the example for

everybody. Q: If 50-plus Hispanics want to become activists, where do they start? A: You have to start people at their level. I like to tell this little story about my daughter, Juanita.

When she was three years old we were doing a training session for organizers. She was walking in and out with her dolls. When we got back to our boycott house in New York City, she was on

the line with her play telephone. I said, "What are you doing?" She said, "I'm calling the people."I said, "Are you calling them to picket?" [She said,]

"They're not ready to picket; they're just going to leaflet."A lot of the time activists want people to go out and get arrested right away or to go on the picket line.

Maybe they're not ready to do that yet. You have to have activism at different levels, at the level people feel comfortable at, then evolve them into stronger positions. I really

realized this when I was beaten up by the police [in 1988 while peacefully protesting then-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush's views on pesticide use] and I was disabled for a few

months. It's not only the physical disability, but also the emotional disability. I found that I was so emotional that during our board meetings I told them, "I'm not going

to be able to fight with you like I usually do." I'd just start crying right away. It took a long time to get my emotional stability back after that beating. It just did something

to me. I couldn't be in crowds, I'd just panic. The physical disability healed in months, but my emotions took about a year and a half. That made me understand a lot about people,

when you ask them to come and they're not ready. Q:And then you nearly bled to death from medical complications in 2000. A: That's right. That was even worse because I

couldn't even walk. I had to learn how to walk, had to learn how to talk. I had to be fed intravenously for months because I couldn't eat. Q: What lesson did you learn from that?

A: The lesson I learned was about dependency, because I had to be so dependent on my children. I'm very fortunate my son is a doctor and my daughter's a nurse. If not, my hospital

stay would've been a lot longer.And then when your children are telling you what to do. It meant something that I don't think young people understand. I've said this to some

of my friends, that when I was disabled, as a parent you're not used to your children telling you what to do. It's very hard. It's very painful for a parent and people need to

understand that. You know, I think a lot of people say, "I'm not going to take this, I'll just die. It's easier for me to die than have my kids order me around."

Even last night, we wanted to go see this reggae band and my daughter, Lori, who's the second oldest, but you'd think she's the mother, says, "Mother, you've got to

get to bed. You've got to get up early tomorrow. I don't think you should go out." I said, Okay," and everybody else went out dancing except me. Q:That must have been

frustrating. I hear you love music and dancing. What's your favorite music? A:I love it all. I love classical. I love opera. I love Spanish, all kinds boleros, corridos, salsa. I love

to dance salsa. But of all those, jazz is really my absolute favorite. Q:So how do we make sure people age with dignity? A:That's so important. All cultures revere older people except

for us. I don't know what it is. I guess it's the Anglo culture. But in all the Asian cultures, and in the Latino cultures, the elders are respected. The creation of more home

health care workers I think is really important because they want to stay in their own homes; they don't want to go into a nursing home. They want to take care of their gardens and see

their grandchildren. Q: What do you see as your legacy? A: I hope my legacy will be that I was an organizer; that I have passed on the miracles that can be accomplished when people come

together, the things they can change. And I look at when we passed the pension bill, the voting in Spanish, the getting driver's licenses in Spanish all these bills we've passed.

The fact that you can build and you can make nonviolent change through organization; that's what I would want my legacy to be. And hopefully we'll see the day when we don't

have discrimination against women, against minorities, against workers. And working for a just world. Showing people how to accomplish this, what they can do to make a difference.