The Chicago Sun-Times Honors American Socialist Leader

Chicago Sun-Times columnist has glowing praise for Comrade Dolores Huerta:

Although most non-Mexicans outside of California have never heard of her, Dolores Huerta is a legend.

She was born 77 years ago in a New Mexico mining town, daughter of a miner and union activist who left his wife and three children when Huerta was 2. Her mother, Alice, supported the family through the Depression by working as a cook and, later, through entrepreneurial acumen bought two hotels and a restaurant in Stockton, Calif., and left much of the child rearing to her own father, Herculano Chavez.

Huerta, like the fictitious Eloise who grew up in the Plaza Hotel, lived in one of her mother's hotels. But unlike Eloise, life was not luxurious. Huerta and her siblings cleaned the 60 rooms as part of their daily chores. In her early 20s, Huerta, influenced by her mother, became a community activist, and through her grass-roots activities she met the iconic Cesar Chavez.

In the mid-'60s, Chavez and Huerta began to organize farm workers and their families in the San Joaquin Valley in California. This led to the famous grape boycott of 1965. Families throughout the United States refused to buy California grapes.

Comrade Huerta is an Honorary Chair of The Democratic Socialists of America.