Honoring Dolores Huerta

Statement from SDEA President Monique Barrett Honoring Dolores Huerta

As president of the San Diego Education Association, my heart is with Dolores Huerta’s family and loved ones, with the organizers who stood beside her, and with every person who found courage and hope through her life.

Some losses reach across generations. This is one of them.

Dolores co-founded the United Farm Workers and gave the movement its rallying cry, “Sí, se puede.” She helped working people whom others ignored and exploited recognize their own power. Their voices mattered. Their children mattered. Together, they demanded more and won.

She was also an educator. She watched children arrive at school hungry and understood that their suffering called for a response beyond the classroom. Loving those children meant standing with their families and confronting the conditions that kept them in poverty.

Educators know that truth. We see what our students carry through our doors. We cannot claim to care about children while remaining silent about what harms them.

As a Black woman, an educator, and a union president, I carry that responsibility into this moment. I want us to honor Dolores with the honesty and courage she asked of the world.

Speaking at Chapman University in 2018, she reminded us, “We are all Africans of different shades and colors.”

We are related. We belong to one another. Our histories differ, and our burdens weigh differently. Our shared humanity calls us to confront anti-Blackness, racism, and exploitation, including within our own communities and our own movement.

Unity must be strong enough to hold the truth. It makes room for people to name the harm they have experienced and calls on us to act. Solidarity becomes real when we stand beside someone whose struggle we could choose to ignore.

Those who profit from division want working people blaming one another. They want us to see an immigrant family as a threat, a neighbor’s rights as a loss of our own, and another community’s suffering as somebody else’s problem. That division keeps workers underpaid, schools underfunded, and communities unheard.

We refuse it.

Every child deserves safety, belonging, and a fully funded public education. Every worker deserves dignity, fair pay, and a voice. Every family deserves to live with respect. These commitments belong together, and together we have the power to win them.

To those who hold power: honoring Dolores Huerta requires more than praising her courage after her death. Listen to the workers organizing today. Fund the schools our children attend. Respect the educators and staff who serve them. Answer for decisions that leave families struggling.

Our children’s humanity is not negotiable. Neither is ours.

Here in San Diego, we can honor her through the truth we teach, the relationships we build, the contracts we fight for, and the people we refuse to leave behind. Every member has a place in that work. Every act of courage can help someone else find theirs.

Today we grieve, and we make room for the sorrow of losing someone who gave so much of herself. We also hold hope because the people she inspired are still here, still teaching, still organizing, still raising children who deserve a more just world.

We are still here. We have one another. We carry this work forward.

May her family feel surrounded by love. May her memory deepen our compassion, strengthen our resolve, and move us to act.

Expresamos nuestro más sentido pésame a su familia y a las comunidades campesinas a las que dedicó su vida.

Rest in power, Dolores Huerta. Thank you for helping generations believe in their own power. We honor yours by using ours.

Sí, se puede.

Shoulder to shoulder. Member by member. Site by site.

Monique Barrett, M.Ed.
President, San Diego Education Association