Cal State East Bay welcomed American labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta on Tuesday, with more than 400 people gathered to listen to her speak at the University Theatre for her presentation titled, “Lessons Learned: Past, Present and Future.”

Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers labor union with farm labor leader Cesar Chavez, spoke about the early events in her life that motivated and inspired her to take action and make a difference, especially in the lives of farm workers who worked hard but lived in poverty.

According to Huerta, her activism began when she was invited to a one-hour meeting with Fred Ross Sr., the founder of the Community Service Organization, where Ross spoke about how poor people could make a difference in their communities.

Huerta explained that she had always “wanted to do things” and despite being a Girl Scout for ten years and belonging to social and church organizations, she felt the need to contribute more.

“When Mr. Ross gave us this one hour meeting that I went to, he showed us pictures of communities in East Los Angeles where they had brought in street lights and clinics and sidewalks,” Huerta stated. But it was when he showed them pictures of over 100 people that attended the CSO’s meetings, and pictures of police being sent to prison for beating up Mexican-Americans, that she knew she wanted to become a part of that organization.

Once she joined CSO, the organization started a chapter in Stockton and one of Huerta’s first tasks was to knock on people’s doors and ask them to go out to vote. This was the task that Huerta admits changed her life entirely.

“In going door to door, I came to a house of a farm worker and they had no linoleum or wood on the floor, it was just dirt,” she stated. “Their furniture were orange crates and cardboard boxes. And the children, you could tell were dressed very poorly and they were malnutritioned.”

Witnessing this made Huerta angry because she knew how hard farm workers worked, but their salaries were not enough to afford a better lifestyle.

Later on as a schoolteacher, witnessing poor farm worker children come to school without shoes and on empty stomachs encouraged Huerta to become an organizer and she abandoned teaching.

“The important thing about going to that meeting is understanding and knowing how we could make changes,” Huerta stated. Her role as an organizer while serving in the leadership of the Stockton Community Service Organization allowed her to contribute to major pieces of legislation passed by the CSO.

Among the pieces of legislation, were laws that allowed farm workers to get disability insurance, receive ballots to vote in Spanish, obtain their driver’s license in Spanish, the ability to go door to door to register new voters and eradicated the requirement of being a citizen in order to receive public assistance.

Despite all of this, the CSO did not support the vision that Huerta and Chavez had to organize farm workers, so the two of them left the organization and decided to start the Farm Workers Union.

Huerta moved from Stockton to Delano in the middle of a divorce to start the union — a move she says was very difficult because she had seven children and did not know where her next meal was going to come from. However, soon after, the union gained more support and they were able to organize farm workers.

“We did it the same way Mr. Ross taught us, by going to the workers and meeting in their homes and telling them that they had power,” Huerta said. “Telling the stories of what people had done in East Los Angeles. Today, we know that farm workers in California do have protections, but we know that farm workers in other states do not have the protections that we were able to get for farm workers.”

Huerta explained that it does not take “100 people” to create change and encouraged the audience to begin organizing and getting others to join and make a difference.

“Right now we are in a big political turmoil in our country,” she stated. “We see some of the things that are coming out of the mouths of some of our candidates and the kind of racism and attacks that are coming out against people of color.”

She further emphasized the attacks on women, transgenders and the strong hate rhetoric we see today is based on ignorance. However, she also explained the hate rhetoric we witness today will force people to pay attention and take action.

“We have to call up on all of our government, organizations, institutions, to say, ya basta, we’ve had it. We should not take these things that are happening now lightly,” she said immediately after comparing Trump to Hitler as to what could potentially happen if the United States elects him.

According to Huerta, we need to battle racism and all the other “isms” that exist today. She called for all people to teach children of color their history and how important they are to this country, so that they do not feel ashamed.

“We have to remind them, we did not cross the border, the border crossed us,” she stated and invited the crowd to repeat. Huerta then ended her speech by inviting the crowd to chant and clap “Si se puede,” which means, “Yes we can.”

Following her presentation, Huerta told the Pioneer she hopes people will get involved in the electoral process, help get others to vote and get involved in the community on issues like education.

“We have to really make democracy work and it has to be a participatory democracy, otherwise we as citizens do not engage and the people with power will take over,” she stated.