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  "path": "/2026/07/02/dolores-huerta-speech-farmworkers-grape-strike/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-07-02T12:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://msmagazine.com",
  "tags": [
    "Herstory",
    "Immigration",
    "National",
    "Activism",
    "Barack Obama and the Obama Administration",
    "Book Excerpt",
    "California",
    "Dolores Huerta",
    "Economic Justice",
    "Economy",
    "Immigrant and Migrant Women",
    "Labor Unions",
    "Latina Women",
    "Mexico",
    "Women of Color",
    "Women Workers",
    "Women's History",
    "Work",
    "Workers' Rights",
    "Workplace Discrimination and Harassment",
    "Revisiting the Speech That Made America See Farmworkers: Dolores Huerta and the Power of Saying, ‘We Exist’",
    "Ms. Magazine"
  ],
  "textContent": "In 1965, the National Farm Workers Association announced their decision to join the striking Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee on Sept. 16—Mexican Independence Day. The choice of date reflected the hybrid identity of Chicanos: straddling Mexican and American cultures, Spanish and English, rooted in the old country but with branches fully extended into the new one.\n\nThis was the identity Huerta embodied.\n\nHuerta maintained a heavy bilingual speaking schedule to keep up mo­rale. In addition to the typical challenges of organizing, the farmworkers were standing up against bigotry and asserting their American identity—attaching their cause to the Civil Rights Movement.\n\n“Abajo con racism! Down with rac­ism!” Huerta sometimes ended her speeches. “Viva la union! Viva la causa!”\n\nThe people in power, the ones who owned the companies that sold the food or wrote laws in the statehouse, had been able to ignore people like the farmworkers—the people who toiled out of sight to keep the system going.\n\nNow, a crowd of people had walked across the state to watch Huerta declare: “We are here and we embody our needs for you.”\n\n(Excerpted from the book _ALL WE SAY: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches_ by Ben Rhodes.)\n\nThe post Revisiting the Speech That Made America See Farmworkers: Dolores Huerta and the Power of Saying, ‘We Exist’ appeared first on Ms. Magazine.",
  "title": "Revisiting the Speech That Made America See Farmworkers: Dolores Huerta and the Power of Saying, ‘We Exist’"
}