Assessor-Recorder Joaquín Torres Delivers Speech at Dolores Huerta's 94th Birthday Celebration

Text of Assessor-Recorder Joaquín Torres Speech:

Buenas noches.

Good evening, everyone.

It’s an honor to be here, en la Mision, among neighbors, community members, leaders, advocates and friends, to celebrate someone who has taught all of us that we have a voice and that we have to use it.

There are people in this room who too have spent their lives working to affirm our right to dignity equity and inclusion. And each of us have been molded, inspired and mentored by Dolores Huerta. 

Across generations, across cities and communities up and down this state and across our Nation, Dolores Huerta continues to show us that every minute is a chance to change the world and every moment is an opportunity to organize.

At 94, her work could not be more important.

As extremism and hate take hold in so many hearts and in our government.

As our rights as immigrants, farmworkers, women and feminists, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, black brown indigenous communities are under attack.

As our youth feel isolated and disillusioned by those that are meant to represent and serve their interests.

As national political players seem intent on denying the contributions, dignity and rights we deserve.

Dolores is here to remind us of our power. Our north star. Our leader who in the same breath reminds us of our past, the shoulders of those we stand on, who fearlessly pushes us forward, into the future, who does the work today.  

Neighborhood by neighborhood.  Community by community. 

At the ballot box. In the halls of our legislatures. In the fields. On the streets of the Mission. Latinx leaders have the power to shape the environment we live in.

But this is also a family affair – a unity in community affair 

It is no coincidence that as we come together - in this place, Mission Language Vocational School, a refuge of opportunity, of possibility for our Latino community, a place of healing and nourishment during the pandemic, a place where Governors come, where Mayors and Senators and Speakers come, where Dolores comes to further the work she has committed her life and spirit to through her foundation - to honor this incredible woman...

...veteran labor champion Dolores Huerta, who has been at the forefront of civil rights advocacy for decades.

Mother of 11, survivor of police brutality within the very confines of these county lines, trailblazer, or in the words of my mother, a Los Angeles born Chicana feminist and journalist.

When I asked her “what does Dolores mean to you?” she said, “OH MY GOD, DOLORES HUERTA!”

In the words of our City Attorney – “the embodiment of power, people power. The woman who didn’t open the door. She built the house.”

The mom who raised those children in the midst of the movement without the same comforts that so many have today.  

Service is our obligation for being on earth - She shakes us awake from the comfort of convenience with the simplest of phrases. 

The calls to service, that so many of us in this room have heard, shakes us awake from the convenience of comfort.  

For her trade was not merely a slogan of hope.  Not only a chant but backed up, fortified by the work – day after day after day. We don’t hope for victory.  We create victory. 

She is the epitome of the American story, with a great grandfather who fought for the Union in the Civil War.  

She is a contributor to the American dream, with decades of service, not to her own legacy, not to buff the sheen of the accolades showered upon her, but as a contributor to the lives of those fighting for it.

She said, “When we set out to do this work, you’re not out there to get fame or fortune, you’re out there trying to help people better their lives – and yet – here we are. 

A born again feminist, a living icon, associated with the working class, the working poor, school children without shoes on their feet and food in their mouths, workers in the field, seniors, presidents and governors, feminists – the cultural change makers of our time a giant of farm worker movement of the movement towards social justice, taken around town by Gloria Steinem, consulted by Governors, and yet, among our community, among younger generations still an unknown. 

Her work, in my mind, is driven by the awareness “that as human beings,” in the words of don Miguel Ruiz, we “are dreaming all the time. Before we were born, the humans before us created a big outsize dream that we will call society’s dream or the dream of the planet. The dream of the planet is the collective dream of billions of smaller, personal dreams, which together create a dream of a family, a dream of a community, a dream of a city, a dream of a country, and finally a dream of the whole humanity. The dream of the planet includes all of society’s rules, its beliefs, its laws, its religions, its different cultures and ways to be, its governments, schools, social events and holidays.”

And to me, it is this awareness that has awakened so many of us to do more, to be more, because as she told a young Eva Longoria, before she had a name we would recognize: 

“Soon you will have a voice - you better have something to say.”

What we have to say, what we must say, in these times when the rights of so many nationally and across the globe are threatened by the poorest choices, the worst kind of dreams – the kind that disregard illiteracy, poverty of mind, poverty of spirit, poverty of resource – she reminds us of the power of our dreams, their power to offer comfort, possibility, inclusion and belonging for the beautiful people that we are if only we choose to see it, to acknowledge our contributions to this great grand experiment we call life. 

You have power in your person. Nobody is going to do it for you. 

Her presence is resonance, emanating an equanimity that reminds us how to be with life, love, openness, with safety.

When asked by Ray Suarez on PBS after receiving the highest civilian honor the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she smiled and said, "it’s a thrill, such an honor. At the same time it’s a humbling experience because it’s on the backs of so many other people that were out there trying to get justice for farm workers -  people that went to jail, people that were marching, people who died just trying to get the things that other people take for granted, so I feel I get this honor on their backs basically for all the things that they did to be able to make life a little bit better for the people that feed us.”

How powerful it is to see ourselves reflected back, yes on Hollywood stages, but on the stage of life walking the streets where power is born, where agency is created, where ever this woman walks with the lightness we feel in our spirits when we gaze at the stars. 

I would not be here but for her. My father, a young man, was staring at a ceiling contemplating his first political loss in 1972 wondering, “what’s next?”

It was the movement that came to Boyle Heights when she knocked on the door. A knock like the call to service so many of us answered in our own lives. 

Dolores, we recognize that we get to do what we do because of your commitment, your experiences, your work, your feminine grace and power, your struggles, your perseverance and your joy. 

Lending of yourself to presidents, to union bosses and power brokers, to the freshest progressive voices up and down the state, leveraging your contacts, always looking for the next victory, the next possibility that creates opportunities to organize so your story may be told, so history may be corrected and herstory can be made – si, se puede.