Dolores Huerta Addresses Young People in Oakland

In a hip-hop themed event featuring a spoken word artist, a DJ and a beat boxer, Huerta, who once organized farm workers alongside Cesar Chavez, said youth culture and music are spurring change and unity.

“We can’t let people drive wedges between us because we are all one family,” said Huerta, 76, to a diverse crowd of mostly receptive teenagers in a packed auditorium. “There is only one human race.”

Huerta spoke of the nation’s past segregation laws and told the story of Emmett Till, a black youth beaten to death in Mississippi in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman. Till was maimed so badly, his eye was where his mouth was supposed to be, Huerta explained to a group in which few had heard his name.

Only 10 raised their hands when she asked if they knew of Till. But half the audience raised their hands later in the program when spoken word artist MC Ise Lyfe asked if they knew someone who had been killed in the last year.

“I see the new civil rights movement emerging,’’ Huerta said after the speech “A lot of it’s around the hip-hop movement, among the young people, but now it’s more about economic rights. I also wanted to tell the young people since the laws we pass in the U.S. cause a lot of suffering in the U.S., the only way to have an influence on the laws is to vote.”

Although a stalwart protestor of the 1970’s, Huerta was to most students an elderly lady. Some had to be quieted down by their teachers during her speech for talking.

“I don’t know who she is,” uttered one student to her teacher.

Youth Together, a multiethnic, leadership-building group comprised of five East Bay high schools, organized the event and presented Huerta with an award and a T-shirt for her continued involvement with community activism.

“It’s very inspirational to see the farm workers organize even when they lacked resources. They kind of relate to us, when we lacked school resources,” said Victor Duarte, 23, site organizer for Youth Together. “She’s a living civil rights legend.”

More
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=e61381a5effaa187b25cdafba5cf758b