The Work

Activist Dolores Huerta and playwright Luis Valdez discussed making change with Anna Sampaio, ethnic studies department chair, as part of a speaker series exploring race. Progress takes constant work, they agree.

“The earth is a garden,” Valdez said. “If you don’t weed it, it’ll get over choked with weeds. The weeds are injustices that continue to grow. It calls for constant activism.”

“I remember when I found out that you could get people together and organize them. And then you could register people to vote and you could put people in office. And I felt like I had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. … That is, of course, the magic that democracy brings to us. But we have to really make people understand what that is. Right now, a lot of people don’t understand how powerful that is and how wonderful it is.” – Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers