Dolores Huerta, Farmworker Leader Behind “Sí Se Puede,” Dies at 96

Dolores Huerta, the labor organizer and civil rights leader who co-founded with César Chávez the group that became the United Farm Workers, died Wednesday at 96, her family said in a statement through her foundation. Family spokesperson Erik Olvera told The Associated Press that she died of cancer at her home in Bakersfield, California, surrounded by family, CBS News reported.

“As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult time for us, and we ask for privacy as we grieve this incredible loss to our family,” the family said. ABC7 in San Francisco reported that plans for a celebration of life are in the works.

Huerta was among the country’s most influential labor leaders, civil rights figures and feminist activists. She is credited with the rallying cry “Sí, se puede,” Spanish for “Yes, it can be done.” She told CBS News earlier this year that she came up with it during a campaign in Arizona, where a state law threatened farmworkers with jail for striking or calling for a boycott. When Latino leaders there told her “in Arizona no se puede,” she said, “my responsibility to them was si se puede in Arizona.” It was, she said, “a spontaneous response.” Presenting her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, President Barack Obama joked that he had borrowed her slogan for his 2008 campaign, CBS reported.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called her a close friend, ordered flags at the State Capitol flown at half-staff. “Dolores represented the best of us,” he said. “California — and the United States — would not be what we are today without her resolute spirit, her passion for justice and fairness, and her commitment to those overlooked and forgotten.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said her legacy was “proof of what ordinary people can accomplish when they organize.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called her a dear friend who led with courage and determination and said, “We all responded to her rallying cry.”

Huerta kept working into her 90s, marching in protests and speaking across the country through her foundation about race, poverty and women’s rights, CBS reported. Los Angeles Mayor Bass said the intensity of her fight never faded. Assemblymember Diane Papan, who knew her, told ABC7 that Huerta was “a trailblazer to the end” who showed compassion “to every single person she met.”

Her final months were clouded by a painful public reckoning over the movement she helped build. Fox News described her in its obituary headline as a co-founder “who accused César Chavez of sex abuse,” and Newsom told ABC7 he could not imagine what she went through “in those last few months, with the revelations around Cesar and how hard that must have been for her.” The accusations concern Chávez, who died in 1993; this obituary does not rehearse them and relies on those two outlets’ descriptions.

Newsom, who said Huerta had “the kind of energy that was just jaw-dropping” and that it felt “like she was never gonna pass,” told ABC7 the state would have to “absorb her contributions, her energy, her passions.” The group she and Chávez built remains the best-known farmworkers’ union in the country, and her foundation, based in Bakersfield, continues her work on civic organizing.