Inspiring Justice: 'Dolores' Screening Sells Out Skylight Theatre
The Columbia Gorge Food Security Coalition sold out Andrew’s Skylight Theatre & Pub with their screening of “Dolores” a documentary about civil rights leader Dolores Huerta.
Community organizers, activists, non-profits, and community members gather to watch Dolores at the Skylight Theatre in Hood River. Photo: Cole Goodwin
By Cole Goodwin
Hood River, Ore, March 4, 2024 – The Columbia Gorge Food Security Coalition sold out a free community screening of “Dolores”, an inspiring documentary that explores the life and legacy of Latina community organizer, labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta on Thursday Feb. 29.
“”Who is Dolores Huerta? One of the most important, yet least known activists of our time.” ”
Dolores is the woman behind: “Sí, se puede!
Her legacy of work includes co-founding the United Farm Workers, the first and largest of the farmworkers unions in the U.S. alongside César Chávez. Larry Itliong, and other organizers in the early 1960’s.
In the past few years, UFW’s work has resulted in Oregon, Washington and California being the first states in the country to provide farmworkers with 8 hour days and overtime pay. As well produced the first standards to prevent heat related deaths and illness in California.
Inspired by Gandhi, Dolores advocated for non-violence, an end to farmworkers exposure to harmful pesticides like DDT, as well as drinking water, toilets, dignity, safety, and fair wages to farmworkers.
Today Dolores is considered “one of the most influential labor activists of the 20th century and a leader of the Chicano civil rights movement,” by Womenshistory.org.
But in some places she has been removed from the history books.
Dolores faced backlash for being a divorced and unmarried woman with children and for criticizing the Republican party. As a result she has been written out of many textbooks.
“It is a refresher on what history tells us about our social movements. Dolores Huerta’s story is the story of every social activist in this country, where they’re stories have not been told, and there is so much effort that has gone into to trying to suppress the story and the struggles of social activists,” said Ubaldo Hernández, Senior Organizer with Communidades and Columbia Riverkeeper.
”At the very least, this is an egregious example of the sexism Huerta faces on a regular basis as a woman of color; at its worst, this is a violent erasure of a pivotal historical figure,” reads HerCampus.com.
Despite backlash, Dolores never gave up. Now 93-years-old, she continues her work with the Dolores Huerta Foundation.
Photo: WomensHistory.org
The documentary is an inspiring tale of perseverance.
Huerta's relentless advocacy for the environment, farmworkers' rights, social justice, women’s rights, and equitable labor conditions at great personal cost have made her a symbol of resilience and empowerment.
After the screening, attendees could be seen engaging in rapt discussion about the film, touching on issues like community empowerment, social and environmental justice and local food systems.
Several movie goers were also heard lamenting that they had never heard of Dolores until now.
Photo: Cole Goodwin
“We all know that films and movies can really move us and coalesce us around a topic and really inspire powerful discussions that you don’t always get from a meeting. So, our hope was just to bring people together to talk about food and social justice issues,” said Lauren Kraemer, Associate Professor at Oregon State University.
OSU is one of the founders of the Food Security Coalition and has been engaged in food systems and food access programming in the Gorge for decades.
Kraemer’s most recent work has been directly related to addressing the working conditions of local farm workers.
“I’m really excited about my work lately improving our awareness of and monitoring of air quality,” said Kraemer, “So often our smoke events happen during harvest season. So we partnered with local orchardists to install air quality monitors on their sites and with our local schools…With AQI monitoring orchardists and farm workers are able to take precautions and make choices about whether to mask or to not work when the air quality index reaches a certain point.”
The film illustrates how environmental justice, social justice, and food access are interconnected.
Ubaldo Hernandez of Communidades Alexa Wilhelm, Gorge Grown Food Network, and Lauren Kraemer, OSU talking with CCCNews post Dolores screening. Photo: Cole Goodwin
“There is no environmental justice without social justice,” said Hernandez. “We as immigrants in the Latino community experience that with pesticides. We see how pesticides affect the environment, the forest, the life of the farmworker, and the people who eat the food.”
Food security has decreased across the region and local food banks have seen double the need since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic.
“In order to solve the much larger issue of food insecurity we have to address the root causes of poverty,” said Breen Goodwin, Transitional Executive Director of Columbia Gorge Food Bank.
For one documentary attendee, the movie touched on a deeply personal family history.
“My grandmother left her family for about ten years and ran to work with Cesar. So Dolores Huerta, what she did with the grape boycott, my grandma did in Philadelphia. She stood out at one of the AMPS and did a hunger strike for two weeks to draw attention to this. So I came to watch hoping maybe I’d see grandma in some of the footage,” said Linda. “So yeah, it’s been a part of my upbringing.”
Linda spoke to the continued struggle for safe working conditions for farm workers today “Folks still use pesticides and stuff that’s kind of nasty, and I don’t want to disparage anybody’s livelihood but maybe you could do that without using products that are going to hurt your family too.”
“My mom used to pick cotton and she would talk about how they would go out in the morning and it was still moist (with spray) and your fingers would get really tender. And how the planes would fly over and just dump stuff and they never knew what it was but it would burn holes in their clothes,” said Linda.
The Coalition hopes to inspire the community to support fair farm labor practices through continued education, contacting representatives, shopping locally, buying certified fair trade, and donating to organizations doing the work.
The film motivated another attendee to be more involved in schools.
“My takeaway from this is I want to get involved in the curriculum committee, it’s been on my radar for a long time,” said Teresa, who emphasized the importance of learning conversation, negotiation, and civil discourse skills.
“These types of presentations are invitations for action. We see a lot of people who come to these presentations and feel empathy during these two hours but the empathy really needs to extend past those two hours and become a part of their life to become a part of their activism,” said Hernández.
Hernández emphasized that the civil rights movement continues to this day.
“This social movement is still alive, still pressing, still current, this is not just a movie to remember the past. Those victories are now the victories for the whole country. But there is still work to be done. Our current movements all over the country have been working to get farm workers overtime pay. Unfortunately only five states, New York, Colorado, California, Oregon and Washington have overtime pay for farmworkers. So this is a constant struggle, you know?” said Hernández.
“And we have the same struggles with a racist, classist and sexist system. And we see that the system may have learned to cover things up a little bit but at its foundation it’s still classist and sexist and we are still dealing with a lot of white fragility. So, everytime we raise our voices the mostly white leadership is still threatened by it. And this struggle is still ongoing in our communities locally and on a national level,” said Hernández.
This film screening was the first ever public event to be held by the Columbia Gorge Food Security Coalition which works with thirty-four businesses, nonprofits and organizations within the Columbia Gorge to address food insecurity and foster a resilient, inclusive and sustainable regional food system. For more information about Columbia Gorge Food Security Coalition visit: Gorgegrown.com/foodsecurity/.
Dolores is available to stream on PBS, Vudu, Google Play, Youtube, Apple TV or Amazon.
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