Fifty-year rights activist to speak Tuesday in Ellensburg

Dolores Huerta won't slow down.

"We have a lot of work to do," said the 78-year-old activist, who carries just about every civil rights credential there is, including co-founding the United Farmworkers of America with César Chávez.

Her mission these days is to spread the word of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a nonprofit that assists women and youth in impoverished communities.

She'll do that at 7 tonight at Central Washington University's McConnell Auditorium in Ellensburg. Her speech, "Now is the Time for Change: 50 Years of Organized Experience," will focus on civic duty, higher education and women's, children's and environmental labor rights.

The event is free to attend.

"What I like to do when I speak is educate listeners about our trade policies and immigration," Huerta said in a telephone interview Monday afternoon as she was being driven to Yakima from Seattle. She spoke Monday evening at Yakima Valley Community College.

"Free trade is not fair when you have people living in poverty in Mexico and Central America. How many bananas have we eaten in our lifetime? All the money goes to corporations, not to the people."

Huerta, of Bakersfield, Calif., likes to work with small communities on their particular local problems. She has helped small towns organize to clean up their water supplies.

"We train people to get together and educate them on the problems that are pretty common in agricultural areas," she said.

Although she was a Hillary Clinton supporter -- she nominated Clinton at the Democratic National Convention -- Huerta is supporting Barack Obama. "I've got my Obama T-shirt on," she said.

"César Chávez used to call her his right hand because she was a constant force behind the movement," said Marian Lien, interim director of the Central Washington University Diversity Education Center. "She graduated with a degree in teaching but decided that she would better serve as an advocate of human rights."

In 1965, Huerta directed the United Farm Workers' grape boycott, which lasted five years and resulted in the first collective farm workers' bargaining agreement in the United States.