Category Archives: What I’m Making

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ORGANIZE honors Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta perSISTERS Feminist Art #FemalePowerProject
ORGANIZE — #FemalePowerProject perSISTERS poster honoring Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta is profoundly gifted with the skills of listening, speaking, inspiring, and negotiating. These, along with courage, persistence, dedication to non-violence—and fed by her love of people—make her one of the most successful community organizers ever. I didn’t think organizing could be such an amazing thing until I started researching Dolores Huerta. I can only sketch in some details about this amazing woman here. I urge everyone to watch a recent documentary about her called “Dolores” (2018). I have started with some quotes of Huerta’s, then sketched out some of her history. I have pasted some links to my sources below.

To begin, you should understand that the migrant farm workers in the US around 1960 were subject to deplorable and shocking living and working conditions.
Dolores Huerta on organizing:
“It is rarely practiced today because it is tedious and time consuming. However, the results are long lasting and while people are in the process of building organization, they are learning lessons they will never forget and the transformative roots are planted. The fruit is the leadership that is developed and the permanent changes in the community. In other words, this is how grass roots democracy works.”

“…giving them the confidence they needed through inspiration and hard work. Educating them for months to realize that no one was going to win their battle for them. That their conditions could be changed by only one group of people, themselves.”

Huerta’s first occupation was as a teacher in California: “I couldn’t tolerate seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.”

From the documentary film: “I used to think it was wrong to take credit for the work that I did. But I don’t feel that way any more.”

Dolores Huerta on learning about the history and dignity of your own people (this is in the context of Arizona eliminating ethnic studies in the schools and erasing Dolores Huerta from their history curriculum): “All that a person has is their story. If you deny their story you take away their power.” (Of course this resonates with me and my work!)

Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta (born April 10, 1930, in New Mexico) is a Mexican-American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, was the co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 in California. In 1966, Huerta and her fellow organizers led a 300-mile march from Delano to the state capitol in Sacramento to focus media attention on the strike. In 1966, she negotiated a contract between the UFWOC and Schenley Wine Company, marking the first time that farm workers were able to effectively bargain with an agricultural enterprise. But what made the largest impact was the nationwide grape boycott, which Huerta went to New York to organize there. While in New York, Huerta worked with feminists like Gloria Steinem, and they influenced each other greatly. Huerta embraced feminism, and Steinem realized that the women’s movement should try harder to include people of color. The grape boycott was successful. The entire California table grape industry signed a three-year collective bargaining agreement with the United Farm Workers in 1970. Furthermore, in 1975 the California Labor Relations Act was signed, the first law in the country that recognized the right of farm worker unions to negotiate contracts with the agricultural industry.  Huerta originated the rallying cry, “Sí, se puede” which she and Cesar Chavez used during a 25-day fast in Phoenix, Arizona, trying to organize farm workers to demand fair wages and better working conditions. It means, “Yes, it can be done.” Huerta created the phrase because people kept telling her, no, you can’t do that, it is not done: “No se puede.” But two negatives make a positive, and saying “no” to a no, means saying “Yes,” yes, it can be done. And she did it. Over the years, “Sí se puede” has also been adopted by other civil and labor rights groups involving Latinos around the country. It was adopted also by Senator Obama during his presidential campaign. In 2012, President Obama awarded Huerta with the highest civilian award in the United States, The Presidential Medal of Freedom. Upon receiving this award Huerta said, “The freedom of association means that people can come together in organization to fight for solutions to the problems they confront in their communities. The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized, and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the women’s movement, and the equality movement for our LGBT brothers and sisters are all manifestations of these rights. I thank President Obama for raising the importance of organizing to the highest level of merit and honor.”The Female Power Project supports causes that resonate with the stories of the females featured. Using her unrestricted gift of $100,000 from the Puffin Foundation, Huerta started a foundation to train people to do community organizing. I urge everyone to support The Dolores C. Huerta Foundation (as I have).  http://doloreshuerta.org/

SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Huerta
http://doloreshuerta.org/dolores-huerta/
http://eloquentwoman.blogspot.com/2015/09/famous-speech-friday-dolores-huerta-at.html
https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/09/nfwa-march-and-rally-april-10-1966/
https://libraries.ucsd.edu/farmworkermovement/media/oral_history/ParadigmArchive/arc%2029.pdf
https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2004/interview_dolores_hurerta.html
https://www.amazon.com/Dolores-Huerta/dp/B07F5FXP71/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1535663112&sr=8-2&keywords=dolores+huerta
https://insider.si.edu/2018/04/dolores-huerta-a-latina-civil-rights-icon/

Female Power Project, On My Mind, perSISTERS designs, What I'm Making, What I'm thinking about

Fannie Lou Hamer: Be inconvenient

Fannie Lou Hamer Feminist Art Feminist Graphics Protest Art Resistance Art Womanist
Be inconvenient — #FemalePowerProject perSISTERS poster honoring Fannie Lou Hamer

I’m not saying I’m finished with this new perSISTER design for the Female Power Project. But I will post updates if I change it. Regardless, Fannie Lou Hamer’s story will remain the same. Here goes:

Fannie Lou Hamer (October 6, 1917–March 14, 1977)

It was inconvenient to the racist white establishment of Mississippi when Hamer decided, at the age of 45, that she wanted to register to vote. She was prevented by an arbitrary literacy test and then fired by her boss (“we’re not ready for that in Mississippi”) and kicked out of her house and shot at by white supremacists. She failed the test a second time. On the third time she passed, but when she went to vote she was told she needed to have two poll tax receipts. She eventually did pay for the receipts and it was inconvenient that she finally did vote. The Voting Rights Act was passed to prevent such voter suppression. (See RBG)

It was inconvenient that Hamer had no sense. “I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared—but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.” (This fearlessness reminds me of Harriet Tubman’s)

It was inconvenient that Hamer had returned to Mississippi after attending a pro-citizenship conference in South Carolina. She was arrested and it took her a month to not-fully recover from the beating the police gave her. It was inconvenient that she never recovered because it proved the brutality of the white people in power there.

It was inconvenient that Hamer was so gifted at organizing voter registration drives like the Freedom Summer.

It was inconvenient that Hamer was so good at hosting and nurturing activists of all colors.

It was inconvenient that Hamer could quote a Bible passage to support every social justice initiative she embraced.

It was inconvenient when Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to contest the legitimacy of the all-white “official delegation” to the 1964 Democratic convention from that state. It was so inconvenient that President Lyndon Johnson had to interrupt the broadcast of her testimony to the credentials committee. He was afraid of it looking like the “Negroes” were taking over the Democratic party platform, and that too many scared white people would vote Republican. (Sound familiar?) After this election the racial alignment of the parties did shift, starting in the South.

In 1971 it was inconvenient that Hamer co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, created “to increase the number of women in all aspects of political life—as elected and appointed officials, as judges in state and federal courts, and as delegates to national conventions.”

More than anything else, it was inconvenient that Hamer told her story so eloquently, authentically, and clearly. It was inconvenient that people couldn’t ignore her words. “…but if I can’t tell the truth—just tell me to sit down—because I have to tell it like it is.”

At her funeral service in 1977 Andrew Young said, “None of us would be where we are today had she not been here then.”

Here are my sources and some really great resources:
Film, “This Little Light of Mine, The Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer” https://www.fannielou.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer
http://www.crmvet.org/docs/flh64.htm
https://timeline.com/hamer-speech-voting-rights-d5f6ddc7470a
This is a very interesting text laying out the racial politics in the US during the 1964 election. It has everything to do with what we are seeing now:
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/spring/lbj-and-white-backlash-1.html

 

Female Power Project, What I'm Making

DISSENT scarf celebrates the positive act of saying “no”

NEW! Dissent square. 36 inches, $55. A portion of the proceeds goes to support the ACLU.

This design is based on my perSISTERS poster design honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This scarf, however, only has words and ornaments. The green color is inspired by the jade earrings Ginsburg wears in her official portrait. I poured over photos of her and concluded that she likes to dress up a lot, but maybe that’s because the photos of her online often show her at the opera. In any case, I chose a blingy typeface and ornaments to adorn this design. Excerpts from some of her most famous dissents are set in script type on the scarves and are quoted below so it’s easier for you to read them. They are in reference to these decisions: Shelby County v. Holder, of 2013; Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, of 2013; Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, of 2014; and Bush v. Gore, of 2000. The devastating Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, of May 21, 2018 came after this design was completed.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (born Joan Ruth Bader; March 15, 1933) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice to be confirmed to the Court (after Sandra Day O’Connor) and one of four female justices to be confirmed (with Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who are still serving as of 2017).

Ginsburg has spent much of her career advocating for the advancement of gender equality and women’s rights, winning multiple victories arguing before the Supreme Court. She was responsible for a very significant change in constitutional jurisprudence that, in effect, requires there to be a higher standard of scrutiny of any law that discriminates on the basis of sex. This was a breakthrough in women’s rights protection. She advocated as a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels in the 1970s. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit where she served until her elevation to the Supreme Court.

DISSENT scarf in Jade, ~27 x 72 inches, A portion of the proceeds goes to support the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, which was founded by Ginsburg in 1972.
DISSENT scarf in Purple, ~27 x 72 inches, A portion of the proceeds goes to support the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, which was founded by Ginsburg in 1972.

“Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, ‘my colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way,’ but the greatest dissents do become court opinions.”

Justice Ginsburg is playing the long game.

Below are excerpts from some significant dissents written by Justice Ginsburg.

Shelby County v. Holder 2013

The Court’s opinion can hardly be described as an exemplar of restrained and moderate decision making. Quite the opposite. Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA. Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court’s opinion today. The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled. Instead, it relies on increases in voter registration and turnout as if that were the whole story. In my judgment, the Court errs egregiously by overriding Congress’ decision.

Instead, the Court strikes [Section]4(b)’s coverage provision because, in its view, the provision is not based on “current conditions.” Ante, at 17. It discounts, however, that one such condition was the preclearance remedy in place in the covered jurisdictions, a remedy Congress designed both to catch discrimination before it causes harm, and to guard against return to old ways. […]Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.
Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action 2013

Texas’ percentage plan was adopted with racially segregated neighborhoods and schools front and center stage. … It is race consciousness, not blindness to race, that drives such plans. I have several times explained why government actors, including state universities, need not be blind to the lingering effects of “an overtly discriminatory past,” the legacy of “centuries of law-sanctioned inequality.”

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby 2014

The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would…deny legions of women who do not hold their employers’ beliefs access to contraceptive coverage. Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community. Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be ‘perceived as favoring one religion over another,’ the very risk the Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.

Bush v. Gore 2000

The Court assumes that time will not permit “orderly judicial review of any disputed matters that might arise.” … But no one has doubted the good faith and diligence with which Florida election officials, attorneys for all sides of this controversy, and the courts of law have performed their duties. Notably, the Florida Supreme Court has produced two substantial opinions within 29 hours of oral argument. In sum, the Court’s conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court’s own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States. I dissent.