[dropcap size=big]T[/dropcap]here is an incredible moment of archival footage in the documentary Dolores, in which a television interviewer asks labor leader Dolores Huerta what she would do, thinking as an ‘average woman,’ if she had $5,000 to spend on ‘herself.’
It is the second or third such patronizing question — from a woman interviewer, no less. Huerta fields them with an empty swallow and a smile that seems to be pleading for mercy at the idiocy of it all. Cesar Chavez, her cohort founder of the United Farm Workers, sits serene-faced right besides her, but silent.
At the time Huerta and Chavez were basically inventing modern grassroots organizing as we know it, while building the UFW in the breadbasket of the United States, California’s Central Valley. But you know, let’s talk about lady things.
“I’d donate it to the union,” Dolores answers after a laugh. But the interviewer is dissatisfied. “—That would be spending it on myself because to me ... this is my life’s work.”