Speaker Rivas Shares Personal Tribute to Lifelong Friend and Civil Rights Leader Dolores Huerta

Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas shares the following remembrance of historic civil rights leaders and lifelong family friend Dolores Huerta:

There would be no Speaker Rivas without Dolores Huerta. She paved the way. She made it possible.

In the 1960s, Dolores negotiated my grandfather's first union contract at Almaden Vineyards. She helped give him and his fellow farmworkers a voice, dignity and a fair shot at a better life. My family's story, and my own journey to becoming Speaker, cannot be told without Dolores Huerta.

To the world, Dolores was a civil rights icon. To my family, she was also a friend, a mentor and someone who helped change the course of our lives.

I grew up in farmworker housing in Paicines, hearing about the fight my grandfather and Dolores waged together. Their courage taught me that progress is never given to us. We have to organize, stand together and fight for it.

Speaker Rivas honoring Dolores on the Assembly Floor for her 96th birthday.

Dolores never stopped showing up for us. When I first ran for the Assembly in 2018, she came to Watsonville to stand with me and to urge young people to vote.

When I took the oath as Speaker in 2023, she was there by my side.

Every time I walk into work, I carry her lessons with me. Dolores helped make it possible for someone like me, raised in farmworker housing, to lead at our state Capitol.

Speaker Rivas, his grandmother and Dolores at the Speaker's inauguration in 2023.

History will remember Dolores as one of the most important civil rights leaders this nation has ever known. Where others saw people they could ignore, Dolores saw power - and she delivered for the people time and again.

Dolores organized farmworkers, lifted up their voices and changed the course of history. She helped lead the grape boycott that millions of Americans joined. She helped win the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first law in the entire nation to give farmworkers the right to organize. She didn't just fight for better wages and working conditions: She fought for the fundamental dignity of the people who feed America.

For generations of Latinos, Dolores was proof that our voices matter, our work matters and we belong in the rooms where decisions are made. She showed us that the people closest to injustice are often the people with the greatest power to change it. She carried that conviction everywhere: for women's rights, voting rights, immigrant rights and environmental justice. She was arrested more than 20 times for peaceful protest, and she never stopped organizing.

Speaker Rivas and Dolores advocating for the Farm Worker Housing Act of 2019.

Dolores Huerta didn't just say "Sí, se puede." She spent her life showing us how.

The best way to honor Dolores is to keep doing what she taught us: stand with working people, speak up for those too often unheard, always cast your vote and never give up on justice and equity.

To her children, grandchildren and the entire Huerta family, and to everyone at the Dolores Huerta Foundation: My entire family is holding you in our hearts.

Dolores Huerta's voice will always be with us - in the fields, in our communities, at the state Capitol, and wherever people come together to demand a better future.

Sí, se puede.

Speaker Rivas and Dolores celebrating her 96th birthday in April 2026.