SF Chronicle preview of Dolores
The nation is tense, and California’s Central Valley farm fields have become an unlikely flash point. The workers — mostly immigrants — who harvest the fruits and vegetables that feed much of the country are scared and angry. They labor to the point of physical exhaustion for low pay. Protests against these conditions are organized and soon gain widespread support.
This may sound like a dispatch from the front lines of 2025, a year that’s been marked by the Trump administration’s immigration raids and arrests across the state’s agricultural industry. But it’s also the historical backdrop for Dolores Huerta, who in the mid-1960s spearheaded a nationwide boycott of table grapes in solidarity with striking farmworkers. Alongside fellow labor leaders Cesar Chavez and Larry Itliong, she played an integral role in the era’s civil rights movement.