Labor Organizer Dolores Huerta, Co-Founder of United Farm Workers, Dies at 96

Huerta's six decades of organizing activity, legislative testimony, and political endorsements made her a recurring figure in federal labor and immigration policy debates, leaving a measurable...

Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers of America alongside Cesar Chavez and whose political activity intersected with federal labor and immigration policy for more than six decades, died Wednesday, October 28, 2026. Her family announced her death on her official Instagram account. She was 96.

Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962, the organization that merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in 1966 to form the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), according to the union's public historical record. The UFW is a federally recognized labor union whose collective bargaining activity falls under the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Act and, for agricultural workers in California, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975.

Her most direct federal policy impact came through her role in negotiating the terms of the grape boycott campaigns of the late 1960s and the subsequent legislative push for agricultural labor protections. Huerta testified before Congress on multiple occasions on behalf of farmworker interests, according to congressional records archived through the Government Publishing Office. The specific hearing dates and committee assignments are available in full through the GPO's congressional record database.

Huerta was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 by President Barack Obama, according to the White House Office of the Press Secretary announcement dated May 29, 2012. The Medal of Freedom is the nation's highest civilian honor, conferred by presidential authority.

Beyond union organizing, Huerta became an active figure in Democratic Party politics. She campaigned for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary and again in 2016, and for Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2020 cycle, according to verified news reports from those election years. Her endorsement activity is not captured in FEC filings as she was not a registered political committee, but her public campaign appearances are documented in contemporaneous press records.

The UFW, which Huerta helped build, has maintained a federal lobbying presence. UFW lobbying disclosures filed with the Senate Office of Public Records under the Lobbying Disclosure Act show the union reported lobbying activity on immigration and agricultural labor issues in multiple years through 2025. The full disclosure database is publicly searchable at lda.senate.gov.

Huerta coined the phrase "Si, se puede," meaning "Yes, it can be done" or "Yes, we can," during a 1972 campaign against a ballot initiative in Arizona that would have restricted farmworker organizing rights, according to the Dolores Huerta Foundation's public biography. The phrase was later adopted as a campaign slogan by President Obama's 2008 campaign, a connection that Huerta publicly acknowledged in interviews documented by multiple news outlets at the time.

The Dolores Huerta Foundation, a nonprofit she established, reported filing Form 990 returns with the IRS, which are publicly accessible through ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer. The foundation's stated mission is civic engagement and leadership development in low-income communities. Its most recent publicly available 990 would confirm current program expenditures and revenue, though the most recent filing on record as of the date of this report covers the 2024 fiscal year.

Huerta's policy legacy remains a reference point in ongoing congressional debates over agricultural labor law. The Agricultural Worker Program Act and related bills introduced in recent Congresses have cited UFW organizing history in their legislative findings sections, according to bill text available through Congress.gov.

What remains unknown is the precise scope of her final years of active political engagement and whether the Dolores Huerta Foundation has filed its 2025 Form 990. That document, once filed with the IRS and made public, would provide the most current picture of the foundation's financial scale and programmatic activity.