si, se puede!
Yes we can!

November 5, 2026

Last week we lost an icon of strength and perseverance. Delores Huerta worked tirelessly for nearly seven decades to fight for the civil and human rights of marginalized communities, bringing attention to the inhumane conditions that farm workers endured. Her unwavering grass roots work led to establishing union representation that significantly improved wages and working conditions for agricultural workers.

Her approach to leadership was rooted in the belief that both confronting injustice and building the collective capacity to address it are necessary to achieve lasting change. She firmly believed that as people are able to recognize their power, communities and institutions can be changed for the good. Delores’s phrase, Sí Se Puede! – Yes, We Can! became the rallying cry for a generation of those who shared her belief in the collective power of the people.

Despite Delores’s strength of character and conviction, her rather recent admission of sexual coercion and abuse from co-leader and lauded icon, Cesar Chávez, over sixty years ago, came as a shock to many. Holding the secret shame of the abuse for all those decades, Delores just recently came forward to validate the allegations of many younger women who were also sexually assaulted by Chávez. In revealing the secret of her abuse, Delores states, “the pain is always with me.”

Sadly, it is not unusual for survivors to hold the secret shame of being sexually victimized for decades before revealing the secret of abuse – if ever. Delores was forced to make the calculation of so many survivors as they weigh the repercussions of speaking out. She feared that revealing the abuse from Chávez would crumble the momentum of the entire labor rights movement.

Is it time for us to begin a movement of our own? A movement modeled after the work of Delores Huerta? What if we believed that every human being who is sexually abused is worthy of being heard and believed – that a survivor’s right to justice must be protected – that survivors will know that the consequences of speaking up will be borne by the abuser?

In honor of Delores Huerta and of every other survivor of sexual abuse who has held their secret in fear for far too long, I absolutely believe in the more exact translation of Delores’s famous phrase, “Yes, it can be done!”  Let this be the rallying cry of those who share the conviction that survivors deserve to speak up, be believed, and will find justice.

Sí, Se Puede!