State Highway 47 Dolores Huerta Boulevard

Second Regular Session Seventy-fifth General Assembly STATE OF COLORADO INTRODUCED LLS NO. R26-0961.01 Jessica Wigent x3701 HOUSE SPONSORSHIP Martinez, Bacon, Camacho, Duran, Garcia, Jackson, Joseph, Mabrey, Nguyen, Rutinel, Velasco, Zokaie House Committees HOUSE RESOLUTION 26-1005 CONCERNING RENAMING STATE HIGHWAY 47, IN PUEBLO, COLORADO, "DOLORES HUERTA BOULEVARD".

WHEREAS, Born in 1930 in Dawson, New Mexico, a mountain mining town in the northern part of the state, Dolores Huerta spent most of her early years in California, where she was raised by her mother, Alicia, who, after years of hard work as a waitress and factory worker, opened a small hotel and restaurant, where she often offered free meals and lodging to migrant workers and their families; and WHEREAS, Huerta studied education in college and became a teacher for a short time; it was this experience, when she saw her young charges, the children of farmworkers, arrive to school in bare feet and study while hungry, that compelled her to devote her life to the people who, the inaugural Poet Laureate of Albuquerque Hakim Bellamy wrote, "power dreams / and profit / and are for granted / and are forgotten"; and WHEREAS, In the late 1950s, as part of the Community Service Organization, she began lobbying for health coverage for farmworkers and working on voter registration drives; in 1962, she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to fight to ensure that Shading denotes HOUSE amendment. Double underlining denotes SENATE amendment.

Capital letters or bold & italic numbers indicate new material to be added to existing law. Dashes through the words or numbers indicate deletions from existing law.

farmworkers were treated with dignity, that they were paid enough to feed their families, and that they were provided rest periods, cold drinking water, and toilets in the fields; and WHEREAS, By 1963, with Huerta's lobbying help, the NFWA had helped secure disability insurance and state public assistance for the workers on California's farms; and WHEREAS, During a coordinated and ultimately successful grape worker strike and boycott in 1965, the NFWA merged with the Filipino-American and Mexican-American farmworkers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), and Dolores Huerta was elected Vice President, the organization's only female leader; and WHEREAS, Huerta would remain UFW's Vice President for decades, and the UFW would go on to energize a worldwide movement that would partner with civil rights organizations and religious leaders and inspire people across the country and on every continent; and WHEREAS, Those inspired included lettuce workers on strike in Center, Colorado, in the San Luis Valley in the early 1970s, who were supported by the UFW as they sought fair wages and more humane working conditions; and WHEREAS, Huerta advocated for the entire family's participation in the movement, as farmworkers often lived on the farms where they toiled, and they protested as families as well--while men marched and women picketed, childcare was provided by the UFW, the first farmworker daycare in the state of California; and WHEREAS, In 1972, when Arizona passed a bill that prevented farmworkers, and only those workers, from unionizing and that punished strikers and boycotters with prison time, at a meeting when a worried participant said, "In Arizona no se puede", Huerta responded, "No, in Arizona, sí, se puede!" and a movement's slogan was born; "Sí, se puede!" is a refrain that still inspires today; and WHEREAS, With Huerta as one of their most prominent spokespersons, the UFW helped pass California's "Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975", which allowed California farmworkers the right to collectively organize and bargain for better wages and working conditions, and the UFW played a vital role in the campaign to outlaw DDT, the pesticide that posed serious health risks to farmworkers, which was first banned not by the government but in a UFW union contract; and WHEREAS, Awarded the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award in 1998 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, she is now the president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a "continuation of the nonviolent civil rights movement of the 1970s", the foundation sends full-time organizers to create "Vecinos Unidos", or "United Neighbors" groups, to train, support, and mobilize communities to interact with government officials and maneuver within complex political systems for their benefit; Vecinos Unidos have successfully raised funding for road and sidewalk repairs, sewer expansions, education equity, local parks, and other powerful community projects; now, therefore, Be It Resolved by the House of Representatives of the Seventy-fifth General Assembly of the State of Colorado:

(1) That Dolores Huerta and the farmworkers she has dedicated her life to raising up deserve the recognition of the people of Colorado;

(2) That State Highway 47, located in Pueblo County, Colorado, be renamed "Dolores Huerta Boulevard"; and

(3) That it is fitting and proper that money from gifts, grants, and donations be used to pay for appropriate signage indicating the highway's new name.