Dolores Huerta’s Legacy Is the Work AI Cannot Do for Us

Dolores Huerta died at home in Bakersfield. She was 96, and her close family was with her on October 28, according to the Dolores Huerta Foundation. The public record will return now to photographs of the medal and the sound of “Sí se puede.” I keep thinking about the work beneath the slogan. Huerta registered voters. She learned the complaints, found the people willing to act, and stayed through the slow business of making a demand stick. Hope mattered to her because somebody had to give it an address and a next meeting. Her politics offers no rescue by a wealthy patron or an ingenious machine. It asks more of ordinary people and takes their capacities seriously. I want her legacy to remain useful to them.

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Why Adjunct Instructors and Graduate Students Need Unions

Unionization in higher education is important because it helps preserve the individual in service to the corpus.  Collective bargaining is all about equality and fair treatment and when the terms of agreed-to contracts are changed on a whim by the university, the stiff arm of the union must be invoked to preserve the basic rights of every instructor.  One violation offends every instructor.

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