Issued October 28, 2026

WASHINGTON, D.C. — SEIU International President April Verrett released the following statement on the death of Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association:

"I've spent all morning thinking about what it takes to be the person in the room who keeps pushing after everyone else has made peace with the way things are. Dolores Huerta was that person for more than seventy years.

She started out as a teacher. She saw children coming to school hungry, and she couldn't look away, so she went out to organize their parents. She raised her own kids on picket lines. She sat across the table from some of the most powerful growers in this country and walked out with contracts that changed farmworkers' lives. And for much of that time, the credit went to someone else. She kept going anyway, because the work was never about her.

That's what I want young people to know about Dolores. You don't have to wait for someone to hand you a title or give you permission. You don't need the spotlight to matter. Dolores gave a whole movement its words, ¡Sí, se puede!, and she meant every one of them. Yes, we can. Not someday, not when conditions are perfect. Now, with what we have.

Dolores understood something our movement can never forget: no one wins alone. Farmworkers and teachers, nurses and janitors, immigrant families and civil rights organizers, women demanding a seat at the table, our fights are united as one. 

Our SEIU family knows that better than most, because Dolores showed up for us again and again. She marched with fast food workers in the Fight for $15. She stood on our picket lines and at our rallies. At 89, she was arrested alongside SEIU home care workers in Fresno, demanding a raise for the people who care for our elders. Our members, so many of them women and immigrants doing work this country can't live without, see themselves in her story. We stand where we stand because she stood first, and because she kept standing with us.

So let's honor her the way she'd want. Not with a moment of silence and then business as usual, but by doing the work. 

To her children and grandchildren and the whole Huerta family, to the Dolores Huerta Foundation, and to every farmworker carrying her fight forward: we are holding you in our hearts. Rest well, Dolores. You did your part. Now it's our turn."