Legendary Organizing Activist Dolores Huerta, 95, Rides in AHF’s ‘Food for Health’ Rose Parade Float
Float honors AHF’s food banks, free farmers’ markets, veterans’ food programs and massive SoCal wildfire food relief efforts for evacuees and first responders
Need some inspiration for 2026? Fix your gaze on the Pasadena Tournament of Roses this Jan.1 to find the amazing legendary civil rights and union activist Dolores Huerta riding on AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s “Food for Health” float in the Rose Parade – an incredibly fitting community tribute to the 95-year-old co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association (now United Farm Workers) with the late Cesar Chavez.
The AHF float spotlights the organization’s national initiative to combat hunger and food insecurity by providing nutritious groceries - including produce, bread, dairy and other staples– to families and individuals in need. Their program is illustrated through “a vibrant ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ motif, symbolizing growth, nourishment and the power of community collaboration,” with oversized pumpkins, carrots, eggplants and strawberries “representing the abundance that can bloom when people work together,” KTLA noted in a recent story. An overflowing farmer’s market truck is a tribute to “AHF’s volunteers and partners who served more than 75,000 meals to wildfire evacuees and first responders earlier this year.” (Click here to see KTLA’s report on the AHF float.)
AHF reports that by the end of 2025, their Food for Health program “will have served over half a million people across the country with weekly groceries.”
While AHF has a reputation for illustrating significant issues through the Rose Parade – starting in 2012 with their float tribute to “Elizabeth Taylor: Our AIDS Champion” – this year’s focus on food insecurity and the possibility of hope through community collaboration is particularly significant.
While Donald Trump calls today’s affordability crisis a Democratic “hoax,” many Americans believe their own eyes. “Roughly 9 in 10 U.S. adults, 87%, say they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries in the past few months, while about two-thirds say they’ve experienced higher prices than usual for electricity and holiday gifts. About half say they’ve seen higher than normal prices for gas recently,” according to a Dec. 12 AP-NORC poll.
Meanwhile, while Congress may have temporarily saved Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from major drastic One Big Beautiful Bill funding cuts - SNAP helps approximately 1 in 8 Americans afford groceries - the bill added confusing new restrictions on who could receive food aid based on employment and immigration status, according to The Hill.
“The battle over SNAP isn’t over yet, either. States are still on the hook to rein in their error rates or face further funding cuts,” The Hill reports. “The Trump administration is also threatening to withhold benefits from states that don’t hand over data on participants, including their immigration statuses.”
Dolores Huerta personifies that intersectionality of people, of issues and “the power of community collaboration.”
“AHF celebrates Dolores Huerta as a national treasure supreme. Dolores represents our unsung farm workers who regardless of their status toil so hard to put food on our tables. Yet, millions of people go hungry in the richest country in the world. The mission of AHF’s Food for Health could have no better representative than Dolores,” says AHF Co-Founder and President Michael Weinstein. “Dolores has also been a steadfast comrade in arms on LGBT and renters’ issues.”
That Huerta advocates on renters’ issues is a natural extension of the mentoring she received from her independent mother Alicia who owned a 70-room hotel in Stockton, California with affordable rates and breaks for low-wage workers. She was civically active and encouraged her daughter to appreciate cultural diversity in their agricultural community of Mexican, Filipino, African-American, Japanese and Chinese working families.
Huerta got involved with the community, too, as well as earning a provisional teaching credential at the University of Pacific’s Delta College and getting married and having two daughters. According to her foundation: “While teaching, she could no longer bear to see her students come to school with empty stomachs and bare feet, and thus began her lifelong journey of working to correct economic injustice.”
Her experience in leadership at the Stockton Community Service Organization led to her founding the Agricultural Workers Association where she started a voter registration drive. In 1955, she married Ventura Huerta (with whom she had four more children), worked with Fred Ross to start the Community Service Organization and met César E. Chávez. The two shared a vision to organize farm workers and in 1962, they launched the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). Huerta’s skills lobbying, negotiating and organizing led in 1963 to her securing the then-unimaginable Aid For Dependent Families and disability insurance for farm workers in California.
Huerta and Chavez saw NFWA as part of the larger civil rights movement and decided to back the Filipino-led Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, an AFL-CIO labor union led by Filipino American organizer Larry Itliong, in what became the historic national 1965 Delano Grape Strike and boycott. Their coalition with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), as well as other union organizers and student activists drew parallels between the Jim Crow South and rural California in the struggle for racial, social and economic justice. By April 1966, the national boycott against Schenley Industries, the second largest grape grower in Delano, California, was so successful, Schenley agreed to sign a labor agreement with the NFWA, the union’s first – negotiated by Dolores Huerta.
In 1966, NFWA merged with the Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee – later pared down to the United Farm Workers. Coalition building continued, including with prominent civil rights leaders and politicians, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
On May 29, 2012, President Barack Obama presented Dolores Huerta with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saying she and the other honorees had “marked my life in profound ways.”
Obama also injected some humor into the ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
“Dolores was very gracious when I told her I had stolen her slogan, ‘Sí, se puede.’ Yes, we can,” Obama said, referring to his familiar 2008 campaign slogan. “Knowing her, I’m pleased that she let me off easy, because Dolores does not play.”
“Without any negotiating experience, Dolores helped lead a worldwide grape boycott that forced growers to agree to some of the country’s first farm worker contracts. And ever since, she has fought to give more people a seat at the table,” Obama said. She is one of those individuals who says, ’Don’t wait to be invited. ... Step in there.’”
Huerta is a woman of action, including standing up for the freedom to marry for same sex couples, even though the fundamental right was disparaged by some in her Latino community.
“Our relationships with the ones we love and our Latino identities are two of the biggest reasons why we should care about equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in America. When we see our Latino hermanos y hermanas harassed and held back simply for being who they are; when we can’t come together to celebrate a wedding for our gay friends; and when we know they don’t have the same opportunities we take for granted, it affects us personally,” Huerta wrote in a widely distributed June 14, 2013 essay for NBCLatino.
“I’ve spent my life championing both labor and civil rights causes and getting to know diverse perspectives; I’ve come to see that the struggles gay people face are intertwined with my own struggles,” she continued. “Let’s each do our part by being open about who we are, by accepting one another without shame or judgment, and by sharing our stories in every way possible. Whether it’s our hijos or hijas, hermanos or hermanas, or tíos and tías, we believe in the same freedoms for everybody, no matter who you are or whom you love.”
AHF launched in 1987 as AIDS Hospice Foundation with Michael Weinstein and a handful of friends trying to provide hospice care and advocacy for people with HIV/AIDS - “fighting for the living and caring for the dying” – during the Second Wave of AIDS when “freedom” often felt meaningless. The Chris Brownlie Hospice provided the last light of nurturing dignity.
Today, AHF is the world’s largest HIV/AIDS healthcare organization serving more than 2.8 million individuals across 50 countries, including the U.S.. Recently the nonprofit opened a new AHF Healthcare Center in Memphis, Tennessee and another in Detroit, Michigan, bringing the total to 19 states, Washington, DC and Puerto Rico. AHF services have also expanded to include food, shelter, disaster relief and wellness services.
“The responsibility of bringing as many people as possible into the lifeboat of care remains staggering but is a challenge AHF will continue to take on,” Weinstein said on World AIDS Day.
As the AHF “Food for Health” float steers down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena on New Year’s Day, think of what “affordability” and “being of service” mean to you. Perhaps you, too, may be inspired by United Farm Workers Dolores Huerta or any of the other local heroes, or AHF staff and volunteers waving back at you and join “the power of community collaboration.”
Wow this is something great from AHF!