An unusual election calls for an unusual inauguration celebration.
On January 20, President-elect Joe Biden will forgo the normal inauguration festivities for a television primetime special. The Biden administration announced the special in a press release on Jan. 15. “The program will highlight the strength of our democracy, the perseverance of our people, and our ability to come together during trying times and emerge stronger than ever before,” it said.
Dolores Huerta, along with many others, will be highlighted in the celebration.
Huerta is one of the most influential activists of the 20th century — and Radio DePaul News was lucky enough to have the chance to speak with her back in October, when Huerta (virtually) visited DePaul in a celebration in her honor hosted by the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity.
The 90-year-old has spent most of her life as an activist, fighting for better striving for greater social and economic justice for people of all races, genders and ethnicities since 1955. The civil rights icon was an equal partner in founding the United Farm Workers of America union with César Chávez, a longtime collaborator.
She is most commonly known for coining the slogan Si, se puede — Spanish for “Yes, we can” — that was used by the Obama/Biden campaign in their 2008 run and often discredited to Chavez. “In Spanish it means both singular ‘I can’ and ‘we can’, that’s the power of that slogan. It means we can envision all this and we can make it happen,” Huerta said.
She has unwavering optimism in the power of community organizing, saying that young people need to remain steadfast in their pursuit of social justice. She emphasized the importance of caring for earth and society for the care of future generations: “To all the young people, don’t give up, and it can happen a lot faster than when we were organizing back then in the ‘60s and ‘70s by people mobilizing so quickly and educating and informing. For all of you young people, you deserve to have a planet that is healthy, that has air that you can breathe, not only for yourself but for your children and grandchildren. So we can make this happen but we will have to work very hard to do it. We can’t afford to give up.”
College students, she said, should get involved in political campaigns to drive change forward. “We’re against some very, very powerful forces and very very wealthy opponents,” Huerta said. “We’re against some very very powerful entities, but that doesn’t mean we can’t win.” She even encouraged DACA students who can’t vote to get involved in political activism.
Latinos absolutely deserve a say in the political process. “The pandemic has really shown us that not only are Latinos very much essential workers like farmworkers and the service workers but also many of the DACA students are also essential for the work that they are also doing. Many of them are not only students but workers,” said Huerta.
“Let’s let them know what the Latino community does, to keep our country fed, to keep our country safe, Latinos are taking care of elderly, taking care of children, and all the work they do to make our country safe and clean… Latino workers are so invisible with all the work they do to keep our country safe and fed,” said Huerta.
In the future, she hopes for “better respect, better wages, less racism and discriminaton against not just Latinos, but Black Americans and indigious people. We need a society that is more fair and more just.” She also called for prison reform, citing the sheer numbers of incarcerated people in the US as compared to countries like India or China.
As an activist now, Huerta continues to work towards many of those goals through the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which works at a grassroots level to organize, train and inspire communities in pursuit of social justice goals.
Biden’s inauguration serves as an optimistic moment amidst a hard year, and offers some hope for both the Latinx community in his proposed more lenient immigration policies, and activists in an end to the Trump era.
The inaugural television special “Celebrating America” will be hosted by Tom Hanks and will air on Wednesday, January 20 from 7:30-9:00 pm CT live on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC and PBS, as well as live-streamed on the Presidential Inaugural Committee social media channels.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kerry Washington, first woman MLB general manager Kim Ng and NBA all-time leading scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, among other celebrities and trailblazers will be highlighted in the celebration of Biden’s presidency.
President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris will also make remarks. “Celebrating America” is the last of five days of programming meant to honor inaugural traditions in a Covid-19 friendly way.
