Mountain Views News          Saturday, October 19, 2013

A5

AROUND SAN GABRIEL VALLEY

Mountain Views-News Saturday, October 19, 2013 


HALLOWEEN: Dealing With Our Fears 

By Christoper Nyerges

[Nyerges is the author of Extreme Simplicity, How To Survive Anywhere, 
and Guide to Wild Foods. He has led outdoor field trips since 1974. He can 
be reached at Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041, or www.ChristopherNyerges.
com.]

“What’s Going On?” 

News and Views from Joan Schmidt


AT 83, DOLORES HUERTA, “SI SE 
PUEDE” “WOWS” CITRUS COLLEGE 
STUDENTS By Joan Schmidt

 Her address probably lasted over an hour, but the entire audience in the 
standing room only Campus Center at Citrus College was mesmerized and 
inspired by one great lady-Dolores Huerta. How could this tiny bundle of energy be 83 years old and 
mother of eleven children still be going strong?

 Dolores’ life began in New Mexico, and when she was young, her parents divorced. Her 
mom, Dolores and her two brothers relocated to Stockton, where she grew up. Her mom was a 
compassionate hard worker, who held two jobs so there could be scouts and violin lessons for her 
children. Her mother eventually purchased a hotel and provided affordable housing for workers. 
Sometimes even for free if they had no money. (Working tirelessly and compassion were two great 
traits Dolores acquired from her mother.)

 Dolores went to college, but a brief marriage and birth of two children interrupted her studies. 
She returned to college, earned a degree and began her career as an elementary school teacher. It 
upset Dolores that many of her students came to school hungry and in need of shoes, so she quit 
teaching and sought ways to help others.

 In 1955, she was recruited by Fred Ross to work in the Community Service Organization 
(CSO). This group labored against segregation, discrimination and police brutality and promoted 
voter registration. During this period, Dolores met her second husband, Ventura Huerta, another 
farm laborer activist and they had five children. (This marriage also ended in divorce.) While working 
at CSO, Dolores met Caesar Chavez, who was the SCO’s national director. They shared a concern 
for the plight of farm workers, and in 1962, Caesar suggested that the CSO expand to include farm 
workers, but this request was denied. Using Delano as a base, Caesar and Dolores Huerta with the 
aid of Gilbert Padilla formed the Farm Workers Association, which would become the United Farm 
Workers Union (UFW). In those days, Caesar and Dolores were a great team, he a great leader/
speaker, and she a great organizer/negotiator. In the 1960s and 1970s, Dolores was instrumental in 
the Unions’ many successes including the strikes.

 Dolores had never stopped working. After she stepped down from her position at the UFW, 
she has continued to work to improve the lives of farmers, workers and women. In 1993, she was 
inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame for her tireless work. In 2002, she received the 
Puffin Foundation/Nation Institute Award for Creative Citizenship. With the $100,000 given with the 
Award, she founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, whose purpose is to bring organizing/training 
skills to low-income communities. The Foundation hires organizers to go out into a community. 
These organizers form groups who march, contact local officials and do all that is necessary to 
improve living conditions.

When Dolores addressed Citrus students, she spoke of the importance of Immigration Reform and 
the stalemate over the budget. She asked who knew who their legislators in Congress were and if they 
had contacted their legislators. She emphasized the importance of using our voices to be heard and 
of voting. There are 6million Latinos not voting who are eligible. Usually only 50% of all registered 
voters actually vote which is really sad.

Dolores had eleven children, and all of them learned to work. One is an attorney and one a physician. 
Two daughters work with the foundation. Dolores spoke of her work with Caesar Chavez and the 
boycott of grapes in 1988. (She is still not satisfied with spraying regulations and advised us only to 
buy organic fruit/vegetables.) She spoke of improvements in the Bakersfield are-18 streets now have 
sidewalks and gutters and there are 2 community pools.

On May 29, 2012, President Obama awarded Dolores the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This seems 
appropriate as Dolores continues to work for others’ freedoms and rights.

The month of Hallowe’en is upon us, the time when Sierra Madre residents 
start to think about the roots of this holiday, and its traditional 
theme of fear.

Is there, as Roosevelt once said, nothing to fear but fear itself?

There are certainly many troubles in the land, from war and rumors of 
war, terrorists, economic fears, nuclear concerns, genetically-modified, 
electronic surveillance and a government that’s no longer trusted by its people. Lots to fear, right?

Well, perhaps Roosevelt was right. Fear is not the best method for handling a troublesome world. 
But if not fear, how does one respond to a world whose seams are unraveling? Is there hope in the 
Hallowe’en season?

When I think of my ignorance of childhood, I realize that my fears drove me. Sometimes that was 
a good thing, and sometimes not. Fear kept me away from certain people, and away from certain 
neighborhoods. Fear got me into trouble, but it also kept me out of trouble because of fearing the 
consequences of what I was contemplating doing.

Hallowe’en is one of our ancient commemorations. Its roots go back to the ancient Celts, who had 
six significant fire ceremonies during the year, one of which was Samhain, the last day in October. 
(Originally, Samhain was celebrated from October 31 through November 2). The Feast of Samhain 
(meaning “summer’s end”), marked both their Feast of the Dead and the Celtic New Year. This time 
of the year, half way between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, was a time of decay and 
death on the earth. This was especially apparent in Western Europe, when the temperatures dropped 
and the rains fell. Take a walk in the woods or fields and you smell the decay of rotting leaves and 
fungus. Samhain ushered in the darkest and most barren time of the year. It was a time when the 
spirits of the recently departed – as well as other disincarnate entities -- were believed to be out and 
about, with easier access to humans. There was much to fear, no? 

Back in the day when there were no modern technological wonders, no Federal Reserve and central 
banking, no modern drugs and Obamacare, no IRS and no ATMs. This was the day when huge fires 
and even fire sacrifices were made in the belief that they’d protect the crops and flocks from demonic 
influence.

Historically, Hallowe’en had to do with the dead, with ghosts, with spirits. 

 The practice of putting food out to appease the ghosts so that they’d go back to their ghostly 
realms has morphed into children and adults dressing up unwittingly as the proxies of the ghosts and 
spirits, and threatening tricks if no treats are given. 

 It may seem like an ignorant way to deal with fears, but it likely seemed very pragmatic way 
back when.

 I feared the darkness as a child, and the things that lived under my bed and in the closet. I 
feared the creatures that peeked in my window at night and the boogie man who roamed our streets. 
As I grew older, I feared police and authority, and the inexplicable “establishment” and the abstract 
evil people.

 Perhaps I was lucky in finding a way to deal with my fears. As a long-standing Halloween tradition, 
the folks at the Los Angeles-based non-profit WTI [www.wtinc.info] showed me that to conquer 
your fears, you must identify them, face them, and go into them. This was done in various ways, 
sometimes by watching and discussing an insightful movie, such as Nosferatu , both the original and 
the 1978 Klaus Kinsie version. We gathered with large bowls of popcorn, and other refreshments, and 
explored the nature of fear. We remained focused on finding the science within that movie as to how 
to deal with our own inner fears. 

Additionally, “Nosferatu” provides a pictorial view of how each of us succumb to our weaknesses, and 
how we “become someone else.” There’s no need to couch any of this in religious terms, or guilt. We 
looked at the movie as a symbolic depiction of one of the ways in which our world actually operates. 
We looked at the movie as a symbol for our daily life, and we explored the many ways in which we 
should protect ourselves from the myriad “bloodsuckers” that seem to surround us in modern life. 

 It occurred to me, in retrospect, that I faced and overcame fears in my own ways too. As I 
child, there was the day I forced myself to look under the bed. Wow! Nothing was there, and I went 
back to sleep. There were the days when I forced myself to confront the older boys who I thought 
were thugs or criminals. Lo and behold, they had their own fears and insecurities, and weren’t that 
different from me. I learned, as Peter Suzuki has taught us, that once we begin thinking we may discover 
that what we thought was an enemy is actually a friend. 

 Fears exist in the abstract, and they stay alive if we keep them there. If we identify the fear, 
we can take some action to deal with it, and by so doing, we discover a greater part of ourself, and we 
discover a new part of the world, and we might even make a new friend. 


Dolores Huerta and Joan Schmidt