Dolores Huerta has been jailed, beaten, mocked by Glenn Beck. A new doc shows why she won’t shut up

Dolores” is a documentary that celebrates a hero, but it’s no hagiography. Its subject wouldn’t stand for that.

That would be Dolores Huerta, a legendary activist who at age 87 defines indefatigable, a woman whose experience shows what a life of total commitment means — as well as the price it demands.

Huerta has been jailed, seriously beaten, mocked by commentator Glenn Beck and given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama. Yet she doesn’t have the name recognition of her close collaborator, Cesar Chavez, something director Peter Bratt is determined to change with this vivid, informative and heartening documentary.

Huerta was the co-founder, along with Chavez, of the United Farm Workers union. She’s also the person who came up with that organization’s celebrated slogan, “Si, se puede” — yes, we can — someone whose tireless activism has extended to feminism, the environment and the political process.

Although numerous on-camera voices are complimentary, including Gloria Steinem, Angela Davis and playwright Luis Valdez, the film’s tone is set not by them but by Huerta herself. She’s a clear-eyed and tough-minded truth-teller who has no hesitation about recalling her life exactly the way it was.

Read more at the LA Times.