Dolores Huerta, Renowned Labor and Civil Rights Leader, and Louis Malfaro, Texas Labor Leader, Endorse Doug Greco for Mayor of Austin
May 21, 2024 | Email info@grecoforaustin.com | Website grecoforaustin.com
Renowned labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta and the Dolores Huerta Action Fund have endorsed Doug Greco for Mayor of Austin. Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers alongside Cesar Chavez, where she was the organization’s principal legislative advocate, key spokesperson, and leader in the farmworkers’ decisive strikes and grape boycotts in California’s Central Valley and across the country.
Doug Greco collaborated with Dolores Huerta in the San Joaquin Valley cities of Bakersfield, Fresno and the surrounding Central Valley counties in 2015-2016 as Director of Programs and Program Development for Equality California (EQCA), the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. Doug and his team of EQCA organizers worked with the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF) to conduct house meetings, town halls, and LGBTQ cultural competency trainings with health clinics, immigration organizations, and LGBTQ Centers to address healthcare disparities for LGBTQ immigrants.
“As an organizer, I am deeply honored to receive Dolores’ support in this election,” said Greco. “She is a lifelong and tireless advocate for workers, immigrants, women, communities of color, and the LGBTQ community, and I will strive to emulate her example in this campaign. During my tenure at Equality California, Dolores was a key advisor to our work in the Central Valley, and was incredibly generous with her time in teaching me the organizing history of the United Farm Workers, the Community Service Organization (CSO), Cesar Chavez, and Fred Ross.”
Texas labor leader Louis Malfaro has also endorsed Doug Greco for Austin Mayor. Malfaro served as President of Education Austin, the teacher and school employee union in AISD, for nearly two decades. Malfaro first met Doug Greco in the late 1990’s at Johnston High School, where Greco was a teacher and first became a union member. Malfaro later became the President of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, AFT’s statewide teachers union, and currently serves as the Associate Executive Director for Austin Voices for Education and Youth.
“During Doug’s leadership with Central Texas Interfaith, together we accomplished numerous, tangible successes for working families: a prevailing wage rate for construction workers on school projects, pay increases for teachers and school staff, and at the state level, a denial of taxpayer handouts to big corporations at the expense of schools,” said Malfaro. “When faced with a choice as mayor of whether to side with big money or working families, there’s no doubt which side he’ll come down on– it’s the side of working families.”