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old me do? Well, this is where you really have to you’ve never had the opportunity to learn or
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think about it and about what plain old you can been lucky enough to be on a picket line or a
do. Plain old you can do a lot of things, you can sit-in or some type of demonstration to make
make real great changes for this country, just change. And we have to do these things, it doesn’t
plain old you — if you make a commitment. Just happen by osmosis, you know, or long distance,
like farm workers have done, all of the changes you’ve got to be present and it’s got to happen
that have been brought and farm workers have to you.[…]
done is because farm workers have made a Build up those muscles because you are
Changing the World
commitment and they lent their whole bodies to going to need them, you are going to need them.
go out there and do something. It was, again, like This country needs a lot of changes and we have
during the Civil Rights struggle when people to make them. We can’t say, “I am going to wait
went in and sat in and got beaten up and what for somebody else to do them,” say, “I am going
have you — it was their bodies that made that to do it. In whatever way I can, I am going to do
difference. So don’t ever think that plain old you it.” In Spanish, in our union, we have a saying
can’t make the difference; it’s like dropping a called — whenever we start these impossible
little stone in a pool; it’s just one little stone, a tasks like they told Cesar — “You can’t organize
little pebble, but it makes all kinds of waves that a union, Cesar,” and “You can’t start a national
reach way out. That’s what your action does, what boycott.” The unions told us we couldn’t do a
you do goes way way out. Sometimes this may be national boycott; now they are doing it. We
hard if we haven’t been in political action before always say, “Sí se puede.” Who knows what that
or social action, and you think, “How can I do means, “Sí se puede?” It can be done, right? Sí se
this?” or think, “I don’t know how,” because puede means it can be done.

Understanding and Interpreting

1. Reread paragraphs 2 and 3, in which Huerta traces some of the history of the farm workers
union. What is the key information that she communicates here, and what purpose does it
serve in her larger argument?
2. Huerta claims at several point in her speech that creating change really comes down to doing
simple things. She offers three examples of simple things: fasting, boycotting, and picketing.
Explain how, to Huerta, these are simple things and how they lead to change.
3. In paragraphs 3 and 4, Huerta talks about hitting the corporations “in the pocketbook.” What
does this mean, and how can it lead to change?
4. Huerta says that she had to unlearn “about being rational, objective, and being logical” (par. 4).
Why, according to her, did she need to do this, and why is this a significant statement to make
considering her audience?
5. In paragraph 7, Huerta tells her audience to “Build up those muscles.” What are the muscles
she’s describing, and what does she want her audience to do with them?

Analyzing Language, Style, and Structure

1. Vocabulary in Context. In paragraph 6, Huerta says, “it doesn’t happen by osmosis.”
“Osmosis” is a scientific term, but Huerta is applying it in a non-scientific context here. What
does it mean in this context? How is this meaning influenced by its scientific meaning?

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