How to overcome apathy and find your power | Dolores Huerta

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"Sí, se puede!" -- "Yes, we can!" It's the rallying cry Dolores Huerta came up with as a young activist in the 1970s, and she's lived by it in her tireless pursuit of civil rights ever since. With her signature wit and humor, Huerta reflects on her life's work, offering inspiration for anybody trying to overcome apathy, get involved and find their own power.

The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more.

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"we have to live simply so that others can simply live." Amen Momma. Took a pen and wrote those very words down just last week. Timing. Call it the labor of Rosa Mystica. I am very thankful for your spirit Momma. "For all has passed- Thanks. For all that will be- Yes."

asburymerton

What a lovely lady. She seems like that one grandma with the best stories with great morals. I love her

samusammale

I am always watching the ted because of improve my English,
Educate and motivate myself
Thanks ted

chandlerbing

Dolores, thank you for making me feel seen, loved, inspired, and ready to take action.

RubyFuentes

Apathy is the glove, into which evil slips its hand!

titlespree

To anyone who cares to read this:
Some complain that she gives too much attention to women during her speech. Here I will try to find out if this is true, as well as if she stays on topic (the topic is considered to be the title here) and speak a bit of my own opinion of this video. Attention, essay incoming, anyone bored leave now, anyone interested read everything before forming an opinion.
The title is "How to overcome apathy and find your power". Let's break down the arguments she used to help in that direction:
a) For everyone:
1) It can be hard for people to help others because they have family and other responsibilities
2)"We have to live simply so that others can simply live". Stop spending money and time in things we don't need and use them to help others.
3)The first example from her own experience, which proves that if you speak up and exhaust your set of possible actions your efforts will pay off. Ask and you shall receive, especially when it's the other persons job to provide what you ask for.
4)The second example from Leticia Prado's (sorry if I misspell) experience, where the aforementioned woman got herself and other people elected in public institutes in order to change things for the better for her own community and maybe even further. Proves you can use public offices that some people think are inaccessible in order to help more people (and yourself/family) even when other things have failed.

b)For women (the list is long but actual time spent saying these things is short):
1)It can be hard for women to help others because the fear they have from previous bad experiences can linger and immobilise their will to help people outside of their own family.Also
partly due to this but also from a lack of experience, some women do not believe they are even able to help themselves and others actively, other than the work they do for their family on a daily basis.
2)Women tend to feel like they are 70-100% (this percentage is my interpretation of what she meant) responsible for their own family's well being and thus often refuse to ask, or even accept help, even from their own husbands if any (who share equal responsibility with them) and their close relatives who may be extremely eager to help, again if any. If they lack both, friends and other people, as well as public services.
3)Women also are taught to be victims and those who believe it don't even think they can save themselves from the harsh realities of our world, let alone help others.
4)"The female is more deadly than the male".
5)Women and minorities can now get elected easier than in the past.

Keep in mind that she also gave helpful advice in what things are important to do if you wish to help, but the things she said are impossible to do before getting rid of your own apathy first (by definition of the word). She also said other things that may be helpful. What she said about women's education is far too vague to put above.
The time she spent giving advice against apathy for everyone is about 6 minutes of the 13 and a half of this video including the introduction and the examples, and the time she gave advice exclusively to women is 1 and a half to two minutes.If anyone cares for how I came up with that time, I will explain in the end. So she did not actually spend too much time talking to just women (this also stands true for the rest 6-6, 5 minutes of the video).
What she did however is stray off the topic for nearly half the video and while it is still worth to listen, that half of the video does not help someone struggling with apathy. Usually ted talks are to the point, so either the title or the speech itself is misdirecting to the audience.
Furthermore, the spearheads of her speech (in terms of overcoming apathy) are 2), 3) and 4)
of the a) part, as these are the parts in which she actually gives advice, with the other arguments playing a supporting role and empathising with the difficulties of overcoming apathy. The stronger of those are 3) and 4), as 2) may be easy to do but not elaborated upon enough to show it's full potential and power ( a little help from everybody is a world of help). So to judge the effectiveness of her speech on following it's stated purpose, we have to see how effective are the 5 minutes of examples ( 3 and 4 of a ) supported by the rest of the arguments.
This is up to anyone's opinion. On one hand providing new examples to encourage people and the sheer presence of someone who is an activist/volunteer as well as the opportunity meet and talk to her is extremely helpful to someone who has given up on the world and needs some hope. The empathy displayed on her speech is also most effective in this context (my estimate is 50-80% effective in those circumstances but I could be wrong). On the other hand, most people have heard and disregarded/forgotten such examples given ample time and also the structure of her persuasion (empathy > small steps > successful examples > you can do it!) is textbook for people trying to get others to join their cause and thus not very convincing, at least from afar, as it is very hard to discriminate this talk from other such things that people hear over and over. Thus it is easy to "phase" this if not in person. Also it does not explore the nature of the problem nearly enough, leaving apathy as a vague enemy and possibly alienating people who have a serious problem with it.However examples are always good even from afar. My opinion is that the talk is effective when you listen to it in person, but has room for improvement in video form.

Other than that, through the way she speaks she does give a lot of emphasis to women even though she does not actually spend so much time talking about them. It kinda bugs me as everyone has the capacity to help and should be called for action, not just women. Also the way she uses the word "feminisation" is simply horrible, as if helping other people and countries is a feminine thing. Kindness is completely genderless and thank god that it is.But her overall disposition can be excused because as an activist she has likely faced an overwhelming amount of oppressed and overburdened women who think themselves helpless and her way of speech is obviously a way she uses to give confidence to those women.She could have avoided the feminisation thing though.Lastly although the definition she gives to feminism is bad I believe she means this: Feminism is the belief that all men and women should have equal opportunities and rights and be judged by society based on merit and not race or gender. But she said in a very crude way a list of things a feminist would do either to help people understand or to underline her own cause.

Conclusions:
1)The video though helpful, strays off topic quite a lot and should not have this title.Specifically, nearly half is blatantly out of topic and the rest of the video's helpfulness
can be debated.It is better on person, which makes sense, but is still misleading for someone who sees the video.
2)The video does not actually spend too much time on women, it is the speaker's disposition that gives emphasis on them.
3)That disposition can be excused because the speaker is trying to encourage women who have been given a hard time, and she has met countless of them in her life.
4)She still made some blunders, especially with "feminisation".
5)Conclusions 1) and 2) can be disproven if the talk is longer in reality than the video. However if they just cut the questions 1) and 2) likely remain the same.

For how long is each part, after the 8th minute of the video she stops talking about helping with apathy and focuses on other stuff, but I subtracted half a minute from 2:20 to 2:50 where she talks about the legacy we leave behind and women's education because the first is not persuasive or emphasised enough and the second is far too vague and unexplained. Other than that, 1 minute intro plus 5 minutes examples plus some change count for everyone's advice and the rest is for women.

I don't think ill of the speaker, just thought it would be fun to analyse this.

If anyone makes it to the end: Congratulations you won, er... How about some Catnip? Uh, you're not a cat you say? Well give it to your cat or something. Or a stray if you don't have one.
That and my condolences for being 1/4 the comment nerd I am :)

bourdonblanc

Good video, I would say, but not what the title implied at all.

Anzyll

Wait! How do I overcome apathy again?

Fix the title.

esbenandreasen

I met her once. In Bakersfield. She's Wonderful 😊
Sí, se puede! Yes, we can!

alicia

You gotta be open minded in order to fully understand. Great speech overall.

johnfouller

Want to see more aged people at TEDtalks. I believe they have wisdoms to share too

faithderla

This is the best Ted talk I’ve ever seen.

zahrapirani

We are learning about her in my class!

sussybaka

amazing lecture!!! yes all of us have power

juhithavaddineni

Soooo... no ACTUAL advice on overcoming apathy, then? Just saying a phrase does squat. Apathy is real. It's debilitating. It's soul destroying. It's not about the fight in front of you. It's about the next ten, next hundred, next thousand. How many fights do you have in you? How many need to be fought? How many people will fight beside you? How many will fight against you? Which fights are the most important? Which can be postponed and which can be abandoned because greater fights exist?

This is the nature of apathy... seeing the monumental horror of the wars ahead, the great impossible climb, building a ladder to the moon. You can ignore the nature of apathy for a time, but eventually the ink black shadow of it will drown you. So the question is... how do you beat apathy? Because a bumper sticker sentiment isn't going to cut it.

AnonEyeMouse