Want to see real change?  Obama is nominating someone for a Cabinet post, Secretary of Labor, who has been about change all her life, and who has shaken up the old boy’s club  doing it.

Hilda Solis, according to Harold Meyerson in the Los Angeles Times is “the Latina daughter of immigrants, a product and champion of the labor movement, a staunch environmentalist, an ardent feminist and one of the gutsiest elected officials in American politics.”

Now, that’s what we’re talking about.

“I’m very excited,” said Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “This is an extraordinary moment for all women, but especially for the Latino community.”

One of seven siblings and daughter of Nicaraguan and Mexican parents, her father a union shop steward, Solis has been concerned all her life with the lives of the working poor. ” In 1996, as a first-term member of the California state Senate (and its first Latina member), Solis did something elected officials just don’t do: She took money out of her own campaign treasury to jump-start an initiative campaign to raise the California minimum wage. Californians passed it overwhelmingly.”

In the state senate, Solis  focused on cleaning up the air and environment in factory neighborhoods and projects to improve poor communities.  She stood up against domestic violence in cultures where male dominance and female submissiveness were ancient and ingrained habits and families often turned a blind eye to this type of abuse.

In 2000, in another gutsy move, Solis challenged a member of her own party for his seat in Congress and won by 69% to 31%.  Her victory signaled a tidal wave of change that had been building in L.A. with the influx of immigrants and the gradual transformation of red neighborhoods to blue.

Coming from a Waspy backround, but partnered with an Hispanic, living in a vibrant city with over 50% Hispanics and imbued with Latin culture and having lived in Latin America for five years, I had long seen the handwriting on the wall. As the Latin population has grown in all of the U.S.‘s major cities, new identities, forged by the challenge of equal rights and labor struggles, education, immigration, bi-lingualism and other daunting issues, have created new power for Latinos who are seizing success in virtually every arena of life in the U.S. From cinema to restaurants, singing to salsa.  Latinas are no longer on the fringes of power, but in the white hot center.

I wanted for Latinas and Latinos the same thing I seek for women in our culture: genuine equity.  And, after many years of working for women’s rights, I realize that comes from two things: succeeding in pocket book issues and wining office in politics.  So I was appropriately thrilled to learn of Hilda Solis’s nomination to prominent office, where she will, without a doubt, be a groundbreaker.

“It was no coincidence that shortly after Solis’s 2000 victory, virtually every Democratic elected official in Los Angeles marched alongside striking union janitors. As the janitors could (and did) attest, Solis’ victory had been theirs too.

“Known as a coalition builder in Congress, Solis has continued to focus on labor, immigration and environmental issues, “coauthoring the Green Jobs Act, providing federal funds for job training in retrofitting, solar panel installation and other environmentally friendly occupations.”

Hilda Solis is clearly a change agent. She has a proven record of change.  And, once in office, we will look forward to her, with passion and her hallmark fearlessness, continuing to transform the landscape around her.

If you ask me, Hilda Solis is change we can believe in.