The latest controversy in the attempts to somehow prove that presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is not the best choice for Blacks and Latinos comes from 84 year-old Labor leader and civil rights activist and icon Dolores Huerta when she tweeted Saturday that Bernie Sanders supporters “chanted” English-Only when she offered to translate at the Harrah’s casino caucus site.
I offered to translate & Bernie supporters chanted English only! We fought too long & hard to be silenced Si Se Puede! #ImwithHer #NVcaucus
— Dolores Huerta (@DoloresHuerta) February 20, 2016
Ugly Betty star and Voto Latino Activist America Ferrera also tweeted that Sanders supporters were “chanting” English-Only
Harrah’s casino site- Bernie supporters chant “English-only” to stop civil rights leader @DoloresHuerta from providing Spanish translation.
— America Ferrera (@AmericaFerrera) February 20, 2016
Quickly a video emerged on YouTube about the incident. Although it is hard to hear what people are yelling the only thing that you can hear people in the crowd are clearly yelling is the word “Neutral” in reference to Huerta being a big Hillary supporter and she was wearing pro Hillary Clinton garments all over.
Erin Cruz was present at the event and spoke with Snopes.com about the situation. Cruz, 41, is a nurse from Cleveland, Ohio, who agreed to volunteer as an independent observer at the Nevada caucuses
“The moderator was at the front, on the stage with the microphone. The Hillary camp was on the left side of the room, and Bernie supporters were on the right side. Undecided voters were in the back of the room, and observers were in the back wall of the auditorium.”
“Once he got started he said he would like somebody to translate. Immediately, the Hillary camp starts ushering up Dolores Huerta, who is a prominent Latina activist, and very outspoken for Hillary. We were yelling for the process to stay neutral, taking objection because we felt there should have been a translator, but it should have been someone undecided, not someone for Bernie, or someone for Hillary.”
“The caucus chair quiets us down and says, ‘We need a translator, the first person who gets to the stage can be the translator.’ A Bernie guy went up, somebody else for Hillary went up, and nobody agreed with that. The caucus chair said, ‘Since there’s no consensus on a translator, the caucus will be conducted in English only.’”
Snopes concluded the allegations to be false
Hillary Clinton won the Nevada caucus by 52.7% of the vote to 47.2% for Bernie Sanders. The Nevada Caucus Exit Poll showed that Latinos voted for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton by 54 percent to 43 percent.
Certainly the attempts to persuade Latinos not to vote for Sanders are not working. But we cannot say the same for the African-American vote. Clinton won 76% of the African-American vote to 22% for Sanders.
The African-American vote makes up 13% of the Nevada electorate but it was decisive in the Nevada caucus.
Could it had been influenced by the comments of another civil right legend John Lewis when he tried to dismiss Bernie Sanders work on the civil rights movement in the 60’s?
“Well, to be very frank, I’m going to cut you off, but I never saw him, I never met him,” Lewis said about Sanders. “I’m a chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for three years, from 1963 to 1966. I was involved in the sit-ins, the freedom rides, the March on Washington, the march from Selma to Montgomery, and directed their voter education project for six years. But I met Hillary Clinton. I met President Clinton.” Lewis added.
John Lewis comments came at a press conference where the Congressional Black Caucus PAC announced its endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president.
Even after pictures and video showing Bernie Sanders participating in the sit-ins, the Selma march with Dr. Martin Luther King JR and John Lewis where discovered skeptics did not want to believe it was Sanders in the pictures.
The photographer Danny Lyon who captured civil rights efforts at the University of Chicago fifty years ago told Time magazine that yes the young man in the disputed 1962 photo is, in fact, Bernie Sanders.
You can read that article here
The results in the Nevada caucus might reflect that the damage is done. In South Carolina in 2008 the African American vote made up more than half the Democratic primary electorate.
Will the SC African- American vote kill the Bernie Sanders momentum? Will he have enough time to close the gap?
At a recent debate Clinton accused Sanders of an “Artful Smear” to spin the donations she has received from Wall Street.
Would she consider this “Artful Smear”?
A reporter shared with me recently “I don’t like the dirty campaigns. Why do they still do that?” My answer to her was “Because they work”
Disclaimer:
The writer is the editor of Hola America this is an opinion piece and is in no way intended as an endorsement of any party or candidate.
It is intended to encourage our audience to get informed about issues and the candidates don’t juts take anyone’s words for fact. Even ours 😉
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
― Abraham Lincoln
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