Not in Las Vegas. Here.
Let’s review. This all started when actress America Ferrera, a Hillary supporter, posted this on Twitter about an incident that had happened at a caucus site at Harrah’s in Las Vegas, when the caucus organizers tried to provide instructions for the caucusgoers:
Ms. Huerta herself then backed up this version of events.
Phoenix Woman wrote a diary about the incident (inaccurately depicting it as taking place at Hillary’s victory speech, which was reported in a few places immediately following the messages from Ferrera and Huerta). While everyone initially expressed shock and dismay at what Huerta had experienced, things quickly got ugly, climaxing when a video surfaced from the caucus site in which no legible “English only” chants could be heard. It is this ugliness that we need to address.
First on the matter of Dolores Huerta. For the benefit of those who don’t know who she is, I’ll let this superb piece about the incident from the Washington Post’s “The Fix” explain it:
In the 1950s, Huerta, a former elementary school teacher, left the relative comfort of the classroom to begin organizing migrant farm workers often paid by the piece or by the pound for produce they gathered. At the time, these workers were subject to almost no labor law protections and were frequently injured or abused without redress and haphazardly exposed to all manner of agricultural chemicals. Avoiding medical costs or expensive payouts to the families of workers killed on the job was routine for farm-related enterprises when Huerta first became involved in farm-worker labor issues.
In the 1960s, Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chavez. The organization would later change its name to the United Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, then the United Farm Workers, eventually becoming arguably the most culturally and legally influential farm-labor union in U.S. history.
The group negotiated the nation's first farm labor contract with a California winery and later enlisted millions of American consumers in a strike against California grape growers over working conditions. Grape growers eventually sat down and negotiated with the workers. The strike not only altered certain aspects of the conditions under which farm workers labored, but it also seeded growing consumer consciousness about food production and the rights of the faceless workers who help supply the food the average American simply purchases in a grocery store.
Dolores Huerta is one of the biggest heroes any of us are likely to ever be in the same room with. More than just about anyone else alive today, Dolores Huerta has earned the benefit of the doubt. If you accomplish what she’s accomplished in your life, you’ll earn the benefit of the doubt too. She does not deserve to be called “a liar,” as happened here directly many, many times yesterday evening, and certainly not on the basis of a murky, confusing amateur video shot from the back of the room with the majority of the speakers facing away from whatever smartphone or whatever was being used to shoot it. You can say the video does not support her version of events; that’s fine. You can say that she may have misremembered the exact words she heard in a rather chaotic situation; that’s fine too. It happens to all of us, and more often than most people think. But you haven’t earned the right to call Dolores Huerta a liar.
Which brings us to the video of the event, which I have transcribed as best I can beginning at the 53:30 mark. In an example of how different things can sound to different observers, I have added two remarks from a Spanish-speaking woman and some crowd reaction from a second video, shot from a different vantage point, which cannot be heard on the first video; these additions are noted with asterisks.
Unidentified: [unintelligible], some people don't speak English. Can we have a Spanish translator with you? Spanish?
[Some people saying what sounds like "No" and "Come on."]
Organizer: It doesn't say anything, yes or no, but sure. Who is the Spanish speaker?
Unidentified: Dolores.
[rising murmurs of apparent objection, none of which are intelligible]
Organizer: Can we do it quickly? First person on the stage who speaks Spanish gets to do it. Climb up the stage then.
[scattered applause, quickly drowned out by loud cries of objection]
Crowd: Noooooo!!! No! No! She's a surrogate! She's a surrogate! No! No!
Organizer: Sshhhhhh! Sshhhhh!
[Someone close to the recording device says something like “You have to get—you have to get up there now.”]
Unidentified: Pero necesitamos español!* [“But we need Spanish!”]
Organizer: Okay. I—I—she’s not—okay, we've already got one person. Hold on. Hold up. Hold on, everybody.
[Continued shouts of “No! No!” from the crowd. Some hissing is heard.*]
Unidentified: It's Dolores Huerta! My goodness!*
Organizer: I'm going to have to clear the back if you keep shouting. Okay? You are observers, not catcallers. Observers. Okay. Fact is, is that I bet half of this room is fluent in Spanish, is that correct?
[General calls of “Yes,” accompanied by at least one loud "No!"]
Organizer: The point being, is anything that she says, you're going to be able to understand if she's saying something that's pro-Hillary, right?
Crowd: No! Absolutely not!
Unidentified: Oh, come on!
Unidentified: [unintelligible] be videotaped!
Unidentified: Come on, this is [unintelligible]
Unidentified: You told us-- our [unintelligible]
Organizer: Okay. We're moving forward in English only.
[applause]
What is extremely and undeniably clear from this video: Someone on the Hillary side asked for a Spanish-language translator for the benefit of caucusgoers—citizens and voters, mind you—who could not speak English fluently, and offered the services of Dolores Huerta. Bernie supporters immediately shouted this idea down. The organizer then suggested a compromise, which the Bernie supporters shouted down again. The organizer then stated that the caucus would proceed in English only, which Bernie supporters applauded.
Whether specific chants of “English only” could be heard—and, as the two different videos demonstrate, it’s entirely possible for something heard loud and clear in one part of the room to go utterly unnoticed by a camera elsewhere in the room—it is crystal clear that the incident described by Ferrera and Huerta absolutely did happen, and their characterization of it is substantially accurate. This is shameful, and right-thinking people ought to denounce it. Instead, even after all this evidence was available, Bernie supporters here attacked the messenger in swarms. They said the vilest imaginable things about a woman whose shoes most of them will never be fit to kiss. There were calls for Phoenix Woman to be banned for the crime of misstating the venue at which the incident took place. I imagine there’s probably a ticket open at the Help Desk right now for exactly that. I had someone tell me that “Sanders supporters were likely just saying they preferred only English to a Hillary supporter’s interpretation”—as if that could possibly make it better, as if it were up to them instead of the people who had a need and a moral right to that translation. Seven people recommended that racist swill. Seven.
I know you’re upset because you lost. Tempers were running hot yesterday. I understand that. Goodness knows I’ve said some intemperate things myself this campaign season. But in the light of a new day, with some distance between then and now and with the video available for all to see, I hope that those of you who participated in the ugly scene yesterday in Phoenix Woman’s diary as well as the response diaries that are still on the rec list, will have the decency to retract the things you said and offer your apology to Ms. Huerta and to all of those whom you offended. If you’re not willing to do that, you don’t belong at Daily Kos, and I wish you would leave.