I want to call to everyone’s attention a very balanced examination of what happened at the caucus yesterday by Angus Johnson at studentactivism.net. Angus is a historian who loves to sift through and get perspectives on things as they happened. Read this and you will come away with an appreciation for how Dolores Huerta came to her view of what happened in Nevada yesterday without imputing nefarious motives. I will excerpt a couple of key passages here:
Some people — a lot of people, if my Twitter mentions from last night are anything to go by — see an intentional smear, a lie spread maliciously by the Clinton camp. But I’m not so sure. Let’s look at where the story started, with a Facebook post from Clinton supporter Delia Garcia...
If you parse this description closely, it’s actually pretty accurate. The Clinton camp did ask for a translator. Huerta did volunteer. Sanders supporters did object, and did boo — though they may have been booing the chair, or the attempt to put Huerta on stage, that’s a pretty slender distinction. The chair did reject Spanish translation, using the phrase “English only,” and the Sanders camp did seem to support his decision. The claim that Sanders people “demanded ENGLISH ONLY” isn’t confirmed by the video, but it’s possible that happened too — that someone said it wasn’t practical to have translation, so the caucus should go forward in English.
He then notes that America Ferrera’s tweet helped escalate the situation. True, to which Johnston notes (emphasis mine):
..the most damaging part of Ferrera’s tweet isn’t even the part that’s apparently wrong. Taken in isolation, the claim that Sanders supporters yelled “to stop [Huerta] from providing Spanish translation” suggests that Huerta was shouted down — that she was performing a service to Spanish-speaking caucusgoers, and was chased from the stage by racists. It’s clear that that didn’t happen.
But that interpretation of the tweet — and it was my interpretation, when I read it — isn’t actually in the text. It’s true that Huerta was prevented from serving as a translator by vocal objections from Sanders supporters, and watching the video, I’m fine with that happening. It was my inferences, not her claims — aside, again, from the use of the word “chant” — that were wrong.
Towards the end, after discussing Huerta’s followup tweets building on Ferrera’s, he says this (emphasis mine):
...what’s most interesting to me about all this, both as a historian who often works with first-person accounts of contentious events and as a guy who lives on the internet. None of these women are clearly lying. Most of what they say is accurate, and it’s possible they all believe they’re telling the whole truth. But the impression that they collectively left was wildly misleading.
People don’t need to be evil to get these stories wrong. They don’t even need to lie. They just need to speak imprecisely, as we all do, and use hyperbolic language, as we all do. You don’t need a conspiracy to spread these stories — it turns out that a game of Telephone works just as well in text-based media as it does when you’re whispering in the dark.
It is VERY clear from the video that Dolores Huerta was greeted by a rousing negative chorus from the Sanders’ supporters in that caucus room, almost certainly because they felt that her doing translation while wearing a Clinton shirt was unfair. I think you can easily see in the charged atmosphere of that room that this could be interpreted as a personal, and coupled with an ineffectual caucus chair, possibly racially tinged slam at Dolores Huerta and the spanish speaking caucus goers in the room. Taking it further as one Bernie supporter’s diary does today to slime Dolores Huerta does not help the senator or the democrats in the least.
Bernie wants to lead a revolution, I get that. Dolores Huerta was part of a revolution 50 years ago, by co-founding the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez!
I get that Bernie’s supporters want a revolution too. But hitting John Lewis negatively? John Lewis was PART of a major revolution 50 years ago and has the scars to prove it!
If you really want Sen Sanders to win you should work with him to reach out to these true heroes, encourage the Senator to meet with them one-to-one. He may not change their minds or get their endorsements, but it will show that he cares about real revolutions, ones that have already happened. Writing diaries that take shots at these true heroes and conflating their statements with dirty tricks by the Clinton campaign only hurts Sen. Sanders as a candidate and alienates large swaths of voters with whom the Senator almost certainly has common ground. If Sen. Sanders wins the nomination, he will definitely need their support, and they are more likely to come around if he reaches out NOW.
If you want your candidate to win, in future caucuses and primaries, it might be helpful to have a little sensitivity training for campaign volunteers. A respectful explanation to Ms. Huerta of the concerns by the Bernie supporters without yelling “Neutral, Neutral” could have helped ease that situation a LOT.
And yes, I do support Secretary Clinton for the nomination. And I have called out Clinton supporters that I feel have gone too far. I think there is no place for red baiting here, for example. And if Sen. Sanders wins, I will line up to support him and vote for him.
Nuff said.
Monday, Feb 22, 2016 · 8:05:46 AM +00:00
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dlcox1958
Excellent Wapo piece provides legal context to the failure to allow translation https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/21/why-neither-side-is-quite-right-in-their-reads-on-that-dolores-huerta-english-only-shout-down/