As a result of this past week’s Nevada caucuses, an incident from one of the gatherings caught fire on Twitter. Actress America Ferrera tweeted that some of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ supporters were chanting “English only” to prevent civil rights leader Dolores Huerta from acting as a translator. Huerta confirmed the incident on her own Twitter account as well.
Actress Susan Sarandon later tweeted that she was present at the event and the moderator was the only one who said “English only” after a neutral translator could not be found, tweeting a link to a video of the incident. The issue is further complicated by the fact that Huerta and Ferrera are openly Clinton supporters, while Sarandon has endorsed Sanders.
Upon watching the video, it seems that, as The Washington Post reported, “neither side was quite right.” It’s hard to hear anything actually said in the video. The Sanders supporters are not audibly shouting “English only,” although they are certainly not happy with Huerta up there. It is pretty evident why she may have felt attacked in the middle of the yelling and hissing.
Some Sanders supporters online went so far as to call the event a disingenuous attempt by Huerta to smear the Sanders campaign, accusing her of lying and picking apart her statement for its word-for-word accuracy. They are vehement that no supporters were “chanting.”
It was reasonable for the Sanders supporters at the event to want a neutral translator — Huerta was wearing a Clinton campaign t-shirt, after all. What is unreasonable is the way they went about it. And the aftermath, dismissing an iconic civil rights leader as some kind of establishment goon for Clinton, is, frankly, ridiculous.
This is not the first time Sanders supporters have been accused of bad behavior. The “Berniebros,” a term originally coined by an October 2015 article in The Atlantic, have gained a nasty reputation for using everything from the smug dismissal of others’ opinions to verbal harassment to support their candidate of choice.
The Huerta incident is not even the first occasion in the past month involving Sanders supporters and a notable civil rights leader. When Georgia congressman and activist John Lewis endorsed Clinton earlier this month, he said he “never saw” Bernie Sanders at civil rights rallies, Mother Jones reported. While this comment is not really a fair assessment of Sanders’ participation in the civil rights movement, some Sanders supporters took to insulting Lewis or accusing him of being part of the “establishment.”
It’s not fair to paint all Sanders supporters as being like this. For every “Berniebro,” there are others apologizing on their behalf or at least respectfully disagreeing. But the aggressive supporters are detrimental to the Sanders campaign and everything it purportedly stands for.
The Sanders campaign throws around the word “establishment” a lot. Usually when Sanders talks about establishment, he means those with all the power — the political insiders and the big banks. But when a Sanders supporter accuses Huerta or Lewis, people who have fought their whole lives for civil rights, as being part of the establishment, the term loses its meaning.
Are Huerta and Lewis part of the establishment because they support Clinton, or because they are not voting for Bernie Sanders? Support for Sanders becomes the litmus test for whether someone is “one of them” or “one of us.” And that’s dangerous.
On the one hand, it’s reasonable to see why Sanders supporters might be frustrated that these iconic civil rights leaders don’t support the Sanders campaign. In their eyes, Sanders is the best candidate for issues like civil rights and labor.
But on the other hand, when people like Huerta or Lewis don’t agree, the solution is not to accuse them of selling out their decades-long work. Attempting to find an excuse for why they’ve made a decision on a candidate is patronizing, especially given the causes these two have championed.
Neither Huerta’s and Lewis’s comments were entirely correct. They may have been misplaced in one way or another and phrased a bit poorly, but when the knee-jerk response is an attack on character, it does not bode well for those doing the attacking. It’s possible to acknowledge the flaws in their statements without giving them a verbal slap in the face.
As I’ve said, these Sanders supporters are probably a small percentage of his overall support. But the Sanders campaign has been struggling to gain more traction with voters of color, and the solution is not to tell people who have been leaders in those demographics that they are sellouts or that they just have not seen the light. That’s an insult, not a political revolution.