MoveOn Denounces Sanders Supporters Who Shouted Down Dolores Huerta (UPDATED)

This is not a good thing for Bernie's campaign.
By Karoli Kuns — February 20, 2016

When legendary organizer Dolores Huerta took the stage to speak at the caucus at Harrah's Casino in Las Vegas, she was greeted with some unexpected hostility.

In the video above, you cannot hear the calls for "English only," but Huerta's response in Spanish seems to be an answer to that call.

According to Huerta, Sanders' supporters were shouting "English only!" at her as she began to speak in Spanish to Latino caucus attendees. Huerta had previously endorsed Hillary Clinton.

MoveOn.org, who has endorsed Sanders, immediately denounced the behavior of a few supporters:

As I said last night about the supporter who "joked" about Hillary Clinton's obituary, this does not help Sanders. It doesn't come from his campaign, and I know emotions are high. But this is unhelpful especially when the media is reporting this story.

According to preliminary statistics, Sanders won the Latino vote 53-45 in Nevada, which is great news for Bernie. His economic message is resonating profoundly, but this kind of behavior can step on its momentum.

Here is more video:

Update:

ThinkProgress has more of the story here. Evidently they called for a translator, Huerta came up, and they chose not to use her, opting instead for English only because they were concerned about her neutrality.

“The fellow that was running the caucus said that the first person to come up to the stage could translate, so I went up. Nobody else did,” she said. “Then the Bernie people started yelling no, no, no. One of their people came up, and I suggested we both translate. But the moderator decided we would have no translation. So the Bernie people preferred we would have no translation just because I was going to do the translating. It’s ridiculous, because if I had said something that wasn’t accurate, I’m sure somebody would have corrected me.”

,,,

“The room was divided with the Hillary people on one side and the Bernie people on the other,” Huerta said. “It was really unfortunate, because there were many Spanish-speaking voters, the casino workers. We wanted to make it more comfortable for them, so they could know what was going on.”

Delia Garcia, the woman who originally posted the video, told ThinkProgress she was with union members who needed a translator.

“We were with the Culinary Workers, and a good chunk of our supporters wanted a translator,” she said. “Dolores Huerta started going up there and Bernie supporters started booing, saying, ‘Don’t let her get up there.'”

Also, this from the Sanders campaign:

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