Rosario Dawson’s Open Letter to Dolores Huerta Has Struck a Chord

Mar 25, 2016
8:53 AM

RDDH

In case you weren’t online yesterday, an open letter that actor, Voto Latino co-founder and Bernie Sanders supporter Rosario Dawson wrote to civil rights icon and Hillary Clinton supporter Dolores Huerta has quickly dominated the online political talk in our digital community. Dawson’s letter was highly critical of Huerta’s claims that Sanders has done nothing for the Latino community. Here is an excerpt of the letter:

I, too, believe in the American ideal of reasonable and robust debate between opposing viewpoints in order to move a discussion forward and ultimately arrive at a sensible resolution. This becomes impossible, or at least unnecessarily difficult, when one of the parties involved is purposefully trying to obfuscate the facts. I recognized that very same tactic that the mainstream media has been using when I read your opinion piece, where the details of Bernie Sanders’ voting record and positions were misrepresented and, again, when you and America Ferrera spread the false story on Twitter that Bernie supporters chanted “English only” at a Nevada caucus. Though it was debunked by multiple media outlets and video evidence, neither of you have corrected, apologized for, or taken down the posts. It’s race baiting, misleading, divisive and inaccurate and I hope you both will rectify that immediately. Regardless of either your interpretations of the event, the guidelines strictly prohibited any form of communication with caucus participants by campaigners once the caucus was called to order!

The democratic process, as it was intended, is quite simple: Present your facts, track records and plans, move forward honestly and openly, debate, call out discrepancies, explain and educate, then let the American people decide whom they would like to lead the country based on such answers. By distorting and omitting facts you do not give us, the American people, a transparent picture. You cheat us out of making an educated and well-informed decision and dishonor our voting process and democracy itself.

Dawson then added several points about Sanders’ record, many of which have been covered on this site in the last few weeks.

Our own Facebook community has had a vigorous debate about the letter. Most were supportive of Dawson’s views:

Translation: You’ve lost your way Dolores and we are not going to support you blindly simply because you are a Latina. Truth and heart are the only things that withstand the test of time.

Rosario Dawson, who played Dolores Huerta in the recent biopic, is so urgently and honestly engaged here: not a “calling out,” but a fair and thorough accounting of the distortions, obfuscation, and race baiting of Huerta and Ferrera on Clinton’s behalf. This is an excellent discussion of immigration issues, Clinton’s support of the Patriot Act, and the corporate take over of electoral politics. Dawson calls on Huerta to recognize the earnest, informed generation that will lead us all–if we let them.

Others did support Huerta:
This is such BS! Seriously. No sources cited, you can tell the BS campaign wrote this for her and the most disappointing thing here is that she has the audacity to call out Dolores. A civil rights icon and still going strong at 85 years old!

I’m cool with her supporting who she wants to support but Dolores nor America Ferrera have ever called Rosario out on her choice of endorsement. I have a major problem when a campaign USES a Latina to shut down another “progressive Latina”.

Does anybody not see a problem with this??

Many of her statements and opinions on this blog are just her “opinions” or the (BS campaigns talking points). She even downplayed his vote on “minutemen” — yeah explain that to the many undocumented Latinos families that have had their mothers, children, hermanos, etc killed and beaten by the hate group while crossing the southern border.

Like I mentioned, she can support who she wants and cross-reference “voting records” among each candidate. I’m down with that. But was it really necessary to “try” to go toe-to-toe against Dolores. This is just disrespectful and she should’ve said “no” to the BS campaign on this. Or just set the record straight without calling out a chingona and union sister like the amazing, Dolores Huerta! Shame on Rosario. She even played her on the Cesar Chavez movie—how dare she!? Shame on Rosario!

As a Latina, she should know better that in “our culture” we respect our elders and Dolores Huerta is an elder — would Rosario talk or call out her 85-year-old grandmother like this?

A few weeks earlier, Latino Rebels Radio interviewed Huerta to discuss some of the very same things Dawson wrote about in her letter:

What do you think of the Dawson letter? Let us know.