Dolores Huerta: Sanders organizers shouted ‘English only’ at casino caucus site

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Dolores Huerta is a civil rights leader and a Hillary Clinton supporter

Huerta says Bernie Sanders supporters chanted "English only" when she tried to translate at a Nevada caucus site

Las Vegas CNN  — 

Dolores Huerta, a civil rights leader and Hillary Clinton supporter, told CNN that when she tried to help translate at a casino caucus site Saturday, organizers from Bernie Sanders’ campaign began shouting “English only.”

CNN caught up with Huerta after Clinton’s victory party.

“What happened is the person who was running the caucus said we need a translator and he said the first person that comes to the stage can be the translator, so I walked up to the front and then some of the organizers, the Bernie organizers, decided to shout ‘no, no, no.’ Then a Bernie person stood up and said, I can also do translation. So then the person running the caucus said we won’t have a translator.”

She added, “Then some of the organizers were shouting ‘English only, English only.’ This is bad.”

Huerta clarified that exchange on Twitter.

“I offered to translate & Bernie supporters chanted English only! We fought too long & hard to be silenced,” Huerta tweeted.

When asked about the incident, Sanders campaign press secretary Symone Sanders said the campaign was about “bringing people together.”

“As the senator has said, this campaign is about bringing people together not dividing them,” she said. “We expect our supporters to be respectful of all people and don’t condone anything otherwise.”

Huerta said the chanting made her feel “bad” because she and other civil rights leaders “have fought for many decades so we that we can have bilingual translations and to have people’s rights respected.”

“It is kind of (a) crash-and-burn strategy,” she added about the Sanders organizers. “It is like if we can’t have it our way, we shouldn’t have it all and they weren’t respecting the rights of those workers.”

The chants went viral on Saturday after actress America Ferrera, another Clinton supporter, tweeted about them.

Clinton defeated Sanders in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses.