In late May President
Obama awarded
the highest civilian honor in the United States, the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, to Dolores Huerta, the openly socialist leader who is an honorary
chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Huerta, the partner
with Cesar Chavez in founding the National Farm Workers Association, has never
hid her socialist views; in 2002 she
said:
“I think organized
labor is a necessary part of democracy. Organized labor is the only way to have
fair distribution of wealth; it helps create a middle class. Without a middle
class, there would be no democracy.”
Even better for
Obama, she has been candid about her hatred for the Republican Party; In April
2006, Huerta, speaking at Tucson High Magnet School in Arizona, twice said,
“Republicans hate Latinos” as well as reiterating her socialist attitude:
“The average pay of a
CEO of a Fortune 500 company is three million to nine million dollars a year.
What are you going to do with all that money, right? I don't care how much
money you make. You can only eat three meals a day, you know. You can only wear
one suit of clothes a day, you know. So the idea, a lot isn't wrong so long as
you use it for the people like what Hugo
Chavez is doing in Venezuela. Why can’t we do that here in the United
States?”
Most telling is her
involvement with the Democratic Socialists of America. Here is their manifesto:
"We are
socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by
private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental
destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo....The
capitalist market economy not only suppresses global living standards, but also
means chronic underfunding of socially necessary public goods, from research
and development to preventive health care and job training … Social
redistribution--the shift of wealth and resources from the rich to the rest of
society--will require: massive redistribution of income from corporations and
the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector, in order to
provide the main source of new funds for social programs, income maintenance
and infrastructure rehabilitation, and a massive shift of public resources from
the military (the main user of existing discretionary funds) to civilian uses.”
Considering Obama polling
is slipping slightly among Latinos, so it was a one for me and one for them for
him; honoring a political ally, and pandering for the Latino vote.
