Labor activist: ‘I think the ’60s are back’

Labor leader Dolores Huerta in a new interview slammed President Trump for giving “license” to racism in America and said she believes the 1960s are back.

“For him to go on rant, rant this way, it just gives license to all the racism that already exists in the United States of America,” Huerta told Politico’s podcast, Off Message, of Trump’s rhetoric about Mexico and building a wall. 

Huerta criticized Trump’s reported decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which temporarily prevented the deportation of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as minors and pursued work permits.

{mosads}”I think that he’s got this obsession, a fixation, against people of color. You know the way that he keeps attacking Mexicans. You know, I’m a Mexican-American and my great-grandparents were here before his were, I’m sure. And his grandfather came from Germany,” Huerta said in the interview.

Huerta, who worked with Cesar Chavez to co-found the National Farmworkers Association in 1962, argued Trump’s comments about Mexico show he is “ignorant” of U.S. history.

“He does not apparently realize, you know, that a third of the United States was once Mexico. Or maybe, I’ll put that another way, the United States took a third of Mexico, which is now part of the United States of America.”

Huerta is known for her civil rights work with Chavez and during the interview discussed her role in helping former Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.) win the 1968 California Democratic presidential primary.

Huerta said she believed the 1960s are back in America but argued that the visibility of racism in the U.S. can help combat discrimination.

“I think in some ways it’s good that the racism is so visible, because then this means that we have to do something about it,” she said.

“I think you can see by all of the engagement of the young people that are out doing all these protests that I think there is very much hope. And now, there are tools we didn’t have back in the ‘60s.”