Thread: GOP lawmaker accuses Obama of using Chávez monument to win Latino support

GOP lawmaker accuses Obama of using Chávez monument to win Latino support

By Zack Colman - 10/08/12 05:24 PM ET

A top House Republican blasted President Obama for what he said was an attempt to score political points with Hispanic voters by designating a national monument to honor civil rights activist César Chávez.

Chavez is arguably the nation’s most recognized Hispanic civil rights activist, who rose to fame through non-violent tactics. A son of immigrant migrant workers, he founded what later became the United Farm Workers. That group helped bring Hispanics into the organized labor movement by expanding rights to field workers, an occupation that employs a considerable amount of Hispanics.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said in a Monday statement that Obama’s “unilateral” monument designation was a clear attempt to drum up support from Hispanic voters ahead of the Nov. 6 election.

“This national monument designation is an unnecessary use of Presidential powers and appears to be based more on politics than sound policy,” Hastings said.

Obama employed executive powers outlined in the 1906 Antiquities Act to acquire land for the César E. Chávez National Monument in Keene, Calif. Hastings said such a transaction should have faced more scrutiny from Congress and local officials.

Getting Hispanic voters to the polls is the Obama’s campaign largest hurdle with the voting bloc, as his advantage with Hispanics in swing states could help color those states blue instead of red.

Obama is crushing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney in polling with Hispanic voters in swing states. In Nevada, Obama leads Romney by 78 to 17 percent with the group; in Florida, he bests Romney by 61 to 31 percent.

Both of those figures indicate Obama is faring better with Hispanic voters than in his 2008 campaign against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

During a speech at the Monday dedication ceremony, Obama drew on personal themes — such as a shared status of being sons to immigrant parents — to link himself with Chávez.

Obama also called upon the kind of populism that has defined his campaign, especially among minority voters.

“And even though we have a difficult road ahead, I know we can keep moving forward together,” Obama said. “I know it because Cesar himself worked for 20 years as an organizer without a single major victory — think about that — but he refused to give up. He refused to scale back his dreams. He just kept fasting and marching and speaking out, confident that his day would come.”

The monument declaration generated positive responses from organized labor and the Hispanic community.

“This monument will not only capture the stature of a Mexican American icon, but also the historic significance of his contributions as a community organizer and spark plug civil rights leader,” said Eliseo Medina, SEIU International secretary-treasurer, in a Monday statement.

source: GOP lawmaker accuses Obama of using Chávez monument to win Latino support - The Hill's E2-Wire

ADDED TO ALIPAC Homepage News ..

http://www.alipac.us/content/gop-law...-support-1021/

OneOldVet also has this article posted and added the following:

Maybe a dose of history will help put Obama’s hispandering in its proper perspective. In a 2007 RENEW AMERICA article titled Cesar Chavez: Longtime foe of illegal immigration by Bryan Fischer we find the historical truth about Chavez ~ OOV:

This week has been Cesar Chavez week at Boise State University, as our local campus celebrates the legacy of one of the three men to have his birthday celebrated as an official holiday in California (the other two: Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King, Jr.). Chavez, who died in 1993, is being portrayed as a champion of illegal immigration when the truth in fact is a bit different.

According to a 2006 article in The American Conservative by Steve Sailer, although Chavez’s union, the United Farm Workers, did manage to raise wages significantly for stoop laborers from 1965 to 1981, those gains have largely disappeared for one reason: illegal immigration.

Chavez himself was a third generation American citizen and a Navy veteran. Although he has become over time virtually the patron saint of the Reconquista movement to reclaim all of the southwest for Mexico, in his prime he was an ardent opponent of illegal immigration and actively fought against the importation of strikebreakers from Mexico.

Chavez understood the basic laws of supply and demand — the greater the supply (of labor), the less the demand (and hence the lower the wages). Just as the founder of the American Federation of Labor Samuel Gompers was an influential voice calling for the immigration-restricting law of 1924, so Chavez openly and actively opposed illegal immigration because it crippled his ability to unionize farm workers and increase their wages.

In 1979 testimony to Congress, Chavez complained, “… when the farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike. And, for over 30 years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has looked the other way and assisted in the strikebreaking. I do not remember one single instance in 30 years where the Immigration service has removed strikebreakers. … The employers use professional smugglers to recruit and transport human contraband across the Mexican border for the specific act of strikebreaking…”

In 1969, Chavez actually led a march to the Mexican border to protest illegal immigration, accompanied by Sen. Walter Mondale and Ralph Abernathy, whom alert readers will recognize as Martin Luther King’s successor as head of the Southern Leadership Conference.

One Old Vet