On May 5, Cinco de Mayo, Hillary Clinton held a speaking event at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, Ca. A long line of Clinton supporters stretched for about a block waiting to go into the college gym. Clinton’s supporters were largely women, but definitely not the women of the local community or the growing crowd of protesters outside.
At the entrance of the college a small crowd of about 20 people held signs reading “Basta de mentir” (stop the lying) and other anti-Clinton messages. This crowd was largely Latino, white, and young. Most of them were students of the college who believed that Clinton had no place in the Latino community of East Los Angeles and no business on their campus.
Clinton supporters occasionally flipped off the protesters and shouted obscenities. One racist woman even told a protester she had “no right to protest and to go back to Mexico” – a sentiment that echoed Clinton’s own politics in 2014 when she called for the U.S. to send refugee children of Central America back despite clear danger to their lives, and called for enhanced border security.
The early protesters were joined by a large contingent of about 200 people who marched up Avenida Cesar Chavez chanting “Hillary fuera” (Hillary out), and carrying signs reading: “We Only Matter When it’s Cinco De Mayo,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Viva Bernie!” and “Hillary Lied Heroes Died”—among others.
The large contingent swallowed up the small crowd of protesters and together everyone marched on the streets up to the school’s marquee sign. Police in riot gear and on horseback formed a barrier as Clinton’s caravan of black vehicles entered the parking structure. Then they made their way inside the gym.
Inside, as Clinton spoke a protester chanted, “She killed Berta” over and over before being escorted out by security. This was a reference to Berta Caceres, an environmental activist assassinated by the reactionary Honduran government, which in her own book Clinton bragged about helping to put in power after a
2009 coup .
The same sentiment of the protesters was reflected outside as other protesters spoke about her ties to Wall Street and her warmongering foreign policy in the Middle East and South America.
Clinton’s visit to East Los Angeles communities is largely seen as a desperate attempt to pander to the Latino voter ahead of the California primaries held in the state later in June. Her attempt was an utter failure and the East Los Angeles community will continue to rise up against the unjust system that she so clearly represents.
