Latina Lawmaker’s Microphone Turned Off During Hearing (VIDEO)

Sep 23, 2015
10:48 AM

During a Monday committee hearing in Pennsylvania’s state legislature on a bill to make English the state’s official language, Rep. Leslie Acosta, the only Latino on the committee, had her microphone cut off during the posing of her question.

WATCH State Representative Darryl Metcalfe cut the microphone on Pennsylvania’s first Latina Representative Leslie Acosta on questioning a bill that would make English the official language of Pennsylvania.

Posted by Raging Chicken Press on Monday, September 21, 2015

As the Huffington Post reports:

‘I started out in Spanish to make a statement,’ Acosta, the first Latina state representative in Pennsylvania’s history, told The Huffington Post. ‘I’m a testament to success in this country and I understand that English is necessary to succeed… but this bill is a violation of First Amendment rights and interferes with the 14th Amendment.’

The person to whom Acosta was posing her question was Robert Vandervoot of ProEnglish, a group which lobbies for making English the official language of the United States, but which also has been labeled a hate group by civil-rights organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.

As Raging Chicken Press, which originally reported the incident, noted in its run-up to Monday’s committee hearing;

The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights points out that Robert Vandervoot was ‘the organizer of the white nationalist group, Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance, while he lived in Illinois’ and ‘while he was in charge, Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance often held joint meetings with the local chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens.’ The IREHR points out that Vandervoot’s ties with these organizations got back to 2003 when he started writing about his ‘admiration for the white nationalist group American Renaissance and its leader Jared Taylor.’

Shockingly, Robert Vandervoot is not the only person at ProEnglish who harbors white nationalist views. Phil Kent, who sits on the board, was caught calling multiculturalism a ‘virus that has been injected into our system, is destroying what we call the quote-unquote ‘United States of America.’

Rep. Acosta, who says her district is 53 percent Latino and 43 percent African-American, spoke with Raging Chicken Press immediately following Monday’s incident.

State Representative Leslie Acosta explains what just occurred in the House State Government Committee that held a hearing on making English the official language of Pennsylvania

Posted by Raging Chicken Press on Monday, September 21, 2015