Rosario Dawson Honored for Civil Empowerment Work, Still All In For Bernie Sanders
With immigration being one of the most critical issues this 2016 presidential election season and more than 27 million Latinos being eligible to vote, actress and activist Rosario Dawson is doing all she can to spark them to action.
"There is a huge pocket of all Latinos, and that means encompassing them as women, and as young people, and all of that," she said. "If they do not show up and vote, then yes, there is going to be a significant impact, because we are such a large minority in this country."
Dawson all in For Bernie Sanders
As for her own vote, the avowed Bernie Sanders supporter insists her approach is a simple though measured one.
"I don't have to vote against someone. I get to vote for someone," said the Voto Latino founder recently awarded the Latinovator prize at the Hispanicize conference for promoting empowerment and civil participation. "If you get someone to vote three times in their life, they will vote for life."
In between dissecting the issues she feels are most significant to Latinos, Dawson took the time to weigh in on how technology and the Internet has changed for everyone.
"The Internet is like another dimension that we live in, and it's a beautiful thing," she said. "You know we all were around the circle, around the fire, and then we went into more of a pyramid, and we all separated, made our own homes and started working in this other tier system."
Dawson later added, "Now we go home into our individual apartments, but we open up this portal and we connect to the world. It's like we're in that circle again."
In Dawson's mind part of the lure is what she and other activists are so dearly fighting for.
"There is equality there," she said. "There are some negative people. There are some positive people. But it's very diverse, more so than it being just negative and positive. There is every part of the spectrum."
Dawson Insists She Wrote Letter Criticizing Dolores Huerta
As for her politics, Dawson remains all heart. She recently took Mexican American civil rights icon Dolores Huerta to task in an op-ed over her endorsement of Sanders' democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
"I was compelled to write the letter," said Dawson. "I worked on it for a week. I didn't write this letter to be divisive."
The 36-year-old Dawson starred as the United Farm Workers co-founder in the movie "Cesar Chavez" and recently insisted all the feelings she expressed in the letter about her support of Clinton came from her and not a ghost writer.
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