Hugo Chavez's Favorite American Joins Union Protest At State House

Actor Danny Glover with Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez

If organized labor in Indiana went searching for a Hollywood actor with a history of controversial political activism to support their fight against Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Republican-controlled legislature to control public spending, they certainly found their man in Danny Glover. Today, union organizers featured Glover as a speaker at a State House rally. As the Star reports:

As more than 1,000 union laborers and their supporters cheered and waved signs, actor Danny Glover encouraged the crowd assembled at the Statehouse to be strong in their opposition to a series of Republican bills aimed at undermining collective bargaining.


"It's not only your battle, its a battle that's taking place across this country," Glover, who has a history of supporting workers' rights, told the crowd that lined the second and third floor balconies. Glover also recited for the crowd the Langston Hughes poem, "Let America be America Again." . . .

"What is happening right now," Glover said, "the governor and legislators have been elected in various states on a mandate to balance the budget. Now there are many choices that you have in order to balance the budget......But to attack peoples right to collective bargaining, to orchestrate legislation that attempts to create a quote unquote right to work state is an attempt to break the unions and undermine the unions."


Onlookers gushed over Glover crowding around to shake his hand.

"I think Danny is a person that is for the working people," said one attendee, John Lacey, the state Director for Indiana Workers United. "He understands working people's issues."

Yeah, they were gushing over a man whose Hollywood career has been bankrolled to the tune of $18 million by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. That would be the same Chavez who declared President George W. Bush "the devil" while addressing the United Nations, which is not much worse than Glover's denunciation of Bush as "a racist." Chavez said he would welcome to Venezuela prisoners held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay for waging a terrorist war against the U.S. He also called Israel "a genocidal and murderous country" and has closely allied himself with our country's sworn enemies, including Iran. Glover was also close friends with former left-wing Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was overthrown and forced into exile in South Africa three years ago. For what it's worth, Glover doesn't think much more of President Obama than he did Bush. On Obama's foreign policy, Glover said, "I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration. I don’t see anything different."