Memo to the Media: Obama Did Not Invent 'Yes We Can'

Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet at 11:20 AM on April 30, 2009.

Among the silly stories currently being peddled by the networks is the report that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stolen Barack Obama's "Yes, we can" slogan in advance of his country's June 12th election. Earlier today, MSNBC host David Schuster interviewed Politico reporter Ken Vogel, who called it a "co-opting" of Obama's signature slogan.
This "analysis" draws from reports earlier this week about an election video featuring Ahmadinejad that shows him "pointing to the Farsi phrase Ma Mitavanim (We Can) on a blackboard," according to the Guardian. "The film is aimed at students and capitalizes on his former status as a university lecturer."
But the corporate press might want to do its homework. When it comes to the origins of "Yes, we can," Barack Obama invented the phrase in the same way that Al Gore invented the internet.
"Yes, we can" (or, less succintly, "Yes it can be done"), of course, is the English translation of "Sí, se puede" -- the official motto of the United Farm Workers, made famous by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in the 1970s.

"Si, se puede was coined by Cesar and our union's co-founder, Dolores Huerta when he was fasting for 25 days in Phoenix, Arizona in 1972," UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez, who succeeded Cesar Chavez as union president, explained on the occasion of Chavez's birthday in 1998. "Since then it has become a rallying cry for both farm workers and millions of Latino activists."
In fact, in 1998, the slogan was officially declared intellectual property of the UWF after AeroMexico, a Mexican airline, backed off of an attempt to trademark the phrase with the U.S. Trademark Office. Lawyers challenged the move, sparking months of litigation and eventually the company "agreed not to use the phrase and abandoned its trademark application."
But never mind history: it's not the first time "Yes, we can" has stirred a tempest in a right-wing teapot over Obama and Iran. During the presidential campaign last summer, FOX news correspondent Monica Crowley told Laura Ingraham that Obama "lifted his campaign line 'Yes, we can' from the recent presidential campaign of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." (As Media Matters reported, "Crowley claimed that Ahmadinejad used the slogan 'We can.' In fact, Obama reportedly used the phrase 'Yes, we can' during his 2004 Senate campaign -- a full year before Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005.")
Note to the corporate media: "Yes, we can" was never the invention of politicians. It was a savvy move for the Obama campaign to pick up on the power of "Si, se puede" and its inherently populist connotations -- but it should come as no surprise that, like "hope" and "change," the phrase has been and will be being used by other politicians for years to come.

Tagged as: barack obama, media matters, mahmoud ahmadinejad, cesar chavez, laura ingraham, yes we can, si se puede, united farmworkers union, dolores huerta, monica crowley, aeromexico, arturo s. rodriguez

Liliana Segura is a staff writer and editor of AlterNet's Rights and Liberties and War on Iraq Special Coverage.