More Than 500,000 Rally in L.A. for Immigrants’ Rights

That’s what am talking about [LA Times - March 25, 2006]!

Joining what some are calling the nation’s largest mobilization of immigrants ever, hundreds of thousands of people boisterously marched in downtown Los Angeles Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall on the U.S. southern border. Spirited crowds representing labor, religious groups, civil-rights advocates and ordinary immigrants stretched over 26 blocks of downtown Los Angeles from Adams Blvd. along Spring Street and Broadway to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting "Si se puede!" (Yes we can!). The crowd, estimated by police at more than 500.000, represented one of the largest protest marches in Los Angeles history, surpassing Vietnam War demonstrations and the 70,000 who rallied downtown against Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that denied public benefits to undocumented migrants.

Republicans, as they always do, counted on scapegoating another out group in the 2006 election cycle. In 2004 they went after "the gays" and this year it looks like Republicans counted on vilifying "illegal aliens" to agitate their narrow minded, yet always reliable, base. Well, as it occurred in California in the 1990s, when the Republican governor at the time, Pete Wilson, backed the draconian 187 anti-immigrant proposition, it looks like this latest scapegoating attempt by Republicans will back fire over the long term (and, hopefully, over the near term, too).

Pete Wilson’s support of proposition 187 turned the Latino community in California against the Republican party for years to come; and, now, even after the Republican efforts to reach out to Latinos, it looks like they miscalculated and never anticipated the Latino community’s reaction to the latest anti-immigrant push by Republicans.

Here we see how grassroots organizing and a cooperative communications network (Spanish language stations have aired announcements for these national marches for a while now) must go hand-in-hand to mobilize people. Now, all the organizing and communications coordination that got out 500,000 people to the streets of LA occurred unnoticed because it was happening out of the mainstream and in Spanish. However, the combination of grassroots organizing and a cooperative communications network, I’m convinced, can mobilize any community, whether it be Spanish speaking or English speaking. And here’s where the equation for organizing mainstream progressives has been broken: we’ve lacked a cooperative and truly liberal broadcasting network. The moment we have a truly liberal and cooperative voice on one of the major broadcasting outlets, that’s when mainstream progressives will be agitated and mobilized — and that’s when we’ll pour onto the streets, just as the Latino community and their supporters have done over the past week. Si se puede!