'We Decided Not to Be Invisible Anymore'
Pro-Immigration Rallies Are Held Across Country

By Dan Balz and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Hundreds of thousands of pro-immigration demonstrators mobilized on the Mall and in scores of cities across the country yesterday in a powerful display of grass-roots muscle-flexing that organizers said could mark a coming-of-age for Latino political power in the United States.

Calling for legal protection for illegal immigrants, the demonstrators -- the overwhelming majority of them Hispanic -- streamed past the White House in Washington, jammed streets near City Hall in Lower Manhattan, marched in Atlanta, held a small candlelight vigil in Los Angeles and, in Mississippi, sang the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" in Spanish.

Demonstrators massed in cities large and small. In tiny Lake Worth, Fla., several thousand legal and illegal immigrants, marching to the beat of drums, demanded fair treatment, with one sign reading "Let Me Love Your Country." In Phoenix, an estimated 100,000 rallied at the Arizona Capitol, with families pushing strollers wedged among construction workers, high school students and old men wearing cowboy hats.

The largely peaceful demonstrations drew only a smattering of anti-immigration protesters.

The rallies came against the backdrop of fierce political struggle in Washington. The House has passed legislation to tighten border security and criminalize illegal immigrants and those who assist them. The Senate is stalemated over a compromise that would provide a path to legal status for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. President Bush has backed the Senate approach but has declined to pressure Republicans to act on it.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that three-quarters of Americans think the government is not doing enough to prevent illegal immigration. But three in five said they favor providing illegal immigrants who have lived here for years a way to gain legal status and eventual citizenship. The idea received majority support from Democrats, independents and Republicans. One in five Americans embraced the House bill, which includes no guest-worker program and would make felons out of those in this country illegally.

The extraordinary outpouring of demonstrators was organized by a loose coalition of church, community and labor organizations and knit together by the burgeoning power of Spanish-language radio and television stations nationwide. The rallies followed Sunday's demonstration in Dallas, which brought up to half a million people into the streets, and an earlier event in Los Angeles that drew more than 500,000. The size of the gatherings has caught the attention of Washington lawmakers.

Unlike some national marches in the past, the pro-immigration rallies have had a bottom-up, organic quality that often surprised organizers and opponents alike. But not everything was spontaneous. In contrast to earlier rallies, which featured Mexican flags and produced a backlash, yesterday's events were awash in American flags after organizers and radio disc jockeys urged demonstrators not to give their opponents something to criticize.

"We had American flags because this is our home and we also wanted to bring part of our heritage," said Salvador Carranza, an organizer of a rally in Madison, Wis. "We believe we are part of this country, and also part of our heritage, so we don't think having other flags is disrespectful."

The rallies signaled that the passions of the immigrant community, which wants Congress to approve comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship, are as intense as they are for those whose opposition to illegal immigrants helped put the issue on the national agenda.

Adelina Nicholls, president of the Coordinating Council of Community Leaders in Atlanta and one of the organizers of the march there, said the House bill, regarded as punitive by many legal and illegal immigrants, "was the ignition that is giving fuel to all community and grass-roots groups." She added: "We decided not to be invisible anymore."

Monzerrat Macias, 15, stood with her family under a swaying palm in Lake Worth, listening to the speakers. She said that her mother came to the United States from Mexico in 1981 and that most of the children in the Macias family have been born here. The family turned out "to help our people to get the legalization they deserve," she said. "We deserve to be here, we work hard. We are immigrants, but we are not terrorists."

The fast-growing Hispanic population now accounts for about 14 percent of the U.S. population, but only about 8 percent of the voters in the last presidential election. For years, experts have predicted that Latinos were on the cusp of significant political power, and with this week's rallies, Latino advocates said they have turned a corner. "I think it's a watershed moment," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute in Los Angeles.

Whether the rallies spur greater participation at the ballot box by the many Latino citizens who are not registered or who vote only irregularly will not be known until later, but there seemed to be little dispute yesterday that the demonstrations were the most significant public expression yet on political issues by the Hispanic community, which is now the largest minority group in the United States.

Hector Flores, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said that part of the movement is unfolding. "The message is 'Today we march, tomorrow we vote,' " he said. Organizations registered thousands to vote at Sunday's march in Dallas.

Flores said he could answer the people who ask, "Why now?" The House bill introduced by Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) "is touching a nerve, man," he said. "It's raw." Flores said the bill threatens to tear apart the family unit, the fabric that holds Latinos together.

"How do you tell the children of undocumented workers who are fighting in Iraq that we're going to deport your parents and your grandparents?" Flores said. "I'm a fifth-generation Mexican American -- there's no distinction between them and me."

Still, along march routes yesterday there were some voices of those opposed to illegal immigration. In Phoenix, state Rep. John Allen (R) held a sign that said "Governor, I'll hold them off, you get the National Guard."

"The question is, when do we stop this activity of illegal immigration?" he said into a battery of cameras. "Right now, it's like Groundhog Day. You wake up every day and there's more of them. It will be this way until we have a closed border."

Many of the organizers said Spanish-language radio, television and newspapers were instrumental not just in helping attract big crowds but for influencing the look and tone of yesterday's rallies.

In Dallas, El Hispanic News covered plans for the march closely. In Los Angeles, Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo, the city's top-rated disc jockey, and also a Mexican immigrant who entered the United States in the trunk of a car in 1986, joined with rival disc jockey Renan "El Cucuy" Almendarez Coello and others to pump up the volume for the rally. They told people where to go, what to wear and what to carry.

Alvaro M. Huerta, who helped organize the Los Angeles rally, said disc jockeys helped spread the word to carry American flags and to wear white shirts as a symbol of peaceful protest.

"We have to give the community credit," he said. "They saw the TV, heard the radio. We expect most people to come with the American flag. We're also here to show our love for the country."

But labor, church and community organizations also helped put together yesterday's nationwide demonstrations. "It was not an overnight thing," said Maria Elena Durazo of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and an organizer of rallies there yesterday and last month.

The Rev. Michael Kennedy of La Placita Catholic Church, which was ground zero for yesterday's candlelight vigil in Los Angeles, drew a parallel between the recent marches and the civil rights movement in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.

"It's the same thing when Rosa Parks got arrested," he said. "People have been offended, their dignity has been offended. I've been around here since 1984 and I've never seen anything like it."

Kennedy's church prepared a PowerPoint presentation on the House bill that church officials showed to parishioners and shared with unions and immigrant-rights organizations. They also organized fasting and prayer vigils, and with the help of hundreds of volunteers put out the word about the rally and yesterday's vigil.

Among labor unions, the Service Employees International Union played a central role in helping to organize rallies in a number of cities, including on the Mall. "I think part of the message that is being sent to members of Congress and both political parties is that people are organized and they're paying attention," said Avril Smith, an SEIU spokeswoman.

Amelia Frank-Vitale, a march organizer with the labor union Unite Here, said local groups worked for months to organize a march in Phoenix two weeks ago that drew 20,000 people. National organizations got involved after the success of that march, she said.

"I do believe the last series of events really changed the discourse in Washington from being solely about enforcement to issues of humanity," she said. "Today, most legislators are back in their home towns. These marches are to speak to them. We're not going away."