Hundreds of Thousands Rally in Cities Large and Small

In Oakland, Calif., the Rev. Antonio Valdivia, pastor of St. Louis Bertrand Catholic Church in East Oakland, gripped a palm frond like a walking stick and led a 5,000-strong procession down the middle of International Boulevard. Many waved American flags. Some, such as Elizabeth Arce, 17, marched for their parents. "I'm not illegal, but my parents are," she said.

Farther south, in Santa Ana, janitor Jose Hernandez waved an American flag in one hand and a Mexican flag in the other. "We are looking for respect," he said. "I want papers for everyone, my family and me."

Many demonstrators drew no distinction between those who live here legally and those who lack documents. To be an immigrant, they said, is to live along a continuum. In Lake Worth, on the southeast coast of Florida, 4,000 demonstrators rallied in the 90-degree heat. Several crews from Somerset Landscaping showed up, a group nearly evenly divided between the legal and the illegal.

Enrique Garcia, 24, said his company knew the crews would take time off to attend the rally. "It's been all over the place for two weeks. We came here to show solidarity for our people," he said. "There is not enough work in Mexico, and we love America. We are America."

At that same rally, a group of young men wrapped in Mexican flags declined to give their names to a reporter but spoke bluntly in Spanish of their work. "We take the jobs Americans don't want," said an 18-year-old with a full grill on his teeth. "They are too lazy or too scared."

Another one laughed and added: "Or too scared of the sun."

Monday's demonstrations were in no fashion spontaneous eruptions. The organizing took weeks, and by this past weekend organizers in many cities had passed out fliers everywhere in immigrant neighborhoods -- taping them to lampposts and to bakery and laundry windows.

Ethnic newspapers and Spanish-language radio and television stations thumped on the need for a big turnout. Hoy, a New York Spanish-language newspaper, declared: "Ready to Make History."

Pastors spoke from pulpits and union rank-and-file workers made phone calls. Mary Crump of Bethpage, Long Island, listened to the bishop of her United Methodist Church endorse the New York march from the pulpit Sunday. "He said to come so here I am," she said.

Hillary Exter, a college administrator in the Bronx, came for reasons of personal history. She is the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who fled czarist Russia, and she wanted to show solidarity with a new generation of immigrants. "I can't imagine they came with a visa," Exter said of her grandparents. "Their situation was not at all different from now."

In Queens, a Salvadoran-born veteran organizer said his coalition took root in the struggle, ultimately unsuccessful, to stop New York state from cracking down on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. And disc jockeys on Spanish-language radio often encouraged the dozens of rallies and student walkouts across the nation.

Against this backdrop, Diego Vasquez's decision to march is perhaps unusual. A Columbian living in New Jersey, he is a political refugee and has waited three years for his green card. He figured it was better not to march. Then from his lawyer's office in Manhattan he heard the ruckus coming down Broadway. He walked downstairs and fell in step.

"I cannot forever sit in limbo," said Vasquez, a broad-faced 34-year-old. "Today I'm standing up for my fellow immigrants -- it makes me feel free."