Hundreds of Thousands Rally in Cities Large and Small

By Sonya Geis and Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 11, 2006

PHOENIX, April 10 -- Victor Colex came marching out of the shadows Monday, draped in American flags from his hat to his measuring tape and demanding recognition from a nation he regards as his own.

Typically the 37-year-old Mexican-born worker earns $7 to $8 an hour building fences in this fast-growing region. But this Monday he joined a 100,000-strong river of humanity, from mothers pushing strollers with flag-waving toddlers to slouching construction workers to old men wearing wide-brimmed cowboy hats, all marching on the state Capitol to demand that Congress not criminalize illegal immigrants.

"We are not asking for favors," he said. "We only want to work, for our families and parents and children. We want what's just."

Across the United States, in the nation's largest cities and some of its smaller towns, hundreds of thousands of immigrants and children of immigrants, labor unions and civic associations took to the streets in an immigrant "Day of Action." The hope was that their chants might echo in the halls of Congress, where lawmakers have debated immigration legislation for weeks.

The turnout numbers cumulatively soared into the hundreds of thousands. Fifty-thousand people snaked two miles through an immigrant neighborhood in Atlanta. San Francisco, Austin and Madison, Wis., each had rallies that attracted 10,000. An estimated 3,000 people took to the streets of Garden City, Kan., a farming community in the southwest corner of that state. In New York City, 30,000 people of various hues and nationalities -- not least young Arab American women wearing Calvin Klein hijabs -- took a thumping, chanting walk down lower Broadway.

At least 350,000 people rallied in downtown Dallas on Sunday, and organizers now talk of an economic boycott in a collective demonstration of muscle.

The atmosphere Monday was as often festive. Anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric bubbles near the boiling point in Arizona, where the Minutemen patrol the border regions and Sen. Jon Kyl (R) has endorsed guest-worker legislation that would require immigrants who are working illegally to return to their countries when their visas expire. But few hints of discord could be heard in Phoenix.

In fact, some immigrants spoke of being inspired by the numbers in the streets Monday and by the failure so far in Washington of any legislation that would crack down on illegal immigrants. Daniel Quintero, a native of Mexico and now a legal resident here, walked with his wife, young daughter and baby. "I was a person who would say this isn't going to make a difference," he said. "But with the first march, there was a change in the government. I think we are making a lot of noise, and we are going to continue to."

Eliz Gerardo, a 17-year-old high school junior, stood in the sharp Southwestern sunlight with her friends. She wore a sticker: "Somos America, We Are America." Immigrant high school students have led impromptu walkouts for weeks. But Eliz said her mother called in and asked permission for her to leave school Monday.

"My parents are immigrants," she said. "We Mexicans are not here to fight against Americans. We're here to become Americans."

The sense often was that immigrants were surfacing Monday, emerging into the spotlight by the thousands from the restaurants and gardening companies and hotels where so many labor. Eduardo Romero, a 32-year-old Peruvian immigrant who works near Madison, said the size of the rally drove home just how many Latinos live there.

"There are so many immigrants supporting this economy," he said. "Something has to happen one way or another."

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."