Posted on 04/11/2006 6:57:15 AM PDT by Fighting Irish
LOS ANGELES The protests that drew national attention to the future of an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants are relaunching even though sweeping reform legislation has stalled on Capitol Hill.
Weeks ago organizers picked Monday for dozens of demonstrations nationwide, a signal that what began as a string of disparate events attracting tens and even hundreds of thousands of people has become more coordinated.
We dont have a leader like Martin Luther King or Cesar Chavez, but this is now a national immigrant rights movement, said Joshua Hoyt, director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which has helped organize rallies around Chicago.
Activists say the Senates decision last week not to push through a bill that would have given many illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship is neither a cause for celebration nor a lost opportunity its a chance to regroup. And thats what theyll do at demonstrations planned from Florida to Oregon that include school walkouts and downtown marches in major cities.
Across California over 20 events were planned Monday, ranging from a rally in Bakersfield to a ceremony in San Diego dedicated to immigrants whove died while trying to illegally cross the border in desolate desert regions.
In Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, who has been at the forefront of the Catholic Churchs calls for activism in support of illegal immigrants, planned to lead a candlelight vigil.
Mondays events
Ahead of Mondays events, hundreds of thousands of people protested in Dallas, while tens of thousands rallied in San Diego and at a handful of smaller demonstrations around the country.
Religious groups have been coordinating the protests in recent weeks, with dozens of unions, schools and civil rights organizations.
Part of their goal has been to recruit more Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants most protesters so far have been Hispanics and high school or university students.
Many groups had been preparing to rally since December, when the House passed a bill to build more walls along the U.S.-Mexico border, make criminals of people who helped undocumented immigrants and turn being in the country illegally from a civil violation to a felony.
Those mostly local and regional efforts, supported by popular Spanish-language disc jockeys, quickly converted into national plans after hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in dozens of cities last month, culminating March 25 with a 500,000-strong rally in Los Angeles.
Organizers say the national strategy that has evolved from the protests will let them keep pressuring lawmakers, though legislation offering eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants staggered Friday when Senate Republicans and Democrats couldnt agree to a final vote.
This fight is not over, said Juan Carlos Ruiz, coordinator of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based group which includes faith, labor and business groups from a handful of surrounding states.
Though the groups are united around the need to protest, they have their own agendas, especially proposals to create a large and regulated guest worker program. Unions say that would hurt organizing efforts and bring down wages, while civil rights groups say making it easier for immigrants to get U.S. work permits will sharply reduce illegal immigration.
Voter registration drives
What organizers agree on is the need to convert energy from protests into massive voter registration drives.
Voter registration and citizenship education initiatives are set to begin in several states after a Day Without An Immigrant campaign planned for May 1, an event which asks immigrants nationwide to stay home from work and school, and refrain from buying American products.
Marches will only get you so far, said Armando Navarro, coordinator of the National Alliance for Human Rights, an umbrella organization for Hispanic activist groups in Southern California. There has to be an electoral component to get the Republicans out of the majority.
Who is organizing these things?
Sure you do, pea-brain: Vicente Fox.
+What makes you think they will care. They are not enforcing the basic problem, much less the down the road resulting broken laws. Get real, the only activism we can partake of that will do any good is ""active"" actions.
Ping
Follow the money
http://www.cccaction.org/cccaction/april10_index.html
Coordinated by the National Capital Immigrant Coalition in the metro Washington, DC area and hundreds of grassroots organizations around the nation, immigrant communities and allies will come together for the largest mobilization for immigrant justice in our nation's history.
The www.April10.org website is hosted by FIRM - the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, a project of the Center for Community Change.
Statistics show that this third world invasion will bring the hispanic population to 38% of our total poplulation in 29 years. It is time to vote both parties out of office. Take a look at the constitution party. Spread the word.
Vincente Fox and his white supremacist cronies want nothing to do with Mestizos, why do you think he wants them in the US?
The people organizing the rallies are professional protesters, mostly identifying themselves as anarchists but in ideology they are communists. There was a story yesterday that A.N.S.W.E.R. was behind some of it, and I did some research that I posted here. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1606894/posts
It's the commie pinkos who hate America who are behind it.
More about organizers/supporters on this thread ... start reading here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612094/posts?page=159#159
Hey Bone Head Republican Reps. You hearin this? WAKE UP AND SMELL THE REFRIED BEANS!!!
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49683
America the infiltrated
By Joseph Farah You've got to hand it to Americans. If ever there was a group of people more patient, more willing to turn the other cheek, more forgiving and tolerant I just don't know who it would be. Every day now, it seems, hundreds of thousands of ungrateful human parasites rally in American cities condemning their host country's lack of hospitality. Think about this. Somewhere around 20 million foreigners have entered this country illegally and stayed here taking advantage of America's health-care system, educational system, welfare system, taxing its criminal justice system and competing for jobs with those at the very lowest of the economic ladder.
They have taken advantage of loopholes in our laws by dropping babies in this country who automatically become U.S. citizens, despite the illegal entry and presence of the parents. They have forced Americans to spend hours a year listening to voice-mail operators give them language options. They have forced Americans to pay the cost of bilingual ballots and for Spanish translators at thousands of government agencies. The very character of our once-cohesive English-speaking country is threatened. These invaders have made it easy for drug dealers, criminals and terrorists to hide behind the skirts of ordinary civilians. After all this and after U.S. officials steadfastly refuse to enforce the immigration and border security laws already on the books amazingly, it is not Americans out in the streets protesting, it is the illegal invaders. What is it that they are protesting? The mere threat of action by lawmakers who have been asleep at the switch for the last 25 years. That's what has prompted this uprising by the army of illegal aliens within our midst. I would have thought by now that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans would be rising up angry, filling the streets and protesting the destruction of their country. But that is not the case. It is the people destroying the country who are showing their strength. And while these protesters hurl mean-spirited verbal attacks at their hosts calling them bigots and racists and intolerant Americans sit back and watch. I'm afraid most Americans have been successfully fattened up for slaughter. We're just not the same people our forebears were. We're not willing to make sacrifices to preserve our freedom and independence and system of self-government. Washington knows this and has decided you are irrelevant. As wrong as the illegal invaders are, you've got to hand it to them. They know how to push their weight around, and they are willing to march in the streets to get their way. How many Americans are willing to do that any more? How many are willing to make any sacrifice for the way of life they were given by their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents? Brave men gave their lives for over two centuries to defend our Constitution, our independence and the right of the people to govern themselves under the rule of law. For what? So that a slow invasion over 25 years could take away everything Americans had so gallantly fought to protect?
I'm sitting here astonished today watching the latest demonstrations in Phoenix and Dallas and Pittsburgh and all over the country. Thousands of non-Americans with nothing better to do than show their strength, wave their flags, thumb their noses at our laws and dare us to do something about it. They are darn lucky I am not running the country. I would order mass arrests at these events, forcing every single participant to prove their legal right to be in this country or face deportation. I keep hearing about how expensive it would be to find all of the illegals and deport them. They are making it very easy for us with these rallies. The fact that no one is even suggesting roundups shows just how far gone our country is.
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. His latest book is "Taking America Back." He also edits the weekly online intelligence newsletter Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, in which he utilizes his sources developed over 30 years in the news business. |
"Voter registration and citizenship education initiatives are set to begin in several states after a Day Without An Immigrant campaign planned for May 1, an event which asks immigrants nationwide to stay home from work and school, and refrain from buying American products."
Arseholes.
How about a LIFETIME without an ILLEGAL immigrant.
Unfortnately they showed to march in my neighborhood.
I happen to know the person who is the POC for the local version of the demonstrations. She's a pretty busy campaign organizer for the local Democrat party, and is otherwise An Activist.
Of the two, I'd say she falls more under the category of "Liberal Activist", more than "Democrat."
I'd say that the D's are probably funding a lot of it, as a part of their "Get Bush" campaign -- a rather cynical ploy, and I don't know whether or why the unions are playing along, except perhaps as an investment.
But I think the real impetus is some fuzzy-minded notion of "civil rights." It doesn't take too many people to organize this sort of thing, so (aside from money and perhaps advice) I don't think there's a huge underlying structure to this stuff.
I disagree. Say what you will about King or Chavez, but their primary thrust was the civil rights of those they represented.
Vincente Fox has a whole different agenda -- to keep himself and his party in power. For them, the US represents a safety valve which, if shut off, would probably result in a revolution in Mexico.
Speaking of the possibility of a Mexican revolution, we might want to keep that in mind when discussing illegal immigration. The law of unintended consequences could result in an unfortunate outcome -- perhaps worse than what we have now: refugees instead of workers.
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