Demonstrations Gaining Strength
by Juan Gonzalez
Massive protests by Latino immigrants have rocked more than a dozen major U.S. cities during the past few weeks in opposition to tough new immigration bills before Congress.
Not since the civil rights movement of the 1960s have street demonstrations spread so rapidly to so many cities - and never have Latinos turned out in such astonishing numbers.
"The sleeping Latino giant has finally awakened," said Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn), who participated in several of the protests last week.
And New York City, which has been fairly quiet so far, could be next with Latino religious and immigrant leaders planning a protest march over the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday.
The largest rally until now has been in Los Angeles, where the new mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, spoke Saturday to a crowd estimated by police at more than a half-million Latinos.
Organizers claimed the L.A. turnout was closer to 1 million, but no matter whom you believe, everyone agrees it was the largest demonstration California has ever seen.
That same day, more than 50,000 Latinos gathered in Denver; 20,000 marched in Phoenix and Milwaukee last week, and an estimated 100,000 filled downtown Chicago on March 10.
The protests continued yesterday, as large gatherings were held in Washington, Boston and Detroit. Thousands of high school students also staged walkouts in California and Texas.
The mushrooming movement has been fueled by a little-noticed alliance among immigrant advocates, the Catholic and Pentecostal churches, and Spanish-language radio and television.
Latino leaders are furious at the Draconian immigration reform bill that passed the Republican-controlled House in December. That bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), would subject all illegal immigrants in the country to prosecution for a felony crime and to immediate deportation, and would permanently bar them from gaining legal status.
The bill would even make it a felony for family members, churches or nonprofit agencies to "assist" such an immigrant in any way.
There are so many punitive measures hidden in the Sensenbrenner-King bill, immigrant groups say, that it would spell devastation to an estimated 11 million low-wage, undocumented workers in the country, the largest number of whom are Hispanic. Under the bill's provision, for example, some 3 million U.S.-born citizen children of those immigrants could face separation from their parents.
The real battle, however, will come in the Senate, which is set to begin debate this week on its own version of immigration reform. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has vowed to produce a compromise that includes a guest worker provision heavily favored by President Bush and corporate America.
But the Republicans are deeply split on immigration.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is threatening to introduce his own version of the House bill if Specter gives up too much.
Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are pressing a version that has the most support from immigrant groups and labor unions. It would include the guest worker program and a way for those who are already in the country illegally to achieve legal status.
"People in our neighborhood are outraged by the tenor of the debate in Washington," said Bryan Pu-Folkes, executive director of New Immigrant Community Empowerment in Jackson Heights, Queens.
State Sen. Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx), who's also a Pentecostal minister, has organized religious groups from around the metropolitan area for the Saturday march that will end at the Federal Building in lower Manhattan.
"We have to send a message to Peter King and those who want to criminalize hardworking immigrants," Diaz said yesterday.
As for our city's top leader, Mayor Bloomberg, he declined to say which of the competing bills in Congress he supports, even though the final legislation will have a major impact on the city's estimated 500,000 undocumented workers.
The mayor promised yesterday to make his stand clear over the next few weeks. Maybe Saturday's march will help him clarify his position.
Juan Gonzalez is a Daily News columnist. Email: jgonzalez@ edit.nydailynews.com
Contributors
Links
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Blog Archive
-
▼
2006
(1766)
-
▼
March
(153)
- The Road to Dubai - New York TimesThe New York Tim...
- Ned Lamont: the unlikely insurgent
- Immigration Follies
- What Bush knew, when he knew it
- "Saddam chose to deny inspectors"
- Five minutes to midnight
- Poll: Opposition to Gay Marriage Declining
- Moment of Truth
- "Latino Giant" Awakens
- Democrats To Unveil "Real Security" Plan
- Lieberman faces tough fight
- Progressive vision for all of the Americas
- Rich Yet Broke
- McCain's embrace, Halliburton's profits and Tom De...
- Rove, "Out of touch."
- Fw: "I think we will be here forever", says a U.S....
- The White House shake-up that wasn't
- Impeachment? Hell, no. Impalement.
- Rove "Cooperating"
- Rumsfeld and the Big Picture
- Detainees' Rights-Scalia Speaks His Mind
- Woman With Perfect Memory Baffles Scientists
- North of the Border - New York TimesThe New York T...
- Anti-War Groups Monitored
- That's Sicilian!
- The Voice of Fear and the Voice of Hope
- On Torture and Being Good Americans
- Does This Mean Saddam Wasn't Responsible for 9/11?
- "Crashing The Gate"
- Bush Makes Iraq the Vital Reason for his Impeachme...
- Bush backlash
- Shiite Death Squads Out of Control
- Solving Cuba's Katrina Donation Problem
- Bush Wants to Make IMF and World Bank Even Worse
- The Procrastinator-in-Chief
- Look Who's Talking!
- Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush
- Anti-Bush Cries Get Louder
- NSA Could've Monitored Lawyers' Calls
- "Nonprofit" Profits
- Feingold Stands Alone Again When Standing on Princ...
- Retraining Laid-Off Workers, but for What?
- Letter to the Secretary - New York Times
- But They Voted For This Government....
- Good Versus Evil Isn't A Strategy
- Bush Shuns Patriot Act Requirement
- Fw: Outsourcing
- How long can you tread water?
- Downtime with Dick
- Apocalyptic President
- Rumsfeld shows no sign he's ready to leave
- Changing the Script
- The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll
- No Light in the Tunnel
- Israel Lobby Dictates U.S. Policy, Study Charges
- Criminalizing Illegal Immigration
- What Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld Have Wrought
- Liberators?
- Unstoppable?
- Fighting the Wrong War
- The President Still in Denial
- Why Cheney won't go
- The president and the straw man
- America's Blinders
- The Gall of Bush
- Bernie Sanders Interview
- Lawmakers get out of the Hous
- The president's greatest hits
- Bush Using Straw-Man Arguments in Speeches
- Shame
- Reminds me of "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Amer...
- Fw: Entering the Fourth Year of War and Occupation...
- "Don't talk about it; be about it."
- Meanwhile . . .
- How to spot a baby Conservative
- Carlos Santana Speaks Out Against Bush
- The Democrats . . . Still Ducking
- Rumsfeld Is "Absolutely Crazy"
- Still Optimistic About Iraq? You Just Might Be a F...
- Rewriting the Science
- Worst Presidency in History
- Huh? Feingold's the Careless, Reckless One?
- The Iraq War: Three Years Later
- The battle to ban birth control
- Adios IMF
- Bush vs. Clean Air Act
- An A for Vendetta
- Bush vs. Clean Air Act
- "Hanoi Jane"
- Three Years and Counting
- Task Force 6-26
- Digby Speak
- The Last Days of the Ocean
- What Might Have Been
- Losing Ground
- Clear and Present Dangers
- Three Years Later
- More Rough 'n' Ready Russ
- The "Long War"? Oh, Goodie
- The New York Times Shills Again
-
▼
March
(153)
No comments:
Post a Comment