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 News from Around the Americas | April 2007 
Immigrant-Rights Rally: ‘Yes, We Can’
 Dianne Solis & Stella M. Chavez - Dallas Morning News
| | Most of the crowd carried U.S. flags, though there was a sprinkling of Mexican flags. And the soundtrack ranged from old Santana tunes to even-older Mexican classics. |
Dallas — An immigrant-rights rally on Sunday to mark the massive social protest a year ago was lower in turnout but more focused in its message: Become a citizen, vote or learn to lobby.
And the speech that roused the crowd at the Dallas City Hall plaza came from departing Roman Catholic Bishop Charles Grahmann whose first “Sí, se puede” — the “Yes, we can” chant from the Chicano labor movement — was followed by a chorus of echoes.
Law enforcement estimates of the crowd varied from 2,000 to 6,000 — a fraction of the attendance at the 2006 march that was the largest social protest in Texas history.
“There are people who are creating racism and division today in the community,” said the Dallas bishop, who retires this month. “And that can’t be permitted.”
As though he were celebrating Mass, the bishop told the crowd in Spanish that they had gathered to push “our federal government” for immigration reform. “The immigrants who are here illegally need the right to get papers, and citizenship, in this great country. … Sí, se puede.”
The rally had its detractors. Less than a dozen persons gathered across the street from the plaza. One held a sign with a man wearing a sombrero that read: “No way Jose.” Other signs read: “Stop taking our jobs” and “Children of an invading force are NOT citizens.”
Said one counter-protester, who asked not to be identified, “The problem is sheer numbers. There are too many coming in too quick. It’s got to slow down.”
And though the Texas director of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps lives in nearby Arlington, Clark Kirby didn’t attend the rally to counter-protest. “We don’t do that,” he said. “That is confrontational.”
Kirby said illegal immigration was out of control, but rallies are a way for people to exercise their opinions. Instead, Kirby was in the Rio Grande Valley, leading a semi-annual “border watch.”
Last year, police officials estimated that 350,000 to 500,000 persons took to the streets of downtown Dallas.
Then, many were angered by proposed federal legislation that would have made felons of those in the U.S. illegally. The bill never made it to a vote of the full Congress.
And last year’s Palm Sunday event was preceded by rolling protests and student walkouts in such cities as Los Angeles and Chicago, where labor and immigration activism have deep roots. Many in Dallas were taken aback in late March 2006 when high school students here staged three days of walkouts in defense of illegal immigrants, or as some of them put it, their parents.
Juan Hernandez, who served in the administration of Mexico’s former president Vicente Fox, urged those who were in the U.S. legally to become U.S. citizens and to register to vote. And then he urged the crowd to lobby, to make phone calls to federal legislators and to the White House. Holding his cellphone to the microphone, he called the White House and said, in Spanish, “I support immigration reform, Mr. Bush.”
Former state legislator Domingo Garcia hit the same lobbying theme. “If it is not now, cuando? If it is not this President Bush, who? … It is time for this Congress to pass immigration reform.”
Other speakers included Dallas City Council member Don Hill, who is running for mayor, Casey Thomas, the president of the Dallas NAACP, and Gustavo Jimenez, the Duncanville High School student who helped kick off the student walkouts last March.
Coty Rodriguez Anderson, a counselor at a Dallas high school, called for immigration raids to stop. “The children must stop fearing that they will come to an empty house every day,” she said.
Most of the crowd carried U.S. flags, though there was a sprinkling of Mexican flags. And the soundtrack ranged from old Santana tunes to even-older Mexican classics to last year’s pop hit “Mojado” about an illegal immigrant. As the rally began, one speaker called out chants of “Stop the raids” and “Justicia para familias.”
Rally participants marched in a circle around the City Hall plaza chanting, “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” — “The people united will never be defeated.”
Vendors selling ice cream, American flags and red, white and blue magnets that said “Latinos love America” also were present. Ice cream vendors, or paleteros, pushed their carts and rang their bells among those marching around City Hall.
Said one vendor, “If I were here legally, I wouldn’t be a paletero.”
Delores Thompson, a Jamaican immigrant, said she showed up at the rally with a friend because “we love Mexicans, we support the Mexicans.”
The Parkland Hospital emergency room nurse said she attends to legal and illegal immigrants all day long. “And Mexicans will pay their bills,” she added.
Mario and Carmen Lopez of Irving unfurled a large, yellow banner they made that proclaimed “Immigration Reform Now” and held it up for much of the rally. The couple came from Mexico in 1995. But the U.S. citizens were only able to bring their oldest sons, who are 13 and 15, legally to the country last year. Carmen Lopez said she did not want to bring her children illegally since it is so dangerous.
But she has many other relatives who are illegal.
“I have a niece who graduated from North Dallas High School who’s married with children,” she said. “She doesn’t have her papers. I have another niece who’s 26 and she came when she was 14 and has the same problem.”
Other rally attendees were tearful, as they explained why they came to the Sunday rally, where the 83-degree heat beamed down on the plaza. Marcela Mata, 29, from Leon, Mexico, acknowledged the crowd didn’t swell to the sums of 2006.
Dallas police Sgt. Gil Cerda said the crowd was “modest” in size.
“They were expecting 5,000, and I’m not sure that they reached that,” Cerda said.
But Sgt. Jaime Cortes of the Dallas County Constable estimated that the crowd was between 5,000 and 6,000.
Mata said it was the message not the numbers that was important.
Standing near his daughter, Jose Mata, who received amnesty with the 1986 immigration overhaul, said his daughter made him proud.
“She was the first one to graduate from high school,” he said. |
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