Shots Across The Bow

Illegal Immigrants Demonstrate Against Making Illegal Immigration...er...Illegal

Sorry for the late posting today, but I did something kind of different for today's post. Instead of commenting on other folk's reporting, I actually went to the event I wanted to talk about, the Anti-Anti-Illegal-Immigration rally.

Warning!: Link is to about a 2MB panorama file.Looks pretty but it's big.

As I walked up to the scene, cutting through the Federal Courthouse building, I saw a moderately large crowd gathered on the lawn, probably 300-400 people. The predominant colors were red and white. Many folks in the crowd were wearing T-shirts that read "Where are our rights? Dignity and justice for all" written in Spanish and English. I walked around and through the crowd, listening to conversations, taking pictures, and waiting for the rally to get going.

The crowd slowly grew, peaking around 700-800 people or so, milling about and enjoying the nice weather. Eventually, the rally got underway, with the speaker using the ever faithful bullhorn to address the crowd. The message wasn't surprising. She asked the people present to sign three letters to be sent to Bill Frist, John Duncan and Lamar Alexander asking for fair immigration reform. Their vision of what would be fair remains a bit hazy, since the speaker didn't go into too many detail, although she did add, almost as an afterthought, that she wanted Tennessee to resume issuing driver's licenses to illegals so they could drive legally.

She also announced to the crowd the size of the marches in other cities, 500,000 in Dallas, 250,000 in Atlanta, and 500,000 in LA. Each announcement was followed by a loud cheer. The crowd broke into chants, sometimes lead by the speaker, other times spontaneously.

Si se puede! (Yes we can!)

Latinos united will never give up.

And the ever popular and always useful, "What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!

After the chanting died down, they lined up and began their march around the Federal Court building. The crowd was big enough that the line stretched all the way around the building. They made several circuits around the block before the rally ended, and they cleaned up the site and then left.

But I wondered whether they'd really accomplished anything. After all, a rally has to have a purpose, some goal to accomplish. If the goal was to rally the base, and get the immigrant community active, then the rally was successful. If, on the other hand, their purpose was to garner support for their cause, they fell well short of that goal. While there was only one active protestor, all of the people I talked to during and after the event expressed disagreement with the cause.

"Charity starts at home," one older gentleman told me. "Who do you feed first, your own kids, or somebody else’s? We have too many problems here to deal with. We need to clean our own house before we have guests over for dinner."

I overheard another man responding to the 'justice' chant, "Does justice include deporting felons?"

I didn't hear any outright racist comments, but I didn't hear anything supporting the demonstrators either.

After the rally, I came home, downloaded my pictures, and began writing this post. I was curious to see how the local news channels handled their coverage of the story. The stories were all basically the same, (Immigrants protested, one guy opposed), but there were two interesting things I noticed.

First the size estimates. WVLT came in the highest, with 2000. WATE came in the lowest with 300, and WBIR came in the slipperiest, claiming "Thousands" in the headline, but just "over a thousand," in the body of their article. Like I said, I was there, and it seemed to me that the crowd was about 800 strong, so an estimate of just over a thousand is fairly accurate. I don't know what the other two stations were thinking.

The other thing I noticed was that none of the three stations' reports included any real questions of the organizers or the supporters. Some questions I would have liked to hear:

• You are chanting that you want justice. Define justice? What exactly do you want?
  
• Do you believe that people who enter this country illegally deserve the same treatment as those who enter legally?
  
• Do you believe that people who entered illegally should be rewarded for their behavior by granting them amnesty?
  
• What do you say to all the people waiting in line to enter the country legally?
  
• Do you believe that the fact that your home country cannot offer you the economic opportunities of the US somehow gives you the right to come here illegally?
  
• Do you believe the US should have an open border policy? If not, how would you restrict immigration? What measures would you put into place? How would you enforce those restrictions?
  
• Mexico has immigration policies that are much stricter than the US. Isn't it hypocritical, then, to criticize US policy? Isn't it even more hypocritical if you're here illegally, and ignoring that policy?
  
• Recently, Harry Reid and the Democrats filibustered an amendment to the immigration reform bill that would have made those illegals convicted of a felony ineligible for the guest worker program. DO you agree or disagree wit his stand?
  
• Is it possible for a person to support strict enforcement of immigration laws without being a racist or a bigot?

Maybe the Sentinel will have answers for those questions tomorrow. If not, maybe I'll give the organizer a call and see what answers I can get. Until then, here are a few pictures of the event.

The rally begins


Issue of concern

At no point during the rally did I hear any mention of why the licensing program was shut down to begin with, ie abuse by other illegal immigrants coming from out of state to get a valid driver's license.


A hope, or a thinly veiled threat?


Isn't it funny how that 'wall of separation' gets breached whenever it's convenient?


Selling the revolution.


Pride in his homeland. That he left behind to find a better life. Puzzling.


Wearing his pride.


Professionally printed and homemade T-shirts were the rule of the day. No signs of extensive involvement by national organizations.


A most dangerous sentiment


Flags from Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador were in evidence throughout the crowd.


I think I was victimized by racial profiling here. I didn't get any of these handouts.



Here's the only picture I really had a hard time with. This is Knoxville's monument to the folks murdered on 9/11. It's not a resting place, and seeing them lean on it like that just seemed disrespectful.

Leaning on the 911 memorial.


A lonely vigil


Marchers move from the City County lawn to surround the Federal Building


The march stretches around the Federal Building.


Should illegal aliens be allowed to vote? This gentleman thinks so.


Apparently, while I was taking pictures of the rally, Mr. David Garrett was taking pictures of me, and in the process of capturing my best side, he also revealed my deepest secret to the world.

I have no butt.


While the rally was very peaceful, and I saw no signs of the La Raza or Mexica movements, a few blocks away, on Wall street, I did find this:

Posted by Rich at April 10, 2006 7:57 PM | TrackBack