Allan Appel Photo
Galvanized by Arizona’s new crackdown, Jorge Marroquin donned his double-fisted American flag cap and joined 1,000 fellow marchers in the streets of immigrant-friendly New Haven to demand national immigration reform, soon.
In what was billed by organizers as a May Day rally for immigration reform, unionists, church members, and community activists assembled Saturday in Quinnipiac River Park, their banners rippling under sunny parade-perfect skies.
In addition to “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now,” the most frequent shout of the marchers was addressed to the White House: Obama, escucha, Estamos en la luche!; Roughly translated: Obama, listen up: we are engaged in the struggle!
Saturday’s demonstration was planned long before Arizona passed a law April 23 calling on local cops to stop people suspected of being in the country illegally and requiring people to carry documents proving their legal residency. That law has sparked nationwide protests from groups saying it will lead to racial profiling. It became a focus of May Day marches around the country Saturday, including New Haven’s.
The march route wound down Grand Avenue, turned left on Olive, then right on Court (where Marroquin flapped his hat), and culminated in a rally at federal Square across from the Green. Friendly cops escorted them. Mayor John DeStefano walked the entire route, then hit the day’s theme at the rally.
“It is morning in America,” not Arizona, he declared. “This is America’s time, not Arizona’s time. We will embrace what has always made us stronger, new generations of immigrants.”
“The dangers of an incoherent [national] immigration policy expressed itself in Arizona,” DeStefano argued. He called Arizona’s new law inconsistent with American values, part of a “vocabulary of anxiety and of fears turning into bad laws.”
New Haven’s march was part of a statewide and nationwide program of protest against the absence of comprehensive federal immigration reform. It has followed on New Haveners going in busloads in March to lobby legislators in Washington. (Click here to read that story.)
“Right now Arizona’s law is taking the country back to before civil rights,” said New Haven rally organizer John Lugo of Unidad Latina En Accion.
Opposition to the Arizona law brought out first-time marchers like Jorge Marroquin.
As the crowd shouted out, “They say Go Back, We say Fight Back,” Marroquin explained his reason for marching: “It’s going to affect everyone. If we don’t have immigrants, who’s going to do the farm jobs, the construction jobs?”
In addition to working a full-time job, Marroquin and his wife run J’s Luncheonette on Middletown Avenue. He’s been a citizen for decades and has three employees. He said he wondered where the non-Latino marchers were, “the Chinese, the Italians.”
His question would be answered later in the march.
Another first-time marcher was Career High School sophomore Andrea Hernandez. Carrying a sign calling for an end to racial profiling, she said that aspect of the Arizona law was a hot topic in the classrooms and hallways of her school. She’d never been to a march before but now was outraged.
Speaking with a high schooler’s enthusiasm, she said, “They [would-be enforcers of the Arizona law] treat people as non-humans.”
Marching beside her was Sandra Trevino (at left in photo), executive director of JUNTA, another of the organizing groups. All Trevino was carrying in her jeans was a cell phone. No wallet, no ID. “If I would be in Arizona now, I’d probably be arrested,” she said. “I’d be put into the process, and [maybe] deported. How ridiculous is that to carry your birth certificate.”
She said her organization’s message is: the federal government needs to pass immigration reform soon. In addition she endorsed the brewing boycotts of Arizona.
At Ferry Street, the march picked up dozens more supporters. Right before Olive, some bystanders in front of Wozniaks, the Polish meat market, looked on in interest. One said to a reporter, “This is America. Why aren’t the signs [of the marchers] in English?”
Abraham Hernandez argued that immigration has been used as a political football at least since the Bush administration. Hernandez, a minister, said calls from his Christian station Radio Amor brought about 200 people to the march.
“The [Arizona] law kindled the fire in people who were previously passive. If it happened in Arizona, no one can say which is the next state to implement an anti-immigration law,” he argued.
At Federal Plaza, Lugo announced that the crowd had reached 1,500 people. To huge applause, the statewide chair of the AFL-CIO, John Olsen, declared, “This is not about worker versus worker, but human rights for all workers!”
Among those listening in the front row were Mongi Dhaouadi and his wife Shirley and son Salah. The president of Connecticut’s Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of 30 chapters of the national CAIR, Dhaouadi had brought 25 members to the rally down from New London.
He said that if Obama has reached out to the Muslims around the world, he should be doing the same to Muslim Americans, who have insight to offer in these matters. “We want to be part of the solution, not the problem,” Dhaouadi said.
Lugo and other march leaders such as Fair Haven Alderwoman Migdalia Castro said the next steps include putting pressure on Connecticut’s federal delegation to be more outspoken on immigration reform.
She said former Board of Aldermen President Tomas Reyes on behalf of the Connecticut Hispanic Democratic Caucus has asked for an urgent meeting with U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman. “We want Lieberman to take a stand on immigration this year. This is a priority for the community that supported him,” she said.
As she helped lead the crowd in shouting “Si, Se Puede,” or Yes, we can,” Castro called for a reform bill to be passed as soon as summer’s end.
DeStefano called New Haven a productive platform or political lab where the issues now roiling the nation have already been engaged. Immigrants create economic wealth, which U.S. cities need now, he noted. “For New Haven it’s more than a ‘brown’ issue. It’s about attracting more PhDs, their energy in a knowledge based economy.”
Regarding the state’s federal representation on the issue, he added, “Lieberman has been strong on immigration. Even during our ICE troubles, Lieberman was helpful.”
He cautioned against rushing to a vote on immigration, likening the complexity of immigration issue to health care. “It doesn’t make sense to run a vote just to run a vote, and then it crashes,” he said.