Immigrants' message: Justice for all
Protesters: Rights worth fight
May 2, 2006
BY NIRAJ WARIKOO and MARGARITA BAUZA
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
Antonia Ruiz Bartholomew, 66, of Harper Woods, center, and Concepcion Perez and her daughter, Areli Perez, 7, of Detroit, right, join in a rally in Clark Park in Detroit on Monday supporting immigrant rights. (ROMAIN BLANQUART/Detroit Free Press)
As immigrant protesters flexed their economic power in Detroit and across the country Monday, local advocates expressed hope that this would be the start of a political movement for justice that goes beyond immigrant rights.
At two rallies Monday in Detroit that organizers say drew more than 1,000 demonstrators, speakers repeatedly stressed the importance of unity across racial and class lines, urging the mostly Latino crowds to link with African Americans, labor groups, and Arab Americans in a movement for worker and civil rights.
"Somos uno," meaning "we are one," hollered Father Thomas Sepulveda, to a crowd of more than 200 immigrant supporters gathered Monday morning in front of Ste. Anne Catholic Church in Detroit.
Local activists say they hope that message will translate into substantial progress over the coming months, and already have marked June 4 as a day of protest in Detroit for equality and justice.
"We've got to keep on speaking out," said Nahemi Gomez, 36, a teaching assistant from Detroit who was at the rally with more than 20 members of her extended family. Still, Monday's demonstrations, while substantial, were smaller than the March 27 rally in Detroit, which organizers said drew about 30,000, and rallies Monday in Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver and some other cities. There was a smaller turnout in Detroit, said organizers, because they had put more of an emphasis on the March 27 rally. Other organizers had called for a daylong boycott Monday of work, school and businesses. But not everyone in Detroit agreed with that, and the split could be seen.
Along Vernor Highway, the main commercial strip for Latino-owned businesses in southwest Detroit, most of the businesses were closed. .
"Closed Monday ... in support of recent immigration protests," flashed the electronic sign outside the popular E&L Supermercado store.
"No compres nada" ("Don't buy anything") read a yellow sign posted on a restaurant, Taqueria Mexico, across the street.
In total, about 300 businesses were closed in or near southwest Detroit, said Mayra Carrillo, sales manager at La Explosiva, a Spanish-language radio station based in Ypsilanti. In addition, more than 100 Latino-owned businesses, from Pontiac to Ann Arbor to Westland, were shut down, she said.
But not all were.
Mexican Town Restaurant on Bagley Street was open, its phone ringing often around lunch from customers asking if the restaurant was open.
The owner, Colleen DiMattia, said she wasn't trying to make a political statement by remaining open.
"I have a business and we're open on Mondays," DiMattia said. "I really didn't give it a lot of thought. This is a business and this is my job. It's not ignorance. This is what I do."
At Wolverine Packing Co., a meatpacking plant in Detroit that employs immigrant workers, it also was business as usual, said manager Jay Bonahoom. The plant had fired 21 workers after they missed work to attend the March 27 rally, but after an outcry, rehired them weeks later. In other parts of the country, meatpacking plants shut down for the day, as did some landscaping businesses.
Other cities saw bigger protests than Detroit. Police estimated 400,000 people marched in Chicago, and tens of thousands more rallied in New York and Los Angeles, where police stopped giving estimates at 60,000 as the crowd kept growing. An estimated 75,000 rallied in Denver, more than 15,000 in Houston and 30,000 more across Florida.
In Detroit, protesters started at Ste. Anne's for a rally organized by Juan Escareno, an advocate with Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength, a coalition group based in Detroit. The rally featured speeches from Arab-American leaders, local unions such as the UAW, and churches with African-American congregations.
Many in the crowd held up signs that read "We are Americans."
"Look around you," the Rev. Donald Hanchon, head of Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in southwest Detroit, told the diverse crowd. "This is what America looks like. ... We are not just Latinos."
A group that is fighting to preserve affirmative action, By Any Means Necessary, also was at the rally, urging immigrants to back their fight against a ballot initiative that would ban public universities and government in Michigan from using race and gender in admissions and hiring decisions. The issue of solidarity with African Americans is an important one in Detroit, considering its large black community, said organizers.
"We are working to unite black and Latino people around a common struggle," said Monica Smith, a 21-year-old Detroiter who is an organizer with BAMN. "We're being attacked by the same racist people and we are working to strengthen our movements."
Escareno asked the crowd: "Where do we go from here? ... We must reach out to" African Americans and whites, he said, and push for the rights of immigrant workers, especially those injured in workplace incidents.
After the church rally, some demonstrators marched through the streets of Detroit to Clark Park, in the heart of southwest Detroit, where a second rally was held. Chanting, "Si, se puede," meaning "Yes, we can," they waved the flags of the United States, Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador.
Hector Fuentes, 20, of Detroit and an immigrant from Honduras, waved a flag of his native land as he listened to the speakers at Clark Park.
He skipped work at a local bakery and said he didn't buy anything at stores Monday because he wanted to help show "how much money we contribute" to the American economy. According to a fact sheet distributed by rally organizers, immigrants pay between $90 billion to $140 billion in taxes per year.
To Gomez, though, the rally is about more than numbers.
Her parents slipped across the border from Mexico into California when she was 10 years old. They were undocumented until a 1986 amnesty plan allowed them to become U.S. citizens.
Gomez remembers how difficult their life was as undocumented workers, and so she wants to help others. With her kids at her side Monday, she said:
"It's up to us to try to make a difference."