the land of immigrants

So Akzoe and I made it to the march last Saturday, in downtown L.A., and I have to say I never expected a crowd of that size. I knew it would be big (and I knew I would be "the white girl"), but I still didn't expect to see what we saw. All the way into the area, we passed people headed that way on foot, wearing white T shirts and wrapping themselves in Mexican flags, U.S. flags, El Salvadoran flags. Cars were honking at them and waving. There were lots of families with children in tow; one man carried around a little dog with a crazy look in his eye.

We were one of the last few to find parking in a structure at Grant and 7th, before it closed like most of the others, and then we started out, just following the crowd. Neither of us had worn white - I had an Art Brut shirt on that said "Popular culture no longer applies to me" and Akzoe had a Korean shirt for Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas. So we represented, in a way! We were hunting for a supposedly large group of Koreans that we had come to meet, but we only ran into a smattering here and there. The majority of the crowd was obviously Latino, although I spotted about 15 or so white people and 2 black people. People who bumped into me said Perdon first, before they looked, and then added, "Sorry!" We were the odd white girl and Asian girl out; Akzoe climbed up on top of newspaper dispensers to look for faces she recognized, while I stayed a little less conspicuous.

We broke through onto what we thought was the main drag, on Broadway, and suddenly there was no room anywhere. There were so many bodies - I had to hold onto Akzoe's bag not to lose her. The sidewalk we were on was crowded, but there was an actual sea of people in the street alongside us. There were fog horns going off, people chanting, Si se puede! (Yes, you can!) Ahora justicia! (Justice now!) Amnistia! (Amnesty!) El pueblo unido something, something I couldn't catch! (The people, united, can never be defeated?) They were waving banners and signs, and flags were catching in my hair from people behind me.

My favorite sign was a gigantic banner that read, "After I built your house and growed your food, why are you treating me like a criminal?" A pretty damn valid point, in my opinion. There were also many that said America was made up of immigrants. We reached a major intersection and turned to see a whole other branch of the march continuing along streets parallel to Broadway, on either side! The march spread across to Los Angeles St. and Main St. - four streets in total, spilling into each other at every intersection, until we reached City Hall. There was a mass of people gathered at the terrace of City Hall, where the mayor was speaking in Spanish. He was followed by many different community leaders, some speaking in Spanish and some in English. The Spanish was not translated and my high school Spanish definitely didn't keep up, although I caught some important phrases. An elderly Korean woman also spoke and was interpreted, although Akzoe said somewhat inaccurately.

We stayed there in the crowd for a long time, squeezing through into different sections, listening to whatever we could understand. There was a lot of repetition - We are not criminals! We are not terrorists! We are workers! Akzoe took pictures of signs and flags, some of the views from the street cross-sections, out to the other branches of the march. We left around 2, tired and hungry, but pretty uplifted. Akzoe was a bit saddened, however, by the underrepresentation of the Korean community. The total number of people that I keep reading now is 500,000 people. 500,000. That is quite a large group to piss off, my friends. I'm glad to have been among them.