Hanging out at the Mall...

I went down to the Mall yesterday afternoon for the Immigrant Rights March, as I am employed at an institution of higher learning -- really a land development company that runs a school on the side -- somewhat close to the Mall, and on the way down I saw groups of people walking, some large some small, decked out in white, heading their own way down to the rally. Buses and vans filled with people were stuck in traffic, too.

Down at the Mall the scene was festive -- people were in a good mood, although we had mainly come out of anger over immigration policy. However, it seemed many of the participants were there to make apparent what so many officials seem to deny or misunderstand: the United States continues to be a nation built by immigrants, still being built by immigrants. As the Washington Post headline put it, "We decided not to be invisible anymore."


Whole families -- encompassing several generations -- came out to the rally. At the center of the Mall, the crowds packed together, but that dense mass tells only part of the story. As far back as the Washington Monument, smaller groups sat together with their posters and flags, either resting before heading to the larger rally or taking a break from it. The same was true of the side streets. As I made my way up the Mall, people streamed back and forth over the street that runs between the Smithsonian Castle and the Mall. Their presence could not be denied.


Struggle against entrenched power takes patience. It takes confrontation. One of the first steps, though, is to participate, to get out and make your presence known -- you must become visible to others, even as zealots like Colorado Representative Tancredo attempt to disappear you.

This fight is not about crossing the border illegally; it's about the same issues that were evident in the early 20th century as eugenicists pushed their agenda to limit immigration from the "inferior stock" and "unassimilable" southern and eastern European nations. It's about right-wing assertions that the United States is a "white man's country" and a "Christian nation" (because although Latinos made up the mass of the protesters we can't forget that immigration is being used as a bully stick in the so-called "War on Terror" and gets attached to Muslim immigrants as well).

Many "illegals" have been in this country for decades and the dirty secret that the politicians and pundits try to gloss over is that our economy has depended upon them for well over a century -- they are integrated into the fabric of the nation's business.