Immigrant Marches

Some first hand reporting from the marches in Washington DC on Monday regarding immigrant / illegal immigrant status. Well over one hundred thousand people showed up of all races and political viewpoints (including the anarchists and socialists, I may note) to show their support for the fourth class of citizens that exists in America.

In my view, a lot of places have it wrong. They start with the Very Wrong (aka Fox News “Videos on Hannity & Colmes at 9 of illegal immigrants crossing the border, you must see this!”) to the Moderately Incompetent (the moderate proposal on the Senate floor that failed to pass). The problem has been the ability to have the ideas based on what can be accomplished by our federal government — deporting or reorganizing over eleven million people is not realistic. Further, a lot of the ideals of ‘sealing’ our border do not come from any great need — America has provided for immigrants since it’s inception in some form — but derives from simple, backwards xenophobia. From Salon: At a recent seal-the-border rally in Washington, Rohrabacher declared, “This is about taking care of our own family before we take care of a foreign family.”

Salon is dead on (they also have reporting on the marches in San Fransisco). Immigrants, illegal or not, are not going anywhere and are not deleterious to our economy. We can not deport them, but we can hope to include them in our democratic and social processes.

Here are some of my pictures & videos from the marches in Washington DC.

My favorite picture from the event:

A sense of the magnitude:

And a video for a sense of the atmosphere: