The Costa Mesa demo was between 1,000-2,500, quite a bit larger than was expected. The police in this city with an ‘honorary’ Minuteman mayor were well-behaved for a change. This no doubt was due to the large media presence. Pushing around demonstrators gets dicey when there are helicopters filming you.

Costa Mesa is notorious for targetting Latinos for abuse. The primary demand was that the city stop allowing deputies to act as immigration officials. One speaker said those with papers are being stopped and harassed too, and sometimes even deported.

The city has been jacked by extreme right-wingers. The people are fighting back.

Hey Anglos, there weren’t many of us there. This is everyone’s fight. “First they came for the Latinos, and I did nothing because I was not Latino…”

Not sure who he is, he was highly respected by the organizers.

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The Bush Administration today announced a major new initiative, “Operation Two Birds”, to “win the war and and solve the immigration question.” Under this new plan, the Pentagon would become directly responsible for border security. Undocumented workers will no longer be deported. Rather, they will be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight in the wars.

A smiling President Bush said, “Rather than having to defenderize our borders against immigrants, they will now protect us.” Responding to criticism from outraged immigrant rights groups, Undersecretary for Border Defense Malcolm Anglowhite stirred up controversy by saying “Hey, they better shut up or we’ll send them too.” The White House quickly issued a “clarification” saying Anglowhite’s comments were meant in jest and had been twisted by “left wing extremists who hate freedom fries and love Saddam.”

During the press conference, the president became agitated when a reporter asked if this new policy did not imply the government would be engaging in kidnapping and slavery, saying “Listen, Traitor Boy, the immigrantoids should be grateful to serve the United States. Plus, we don’t have to pay them, so maybe that’ll shut up the whiners in Congress who say the war costs too much.”

Rumors that Vice President Cheney was present as the first group of undocumented workers was hogtied in preparation to being sent to Iraq and accidentally shot one of them is “as yet unconfirmed” said Asst. Press Secretary April Foole.

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From John Shay, of HeadZup, “the first video comic strip for cell phones and iPods,” following up on yesterday’s post.

I think your readers will be very interested in the whole idea of “store and forward entertainment”…. which is basically napster without the guilt. While the entire cellular industry is trying their best to turn our cell phones into mind-numbing TV’s and iPods, Head Zup is all about sharing ideas and freedom of _expression. Head Zup clips can be shared freely via the totally unexploited MMS channel that is nearly ubiquitous across global cellular networks (not just 3G networks).

In my mind, MMS offers the promise of an excessively viral nano-podcasting mass medium.

The challenge is learning how to entertain users in 12-15 seconds bite videos (there’s a 100K file limit for attached files via MMS…. which translates to 12-15 seconds of mpeg4). Most comics strips are consumed in 10-15 seconds. Which is why Head Zup is billed as the world’s first video comic strip for cell phones and iPods.

Head Zup is also the first “open source” comic strip… using the term broadly Anyone can create anonymous (and hilarious) zups by simply turning their camera phone upside down and recording just their chins. The anonymous aspect brings a unique freedom of _expression element to mobile communications.

PS It would be hugely helpful to mention the Head Zup wap site (same URL as the main site) where users can download free clips to their cell phones. By downloading and sending the clips they will help jump-start NanoCasting.

The phone must have a video player to watch the clip and they’ll need to have MMS turned on to send it to someone.

…. also, Head Zup is available as a free iTunes podcast in the Apple music store.

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US Hispanic groups, buoyed by massive weekend protests against a proposed immigration crackdown, are planning a major boycott of American life dubbed a ”day without Latinos,” leaders said on Tuesday.

Organisers of the planned May 1 “A day without Latinos or a day without immigrants” boycott will ask immigrants to put down tools, leave their places of work and classrooms, shut their business and take to the streets en masse to protest a bill that would criminalise illegal immigration.

Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Association, one of the organisers of a massive protest in Los Angeles that saw at least 500,000 protest on Saturday, said the protest would send a stern message to Washington.

“We are looking forward to a major action in all large US cities where immigrants make up a significant proportion of the workforce,” he told AFP.

“We are asking people not to go to school, or work, or shopping and instead to go out and protest against the racist and inhumane measures in this bill.”

Planning meetings will be held in several cities over the next few weeks with the official announcement to be made in D.C. soon.

“Amnesty and Full Legalization” is the demand from the March 25 Coalition, organizers of last Saturday’s historic march in L.A.

I’ll be blogging much more about this in the coming days.

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