Even more so than yesterday, it’s looking like the Immigrant Rights march in L.A. tomorrow will be massive, with hundreds of thousands coming, just like what happened in Chicago on March 10.
Hey, all you netroots folks who think you need a laptop and a net feed to get things done. Both of these marches were organized with little web presence and primarily by word-of-mouth, meetings, and flyering. That they’ve gone supernova shows that Immigrant Rights is an idea whose time has come – and they didn’t rely on the Net to do it.
The primary demand is NO on the Sensenbrenner bill. You bet they’re listening in D.C. Why? Because people in the streets are forcing them to.
Yesterday [March 16], some advocates calling the Judiciary Committee were told that the phones were ‘ringing off the hook.’ Today, Senator Specter opened the Committee’s meeting telling his colleagues that the Committee was going to take more time to consider this complicated bill–despite Senate Majority leader Frist’s demands–and that he was committed to having a vote on how the legislation will treat the undocumented population in the U.S.
This should be instructive for the netroots, who generally believe that if they can just somehow make Democratic leadership understand the errors of their ways, then those leaders will suddenly reverse direction and move towards meaningful change. Immigrant rights organizers use a more effective tactic. Hundreds of thousands in the streets in a growing tsunami of protest is what will make the changes happen. Netroots can learn much from the Immigrant Rights movement.
NO on the Sensenbrenner bill. Amnesty now.
Assemble at Olympic and Broadway downtown at 10 am (earlier is better.)
Immigrant Solidarity Network has more. There will be protests and rallies nationwide this weekend.