Mass student march for immigrant rights

Today, in L.A.
Assemble Olympic and Broadway downtown 10 am.

Of course I’ll be there! It should be several thousand, and is dedicated to Anthony Soltero (photo), the 14 year old who organized a walkout, was told by a vice principal he would goԚ  prison for doing so, and went home and shot himself. His mother will be speaking.

Meanwhile, momentum for the May 1 National Boycott for Immigrant Rights continues to snowball. The phone in the ANSWER LA office is ringing almost non-stop with people either wanting information or telling us, for example, that their boss is shutting the business that day in solidarity or that their entire shift crew will call in sick, things like that.

Another indicator, starting a few days before March 25, web site traffic on ANSWERLA.org jumped to 4-5 times normal and hasn’t slowed down since. Something quite extraordinary is happening. This is a grassroots, straight-outta-the-working-class movement. None of the pundits or netroots or political gurus saw it coming. But by the Tuesday before March 25, those of us organizing for immigrant rights knew something completely unprecedented and enormous was about to happen.

March 25 was the largest protest ever in California. The marches that have followed, in cities like Dallas, Phoenix, San Diego, D.C, and dozens of smaller cities, were also large, and sometimes huge. This is a nationwide movement.

From ANSWER LA

We remember the 1955-56 Montgomery, Alabama boycott of the heroic African American people in that city. It was the people, the domestic and hotel maids, gardeners, cooks, seamstresses and the whole community, who said, “enough is enough. They demanded nothing less than full equality. Through their persistence they were victorious and made history. Today, this new Civil and workers’ rights movement demands amnesty, legalization and full equality. The May 1 boycott will bring us closer to our goal. No business as usual on May 1. Take to the streets to support the boycott!