Grass-roots movement of immigrants hopes to sway debate

LOS ANGELES — On Feb. 1, Arturo Hernandez went to his church on the east side of Los Angeles and watched the first PowerPoint presentation of his life. The illegal immigrant from a Mexican village on the Sea of Cortez learned about a bill that had passed the House of Representatives that would turn him and the church that helps his family with child care, his employers in the affluent Brentwood section of Los Angeles and the hospitals that treat his family into felons.

In subsequent weeks, Hernandez listened to public-service announcements on L.A.'s Spanish-language radio stations in which disc jockeys and other celebrities said they wanted him and others like him to let the Senate, which is meeting this week to hammer out its own legislation, know what they think about the proposal.

At the same time, his church, the hotel worker's union that represents his wife and the leadership of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles continued to tell him the legislation was, in the words of Cardinal Roger Mahony who spoke against the proposed law on Ash Wednesday, a "blameful, vicious" bill.

On Saturday, Hernandez, his wife, Gloria, and their three children marched in the first protest of their lives — along with more than 500,000 other demonstrators — through downtown Los Angeles. "I have lived for 15 years in America," said the 34-year-old gardener. "All that time I have lived with my head down, you know. On Saturday, all these people were telling me to put my head up."

As the immigrant legislation was heard Monday on Capital Hill, a grass-roots movement of immigrant churchgoers, union members, businessmen, media personalities and laborers was hoping to use the power of the numbers to move the debate. Some in the loosely knit movement speak of the dawning of a new civil-rights movement, drawing parallels with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and labor activist César Chávez.

For some time, opponents of illegal immigration have been organizing and even launching their own border patrols, such as the Minutemen, while the immigrants themselves have been silent. But the turnout at rallies and demonstrations in recent weeks shows a deepening activism.

Almost a million people in more than 10 cities have marched against the proposed bill. On March 10, nearly 300,000 marched in Chicago. Big crowds have also massed in Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Denver and Phoenix. And protests continued Monday when thousands of students, including some in the Seattle area, skipped class in California, Texas and other states and demonstrators marched on a federal building in Detroit. Organizers said they were gearing up for a nationwide demonstration April 10.

In Los Angeles, a city that is 47 percent Hispanic, the march was a blunt reminder of Latino power in this city — illegal or legal. Busboys, gardeners, maids, textile workers, delivery boys, taco-truck operators, firefighters, politicians, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, union chiefs and thousands more coursed down Broadway in the heart of L.A.'s downtown predominantly Hispanic shopping district.

Churches have been at the center of the movement. Mahony's message for Lent announced that archdiocesan priests and pastoral workers would defy the government and continue offering services to people in the country illegally if such efforts are outlawed. Similar statements came from the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr., president of the National Hispanic Association of Evangelicals, which is usually associated with conservative causes.

Rodriguez called the recent marches the result of "the greatest mobilization since the days of César Chávez."

Rodriguez cautioned members of the Republican Party who back the tough House bill. "More and more Hispanics are voting, and more and more are voting conservatively," he said. "But if we are abandoned by the Republicans on this issue, it will nullify the possibility of a Republican winning national office."

In Los Angeles, radio personalities, who normally engage in cutthroat competition, worked together to inform people about the upcoming march, said David Haymore, vice president and general manager of Spanish Broadcasting System in Los Angeles, which runs two of the most popular Spanish-language radio stations in the city. Haymore said that eight days before the march the program directors and on-air personalities of the major Spanish-language stations here met and "agreed to leave egos at the door, not promote the stations" and make the case on the air for "people to show their unity by marching in downtown L.A."

During the next seven days, stations aired conference calls that featured disc jockeys from competing stations discussing the immigration bills and the Senate's upcoming debate.

"The community needs to see us together so they can understand the message that united we are much more powerful," said the host of the city's most popular Spanish morning radio show, Renan Almendarez Coello, better known as "El Cucuy," a character out of a scary Mexican folktale. "We have to be united to demonstrate to the world that this country is made by immigrants."

In Los Angeles, the campaigning by the Spanish-language media was also mirrored by Radio Seoul, the 24-hour Korean-language station in the city, which aired similar spots exhorting this city's 1 million Koreans to take to the streets.

"We estimate about one in five Koreans in America is illegal," said Dae Joong Yoon, executive director of the Korean Resource Center in Los Angeles. "So we all have these people in our families. We know about their struggles. They are working hard."

On Monday, California's César Chávez Day, more than 22,000 students marched out of Los Angeles-area schools, including the San Fernando Valley and the wealthy coastal enclave of Pacific Palisades, said Monica Carazo, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles school district.

By midmorning, the protests had spread to downtown, where hundreds of students walked the streets and chanted.

The boycott had the tacit approval of school officials in some of the heavily Hispanic downtown schools, where word was passed through hall posters and public-address systems.

A few schools barred their doors to prevent walkouts. Officials at Huntington Park High School locked the gates after classes started, but the students climbed over a chain-link fence and joined marchers in their heavily immigrant community.

About 300 students and adult supporters walked onto a freeway in downtown Los Angeles, forcing police to briefly close some lanes.

The demonstrators walked about a mile before they were escorted off, the highway patrol said.

Police went on a citywide alert, but most protests were peaceful.

Elsewhere, thousands of teenagers also walked out of several high schools in Dallas and headed for a rally at a park, some carrying Mexican flags and others posters calling for Congress to recognize immigrant rights.

Organizers in this region say about 200 Latino students from Highland, Federal Way, Evergreen, Tyee and Todd Beamer high schools skipped classes Monday morning and met at Angle Lake Park in SeaTac. They marched a few blocks north before returning to the park.

As for concerns the high schoolers were missing classes, organizer Julian Torrez, 20, of Federal Way said: "That's something that's been said, but students have a right to protest and assemble."

The Associated Press and Seattle Times staff reporter Alex Fryer contributed to this report.