Last year I hesitated going to the May 1 immigration march. I was still at Long Beach City College at the time, and it was my first “on the street” experience as a journalist. I was interviewing protesters along with reporters from the Los Angeles Times and ABC News.
This year, I once again made the trip, but this time to the Santa Ana march. As I arrived to the scene at around 3 p.m., the smell of horses and the sight of green shirts (in the name of peace) made a strange welcome. Earlier that morning, I was following the number of participants in the Los Angeles Time‘s Web site, which kept an approximate count of protesters in the L.A. march. It was almost 10,000 by noon.
Unlike last year, Mexican flags were almost a thing of the past at the Santa Ana march. I encountered a Riverside Community College freshman who was draped in a Uruguayan flag. Her reason? To show others that “the immigration issue doesn’t only affect Mexicans, but people of other parts of the world such as South America, Europe and Asia.” As I walked along protesters with the signs we’ve all seen on television, I bumped into a UC Irvine Chicano studies professor, Roberto Gonzalez, who I’d met at Cal State Long Beach for a similar event. I asked him about the lower turnout at the protest this year.
“I think that a lot of people are frustrated,” Gonzalez said. “A lot of the raids have scared a lot of them. The low turnout isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Look at all of these students here. There’s still people who care.”
Unlike the L.A. march, which involved batons in response to the few bad apples in the crowd who were throwing bottles and rocks at officers, the Santa Ana march was peaceful. I just feel really bad for the person who had to clean the horse excrement on Broadway Street.
– Julio Salgado
