The Jastro Park HR4437 Protests: Part Three - By N.L. Belardes

In the final stretch of the walk back to Jastro Park I saw kids waving flags and the line of marchers still keeping their form... though not for long.









Matt did another interview and I snapped a photo while a lone organizer said a few final words to the marchers over a bullhorn. As I headed into the park I passed by one Caucasian lady facing the protestors and waving an American flag, saying, “You did great! You did great!”



Once nearing the park, some protestors refused to walk the slow pace of the lead and ran towards the stage area. The line itself spread out wide into a huge tide of people that engulfed the park like a slow burning fire.







I ran ahead so I could take a few photos from the stage. This was the most surreal moment as I watched the human tide move toward the stage. The leaders once again on the stage, there was music that played a celebratory accordion-filled waltz. Gonzalo Santos then started dancing with Nicole Parra right in the front.



He changed partners so Pete Parra could dance with his daughter in one of the most interesting political yet joyous moves of the day. Was the dance orchestrated? I wasn’t sure. It seemed spontaneous as Gonzalo strikes me as an energetic man who knows how to adapt to the celebration of the moment with some good two-stepping.





The chanting continued, and the American flag continued to be held by the leaders of the march as they stood onstage and took in the entire sight. Dolores Huerta in a moment of stoic reflection seemed to ponder many years worth of such protests in a glimmer of chanting that saw many people waving flags and cheering.





I stood at the back of the stage and wondered about such a historic moment. Whichever side you support, you can’t deny the incredible movement of people who trudged through sunny streets to show the world that many immigrants do love America, that they do want to stay, but don’t want to be known as criminals in the very country they escaped to. Just then I met a photographer who had traveled a few hundred miles to the event. We spoke for a little while and he took a few photos of Matt and I as perhaps 20,000 or more people stood behind us. Clearly this march would have filled local Memorial Stadium. Later I spoke with a photographer over the phone who was astonished at the amount of people at the event. “The way the head of the snake looped around to the tail there was far more than 10,000 people,” he said.







Finally Dolores Huerta spoke to the crowd as well as some high school students who led student protests in the previous weeks. As the rally came to a close it looked as if many people would have stayed longer if there had been food in the crowd. But there wasn’t, and so many people hovered around ice cream carts and drank water and made their way out of the park.

A few days later I still think of the historic value of such an event and the impact of an issue that has the ability to stir and mobilize so many millions nationwide of multiple ethnicities. Leaving the park, Matt Munoz and I couldn’t help but to walk on tired legs. He did one final interview with another counter protester.



We headed past many people—still with smiles on their faces—as they got in cars and sipped from water bottles. Yes they were hungry, but they were also energized. What would they be talking about for the rest of the day and the weeks ahead? Already as I write this, there are victories in the senate regarding anti-HR4437 stances.

My best advice to anyone with an opinion for or against immigration is education. On both sides there are too many people who rely on their 6 o'clock news or CNN for their education. Immigration has been controversial since the early days of America with immigrants constantly being vilified. Catholics and Southern Europeans: unwanted immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s; Chinese men allowed to help build railroads, but not their women; Japanese people unwanted and eventually scapegoated and interned in camps in a war that saw German-Americans walking streets freely. And so on...

Educate yourself. I could lecture for four hours a day for more than a week on immigration and still barely scratch the surface on the topic.

Explore your libraries, especially university libraries

Explore the Internet.

Be creative with google searches and find links to scholaraly resources. A scholarly source on the Internet would be a web page that is from an accredited institution/university. If not, then that page lacks credability. Here are a few valuable scholarly immigration resources by just using "university immigration studies" as keywords in a search. Check out these links to programs at Southern Illinois, UC San Diego, Princeton, USC...

Center for comparative immigration studies.
Irish immigrant studies
Consortium for Latin immigration studies
Western European immigration studies
Princeton Program in Latin American Studies
Study the humanities at CSU Bakersfield where immigration touches many of the majors you can invest your time in...

Finally we made our way downtown to Sandrinis, broke bread and had some pasta with chingpea. The bread was moist and tasty and Matt and I ate as if we had been starved. We talked about the morning, laughed and thanked the maker for helping us team up throughout the day. We then reflected on how such a historic moment would not just shape the outcome of the rest of the day, but the rest of our lives.

Not long after, grey clouds moved in and it started to rain. What perfect timing.

Read Part One
Read Part Two

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Thursday, April 13, 2006. You can leave your response.