A Day of Power
Can Congress pick up the vibe of the movement?
Lopez added, “We’re feeding our children. We’re not trying to break the bank.”
Businesses all over Koreatown were shut, signaling a growing support for the movement among the Korean community, organizers and news reports said. From MacArthur Park, a traditional gathering space for people from the impoverished working-class neighborhoods populated largely by recent Central American immigrants, the march moved west, uncharted territory so far for the immigrant-rights movement.
The distance became a biblical metaphor. People had to stop and sit along the sidewalks. They shared bottled water with their beleaguered pets. Grannies covered their heads with signs. Tatted-up cholos apparently wounded in gang warfare and using canes to walk kept on walking. The march at some points grew thin.
Official crowd estimates of 250,000 marchers downtown and 400,000 at the afternoon rally seemed unreasonably low. By 6:30 p.m., fully three hours after the march from MacArthur Park started and toward the end of the rally where Villaraigosa waved a huge American flag, throngs of new marchers were still coming down Wilshire Boulevard. Waves of people led by large banners, Aztec dancers, Korean drummers, baby-stroller brigades. Still coming.
The air of the ridiculous was never too far removed from the whole affair. Spanish-speaking clowns in full makeup and oversize shoes marched the whole way. Eager parents asked strapping blond firefighters to hold their babies and pose for pictures. The firefighters gladly obliged.
When it was all over, immigrants in white, exhausted, sunburned, still somehow happy, jammed the well-kept sidewalks of Windsor Square and Hancock Park, passing the mansions where many likely work in the kitchens and gardens.
It was dusk, and it looked like people all over the city were marching to dinner.
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