Primero de Mayo: Dia Sin Un Imigrante
Well, I wrote about how I wouldn't go, and then I hung around the house and felt crappy for about five minutes, and then the Squid woke up. So I thought, fuck this, I don't care if I'm late, I can't not be part of this. This is history. This is regular people mobilizing to change the world for the better. I'm going to skip this for a nap? I think not. So I packed up a few clean diapers and the Squid's frontpack and we went to San Jose; the march (a four-mile stretch) had been underway for an hour and a half by the time we got there, so I parked about two miles from the end point, loaded a sleeping Squid into the frontpack, and walked up to the main street. I needn't have worried about it being over; this is what I saw as I got there:
The demonstration stretched the full four miles - one woman told me that at 6:30 (the ostensible "end time" of the march) people were still leaving the origination point. I have never seen so many people all in one place, except maybe at Gay Pride in San Francisco, and even then, it's a parade, not a march, so they clear the street for floats and groups of organized marchers, not this steady stream of regular folks. Almost everyone was Latino, and I heard very little English - we could have easily been south of the border, a sudden reversal, an oasis of (mostly) Mexico in the middle of downtown San Jose. There were a few bands, and a dance troupe, and I'm sure some other organized groups, but mainly it was just a stream of families (children everywhere) and friends and couples, dressed in white shirts and waving American and Mexican flags.
I'm not a big fan of the American flag. I love my country, but the flag's been used too many times by heavy-handed right-wing politicians to stand for everything I can't stand for in this country. But it was heartwarming to see it today. One of the small rag-tag marching bands struck up "Hurrah for the Red, White, and Blue" at one point along our route and everyone cheered. I've never actually felt patriotic about a patriotic song (unless, you know, Woody Guthrie, okay) until that moment, but there was something very special about it.
The signs were great - not cheeky, like so many of the "fun" signs you see at political rallies, but very heartfelt. "We Do Jobs You Won't." "Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote." "What Would You Do To Feed Your Family?" "You Immigrated Too." I saw a little girl on her father's shoulders wearing a t-shirt that said, "My Parents Pay Taxes." I walked along and couldn't stop smiling. People smiled back and asked after the baby, and with my usual pathetic inability to generate ease with strangers, I answered them, and we smiled at each other, and walked on. One woman thanked me profusely for coming, which made me feel strange - like being thanked for doing less than you know you should. I told her I was very happy to be there, which was true, but made me sound like a guest on a talk show.
Never at any point was the street less than completely full of people in all directions, a sea of white-shirted humanity as far as I could see. I'm a bit cynical about marches, having participated in way too many that were pointless and self-congratulatory over the years, but this felt different. The Squid and I marched maybe 20 blocks and turned around when the sun started going down, but I was so glad we'd gone. If he ever asks me, when he gets older, what I did on the first of May, 2006, when all this amazing stuff was happening, I won't have to tell him I was taking a nap.
The demonstration stretched the full four miles - one woman told me that at 6:30 (the ostensible "end time" of the march) people were still leaving the origination point. I have never seen so many people all in one place, except maybe at Gay Pride in San Francisco, and even then, it's a parade, not a march, so they clear the street for floats and groups of organized marchers, not this steady stream of regular folks. Almost everyone was Latino, and I heard very little English - we could have easily been south of the border, a sudden reversal, an oasis of (mostly) Mexico in the middle of downtown San Jose. There were a few bands, and a dance troupe, and I'm sure some other organized groups, but mainly it was just a stream of families (children everywhere) and friends and couples, dressed in white shirts and waving American and Mexican flags.
I'm not a big fan of the American flag. I love my country, but the flag's been used too many times by heavy-handed right-wing politicians to stand for everything I can't stand for in this country. But it was heartwarming to see it today. One of the small rag-tag marching bands struck up "Hurrah for the Red, White, and Blue" at one point along our route and everyone cheered. I've never actually felt patriotic about a patriotic song (unless, you know, Woody Guthrie, okay) until that moment, but there was something very special about it.
The signs were great - not cheeky, like so many of the "fun" signs you see at political rallies, but very heartfelt. "We Do Jobs You Won't." "Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote." "What Would You Do To Feed Your Family?" "You Immigrated Too." I saw a little girl on her father's shoulders wearing a t-shirt that said, "My Parents Pay Taxes." I walked along and couldn't stop smiling. People smiled back and asked after the baby, and with my usual pathetic inability to generate ease with strangers, I answered them, and we smiled at each other, and walked on. One woman thanked me profusely for coming, which made me feel strange - like being thanked for doing less than you know you should. I told her I was very happy to be there, which was true, but made me sound like a guest on a talk show.
Never at any point was the street less than completely full of people in all directions, a sea of white-shirted humanity as far as I could see. I'm a bit cynical about marches, having participated in way too many that were pointless and self-congratulatory over the years, but this felt different. The Squid and I marched maybe 20 blocks and turned around when the sun started going down, but I was so glad we'd gone. If he ever asks me, when he gets older, what I did on the first of May, 2006, when all this amazing stuff was happening, I won't have to tell him I was taking a nap.
posted by The Stute Fish at 02:34
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