"He ain't heavy, Father, he's my brother." That was on a picture that must have hung in every Catholic home when I was a child. It represented two orphan boys, one carrying his brother on his back, and was the advertisement for supporting Catholic orphanages at the time. Two boys alone in the world and the older taking care of his younger brother without complaint. The burden was not heavy as they were together.
That slogan was used also in WWII when a soldier was carrying his wounded brother to help. It is also the unstated backbone of the union movement. When union brothers stand together, the burden of changing things becomes lighter.
The slogan came back to my mind after watching the protest march in Chicago and even more so after the march in LA yesterday. 500,000 brothers marching together to make a change. Whether we totally support their cause or not, we must stand with them.
I was in the marches during the Vietnam War and saw what happened as a result. I was in the marches for civil rights in the 50's. I believe in marches. The initial anti-Iraq marches were held at the wrong time as most of the country was still in shock over 9/11 and "patriotism" was at its highest since Pearl Harbor, but I think the time has come, and the polls show it, for anti-war marches once again. But this diary is not particularly about anti-war marches or the immigration issue. It is about standing together as brothers to beat the beast among us.
I want to talk about marches in general and how important the size of the march can be, and how we need to support our brothers so that they will support us. The Democrats are fragmented. We are! We each have our pet earth-shattering matter; we cannot understand why everyone isn't as upset about it as we are, and why we can't get support for it. Be honest now - wouldn't you like to see 500,000 people marching for your cause? They can, you know, but we must start supporting each other's causes to get support for ours. And you can guess why - they are all inter-related and all go back to the hideous policies of this Bush administration. Until we can unite to march on the real enemy...until we can support someone else's cause even if we ourselves are not totally happy about the situation...we will be defeated.
One boy carrying another on his back. One union going out on strike to help their brothers in another union. Whites marching with blacks. Old and young marching against war. That's what made this country great, and that is how we can make a difference now. There were some marvelous statements in the diaries about the LA march and I will post some here now in case you missed them. These were the ones that impressed me the most, and I apologize for the number of them, but couldn't leave any of them out. I have left off the user's names just so that no one will be influenced by who said what, but you can find them all in the two diaries on the LA march.
"When immigrants are scapegoated, that they could be next. Anybody's cousin; anybody's sister."
"Bush can continue to fly beneath the radar when it does not affect most of us....What you are seeing are people whose immediate life situations are at risk. The train is in the tunnel and coming toward them."
"The reason 500,000 people turned out? Fear."
"This approach involves caring about other people: most of the politicians in DC (especially Bush supporters) don't seem to know a lot about that."
"The biggest LA protest march ever? There wasn't any Republican that saw that coming . . ."
"Interesting how it was under the radar of a lot of the political left, yet half a MILLION turned out."
"People are scared. Families are scared. That's why they turned out."
"My grandparents didn't have passports. My maternal grandmother, for instance, was 12 and had run away from home, with a ticket her brothers, who were already in America, had bought her and sent to her through neighbors.....We can thank, in good part, the labor movements and union movements of the first part of the century for many of the laws that we now take for granted as comprising the benefits of "being legal" in the United States. Those laws weren't always there, though."
"This is a wake up call for all of us... "Are you on the bus or off the bus?" Puts blogging to shame...."
"Think about it....the crowd was half a million... all peaceful... and the cops were not prepared for the numbers because the word was sent out on SPANISH SPEAKING RADIO."
"The cops support the people....... there were no arrests, no violence, no hassle, no property damage.... the cops are on the side of the people here, and the people are on the side of justice..."
"This was not your typical lefty anti-Bush war demonstration.... In Sacramento at Caesar Chavez park there were 10,000 demonstrators... whereas last Saturday in the demonstration I attended in Sacramento there were only 350 demonstrators on the third anniversary of the war on Iraq. The anti-Bush anti-war pro-impeachment left should join with the immigrant population and support them in opposition to HR 4437."
"You shouldn't be afraid of the government, the government should be afraid of you. shrubCo just shit its pants.
Now we need some of these numbers in anti-war/impeachment demonstrations."
"If you really get people standing up around an issue, it's powerful."
"There are huge Latin populations in almost every American city, as well as substantial populations of other immigrants. However, the Spanish-speaking crowd seems to be damn well organized."
"Those that think mass action is of no importance, you are IDIOTS.
This is historic. A half million or more in LA. This means the routes of mass action will now be blazed in Los Angeles and San Diego, everywhere. Blazed by the roaring mass of humanity."
"The scenes in L.A. were stunning. What energy a half-million people can generate!....I think the Republicans should start to worry .... a lot."
"Some crumb on TV said this while I watched:
"They do not matter since they do not vote. The people who do vote, do want this tough immigration law."
I think the crumb on TV was wishfully thinking, because there are probably a quarter million or more voters in that demonstration, and many more out here supporting them in spirit."
"The elephant in the room is always about prejudice. Until you have experienced this evil first hand it can only remain an intellectual abstraction. I heard one comment mention that if the immigrants could become citizens, then the wages of "menial" jobs could be raised. Ya, sure, blame the immigrants for lowering the wages of businesses they have no control over. When was the last time that Congress raised the minimum wage? Quite a few years if I am not mistaken. Republicans have always blocked any attempt by democrats to raise this wage to a "living wage," and that includes all Americans too. Just look at what Large Corporations have done to the unions , and you sure as hell can't blame the immigrants here either. Maybe the immigrants that first arrive, may take these jobs nobody wants, because relatively speaking they are a godsend in comparison to the country of origin.
But, the fact is usually, after years of hard work by both parents in these shit jobs of exploitation , their kids go on to college. Second and third generations are assimilated, and become as competitive as the "natives." As you can assume, I certainly don't buy into that bell curve bullshit theory written by a racist. The kids go to college and are bilingual to boot. That is loving sacrifice by the parents of the most noble kind. There is honor in this form of love of family."
"I think there was a huge turnout because the proposed legislation directly affects the lives of millions of immigrants in the United States. Furthermore it affects their families, some of them may have children who are american citizens and were born here.
If you look at large social movements like say the Civil Rights Movement and the antiwar movement in the 60s-70s, the stakes were personal. Blacks were by law, second class citizens in their own country and they mobilized to claim what was rightfully theirs. During Vietnam, students and young adults faced a perverse system that gambled with the lives of thousands at home and millions abroad.
The Iraq War on the other hand is much less visible. Given the lack of security and govt. censorship, the media coverage out of Iraq isn't what it could be. The war is hardly on our TV screens day in, day out. The war affects the lives of soldiers and their families, but without a military draft to imperil the lives of many I wouldn't expect any mass public mobilization on the scale of what we saw today in LA."
"Street protest is not a thing of the past.
It has changed, and is still changing. In fact, the netroots and grassroots still have to link up, and enhance the very best of both - we are still not at the point where net based communities are working to enable street protest.
The best measure of effectiveness of the protest is the press coverage. Fair or not, that is the arbiter: to influence others, they must be made aware of what is going on.
It's been front page lead item at CNN for over 8 hours .. I'd say it's pretty big.
It IS street protest that I think will finally and truly announce the 'tipping point', because this is what feeds the media."
"I am proud and happy that Latinos took to the streets in more force than any other group of people has lately. People talk about protest as if it is posting signs for yard sales. A Thing of the Past? Losers. You protest because you must. It is a direct sign of the outraged heart, not a planned and packaged show. Sure, of course some would rather sit at their desk and get a fat ass instead of taking to their feet. And when the revolution comes, they'll be first to nap on the couch.
You know what else is a thing of the past? The Constitution. Should we give up on that too?"
He ain't heavy, Father, he's my brother!