I'm a little surprised there aren't more diaries about the rallies in support of immigrants and in opposition to HR 4437 and other proposals to criminalize undocumented immigrants. So I'm taking it upon myself to set this up as an open thread. I'll start with my report from the rally in Denver, Colorado.
I joined the march in the middle of downtown around noon. Before that, I saw from a window of a downtown building that the march stretched all the way back to almost Federal Blvd. on Speer -- that's all the way on the other side of the Platte River from downtown, for those of you who are sort of familiar with Denver. (Update: a great pic of the march coming into downtown from
9News here, thanks to msobel in comments.) The crowd at Civic Center Park was the largest I've ever seen, with the possible exception of the first Avalanche Stanley Cup celebration (the Broncos, having their celebrations in mid-winter, didn't draw as well IIRC).
There wasn't exactly message control going on. I also didn't see any of the promised voter registration efforts, although maybe those were taking place at the staging area for the march. There was a guy wearing an Irish Northern Aid t-shirt holding a sign saying "Repeal NAFTA," and there were a bunch of anti-war protestors, among others. There were also a lot of anti-Tom Tancredo signs. But the main message was No to Criminalizing Immigrants, No to HR 4437.
Flags I saw in the crowd in order of frequency:
1. USA
2. Mexico
3. Argentina
4. Canada
5. El Salvador
6. Poland
The pro-immigrant crowd outnumbered the handful of wingnut protesters by literally something like 100,000 to 5. But I'll bet the one Black guy wearing a "Go back to Mexico and South America" shirt gets on the front page of the Rocky Mountain News tomorrow.