Led by advocates for Latinos, Asian-Americans and African-Americans, the crowd demanded Congress write legislation providing a path to citizenship and other legal rights for the estimated 11 million undocumented people in the U.S.
And that includes the right to unionize and collectively bargain, said United Auto Workers President Bob King, one of five union leaders to address the crowd.
Organizers called the rally as bipartisan groups of lawmakers are on the verge of unveiling their versions of comprehensive reform. The reform should include not only a path to citizenship, but provisions for family unification, and an end to deportations, which are running at 1,400 daily, speakers said.
“My students tell me, ‘I’m afraid I’ll come home one day and find my parents have been deported.’ No child in any country should live in fear like that,” National Education Association President Lilly Eskelsen, a 6th-grade teacher from Utah, told the crowd.
The Service Employees International Union accounted for between 1,000 and 2,000 people in the crowd, Hector Figueroa, president of SEIU Local 32BJ, which represents building service workers, told Press Associates Union News Service. UAW sent several busloads. So did the NEA. Casa de Maryland, a Latino group whose staff is represented by The Newspaper Guild-CWA, contributed hundreds.
And the Farm Workers draped their black-eagle-on-red flag over a park wall when one of their officials spoke, entirely in Spanish. Chants of “Si se puede!” were common. So were cheers for advocates, and so were water bottles, in 90-degree heat.
online pharmacy buspar over the counter with best prices today in the USA
King encouraged the crowd to keep up the pressure on Congress. “Change never happens unless people come together to march, rally, demand and sit in,” the veteran activist, unionist and civil rights crusader declared.
online pharmacy buy strattera no prescription
“We commit to stay in the movement, to demand a path to citizenship, to families being reunited and that workers – immigrant workers and other workers – have the right to collectively bargain. Hasta la Victoria!” he concluded.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., one of the House working group drafting that chamber’s version of a comprehensive bill, sounded the same theme. He exhorted the crowd, in English and Spanish, to keep the pressure on lawmakers until immigrants not only get citizenship through the new law, but the right to vote.
“The time is now for freedom! The time is now for equality! We need to bring 11 million workers out of the shadows and into citizenship once and for all,” declared another unionist from the podium, Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry.
“And they want us to stay in the streets, to keep marching, to keep pressuring Congress to pass common-sense immigration reform,” she concluded.
Share
Led by advocates for Latinos, Asian-Americans and African-Americans, the crowd demanded Congress write legislation providing a path to citizenship and other legal rights for the estimated 11 million undocumented people in the U.S.
And that includes the right to unionize and collectively bargain, said United Auto Workers President Bob King, one of five union leaders to address the crowd.
Organizers called the rally as bipartisan groups of lawmakers are on the verge of unveiling their versions of comprehensive reform. The reform should include not only a path to citizenship, but provisions for family unification, and an end to deportations, which are running at 1,400 daily, speakers said.
“My students tell me, ‘I’m afraid I’ll come home one day and find my parents have been deported.’ No child in any country should live in fear like that,” National Education Association President Lilly Eskelsen, a 6th-grade teacher from Utah, told the crowd.
The Service Employees International Union accounted for between 1,000 and 2,000 people in the crowd, Hector Figueroa, president of SEIU Local 32BJ, which represents building service workers, told Press Associates Union News Service. UAW sent several busloads. So did the NEA. Casa de Maryland, a Latino group whose staff is represented by The Newspaper Guild-CWA, contributed hundreds.
And the Farm Workers draped their black-eagle-on-red flag over a park wall when one of their officials spoke, entirely in Spanish. Chants of “Si se puede!” were common. So were cheers for advocates, and so were water bottles, in 90-degree heat.
online pharmacy buspar over the counter with best prices today in the USA
King encouraged the crowd to keep up the pressure on Congress. “Change never happens unless people come together to march, rally, demand and sit in,” the veteran activist, unionist and civil rights crusader declared.
online pharmacy buy strattera no prescription
“We commit to stay in the movement, to demand a path to citizenship, to families being reunited and that workers – immigrant workers and other workers – have the right to collectively bargain. Hasta la Victoria!” he concluded.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., one of the House working group drafting that chamber’s version of a comprehensive bill, sounded the same theme. He exhorted the crowd, in English and Spanish, to keep the pressure on lawmakers until immigrants not only get citizenship through the new law, but the right to vote.
“The time is now for freedom! The time is now for equality! We need to bring 11 million workers out of the shadows and into citizenship once and for all,” declared another unionist from the podium, Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry.
“And they want us to stay in the streets, to keep marching, to keep pressuring Congress to pass common-sense immigration reform,” she concluded.