Thread: Leaders step in to shape march (Dallas)

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... c15bf.html

Leaders step in to shape march
Dallas: Orchestration replaces freewheeling of student-inspired protest
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, April 8, 2006
By PAUL MEYER / The Dallas Morning News

Nearly two weeks ago, Dallas student immigration protests erupted in a spectacle of dissonant voices, perspectives and national allegiances. Then the professional organizers moved in.


MILTON HINNANT/DMN
Hector Flores, LULAC national president,
spoke to volunteers at St. Cecilia
Catholic Church during planning
Friday for Sunday's march.

On Friday night in a Catholic school gymnasium, leaders put the finishing touches on a march and message now carefully choreographed to present a singular image of unity to the nation.

A centralized command has quickly formed, in charge of everything from songs to speakers.

Rally slogans have been scrutinized.

As many as 14,000 American flags are ready to be handed out Sunday, when marchers will descend on downtown Dallas. Event fliers prominently highlight the Statue of Liberty.

Domingo Garcia, national chairman of the civil rights branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens, exhibited the need for a universal message through his attire at recent events. He arrived Friday wearing a blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, with an American flag tie featuring a bald eagle.

Sunday's march, he and others say, will be about speaking with a single voice on immigration reform.

It will also be about balancing civil disobedience with civility.

"It has been a daunting task because we cannot address all the different issues at once," said Lydia Gonzalez-Welch, in charge of public relations for the protest.

"It is a massive undertaking," she said. "I'm not sleeping at night."

The march preparations started in earnest at an Oak Cliff restaurant March 27, the same day the student protests began.

Subcommittees were quickly formed and organizational meetings held as some questioned whether LULAC organizers have gone too far in trying to fashion a single image for the event.

The march must be "more participatory of the very community whose rights are being defended at this event," said Roberto Calderon, a history professor at the University of North Texas.

Margarita Alvarez, the 47-year-old Guatemalan president of United Voices of the Immigrants, will speak at Sunday's march, as she did at a March 25 rally at Dallas City Hall.

Ms. Alvarez, a housekeeper, said she knows that some immigrant leaders have complained of not getting time on the stage Sunday. But the broader mission should now focus on making "those with power and money realize that we have economic power, too, and that helps make this nation great."

On Friday in the St. Cecilia school gymnasium, march leaders appeared ready to hit the streets with a broad coalition of voices. They issued final instructions for march monitors in charge of crowd control.

"I don't know how they're doing it," said Richard Sambrano of the U.S. Department of Justice's community relations service.

Across town at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Duncanville High School junior Gustavo Jimenez Jr., 16, reflected on the two-week journey from the chaos of the student protests to the well-oiled machine behind Sunday's march.

"When it comes down to it, everybody is still together for one cause," he said.

Staff writer Dianne Solís contributed to this report.

E-mail pmeyer@dallasnews.com

Awe.....That would be such a TOUCHING story - IF they were IMMIGRANTS!@&%$#*&

i can't wait to disrupt them.

Originally Posted by dragons5

i can't wait to disrupt them.

Be careful! Don't put yourself in harm's way.