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Immigration rally floods Seattle's streets
By Lornet Turnbull

Seattle Times staff reporter


They kept coming — and coming. They poured from alleyways and side streets, joining throngs of other immigrants and their supporters, marching through the Central Area and past downtown Seattle landmarks.

From sidewalks and bus stops and stranded cars along the way, onlookers stared in awe at a spectacle seldom seen in Seattle — a mass of immigrants, most of them Latinos, many of them illegal, chanting in Spanish as they coursed through city streets.

By the time the two-mile march ended with a rally at the federal building on Second Avenue, police estimated about 25,000 people had participated, far more than organizers had predicted. Among them was Fernando Aramburu, who carried a simple sign: "The Giant has Awaken."

"We are a respectful and quiet people — until we're provoked," said Aramburu, who moved here from Peru about 40 years ago and has legal status in this country.

"We come here wanting to abide by the laws, work hard and provide for our families. We want the government to see the strength of our numbers. As a whole we are the giant."

Monday's march in Seattle was part of the National Day of Action in which immigrants and their supporters in dozens of cities nationwide, from New York to San Diego, carried picket signs and chanted, calling on lawmakers to create a path to legal residency for the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

Rallies took place in communities of all sizes, from a gathering of at least 50,000 people in Atlanta to one involving 3,000 in the farming town of Garden City, Kan. In Washington, D.C., thousands marched from Hispanic neighborhoods past the White House, then converged on the National Mall.

The demonstrations followed a weekend of rallies in 10 states that drew as many as 500,000 people in Dallas and tens of thousands elsewhere.

In Seattle, at the height of rush hour, the march created a vicious bottleneck downtown, stranding motorists on side streets and commuters at bus stops. To handle traffic and crowd control, about 100 Seattle police officers were assigned to the event. Police said there were no arrests.

A sea of American flags bobbed in the crowd, along with a smattering of flags from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

While there were no obvious organized counter-demonstrations in Seattle yesterday, "Americans are infuriated by the idea of people who have broken the law demanding to be rewarded, making claims to rights and privileges that nobody gave to them," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors cracking down on illegal immigration.

"We've never had the kind of illegal immigration we are seeing now," he said. "We've never had millions who come here illegally demanding rights and marching under foreign flags."

The 2000 census counted 441,509 Latinos of all races living in Washington, the largest of any minority group in the state. Fewer than half of those live in the Puget Sound region, where many work in the construction and landscape industries, in restaurant kitchens or in the hospitality industry.

A recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 Washington residents are in this country illegally.

"Latinos are the largest minority in this country, yet they are silent and humble," said Magdaleno "Leno" Rose-Avila, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, one of the event's sponsors.

"What you're seeing is people giving voice to frustration. And if [change] doesn't come, there will be more reaction by this community. They know we have the numbers."

Erika Vacquez, 28, and her partner Alberto Casillas, 26, who live in Seattle, brought their 4- and 5-year-old daughters to the march and rally because they believe what's happening now is important to their children's future.

Like other Mexicans, they came to the U.S. two years ago in search of better lives for themselves and their children.

They were shocked by the sheer number of Monday's marchers. "I never knew there were this many of us here," Vacquez said. "We don't see each other. We go to work and go home."

Vacquez works in a tortilla factory; Casillas drives a delivery truck.
"They're not going to stop us — with or without a wall," Vacquez said. "We're not doing anything bad to anyone."

While most in the crowd were Latino, people from all races joined in the march, many carrying signs reading "We're all immigrants."

Margaret Boddie, who is black, said the immigration debate is a human-rights issue. "We need to support each other — all the vulnerable people," she said. "When there's an issue that's important to us, they support us."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com. Seattle Times reporter Jennifer Sullivan and The Associated Press contributed to this report.