Local alliance rallies for immigrant justice
Wednesday, July 04, 2007


Editor's note: Last Thursday, the Senate failed to achieve the votes needed to advance the immigration reform bill, effectively killing the legislation until after the 2008 elections.

Seeing the Springfield-based Alliance to Develop Power, a 4,000-member organization designed to promote fair wages and housing, in action is a civic lesson as well as a story about the city's Latino community shaping its destiny.

Take the recent trip to the nation's capital, when the alliance brought two busloads of Springfield-area residents. They ranged from members to undocumented workers, the rank-and-file of the region's underground economy, the field and factory workers who work long hours for low wages and try to live in the shadows of society, below the radar of federal officials.

The alliance came to Washington, D.C., to join other grassroots organizations from Los Angeles to New York City and from Miami to Chicago to rally for the passage of an immigration bill that would allow more than 12 million illegal aliens to earn citizenship.

But it did much more than that.

While the other groups gathered inside the historic African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Washington with little fanfare, the alliance's group made an entrance from blocks away as members marched down M Street to the rhythm and beat of: "Who are we? ADP. What do we want? Justice."

Springfield native Joel Rodriguez, who is of Puerto Rican and American Indian heritage, herded his contingent through police-blocked intersections from the church to the White House, all the time sounding off like an Army drill sergeant. Distinctive with his cornrows, wide shoulders from his work as a carpenter and construction worker, and now an alliance organizer, he had his two children in tow.

In front of the White House, he translated for the wife of Limbano Santizo, a former Springfield resident and undocumented factory worker who was deported back to Guatemala a year after being ordered to leave the country by an immigration judge in Miami in 2006. His wife, Elora, and their 7-year-old son, a U.S. citizen by birth, were left alone in Springfield.

And, as her voice choked with emotion when she told the gathering of a few thousand that her husband was on an airplane being flown back to Guatemala as she addressed them, Rodriguez translated the same emotion, had the same choking in his voice.

He loaded wheelchairs and baby strollers onto buses, distributed sandwiches and water bottles and constantly checked in with the Springfield pilgrims. They had ridden all night on buses, spent their day in a hot, packed church and, later, beneath a broiling sun, only to turn around and head back to Springfield after they had accomplished their mission.

After the church service, at which U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the architect of the immigrant reform package, unexpectedly showed up to deliver an impassioned speech about unity and perseverance, and after the rally in front of the White House, the alliance still wasn't finished with what members had set out to do.

They wanted face time with U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the House speaker, or at least with one of her veteran representatives.

And members of this shoe-string but growing grassroots organization from the city's South End swung into mission mode with the same sort of detailed planning as George Clooney and Brad Pitt deliver in their "Ocean's Eleven" movies. The meaning of hand signals was reviewed and team leaders were identified. Members were appointed to sit in on a meeting if they got one, and the protocol was established in the event police intervened.

They pulled the mission off like pros.

The receptionist couldn't get rid of the more than 100 alliance members who swelled into the waiting area within Pelosi's office. Members of the U.S. Capitol Police moved in to evict them. Director Caroline Murray paraphrased the Constitution, and her crowd chanted: "Pelosi. Pelosi. Please come out. See what America's all about."

All the while, Rodriguez cased the room - using arm signals and low verbal cues to ensure that Pelosi's staff had a path to move about freely. In less than a minute, a Pelosi representative dismissed the police and invited the group's leadership team into a meeting, which lasted about 30 minutes.

Rodriquez sat in on the meeting. Murray waited in the corridor - with a handful of Capitol police standing by - with Springfield resident Mary Soto, who traces her heritage to Mexico and who is involved in the Neighbor 2 Neighbor campaign. The mother of a U.S. Marine, Soto said she joined the rally to promote a better life for all Latinos.

Lisa Colon, the vice president of the board of directors of the Spring Meadow housing complex in Springfield, agreed that she came to show unity, adding, "I consider myself very lucky being born into a Puerto Rican family."

And to Rodriguez, the day was about one of his chants: "The people united will never be defeated."

"It is not about one voice but thousands of voices," Rodriguez said. "They can't push us under the carpet." Jo-Ann Moriarty is a staff writer for The Republican who covers Washington, D.C. If you have questions related to the Western Massachusetts congressional delegation or issues being addressed by the U.S. House and Senate, please send them to pluspapers@

repub.com, attention: A View from the Hill; be sure to include your name and a daytime telephone number.



©2007 The Republican
© 2007 MassLive.com All Rights Reserved.
http://www.masslive.com/metroeastplus/r ... xml&coll=1