Thread: OH: Latinos to rally Sunday to protest raids in Lake Co

GLOBAL VILLAGE
Latinos plan rally Sunday to protest immigration raids in Lake County
Friday, June 15, 2007
The Latino community in Lake County, unnerved and angered by recent immigration sweeps, plans its strongest response yet Sunday.

Advocates for the region's Spanish-speaking community will hold a Father's Day prayer vigil and march beginning at 2 p.m. in Painesville's Recreation Park. Latino groups from elsewhere in Ohio are sending supporters.

Baldemar Velásquez, founder and president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, is expected to arrive with a busload from Toledo and address the rally. Guatemalan im migrants organized by Miguate, a Mayan sup port group, are coming up from Tuscarawas County.

Since May 18, agents from the Cleve land office of Immigra tion and Customs En forcement have arrested more than 40 people in Lake County suspected of being in the country without valid visas. Several have already been deported.

The ICE says it is targeting illegal immigrants who have ignored court orders, but most of those detained have been illegal immigrants nabbed in passing, so-called "collateral arrests."

Veronica Dahlberg, one of the organizers of the march, contends the strategy persecutes hardworking people and tears apart families.

A Fiesta survives:

A smaller version of the annual Puerto Rican Parade and Latino Fest, Northeast Ohio's largest Hispanic event, will fall on a new date and be in a new place.

The 39th annual festival will be Aug. 11 - one day only - at Malls A and B in downtown Cleveland. Plans for the parade are still taking shape.

The festival lost its home at East Ninth Street and the Shoreway when the city leased the huge Municipal Parking Lot to the Cleveland Clinic. Organizers scrambled to find another site for a three-day fiesta traditionally held the third weekend of July.

"We decided to limit it to one day and continue the tradition," said Natividad Pagan, president of the Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center, which sponsors the event.

She said it should return to its former grandeur next year, the 40th anniversary.

Lakewood says welcome:

An inner-ring suburb is putting out the welcome mat for a new generation of immigrants.

Lakewood now offers a Guide to City Services in Albanian for its estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Albanian-American residents. The city will soon reach out to another growing nationality group and publish the guide in Romanian.

"We value our immigrant families" said Mayor Thomas George. "They conveyed to us, in their words, a need to 'know the rules.' "

The city guide describes the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship, from trash services to zoning regulations to licensing fees. You can find both Albanian and English versions at ci.lakewood.oh.us/cityservices.html.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:


rsmith@plaind.com, 216-999-4024
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindeal ... xml&coll=2

Ok! Finally, one close to me. Now, someone tell me where the anti-illegal, PRO AMERICAN crowd will gather!

NotGoingToTakeItAnymore

It's going to need to be put together by you...

maybe.

Originally Posted by notalka

NotGoingToTakeItAnymore

It's going to need to be put together by you...

maybe.

And believe me when I tell you I would be more than happy to if I knew where to begin and knew any people. I've always been too busy doing "the jobs I just won't do" to meet a lot of people or make a lot of friends.

But if anyone can hook me up with ONE other person...we are an
anti-illegal PRO AMERICAN "group" of two! And I'll go face the bastards down!