Thread: Turnout for rallies expected to be large

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Turnout for rallies expected to be large

By Tim Vandenack

The Hutchinson News

tvandenack@hutchnews.com

DODGE CITY - On Monday, John Martin, a meatpacker here, plans to skip work to attend a rally aimed at bolstering the call for immigration reform.

"We want the work we do to be valued," he explained. "It's hard work in the plant."

Fellow meatpacker David Gunion seconds that, wondering what would become of the plant without the workers, many of them immigrants. "Without us, the plant dies," he said.

Fliers, e-mails and text messages are circulating like wildfire around southwest Kansas, calling on the zone's sizable Latino population to rally, skip work, skip school and boycott stores Monday to show solidarity with the immigrant cause.

No one knows how many will heed the calls, many of them anonymous. But Gunion, whose plant was targeted by one of the fliers, suspects a large chunk of his cohorts will take off, and some school officials are bracing for the possibility of mass absences.

"There have been kids who've said, 'We're not going to be here,' " said Terry Lee, a social studies instructor at Dodge City Middle School and also the city's mayor.

Vernon Welch, superintendent of Liberal USD 480, said he will arrive early on Monday to prepare in the event of massive no-shows, not only among students, but also among lunchroom workers and other support staff. Leaflets and talk of skipping school also have prevailed there this week.

"We've got a plan in place," Welch said.

With debate in the U.S. Senate continuing on how best to reform the nation's immigration system, immigrants' rights groups and Hispanic advocacy groups are planning rallies for Monday all across the United States. A rally is set for 9:30 a.m. in Garden City - organizers expect 2,000 or more - and another is scheduled for 10 a.m. in Dodge City.

Beyond that, a leaflet making the rounds in Dodge City on the letterhead of a group called the Hispanic Union of Telluride, Colo., calls for workers to skip work on Monday and for students to stay home. It also calls for a one-day boycott of all stores and services to protest "unjust, unconstitutional and inhumane anti-immigrant initiatives" and to pressure for "fair, humane and ordered" change.

Similarly, an unsigned leaflet circulating in Liberal denounces a controversial U.S. House of Representatives proposal, HR 4437, and calls, indirectly, on workers to steer clear of work on Monday. HR 4437, decried by many churches and Hispanic advocacy groups, calls for construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico and would make it a felony to aid illegal immigrants.

"If no Hispanic in the United States goes to work this day, we will demonstrate that (the country) really needs our sweat," says the leaflet. "Or go and work and continue being humiliated, discriminated against, jailed, deported or murdered by racist people."

Members of Liberal's Cinco de Mayo Committee, which organizes an annual celebration around Mexico's May 5 holiday, had been planning an event for Monday as a show of solidarity with calls for immigrant reform. But they canceled the plans in light of the letter as well as what they see as lack of clarity from federal officials on the direction of immigration reform.

"There was really nothing there we could be solid about," said Cinco de Mayo Committee Chairman Jack Cooley, referring to U.S. Senate efforts at immigration reform. "Then all these rumors started going and everything else."

Welch said mass e-mails also are being used to spread the word, and Concha Aragon, head of a southwest Kansas advocacy group called Hispanics United, said some students are receiving anonymous text messages about skipping class.

Amid the flurry, some are calling on the zone's Hispanics to keep their appointments with work and school and warning that doing otherwise can hurt the immigrant and Latino cause.

Onesimo Aranda, head of the Regional Latino Affairs Council in Dodge City, an advocacy group, said contacting elected leaders is the way to demonstrate.

"We don't want to promote anything that's going to hurt the (Hispanic) community," he said. "We're trying to build them up."

Sister Janice Thome, a member of the Dominican Sisters Ministry of Presence and one of the organizers of the Garden City rally, said going to class instead of skipping will demonstrate Latino students' dedication to education. That, in turn, will help in efforts to open up universities to undocumented students, she says.

For its part, National Beef, in a letter distributed to workers this week, questioned the wisdom of skipping work as a form of protest, touting contact with elected leaders instead. The letter alluded to Latino efforts to demonstrate their importance to the U.S. economy and Hispanic opposition to HR 4437.

"We at National Beef already know that we need our Hispanic work force," the letter stated. "We disagree that not working is the best way to express your disapproval of this bill."

We need to take a page out of their 'organization' book.

RR