Immigration March on Washington DC

Yesterday, I joined a group from North Carolina who participated in a march for comprehensive immigration reform in Washington DC. After a mostly sleepless bus ride, we gathered along with hundreds of other busloads from around the country at RFK Stadium and headed down to the National Mall. It turned into a warm, dusty day with bright sunshine. When the North Carolina Contingent arrived, we were one of the first to gather at the mall. But it quickly began to fill up, with union groups from New York, with student groups from California, with farmworkers from Texas, with a Georgia human rights group. And the people kept filling in, from Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Colorado, and even Montana. I'm not a good judge of crowd numbers, but the organizers said around 200,000 people. While stood around and listened to hours and hours of speeches, the crowd would spontaneously burst into chants, "Si Se Puede!, Yes We Can," or "Obama Escucha, Estamos en la Lucha (Listen up Obama, we are fighting)." Then we marched, past the US Capitol building, through the streets of the Capital Heights neighborhood and back to our buses. Then, after a long bus ride, we arrived exhausted in Charlotte at 3am Monday morning. Here are some pictures and commentary:


Our group gathers at RFK Stadium to head to the National Mall-



Charlotte Presente!



This guy is doing the calvary for Immigration Reform, while the guy in front, well he's just the coolest guy at the march-



Various groups march into the National Mall



Notice the Polish flags, it truly was a multicultural march-




The Mall starts to fill up, by 2:30 pm it was so crowded I couldn't get back to where I took this picture.



Some mariachis played Cielito Lindo and people gathered around to sing...



A huge American flag was passed over the crowd-



Bolivians making their voices heard-



One of my favorite signs, simple and to the point



Folk and electronic reprentations of President Obama-




Other great signs:




Some hippie anarchist types (they were "dancing" to Dead Prez, probably fellow Obies)-



This guy was yelling Si Se Puede! at the top of his lungs in front of the Capitol, I hope Congess heard him...



The North Carolina marchers plant thier flag and claim the US Capitol as their own-