Feeling power in their numbers, hundreds of thousands of people marched peacefully, even joyously, through the streets of Los Angeles on Monday as part of a nationwide demonstration of economic and political clout by immigrants -- legal and illegal.
Thousands of businesses were shuttered on the "Day Without Immigrants" as workers and their families, most of them from Mexico, participated in a boycott of work and commerce, rallying to demonstrate their importance to the U.S. economy and to demand changes in immigration law that would give illegal migrants a path to citizenship.
A crowd estimated by Los Angeles police at 250,000 marched to City Hall in the morning, after which many determined demonstrators made their way, on foot or by subway, to MacArthur Park for a larger march along Wilshire Boulevard. Police estimated that crowd at 400,000 and reported few problems.
"I want to come out of the shadows," said Josefina Cordoba, 46, of El Sereno, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who joined six family members on the City Hall march. A cleaning woman who earns $70 a day, she said it was worth losing a day's wages to make her case. She clutched a small poster that summed up the sentiments of many: "We Just Want a Taste of the American Dream."
The demonstrations in Los Angeles were the largest among the immigrant rights' protests held around the nation, including gatherings in Chicago, New York and Houston. And the boycott apparently received substantial support -- nearly stopping commerce at the nation's largest port complex. Elsewhere in the region, at least 15,000 people marched in Santa Barbara, 10,000 in Santa Ana, 8,000 in Huntington Park and a few thousand in the Inland Empire, according to official estimates.
In San Ysidro, about 1,000 protesters on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border blocked lanes into the United States for about an hour at midday, bringing traffic to a standstill. Eventually, protesters were pushed back by Mexican police, who arrested about two dozen people.
The demonstrations followed a massive March 25 rally in downtown Los Angeles that drew half a million people, primarily to protest an immigration bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would have made illegal immigration a felony.
With that bill's prospects apparently dimmed, Monday's protesters appeared emboldened and ready to amplify their political voice. A major theme of the day was summed up by signs that read: "\o7Ahora marchamos, manana votamos" \f7 -- (Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote.)
