Boycotts

Political and religious leaders, including President Bush and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, urged immigrant rights supporters Friday not to take part in next week's boycotts of work and school, but to hold peaceful rallies or other events after the workday is done. "You know, I'm not a supporter of boycotts," Bush said at a Rose Garden news conference.

From Los Angeles garment factories to Sonoma County vineyards, California businesses spent the weekend preparing for today's marches and boycotts aimed at demonstrating immigrants' economic contributions. Restaurants and other retailers near a downtown Los Angeles march route and in heavily immigrant neighborhoods throughout the city posted signs saying they would be closed today.

High gas prices are unquestionably painful in Beeville, Texas, a small town at least an hour's drive from malls and specialized medical care. But some residents are doubting the wisdom of the county board's call for a boycott of Exxon Mobil Corp. Opponents of the boycott that starts today note that oil and gasoline taxes fund much of Bee County's budget, and they say a boycott could harm mom-and-pop gas stations whose main profits are not from oil.

As organizers and police made final preparations Sunday for immigration protests and possible boycotts around the nation today, residents and business owners in the path of marches in Los Angeles were bracing with a mix of excitement, anxiety and even some anger. Los Angeles police expect the largest of the demonstrations to occur this afternoon on Wilshire Boulevard. Authorities are preparing for hundreds of thousands to march down one of L.A.'

Three days before the planned nationwide boycott for immigrant rights, one of its chief local organizers was still working the crowd. At a Mexican fast-food restaurant Friday in Ontario, Jesse Diaz Jr. urged two Latino laborers to skip work and march today in downtown Los Angeles. The sell was met with polite nods until Diaz threw out a wisecrack: "They want our food," he said between bites of a bean burrito, "they just don't want our people."

The county board of this small southeast Texas town at least an hour's drive from malls and specialized medical care has called for a countywide boycott of Exxon Mobil Corp. over high gasoline prices. The boycott, which begins today, was approved 4 to 1 last week, and will continue until gas is down to $1.30 a gallon, said County Judge Jimmy Martinez. A gallon of regular unleaded averaged $2.80 in the Corpus Christi region Sunday, according to American Automobile Assn.

Whatever side of the border or fence viewers may have sat upon, Monday's immigration rights rallies provided vibrant material for national and local media, which in some cases interrupted regular programming to provide a day of expansive coverage. The protests were the lead story on Fox News and CNN all day, with both cable news networks devoting substantial airtime to the rallies and debates about the immigration issue.

A national holiday emptied many of the capital's normally crowded streets Monday, making it difficult to tally a planned boycott of U.S. products and businesses. But traditional May Day rallies gave many Mexicans a chance to voice support for their brethren north of the border. "We gave our blood to build capitalism in North America," said Fernando Vazquez Herrera, a former bracero, one of the millions of Mexicans recruited to the United States for farm work from the 1940s to the mid-1960s.

Dov Charney's loss for the day came to about $400,000, but he couldn't have been happier. While his workers gathered to march through downtown Los Angeles on Monday, Charney was a few miles away in his seven-story garment factory idled by the immigrant protest. The iconoclastic chief executive of American Apparel Inc. not only gave 3,300 of his employees the day off, but he also supplied them with T-shirts emblazoned with a pro-immigration message.

Immigrant workers powerfully asserted their importance Monday, making clear they are vital to California's economy. Without us, they declared, industries would tremble, jobs go undone and prices rise. Dolls from China, DVD players from Japan and shirts from Malaysia piled up at the ports. Lettuce wasn't picked in Blythe and strawberries languished in Oxnard. On one block of L.A.'s Koreatown, only two out of nine businesses were open. The garment district was nearly deserted.