Beltway Happenings
May 12, 2006--After a cross country caravan, activists of The Minuteman Project held a rally in Upper Senate Park. (more)
Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minuteman Project, makes an emphatic point.
Some people circulated petitions.  Barbara Coe of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform handed out copies of a flyer "Mexico's Immigration Laws."  "Grassroots can do a lot," in the view of Larry Ball, a retired maintenance electrician from central Michigan.  He and his wife joined the caravan in their truck camper starting in Birmingham, AL.  Ball said the caravan had "nothing but support--thumbs up all along the highway."  After Birmingham they also held rallies in Atlanta, GA and Richmond, VA.  Ball said it was his wife's idea to join the caravan.  He stated, "We feel strongly about this illegal immigration.  There's people on our caravan that have lost their jobs because of illegal immigrants, and its not going to get any better unless we do something.  We just want the laws that are on the books enforced, that's all."  He suggested fining employers "$10,000 a day for every illegal alien and use the money to secure the borders, and that's all you have to do."
Los Angeles homeless activist Ted Hayes has termed illegal immigration the "biggest threat to blacks in America since slavery."
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Copyright © 2006  Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action