Local blogger Kevin Ecker attended a pro-immigration(illegal) rally yesterday in St. Paul. His observations and many pictures are available here:
Flags were all over the place. It appears the organizers of this rally have learned from the previous immigration rallies because probably 50% of the flags I saw were US flags. The other 50% were a mix of all of South/Central America. Most of them were Mexican, El Salvadore, Guatemala, and Honduras. For the most part marchers were respectful of the US Flag. Although there were a few instances of foreign flags be hoisted above the US flag, or the US flag being altered (mostly rearranging the stars to create a peace symbol).
If this was a rally to convince non-spanish speaking people that immigration is okay, they failed horribly. All the chants were in spanish. Most of the signs were and each speech was broadcast in both broken-english and spanish (presumably non-broken). It occasionally got difficult to understand what the speaker was ranting about. Combine that with what was either an incredibly poor PA system, or else each speaker was trying to eat their microphone.
The speeches, what I could understand anyway, were essentially the same. Illegals deserve equal rights because...well, as it was stated, they "have followed the law their whole life. Only thing we're guilty of is an administrative fault." Yup, breaking our immigration laws is just a clerical error on par with them misfiling a form at the DMV.
Read the whole thing and be sure to check out the diverse crowd in Kevin's photos.
UPDATE: Another local blogger, Andy from Residual Forces, was also on hand and has photos, video, and even a podcast on the event.
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