On Friday, Joe took me by surprise by telling the us that we had to go to an immigration march on Saturday for his History, Film, and Art Class, or we’d have to do some other form of activism. I opted to go to the protest, because I had tired of writing letters to Congress. The march began at Judkins Park, the park right behind Washington Middle School. Since it was close enough to my house, I decided to walk there instead of riding the bus, partially because I had missed the bus. When I finally got to the march, my legs were aching, but I was instantly taken aback by the sheer number of protesters who had shown up. Before getting there, I was thinking maybe 500 or 1,000 people would show up, but from the looks of things there were at least 5,000 when I got there. And more would come after that.
I brought my camera along to take pictures of the event, to help me remember it better, and for the article that I was planning on writing about the march. I couldn’t help but notice that there were two police officers standing in the street. Making sure nothing went wrong, I suppose. I dug out the camera and took a couple of pictures, mostly of signs, many of which were in Spanish. Though the crowd was fairly diverse, I couldn’t help but notice that a fairly significant portion of the crowd was Mexican American, whom the Arizonan law would effect the most. So, I guess it only makes sense.
As I was taking pictures, I was stopped by a man handing out a newspaper. A socialist newspaper. Jordan was working at a table behind him, with some other person (who was probably a Nova student as well) that I couldn’t quite recognize. I took the newspaper, and was asked to make a donation to their organization. I gave them a dollar. As I made my way up to the mob of people, I heard a man speaking on a microphone, rallying the crowd. Seizing the opportunity, I took out the camera and recorded the man (for about two minutes).
I put the camera back into my backpack, and started looking for Joe. I had told him that I would meet him at the Meany building, but that was before I realized the march was so close to my home. The search was to no avail, as the crowd was just too thick to find anyone in. And too thick to penetrate. A man in blue came walking down the sidewalk that I was on, telling everybody to move down the street and get into the mob. So I did. From then it was about a ten minute wait before we started moving.
It wasn’t until we turned a corner (a store was blasting By the Time I Get to Arizona out of some speakers at that corner. There were also a ton of cops, on foot, on bike, and on horse) and started going downhill that I realized that just how many people were there. Looking up the hill, walking backwards to stay in time with the crowd, I was awestruck by the mass of people behind me. There weren’t 5,000 people there, there were at least 10,000. Maybe even 20,000. Or more.
And so we marched, from Judkins Park to the football field next to the EMP, it was about four miles (and two hours) of walking, and you’d better believe that my legs were killing me by the end. At first I was completely silent, holding my flag against my shoulder, and walking along with everyone. But once I finally figured out what some of the chants were, and after gaining a bit of confidence, I would occasionally chant with them. Everywhere the march took us, not only was the traffic adversely effected (by the march, of course), there were people standing on roofs, on the street, looking out windows, looking right at us. It really felt like all of Seattle was watching, and that’s an exhilarating feeling.
At the football field, there was some Mexican food stalls, which I think gave free food to the participants, and a stage with some people playing music on it. I didn’t really care for the music, but I mostly ignored it, and was happy to finally get to sit down. When the music stopped, a man went up to the microphone and started saying a bunch of stuff in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish, so I was completely lost through the entire portion of the speech that I stayed for. Impatient and tired, I decided to leave the stadium early to go look for a payphone. I’m sure I didn’t miss anything particularly important though. But all in all, this march (which happened to be my first) was a very good experience, and I can’t believe that I would have missed it if it weren’t required.
NovaKnows.com is a journalism website created and maintained by students at Nova Alternative High School. Nova is a small community-orientated alternative program that is part of the Seattle Public School system.
