Our New Anahuac

Photo Courtesy of Bryan Barras

The August 29th Rally was organized to call for a complete moratorium on all immigration enforcement, including deportations and detentions. The original plan for the rally was to call for the shutdown of T. Don Hutto, a prison in which immigrant children were being jailed. Because of the intense work of many, many people, the Obama administration decided not to jail children at Hutto anymore. Additionally, the administration decided not to jail children at three other facilities which were scheduled to be built for the same purpose.

Because of these changes, the rally morphed into both a battle victory and a call for more mobilization for a bigger war against our gente. It was specifically a call to mobilize around the issue of a moratorium. We did so in solidarity with a national call:

If we can’t have reform this year, we absolutely require relief in the form of a moratorium of the enforcement of employer sanctions, raids, deportations, e-Verify, and prolonged detention for immigration related offenses, which are civil in nature.
–A Press Release By MAPA, and a dozen other organizations from around the country.

My own opinion is that as long as there is no border for corporations (thanks to free trade agreements), there should be no border for human beings, but I digress.

So I arranged everything with the county parks administration and reserved the basketball court. I told them that there might be counter protesters, and that they should be prepared for it. They begrudgingly promised to direct all of the counter protesters to the pavilion about fifty yards away. I told them that I disagreed with their assesment that the pavillion would provide enough distance, and they told me “too bad” in so many words.

So the day of the rally, everything’s running on schedule, except that our opening performer doesn’t show and doesn’t call. No biggie. The racists show up and start hurling insults from the parking lot. Still no biggie. Right as I get the sound system set up, the racists decide that they are going to come right up on the edge of the basketball court. Biggie, well it could have been…

The homies and families in the park, along with most of the supporting activists inched up right to the edge of the basketball court and they start verbally going at it. They start saying that we need to go back home and that they don’t want to pay for our pregnant teens y que esto y que el otro. Someone shouted back at them that they should go back to England, which is about the only thing that made sense to me in the whole shouting match.

I told the deputies (again) about the agreement that they should be directed to the pavilion, and they refused to enforce the agreement, just saying that they had not been briefed and that it was a free country. Even though I wasn’t surprised, I was caught off guard. I don’t know if that makes any sense…but como quiera. They seemed to have the same demographic tendencies as the counter protesters. No surprise here. Maybe they were related.

It started getting heated and more people started to get more and more agitated, and the crowd started screaming. One little thing could have caused violence, if only because of the proximity of the two crowds.

Then some of the other activists started coming after me (not in a bad way, just about logistics). I don’t know who I did or didn’t snap at, but my main goal was to make sure that we got the program on track. I didn’t want these pendejos to jack our program. I got on our sound system and said:

“I’m from this neighborhood. I know we’re not a neighborhood of cowards. Get on the phone and call your friends, neighbors, tias, carnales. Everybody. I know that you’re not gonna let more racists than Raza be here.”

So many did.

We got on the bullhorn and the sound system and started shouting at the top of our lungs that everyone should line up for a march. We circled the park with chants of “Si Se Puede,” “La Raza Unida Jamas Sera Vencida.”

And that’s how we got the program back on track.

By the time we finished the march, it seemed like our numbers had doubled.

In the end, the racists probably helped our turn out, since many of the neighbors were moved so much by anger that they were going to make sure to have their familia represent.

More on the program in part II.