Leading 'La Marcha'

Last month, hundreds of thousands of immigrants marched to protest Rep. James F. Sensenbrenner's, R-Wis., punitive immigration bill. Five hundred thousand marched in Los Angeles, 100,000 in Chicago, and 50,000 in Denver. Similar numbers are expected today . The protests have touched many more than even those numbers imply. Millions of people--at kitchen tables, in bars, at the bowling alley--are now debating the rights of immigrants, particularly Latinos, to assert themselves as Americans while holding to their original identities. These developments appear to have killed the House bill. Whether or not a better bill passes this year, there's no question that the immigration policy debate has shifted.

These events offer important lessons for advocates and policymakers. Strategically, the protests have exposed the true nature of the immigration debate, which is far more cultural and racial than our economic arguments have accounted for. Tactically, they teach us that social networks and media have to be integrated with our political strategy, even though they cannot, by their very nature, be fully predicted or controlled.

The immigration debate has largely pitted two images of undocumented immigrants against each other. On the political right, they are lawbreakers. On the left, they are hard workers. Conservatives are careful not to appear racist by focusing on legal technicalities. Progressives have also been silent on race because they fear that immigrants don't see themselves as people of color, or because they want to pander to Americans who can't stomach the idea that their nation is growing browner with every passing year.

For many years, the right and left have been talking in codes around the real issue. Americans, whether corporate leader or working mother, are perfectly fine having brown people from other countries provide cheap labor. But they draw the line at letting those people bring or build families here, and at letting them speak other languages or marry their children.

The look and feel of the demonstrations indicates that these racial and cultural dynamics has driven the debate into the streets. A New America Media poll reveals that the vast majority of legal immigrants are alarmed by the racism embedded in the debate. This is an uprising of people, not just of workers, who are social beings rather than economic objects.

Hundreds of thousands of marchers are now telling America what its leaders have kept quiet: you can't have our labor without changing the color of the country. Immigrants, legal or not, will change the complexion and culture of the United States within the next 50 years.

The controversy over protestors carrying Mexican and Central American flags proves the point. The criticism from conservative ideologues and liberal tacticians isn't going to change the reality of a multiracial, multilingual, multinational America. It's because of the racial identity base of the protestors that these marches have so much focus--the kind of focus that similarly massive anti-war protests, which have included everything from Palestine to global warming, have lacked.

This explosive movement has been driven by social, rather than by political, networks. In fact, every U.S. social movement has reached its apex when the political and social elements came together, when they had the political base, used the mass media creatively and effectively, and activated friendship, spiritual and family networks.

While immigrant rights organizations have worked for years to generate mass action on a range of anti-immigrant ballot measures in California, the convergence of distinct cultural trends has made all the difference.

Young people are moving their friends through cell phones and MySpace, Spanish-language radio DJs (in the corporate media, by the way) are talking to their listeners, and church leaders, both lay and ordained, are getting to their parishioners.