Save Our State - Report from The All Star Game Rally

Lot of fun, lots of support.

OC Register

http://www.ocregister.com/news/immig...w-arizona.html

NAHEIM – Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game was the latest battlefield in the immigration debate with groups of protesters and counter-protesters turning out just before the event to demonstrate.
As traffic mounted at Angel Stadium Tuesday afternoon, about 20 activists in favor of Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law waved Arizona and American flags as they awaited the demonstrators who planned to protest the new law.

Deborah Craig of Mission Viejo coordinated the counter-protest a day after a group condemning the Arizona law announced that they had gathered 110,000 petitions asking Major League Baseball to move next year’s All-Star game from Arizona. The counter-protest began at 2 p.m., about an hour earlier of the expected demonstration.

"I think baseball should stay out of politics,’’ said Craig, whose husband, Britt, is a Campo Minuteman. “And second of all they (MLB) should not be on the wrong side and support illegal aliens.’’

The petitions are part of a national campaign called MoveTheGame.org, which has coordinated several rallies across the country to protest Arizona's recent passage of the anti-illegal immigration law SB1070.

John Morales of Los Angeles, one of the first of the protesters to arrive, said he wanted to bring the issue to baseball fans coming to the ballpark.

His group, Boycott Arizona Los Angeles, helped stage an earlier protest at Dodger Stadium.

“The All-Star game is just a small portion of a larger boycott,’’ Morales said. “If it doesn’t get pulled, we still have Arizona to boycott. This is just one of the targets.’’

The Arizona state law makes it a crime to lack immigration papers in Arizona and requires police to ask for documentation of legal status if there is “reasonable suspicion” the person they stopped is in the country illegally. The law goes into effect only when someone is stopped on suspicion of violating another law.

As members of California Coalition for Immigration Reform, an anti-illegal immigration group based out of Huntington Beach, protested at the intersection of Gene Autry Way and State College Boulevard, protesters challenging SB1070 began to gather at an opposite corner of the intersection at around 3 p.m. At its peak, the protest at the intersection involved 40 demonstrators, including a group that unsuccessfully tried to deliver the petitions to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.

The group is part of the same contingent that traveled to Arizona in June for a pro-Arizona rally. The trip was part of a national "buycott'' effort – a reaction to multiple calls from immigration rights groups and some political leaders to "boycott" the "Grand Canyon State."

After about 30 minutes at the intersection, the protestors joined a larger demonstration that had gathered at the main entrance to Angel Stadium. There, around 100 demonstrators in orange shirts formed a circle, walking counterclockwise as they chanted and handed out flyers.

Among those in attendance were representatives from various immigration rights movements, including the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles, Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice, Orange County Dream Team and Orange County Labor Federation.

Members of Service Employees International Union, a labor union representing 2.2 million workers, were also in attendance, distinguished from the rest of the crowd by their purple union shirts.

"We are a country of immigrants and we can’t support racist ones like the one in Arizona,” said Ernesto Guerrero, the regional organizing coordinator for the SEIU Local 1877. “How many baseball players are immigrants?”

Roberto Lovato echoed this sentiment. Lovato co-founded Presente.org, an organization that teamed with MoveOn.org in May to campaign against the 2011 All-Star game in Arizona.

“Clearly we have momentum inside of Arizona,” he said, emphasizing his group’s desire to move next year’s All-Star game out of Arizona. “Officials who are a part of the Arizona Diamondbacks are starting to get concerned.”

Among the onlookers at the protest included various members with the Diamondbacks organization, who would not provide names or comments regarding the demonstration.

Officers who had gathered to monitor the situation called the protest “pretty peaceful,” but remained alert and were quick to calm any flare-ups during the protest.

A Gallup Poll from late April stated that 51 percent of Americans who had heard of SB1070 favored the law, which some states are now looking to replicate.

SB1070 is expected to go into effect at the end of July but may be delayed by multiple pending court challenges.

The law was amended to discourage racial profiling, but some still say it could lead to targeting Latinos and destroy the trust law enforcement has worked for with the Latino community in that region.

Anti-illegal immigration activists say the new law is the only way the state can defend itself after becoming the nation's busiest corridor for illegal immigration and smuggling.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7924 or ccarcamo@ocregister.com

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