May Day immigration march
Thousands walked from Union Park on the Near West Side to Federal Plaza in the Loop on Wednesday to demand immigration reform, sending a loud message to end deportations.
Many carried signs asking President Obama to pay attention to their fight. Others chanted in Spanish, “Yes, we can. Stop deportations.”
Anna Munoz, 16, stood before a podium in Federal Plaza and said her father, Efrain, is in the process of being deported to Mexico after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers raided the pallet factory near O’Hare Airport where he worked. “We want to be together as a family,” said Anna, who’s in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen.
“This day is about stopping families from being destroyed as these deportations continue,” Rosi Carrasco, an immigration activist, earlier told a Union Park crowd of hundreds. “We want legislation that includes everything. . . . We can’t do this anymore.”
Immigration was in the limelight, but marchers chanted and waved signs calling attention to everything from workers’ rights to freeing Bradley Manning, the imprisoned Army soldier accused of leaking secret government information to WikiLeaks.
The loud but peaceful crowd swelled to thousands as union workers and community activists marched east over the Kennedy Expy. into the Loop. A few dozen anarchists, many who protested the NATO Summit protest last summer, marched as well.