The 'American Free' Stir Protests Nationwide
NEW YORK - New Yorkers rallying against the House immigration reform bill took up more than six city blocks in Manhattan Monday, with groups declaring themselves as "the American free."
Part of a nationwide Apr.10 Day of Action for Immigrant Justice, the four-hour rally saw tens of thousands of people along Broadway and overflowing to side streets, joining the hundreds of thousands that made mass protests across the country.
"We are inseparable, indivisible and impossible to take out of America," Chung-Wha Hong, director of the New York Immigration Coalition, told the crowd, according to The New York Times.
The only thing separating the mass groups were street intersections to keep day traffic going as flags of the rallyers' mother countries and of the United States adorned the crowded streets.
The New York rally was only one of many protests that kept voices loud throughout the day in a fight for citizenship and protection for undocumented immigrants. Prayer rallies were held in such cities as Detroit and bus loads of people unloaded at Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
"We are encouraged by the tremendous grassroots movement throughout the country that has called attention to the plight of undocumented workers and brought the comprehensive immigration reform debate into the spotlight," said a statement by Church World Service, a global humanitarian agency.
The Senate Bill that would make entering the country illegally a felony is currently stalled in Congress as debate continues over more stringent measures that would secure the border, strengthen the enforcement within the country and create a temporary worker program and one more favorable to the estimated 11 million immigrants residing in the states.
Joining faith communities who had cried out against the penalties proposed against those who help undocumented immigrants, CWS stated that it "supports reform that enables faith-based and human rights organizations to continue to offer hands of help, hope, and hospitality to all persons in need."
Just as many other leaders have stated, the Rev. Dr. John E. Hiemstra, executive director of the Council of Churches of the City of New York, called America the "land of opportunity and the land of immigrants."
The national Apr. 10 rallies follow a month after the widespread marches and protests began and have persisted around the country.
