I'm always amazed when a piece like this makes it into the Slimes, including actual truth. I guess the editors were at lunch:
[snip]
Monday's rallies also had little in common with the peaceful protests in L.A. and other cities in late March and early April. Those were homegrown, "organic" demonstrations that sprang up, without much formal organization, in response to onerous provisions in a House-passed immigration bill. They had their genesis in Spanish-language radio, the Internet, even text messaging among teenagers and young adults.
Monday's demonstration at Los Angeles City Hall, on the other hand, was a creation of the radical left, a wholly owned subsidiary of umbrella groups such as ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), union organizers and fierce political partisans acting on agendas of their own.
Even though a starry-eyed Los Angeles Times editorial called the march "peaceful and mostly joyous," the fact remains that its purpose was fundamentally malevolent. In Los Angeles, a spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union spoke hopefully of "total chaos at the ports." In the process, organizers risked setting back legitimate efforts at immigration reform by years.
[snip]
Beyond economic chaos, what did the organizers want? Not just defeat of the restrictive House immigration bill. "We want full amnesty, full legalization for anybody who is here" illegally, said Jorge Rodriguez, a union official who helped organize the protests.
While such calls may energize the organizers' radical base, Americans don't respond well to bullying, a sense of entitlement or "in your face" tactics, and the ultimate result of all this will be a hardening of positions.
Already, the founder of the Minutemen border control group has been quoted as saying that "it's intimidation when a million people march down Main streets in our major cities under the Mexican flag."
And it's not just xenophobic and anti-immigrant Anglos who will be alienated by a radicalized boycott. Latinos, too, will be turned off.
By radicalizing the immigration issue, the organizers of Monday's boycott polarized an already emotional issue further, and in so doing risk reversing their own goals, if not permanently then at least significantly, and for a long time.
The May Day boycott wasn't Selma. It was a lot closer to Watts.
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