New Haven Independent

Saturday afternoon’s rousing march through the rain featured a bilingual atmosphere, multi-state contingents, and wide spectrum of participation, ranging from labor unions to peace councils and politicians to a newly sighted group, Queers Without Borders. It all underscored that for organizers and participants, the show they were putting on was not only for the city, but for the country as well.

From the staging point in Quinnipiac River Park, where this Peruvian-American family, the Orbegozas, from New Britain, were readying their signs, down Grand Avenue to the closing rally in the atrium at City Hall, the parade therefore seemed aimed to make both a local and also a national statement: Support not only for the 32 people picked up last week in New Haven and for the municipal ID card, due to debut next month. But also for the national significance with which these steps, as well as images from the parade, might be viewed in the ongoing countrywide immigrant rights’ debate

Here’s a brief cavalcade of some faces and voices from the spirited march:

Jayne Ptolemy and Carlos Aramayo are organizers with Yale University’s Graduate Employee Student Organization. About 50 GESO members were marching on Saturday, many functioning as marshals in their orange T-shirts. “We’ve long had Latino-immigrant issues on GESO’s agenda,” said Ptolemy, an African-American studies professor-to-be from Dryden Michigan, “and the raids just accelerated it.”

“And it’s far from Latinos only,” Aramayo added. “Since about 2002 when a number of our Chinese members had visa renewal issues badly handled, we’ve spoken at rallies. Immigrant rights has been a consistent part of our agenda. If school weren’t out, we’d have even more members present.”

Faustina Orbegoza (pictured above with daughter Yessica, granddaughter Esmeralda, and sleeping and therefore not picture nine-month-old grandson Alejandro) worked two full-time jobs for five years in order to bring Yessica to New Britain from their home town of Chimbote, in northern Peru. “Yes, I did come here illegally,” she said, “but so I could make a better life for my only daughter. I married a U.S. citizen, a Peruvian man in Hartford, and worked hard, and became a citizen myself, and brought Yessica over. She now goes to St. Joseph’s College, the kids are born here, citizens. But I have never forgotten how hard it is for people living here illegally, how they always feel threatened. Sure, there are Americans who think bad things of Hispanic people, and some are bad. But so are some Americans bad too. Not most. Hard-working people. This is my only day off from working as a nurse’s aide at Jefferson House in Newington. My daughter said, ‘Mom, you want to take your day off and spend it this way?’ I answered: Absolutely. I always give to people, think of others, and I teach this to Esmeralda. Don’t I?”

We’ll return to this family in 2.1 miles, after traversing Grand to Olive to Chapel to Church, and check out what Esmeralda thinks.

In the meantime, Migdalia Castro was one of at least half a dozen alders spotted (Jorge Perez, Yusuf Shah, Andrea Jackson-Brooks among them), she in front of the New England Health Care Employees Union contingent, all the way from Providence, R.I., who began to lead the marchers out of the park. “Absolutely nothing should divide us,” said Castro. “On this issue, race and class do not matter. On this issue, we are all neighbors.”

Tanitza Clavell, the woman holding the sign right over Castro’s shoulder, is originally from Bolivia and for six years now an organizer among day care workers in Providence. She says nearly all of them are undocumented immigrants. “They feel threatened every day of their lives. I’m absolutely for amnesty,” she added. “It’s a real emergency.”

As the marched moved past East Pearl Street, the marshals on bullhorns called out, “What do we want?” The answer came, “Unite the families.” “When do we want it?” “Now!”

At Atwater Street, a quick census of other organizational signs revealed these groups also marching: New Haven’s Peoples Center, The Connecticut Center for the New Economy, a large red-t-shirted group from UNITE/Here Hotel Workers, Local 1199 health care workers, and then three guys carrying a banner “Queers Without Borders Dicen Ningun Ser Humano Es Ilegal.”

A reporter caught up with (left to right) Frank O’Gorman, who’s from Hartford, Ben Gonzales, a Yale junior, and Zil Goldstein, of Hamden who’s just graduated from Quinnipiac University’s nursing school, to ask about the connection between queer rights and immigrant rights. “In both communities,” said O’Gorman, “you’re dealing with issues of dehumanization and demonization. And then that becomes the basis for discrimination.”

“And worse,” added Goldstein. “It becomes the basis for segregation and for violence.”

“And there are other connections,” said Goldstein, who describes his organization as evolving, with fifteen or so active members in the Hartford area but with chapters elsewhere. “We’ve been part of immigrant rights rallies in Hartford for years. Besides, there are immigrant queers and queer immigrants!”

At the corner of James, the rain began in earnest. Still the marchers were not daunted, and only a few UNITE members pulled out red ponchos to match their red shirts. “What do we do when ICE comes to town?” called out one of the leaders. “Shut them down,” came the response. “Shut them down.”

Santos Lucero, a U.S. citizen who hails from Pueblo, Mexico, and runs the Gran Rodeo boutique at Grand and Maltby, would have been in the march, except he had to work. The door to his colorful store, which sells “articulos vaqueros” and much else, was open, so a reporter popped in out of the rain to see how business was.

“Terrible,” said Lucero, whose daughters Alejandra (on the left) and Erica (both East Rock Magnet School girls) clung to him. “Since the raids, business is down by half, by more than half. People are scared to come out. You see that customer,” he said, referring to the man who walked out as the reporter came in, “that’s my only customer all day. It can’t go on this way. I don’t see it getting better for business on the street until something is done.”

Lucero, an agreeable and relaxed man, didn’t seem given to alarm. His daughters were born in New Haven and are citizens. However, his older son, who was born in Mexico, is 16, and just received his papers, in process to citizenship, last year. “It took six years,” said Lucero. “Much too long. And we had to spend five, six thousand dollars on a lawyer too. My son is an excellent student as well,” he added proudly. There was something wrong in the calculus of the numbers in Lucero’s view. “Something’s got to be done. Soon. Not a few people are scared. Everyone is.”

At the corner of Franklin, a woman was heard to say, “Oh, damn, they’re holding up the buses.” On further inquiry, she clarified that she was all for immigrant rights; she just needed to get a bus. By and large, the car honks, of which there were many, were festive, and not cranky. The sprinkle of pedestrian onlookers responded positively to the patriotic displays of Jorge Colon, one of the three busloads, 150 strong, UNITE/Here members up from New York City for the march. “The only way we can get results is to demonstrate like this,” he said. “Like it or not, that’s the way it works. I’m against the bad few among the immigrants. But the good, most of them, are hard-working people, and they shouldn’t be punished. They work for years, for decades without rights and benefits. That’s wrong.”

By the time the march left-turned from Grand onto Olive, and then down Chapel toward the rallying point in Federal Plaza, it was pouring. Still the calls rang out: “Justicia Ahora,” and then the refrain of the parade: “Si Se Puede.”

Yusuf Shah and 1,000 others patiently lined up in the plaza. There was some concern the rain would scatter the troops before the speeches. However, the mayor, who was scheduled to speak, opened the atrium of City Hall to the parade and invited everyone in.

There, Jose Diaz of Waterbury and Lauren Mednick of New Haven, who had met working on the Lamont campaign, got some good viewing on the balcony as the crowd assembled below.

Addressing them, the mayor said, “We are proud to soon be issuing the first municipal ID card in the nation. So, everyone, I welcome you to City Hall today. And come back to your City Hall next month as well to get your cards.”

The remarks eliciting the most fervent response from the soaked marchers, came from John Wilhelm, on the left, president of the 460,000 member UNITE/Here union. He began by tracing a history of animosity toward immigrants, before the boil was lanced, by quoting from the Brooklyn Eagle, a 19th century New York paper, full of disparaging descriptions of Italian immigrants (“pests”) and Irish immigrants (“polluting the country”).

Then he read a letter of greeting from Congressman John Lewis, an African-American civil rights leader during the 1960s: “We knew well by then the meaning of the knock on the door in the middle of the night … and men with hoods stood there …New Haven, you are a shining light of which every American should be proud. A light shining brighter today than even the torch of the Statue of Liberty… Let everyone of you - young and old, men and women, firefighters and police officers, citizen and non-citizen alike - carry the identity card of the New Haven family.” (For the full text of John Lewis’ letter to the people of New Haven, click here.)

What did the Orbegoza family make of this, at march’s end? “I don’t mind being soaked with rain at all,” said Faustina. “Rain doesn’t matter when you are supporting something important, something you believe in.”

Since baby Alejandro was finally awake from his nap, his sister was asked to check in with him for his assessment of the day’s events. “He’s only nine months old,” Esmeralda reported. “But he’s ready to walk in the parade too.”