Despite shutdown, union-sponsored immigration rally proceeds on ‘closed’ National Mall

A slowly swelling crowd of protesters and activists gathered on the National Mall in the nation’s capital Tuesday for the Camino Americano: Rally and March for Immigrant Dignity and Respect, an afternoon-long call for comprehensive immigration reform that featured a long speaking list of public officials, labor leaders and immigration reform advocates. The event, backed in part by the AFL-CIO, National Educational Association and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), proceeded unimpeded despite the National Park Service’s (NPS) selective and unmistakable closure of national parkland, including multiple memorials just down the road from the rally site outside the Smithsonian Institution Building.

“Under the same First Amendment rights that are allowing Honor Flight veterans and their families to visit the veterans memorials on the National Mall, other groups will be granted access to the park for First amendement activities,” an NPS spokesman said.

Those very Honor Flight veterans encountered barricades at the World War II Memorial in the aftermath of the shutdown, as Red Alert Politics and several other outlets documented; it even was reported that an NPS spokeswoman outside the memorial said that the White House Office of Management and Budget issued the order for the memorial to be closed off.

The government’s inconsistencies notwithstanding, the Tuesday rally appeared to go off sans hitch with a noisy crowd, much of it Latino parents and their children and out-of-town advocacy groups, warmly receiving a slate of lawmakers to offset one of the brisker days of the D.C. fall thus far. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a headline guest, spoke to the economic benefits of immigration reform and the inherent traits of immigrants that ‘make America more American’.

“With all the respect and love we have for our Native American brothers and sisters, we are by and large a nation of immigrants,” Pelosi said. “We must remember that the blood of immigrants flows through all of our veins.”

Pelosi was joined on stage by several Democrat House colleagues, including House Democratic Caucus chair Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) and civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). Other Democrat-aligned speakers included Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray.

Despite the demonstration’s noticeably left-leaning overtones, Republican lawmakers made an appearance behind the microphone, including Floridians Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Diaz-Balart was particularly effusive and urgent in framing the idea of comprehensive immigration reform, saying that the current immigration system is broadly flawed.

“It is broken for our national security interests, it is broken for our economic interests, it’s broken for the rule of law, and it’s broken for the millions of people who are here working day in, day out, undocumented, who finally deserve a status — finally deserve an answer after all these years,” he said. “We’ve heard a lot of lip service and a lot of promises. Both political parties have had a chance to solve it, neither have — it’s about time we get it done this year!”

Though the attendance was expected to number in the tens of thousands, it was much smaller, though boisterous. The crowd spontaneously broke into the United Farm Workers’ chant of Si, se puede! — “Yes, it can be done” — and waved union-labeled signs and handwritten ones alike.

Some subgroups at the event broke off and formed their own chanting circles. One comprised Yale University students that shipped down from New Haven, Conn., and shouted, “What do we want? Reform! When do we want it? Now!”

Others marched toward the stage from outside the Smithsonian subway stop a few blocks away, gradually padding the audience in advance of and through the 12 p.m. hour as the rally got underway.