¡Aquí estamos! ¡Aquí nos quedamos! ¡Y aquí luchamos!
Revolution #41, April 2, 2006, posted at revcom.us
The following is the text of the speech by Travis Morales at the March 25 protest in Los Angeles.
I am a member of the World Can’t Wait, Drive Out the Bush Regime. President Bush, listen to us. Listen to us, President Bush. Here we are! Here we will stay! Here we will fight!
We have not come here to beg or ask for crumbs. We have come to demand and take what we need to live with equality and dignity and not live like slaves or animals.
There is no savior in Congress. There is no savior in the Democratic Party. The only savior we have is ourselves fighting in the streets.
Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me that immigrants are criminals because they cross the border to work and survive while the biggest criminals in the world are in the White House. The Bush regime tortures and defends it. It launches unjust and illegitimate wars based on lies. It militarizes the border, causing the death of thousands. It builds concentration camps for immigrants. It arrests immigrants, detains them without the right to see their lawyers or family, and secretly deports them. The attack on immigrants is a cornerstone of a fascist program. If we want to defeat it, we must organize a movement of millions in the streets to stop it.
No militarization of the border. No discrimination. No criminalization. No anti-immigrant laws.
We are right. The World Can’t Wait, Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Los Angeles, March 25— An estimated 700,000 to over 1 million people converged in downtown to protest against HR 4437. The day before the demonstration, local radio reported that buses from the Southwest or Northern California to Los Angeles and motels in the area were fully booked. On the morning of the 25th, there were long lines to board city buses, subways, and trains heading downtown, and the freeways and streets were at a standstill. People began gathering as early as 6 a.m., 4 hours before the march's start. In the following hours, wave after wave of people filled the 26-block area of Broadway and streets connecting to it—as far as the eye could see. The marchers called on workers from the garment factories and construction sites to join in this historic day.
The day before this march, thousands of South L.A. and East L.A. students from various high schools walked out to protest HR4437. Defying school administrators (and in some cases scaling fences because the school was locked down), students marched for many miles through predominantly Latino immigrant and Chicano neighborhoods. Students from Jordan H.S. marched through the housing projects in Watts.