Video by Katie Bieri
A sea of red shirts flooded the streets of downtown Phoenix on Saturday, the sound of “Sí se puede!” welling up as it flowed forward.
This chant could be heard from thousands of voices on an otherwise quiet weekend morning. The Arizona March for Dignity and Respect wove its way through downtown, beginning at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church on Washington and Ninth streets with a prayer and ending at the Maricopa County Superior Court on Washington Street and First Avenue with the Pledge of Allegiance.
The route was carefully chosen to tell the story of deportation, said Petra Falcon, leader of the immigrant rights organization Promise Arizona, a key group in the planning of the march.
“Politics created a logjam in the immigration process,” Falcon said. “Our message is meant to change the hearts and minds of Congress.”
The marchers began by congregating in the parking lot of Immaculate Heart to hear Phoenix faith leaders give speeches. Falcon said faith plays an integral role in Latino communities and that they were “praying all along the way” while marching.
The next stop for the marchers on their symbolic path toward citizenship was through the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus to Civic Space Park, where a group of marchers on the stage chanted, “Up, up with education! Down, down with deportation!”
Education is a crucial element of immigration reform, said Laura Casas, 26, who teaches third grade at J.B. Sutton Elementary School in central Phoenix. Since the enactment of Senate Bill 1070, Casas said she has seen the law directly affect her students and thus decided to become a part of the immigrant rights movement.
“I made a promise to some of my students back in 2010 that I would be involved,” Casas said. “They were so discouraged. They felt they couldn’t be somebody because of their status.”
Fear pervades students’ everyday lives, Casas said. Some parents are afraid to take their children to the doctor for fear of needing to provide proof of citizenship, and getting pulled over for a minor traffic violation could lead to consequences beyond a traffic ticket. Even if the students are citizens, the deportation of relatives directly impacts their lives, Casas said.
Ruben Ruiz knows this fact well. Ruiz is a 16-year-old Sunnyslope High School student, currently living with his parents and siblings. Ruiz marched on Saturday because his home life was not always so intact. A few years ago both his parents were deported, and the family was separated for seven months, which affected his entire school year.
Ruiz and his siblings lived with various relatives and family friends during that time. They had to switch schools since they resided in different districts.
“My parents aren’t criminals,” Ruiz said. “They should have the right to be here. … They’re hard workers, they pay taxes.”
“Keep families together” was a central theme in the march, seen on signs and heard from voices throughout the day. When marchers arrived at the Maricopa County Fourth Avenue Jail, a skit was performed about a father being deported and separated from his family. A large sign at the location read “11,000 deportations daily,” highlighting the pervasiveness of family separation in immigration reform issues, Falcon said. She estimates that at its peak the march likely contained 8,000 people — a large turnout for a Phoenix march, but still not the number of deportations that occur on a daily basis.
The march organizers wanted the message of the march to focus on families and family values, to show the significance of immigration law within the entire family unit and community as a whole. Symbolism played a key role in sending the message, Falcon said. She said organizers asked marchers to wear red, a vibrant color associated with passion and the heart. Additionally, over 400 American flags were handed out to marchers, Falcon said, to convey the idea of U.S. citizenship.
At the final destination, marchers all pledged their allegiance to the American flag to mimic the pledge that would be made during a United States naturalization ceremony. Although this ceremony was merely symbolic of the path of citizenship, the struggles along the real path to citizenship continue to motivate immigration rights activists to advocate for policy reform. Falcon said this march was one of more than 180 marches across the country in more than 40 states that day.
Contact the reporter at ascline1@asu.edu
