New America Media, Posted May 31, 2010
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Phoenix, Arizona – In the second largest march in Arizona’s history dozens of thousands of people took to the streets of Phoenix in opposition to SB 1070 on Saturday.
The law that will take effect on July 29 would make it a crime for a person to be an undocumented immigrant in Arizona.
“We are not afraid to come out. If we didn’t, the risks are the same. We could be deported any day,” said Gloria Ruiz, 40, an undocumented immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico who came to march with her daughter and husband.
For Ruiz and many other undocumented immigrants in the 5-mile march there was a sense of urgency because despite wide opposition to the new law from some police departments, some officers on the ground are already putting it into effect.
Phoenix Police Department reported that 50,000 people participated in the event. But organizers estimated it could have been between 100,000 to 200,000 people. Regardless of the count, aerial pictures showed a huge mass of people that stretched over seven Phoenix blocks and grew as it reached its destination – the State Capitol.
Even by conservative estimates, it surpassed by thousands any recent march in Phoenix. The last march in the city that came anywhere close in scale was on April 10, 2006 and it brought 250,000 people to protest against Congressman James Sensenbrenner’s immigration bill, very similar to SB 1070, which would have made it a federal crime for a person to be illegally in the U.S.
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