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Immigration Activists Arrested For Protesting in Chicago
A score of activists were arrested Friday in downtown Chicago during an act of civil disobedience to demand a voice in the negotiations on immigration reform now taking place behind closed doors in Washington.
“We’re outside the process and we don’t know if we will be able to accept what they’re cooking up among themselves,” Artemio Arreola of the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights told Efe.
“We need to see at least a rough draft of what they’ve been negotiating since January, because we don’t know if they’re going to include what we need,” he said, referring to the initiative of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators.
Some 200 people, including city aldermen, held a vigil in downtown Chicago’s Federal Plaza and then blocked traffic for several minutes.
Police followed the protests closely, but allowed the demonstrators to first occupy part of Federal Plaza for their vigil and then form a human chain to temporarily hold up traffic.
When the group tried to block access to the Kluczynski Federal Building, where the local offices are located of Illinois’ two U.S. senators, Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk, police arrested some 20 activists.
One of those in custody, Mexican-American Ald. Daniel Solis, said he took a “particular pride” in the immigrants’ demonstration and their peaceful resistance.
The ICIRR said that Friday’s civil disobedience was part of a series of nationwide protests to highlight the failure of the Group of Eight to produce a bill prior to the Senate’s Easter recess.
“The more they put off passing the bill, the more families will be separated and we’ll lose our momentum in Congress,” ICIRR director Fred Tsao told Efe.
Published in Latino Daily News
2013-03-23 05:31:38
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