Discussing March 21's big illegal immigration march, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson says (link):

And so, the immigrant leaders called a march on Washington that, as Gutierrez says, "is primarily directed at President Obama and his administration." In that sense, the march comes straight out of the A. Philip Randolph playbook. Randolph, the president of the old Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, called the first March on Washington in 1941 to pressure Franklin Roosevelt to issue an executive order desegregating defense factories. When Roosevelt issued the order, Randolph agreed to call off the march. But he called for such a march again in 1948 to pressure Harry Truman to desegregate the armed forces -- and when Truman issued that order, Randolph again called off the march. The third such march he called -- in the summer of 1963, to demand the passage of civil rights legislation -- famously and gloriously took place.

...And if the president doesn't agree? "We will go into the field," says (Luis Gutierrez), "like the civil rights movement and the suffragists did." "We will escalate," says Gustavo Torres of Casa de Maryland, "to civil disobedience."

1. See the Hispanic civil rights page for a brief discussion of how giving rights to American blacks who were citizens isn't the same as what Gutierrez and Torres want to do: give U.S. civic rights to citizens of foreign countries.

2. The fact that a Washington Post columnist would print Torres' comment without asking him about it or commenting on it is a bit shocking. Not that it would do much good, you can complain to ombudsman *at* washpost.com

3. If someone else has pointed this out in a better fashion let me know, but Meyerson's issues seem to relate less to standard pathologies (bleeding heart "liberalism", guilt, etc.) and more to the fact that he's not that bright and he's also a bit of a clueless "wannabe".