Newstips(Community Media Workshop)/Gordon Mayer/[[April 25, 2006]]/ link

More than 100 leaders of the immigration rallies that have swept from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. since early March gathered Saturday ([[April 22, 2006]]) at the UNITE HERE union headquarters, 333 S. Ashland, for an all-day meeting to discuss the movement behind the marches.

The agenda covered two sides of a sheet of paper and focused on the "birth of a new movement," goals, national strategies, and how to continue the momentum expected from a second wave of marches planned for Monday, May 1 across the country. Resolutions calling for "Regime Change 2006" voter registration drives, third party candidacies to defeat anti-immigrant incumbents, and a 40-day economic boycott were among those to be proposed.

...In Chicago, organizers plan to gather at 10 a.m. May 1 at Union Park, then at noon to march east on Randolph Street to Grant Park where they will rally and listen to speakers...

'Saturday's meeting was led by among others Omar Lopez and Artemio Arreola, two of Chicago's five elected consejeros with the Institute for Mexicans Abroad. Lopez and Arreola convened the first meeting to plan a march on February 16; Lopez sairepresentatives from just a dozen organizations had attended that first gathering.

...Lopez, executive director of Calor, a social service agency that serves mostly Latinos with HIV/AIDS, said that as the marches begin to gather momentum and through meetings like the one on Saturday, the parallels to Civil Rights become clearer and lessons learned from that movement may be useful to immigrants' rights organizers...

More Info:

* Omar Lopez at Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior, 773-???-????

* Jessica Aranda at Latino Union of Chicago, 773-???-????

* Catherine Salgado at Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, 630-???-????