Immigrants Demonstrate Peaceful Power

Feeling power in their numbers, hundreds of thousands of people marched peacefully, even joyously, through the streets of Los Angeles on Monday as part of a nationwide demonstration of economic and political clout by immigrants , legal and illegal. Thousands of businesses were shuttered on the “Day Without Immigrants” as workers and their families, most of them from Mexico, participated in a boycott of work and commerce, rallying to demonstrate their importance to the U.S. economy and to demand changes in immigration law that would give illegal migrants a path to citizenship. A crowd estimated by Los Angeles police at 250,000 marched to City Hall in the morning, after which many determined demonstrators made their way, on foot or by subway, to MacArthur Park for a larger march along Wilshire Boulevard. Police estimated that crowd at 400,000 and reported few problems.

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Katrina Boon for State’s Farmers


The way Congress calculates, California farmers could end up benefiting from Hurricane Katrina, the Sacramento Bee reports. All told, farm state lawmakers included some $4 billion worth of agricultural assistance in a $106.5 billion emergency spending bill scheduled for a key Senate vote today. Rural senators facing re-election this year could find it particularly tasty. The farm programs have boosted potential Katrina spending well beyond what President Bush says he will accept. And because they have nothing to do with the hurricane that ripped through Louisiana and Mississippi last August, they incite questions about where emergencies end and where pork-barrel spending begins.

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