Tens of thousands marched, protested, or formed a human chain during yesterday's "A Day Without An Immigrant" rallies. However, the NY marches paled in comparison to the ones in Los Angeles (an estimated 800,000) and Chicago (400,000). One immigrant who took yesterday off lost her job at a midtown deli and was profiled mentioned in both the NY Times and NY Post: Sylvia Garcia's boss (and a Korean immigrant) Patrick Lee said ten employees asked for Monday off, "It was irresponsible. You don't come to me at 5 on Friday and say you're not showing up on Monday. If they had given notice, it would have been different." (The Post says he fired six workers, as four others came back to work.)
The day came to close with the rally at Union Square, march down Broadway, ending at Foley Square. What we noticed was a huge police presence; we found this comment on Gothamist Contribute interesting:
Cops tried to confuse marchers by keeping most of the crowd back in Union Square so the Foley square rally ended before they got there. They then removed barriers thinking people would disseminate. Instead they grouped in the square. When police forced them to move they ended up going on the brooklyn bridge's car lanes. Cops finally stopped this and everyone started going home, slowly.
Did you march or see the marchers? What did you observe?
More photos, links and comments in yesterday's post.
Photograph by somenoise on Flickr
