Cliff LyonBiggest Rally in Utah History?
Well over 100,000 Mexican and Latino Americans marched through Salt Lake City today in a peaceful reminder that they are here, they are American families, and they are peaceful and proud. The AP quoted SLC Police as estimating the number at 20,000. As one with a great deal of experience counting and then verifying crowd size from pictures, I have found most people dramatically underestimate crowd size.
At the last year’s anti-war rally in SLC, police estimated the crowd at 500. I photographed the crowd from the City County Building and subsequently counted 3000+ just within the perimeter of the park. Many more photos here. Come to the Freedom Forum on immigration on Wednesday.
Whole families came, friends, nieghbors, and colleagues too.
A sea of people filled the streets and side walks from the Capitol to the City County Building.
I’ve never seen so many Americans flags and smiling people.
I’ve heard it said they are a drain on our community. For those who look at facts, the illegal ones pay the same payroll taxes everyone else does, except they never get the benefit. In many ways, they support us.
Rocky rocked’em with this speech.
Chris Johnson, a former ER tech, assisted the only known injury.
…and beautiful American children wrapped themselves in their flag.
…and some unhappy looking minutemen and minuteladies showed up who would like to throw the Amrican children’s parents in jail and marched.
…some thought THEY owned America
…and some were just goofy.
…some made you feel sorry for their children
…and others looked just plain evil.
All were full of sh..t.
But then Professor Firmage yelled at them, and they went scurrying away.
April 10th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
So where are the pictures of Employers who mistreat illegal immigrants because they know the US Govt wont come after them. Where are the pictures of the sweetshops in San Fransico that opperate under the same beliefs. The core of this issue is holding employers accountable for these actions. With proper legisaltion, and I am not saying the platter of crap they tried to float this last week was, these things would sieze to exsist in our country. People wouldn’t come here and make $1.50 an hour because they are here illegally, they would have assurance that they would get at least the min. wage for that state. Sometimes we get away from the orginally point and it turns into bloodsausage.
April 11th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Is it about legislation, law-enforcement, or just hypocracy? The $1.50 an hour thing (if its true) helps them eat until they find a job paying $5 them $8 and up.
As a former employer of many fine latinos, I can tell you they have a work ethic that puts the average white boy to shame. I don’t know if its cultural as much as a kind of selection process.
It take “HUGE balls” to leave your family and home and risk death trying to cross the border only to arrive with nothing. It takes both conviction AND humility.
People forget- this is the REASON we became the economic powerhouse we are.
Immigrants are tough as nails - starting with the protestants, Irish, chinese, Italians etc. I wonder how many of the minute men would have the balls in the same circumstances?
Great photos Cliff!
April 11th, 2006 at 9:25 am
Growing up in rural California, I learned a great deal about imigrant workers, being raised by a family with that as their history taught me a lot about work ethics. WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT, is creating laws that ARE ENFORCED that will shut down these places. They hire illegals knowing that they aren’t going to complain and work increditably hard and longer hours for pay that is maybe double what they got in Mexico or whatever country they left behind. I am not belittleing their courage and not sure how you came to that conclusion.
What we need is real legislation, not this crap that will add more laws to the books and do nothing. Its great that these rallies have popped up, however they are on the wrong issues. I will never change my mind on people that come here illegally, after all many people do come here legally and take the time to follow the procedure set forth by the US Govt. People who jump a fence and try to blend in don’t get the same rights. The Family that raised me, made sure they didn’t violate US Immigration laws, and would not assocaite with family members that didn’t, they didn’t want to risk their status or rights. That is what gives illegal immigrants a bad wrap.
My Grandfather stood in line to come to this country and I am greatful he decided to come to the US.
I am surprised that DarkStar doesn’t know what I am talking about, after all even CNN covered these types of employers in San Fransicso’s Chinatown.
April 11th, 2006 at 10:39 am
Hey TKL. There are laws on the books that prohibit domestic spying by a US president. Shall we enforce those laws, too?
April 11th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Bush didn’t break any laws, he used the authority provided to him.
April 11th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
I don’t think a blanket ok from Karl Rove counts as proper authority to spy on US citizens, unless, of course, the republican-controlled senate successfully snuck such a provision in between various line items of pork.
April 11th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Maybe your issue isn’t that you can’t read…maybe your issue is you affraid that they are listening to your phone calls. They are listening on calls that come in from overseas that are from suspected terrorist, and trying to find activity. You know the one time they succeed and prevent another attack will probably be the only time you will shut the hell up about wire taps. They are with the power of the Preseident, and Bush wasn’t the first, Clinton did it too, of course we were all preoccupied by his scandals to notice.
April 11th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
TKL, I think you need to double-check your facts or, better yet, present your facts to the forum for discussion. Simply stating that Bush is authorized to conduct these wire taps is not helpful, and neither is stating that “Clinton did it too.”
FISA expressly prohibits eavedropping on US citizens while in this country absent a warrant. Is that law too difficult for you to comprehend? Should I break it down for you, word by word? Bush broke, and continues to break, FISA, and he should be impeached and jailed for his felonious actions in this regard!
April 11th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Oh man, I am not a journalist, and well where I pull my sources from is public and been in the media. Find it if you want. If you can’t remember events from a couple of months ago, thats not my problem. This day and age you can be competly lazy and use google and be somewhat successful.
Good Luck.
April 11th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Exactly as I thought you would remark! You prove my point.
April 11th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
what that you are just a drunk hippie?
April 11th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
USSID, enacted in July of 1993, creates the following, as described by The American Spectator’s Jed Babbin:
Under Section 4 of USSID 18, communications which are known to be to or from U.S. persons can’t be intentionally intercepted without: (a) the approval of the FISA court…; OR (b) the approval of the Attorney General of the United States with respect to “communications to or from U.S. PERSONS outside the United States…international communications” and other categories of communications including for the purpose of collecting “significant foreign intelligence information.”
USSID 18 goes on to allow NSA to gather intelligence about a U.S. person outside the United States even without Attorney General sanction in emergencies “when securing the approval of the Attorney General is not practical because…the time required to obtain such approval would result in the loss of significant foreign intelligence and would cause substantial harm to national security.”
——————————-
Babbin further reports that FISA, misrepresented by liberals far and wide, allows the Attorney General to bypass the FISA court. This obviously makes sense, since it would be virtually impossible for the government to go before the FISA court every time a terrorist made a telephone call in which someone in the United States was a participant.
There Vermont Beer Drinker, the big words are even spelled out correctly. Do you need to know the web address to the source too?
April 11th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200512200946.asp
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1562746/posts
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/aug2000/wire-a02.shtml
http://www.fff.org/freedom/1296d.asp
http://www.cato.org/dailys/10-23-97.html
* Just incase you don’t read the whol article on the last one I will paste a paragraph here for you:
But the harshest examples of jackboot liberalism have come from the Justice Department and federal law enforcement agencies. The Branch Davidian and Randy Weaver cases continue to stand as examples of government run-amok, persecuting people who wanted little more than to be left alone. The administration’s response to the Oklahoma City bombing was to impose sweeping new powers, such as restricting the right of habeas corpus and expanding the use of wiretaps, for itself, even though the president was unable to point to a single example where civil liberties protections had hampered efforts to combat terrorism.
The administration, the most wiretap-friendly in U.S. history, has sought to eliminate Fourth Amendment protections against government searches. The president claims to possess “inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes.” The administration requires public housing residents to sign away their constitutional rights. The Justice Department backed warrantless (indeed, suspicionless) drug tests for high school athletes. The administration has requested greater FBI authority to conduct “moving wiretaps” without a court order. President Clinton pushed the Communications Assistance Act, which requires telephone companies to retrofit their systems to ease police surveillance, supported restrictions on the sale of Internet encryption technology, and requested legislation forcing firms to give the government the “keys” to such technology.
Now these are just archived articles, if you really feel like you need it, there are plenty of govt documents out there that will back this up.
Remember Clinton had an uphill battle with Terrorism, being before 9/11. Public didn’t seem to care when my fellow sailors were killed on the USS Cole, the Embassy Bombings, the first attempt on the World Trade Towers.
It was different game before 9/11. None-the-less wiretapping has been done before Bush.
April 11th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Take another look at FISA, my friend, and you will find that any so-called “bypass” option requires rectification within 72 hours. Furthermore, your quoted section also indicates where Bush violated the law - no authority exists for eavedropping on persons inside the US, which Bush has done repeatedly.
Nice try.
April 11th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Well its been real fun today folks and now there is a cocktail Gala in DC and I have a date with a Martini.
April 11th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Enjoy, and give Ted my kindest regards!
April 11th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
100,000?
I highly doubt that.
Why are you making up numbers?
April 11th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Were you there? I have a great deal of experience crowd counting. It is an art. As I explained in the post, I have found “official estimates” to be way off and always way under.
It is my strongest conviction and testimony, that at LEAST 100,000 people were there over the course of the day, between the Capitol and The City County Building. I saw news helicopters. If someone can get that footage, I could prove it.
April 11th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Cliff -
Pardon my language, but I need to call bullshit on you.
If there were 100,000 - that’s half of the hispanic population of Utah.
There is no freaking way that there were 100,000 there.
And just how do you have “experience crowd counting.” Where the hell do you get that kind of experience? KSL TV did a story where they asked people who count crowds professionaly, and they said it looked like 50,000 tops.
April 11th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
I’m happy to go with 50,000 people instead of 100,000. The result is, however, the same: tens of thousands of frustrated folks in SLC on Sunday!
April 11th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
Apparently you weren’t there, since your IP is in Oregon. What would be your agenda for detracting from the uncomfortable reality of Latino impact?
I provided a classic example in the post - “At the last year’s anti-war rally in SLC, police estimated the crowd at 500. I photographed the crowd from the City County Building and subsequently counted 3000+” - So based on how off they were, 3000/500=6. 6*20,000 is 120,000.
I’ve never heard of professional crowd counters, but I’d sure like to talk with them, and find out their methodolgy.
I would also point out, that there were many, many people there who are not included in the “Hispanic poplulation of Utah”. How is THAT number arrived at?
Lets play this out, because I know there were 100,000 people there, and I will do whatever its takes to prove it. Where do we start?
I’m asking KSL for copies of the arial footage.
April 11th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
Could have been there, we do have this thing called Freeways and Airplanes, Oregon is only 8 hour drive away or a two hour flight. Do you want to meet a crowd counter, go to the DMV, they are experts there.
April 11th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Great photos! Thanks.
It really was great on Sunday.
April 12th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Cliff -
You know you are the only person I’ve come across who thinks there were 100K there. I was there, and there were not 100K.
Using Cliff’s math - the Phoenix demonstration must have had 2 or 3 million, nearly 10 million in Los Angeles and, I’m guessing you would have said there were 73 bazillion total protesters across the country.
Why does the number even matter?
It was a remarkable event - bottom line.
April 12th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
I heard that there was some stupid bitch there that was calling little nine year old hispanic/latin children losers and other stupid things.. how low do people have to go that they have to put KIDS down to feel better about who they are!! LAME!!
April 12th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
I like your photos Cliff, but maybe you should let people interpet the photos without adding your biased assumptions. Using words like evil, and goofy seems very judgemental on your part.
April 12th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
That said, you bet I’m biased. The anti-immigration position is born of ignorance of American history, disregard for naturalized children, hypocrisy of legal interpretation, and pure nationalism
The only thing anyone should be protesting against is the deliberate exploitation of illegal immigrants as the result of gov’t policy designed to support the paradigm. If you wanna talk about enforcing the laws of the land, lets start with Bush. Evil and goofy admittedly reflect my lack of tolerance for bias born of ignorance.
But I have shown great restraint because my grandfather’s family was threatened with violence and endured cross burnings on their lawn in Alabama in the 60’s, and my father escaped Nazi Germany leaving behind his entire family to suffer the atrocities of the holocaust.
One learns to recognize the mentality that underlies the perpetuation of discrimination and worse. The parallels are clear. The misguided and uninformed are provided a special status within a small like-minded group with an exaggerated enemy.
It happens on the left and on the right. The only difference is the group on the left save trees, the group on the right engender hate and fear and human rights abuses. Bush is a classic example of one who preys on this type of people to help him justify his own crimes