300,000 to 500,000 people marched in Chicago to protest The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.
The Police estimated 300,000 according to Channel 2 News Chicago. Which means there were at least 400,000 to 500,000 people.
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_069125525.html
I live in Chicago. I didn’t know anything about it until I heard about the march on the news. It was a march apparently organized by word of mouth and internally in various communities. Yet I live in Uptown which claims to be the most diverse community in Chicago. Maybe I’m out of it. I didn’t see anything in the papers about an upcoming march. It got a few minutes of coverage on TV. 300,000 to 500,000 people gets a few minutes of coverage in Chicago, I can’t imagine what the coverage was in the rest of the country.
Here’s the on line link to the Chicago Tribune. If you look very carefully you will find a single link called “immigrant march”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/
The Saturday Chicago Tribune did show a front page picture of the crowd with a headline and then a not very detailed article. Seems like they don’t really know much about it either. Their estimate was 100.000 people. Amazing how they low-balled the police estimate which low balls the organizers estimates as a rule. If the police say there were 300.000 people then that is AT LEAST how many people were there.
Minor on line Coverage from the Chicago Suntimes
http://www.suntimes.com/index/
But it doesn’t matter because all the awful politicians in Chicago were there to support the crowd. They had to. That’s 300,000 to 1/2 million votes ( if everybody there were all to be registered) they could lose. Even Mayor Daley who has installed TV cameras on many city corners and hopes to have the entire city monitored electronically ala Big Brother and who did not endorse John Kerry for president was there.
There is nothing that scares a government more than to see 300 to 500 thousand people in the street…protesting.
And they were protesting against Bush too. They were protesting about a bill sponsored by Jim Sensenbrenner that seeks mass deportations of Illegal immigrants, sending illegal workers to jail and making it a crime to have aided an illegal immigrant.
