Milwaukee’s message to Arizona
By
MILWAUKEE--About 20 activists boarded a bus in Madison, Wis., to make their way to Milwaukee for a picket of the game between the Milwaukee Brewers and Arizona Diamondbacks on August 9.
The picketers were expressing their opposition to Diamondbacks' owner Ken Kendricks' role in supporting Arizona's anti-immigrant SB 1070 law and calling on Major League Baseball (MLB) to boycott Arizona and move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Phoenix.
Our group of activists met up with more than 20 members of Voces de la Frontera and other activists from Milwaukee and held a spirited picket for an hour with informational leaflets and steady chants. We were loud: "Arizona, shame on you, immigrants are people too!" "Don't give in to racist fear, immigrants are welcome here!" And "Immigrants are people too, it's Wall Street that's robbing you!"
As might be expected, we caught flak from a bunch of bigots, but we also got many thumbs up in support.
Inside the game, we held letter boards between innings that read "Boycott Arizona" and "Move the All-Star Game."
While a few people, primarily your grandpa's age, got annoyed, a group of five high school students behind us were very open to our message and said they didn't understand why people would be mad at us for standing up for what's right. The father of one of them had just lost his job to the recession, and she said she knew the bankers were to blame. When their mother told us to stop talking to them, the young people told her they could talk to us if they wanted to! (Insubordination rules!)
Eventually, security confiscated our signs, but not before a few innings of exposure.
It was a great time and wonderful opportunity to work with our friends in Milwaukee. There was definitely a shared feeling that this was just the beginning, and that we would be working together again very soon.
