Gay socialist radicals (2 of 2): Immigration reform march.

This past weekend I marched with the gay socialist radicals as part of their annual Pride parade contingent.

This year's message?  Immigration reform.

The contingent wasn't scheduled till the last third of the parade, so there was a lot of time to kill before kick-off.

Fortunately, a Latin radio station float had a flatscreen wired up to the Mexico-Netherlands World Cup game, so I joined like fifty (mostly Mexican) people there watching the game until the parade began.

When we finally did kick off, I held a sign saying -

PRESIDENT OBAMA:

STOP DEPORTATIONS NOW!

- and I was towards the front when we began, and within the first block already 2 (older) (Latinas) pointed and clapped when they saw me and my sign.

As the parade progressed, however, I fell in towards the middle, and so I didn't get to see people's reactions as much, saddly.

I also wore Polish flag mardi gras beads that I had gotten down in New Orleans; since the theme was immigration, I figured that I might as well highlight that immigrant half of my family, and show immigrant solidarity.

As my one Czech literature prof friend texted -

Cool.  Very cool.

- and, as it turns out, I had 2 people yell out to me in Polish during the parade, one fatter shorter young (brown-haired) guy who yelled out "Pane!" ("Man!"), and another, a tanned muscled blonde very drunk guy in a light blue tank top with royal blue trim, who was like, "JAK SE MASH!!!!!!" ("How are you?").

After the parade, I texted those responses to my one Czech literature prof friend, and she was like -

awe2thesome!

. . .

Later, when me and my roommate were at a bar afterwards, a (young) (Latina) woman was talking with us, and she said that though she was born here, her cousins are undocumented and it's sad, since they're smarter than her and could be nurses and doctors and lawyers and stuff, but they can't even make it to college because of all the barriers that come with their status.

Her uncle was also deported, and then he walked back to the city from Mexico - all the way back.

For a while at the beginning they lost touch with him, too, and they wondered if he had died or been murdered at the border.

Right before then, my roommate had been wondering aloud just how major of an issue deportation really was to people, since she knew it was a problem, but didn't know the details of it.