Activists plan to block border at Douglas Susan Carroll
Republic Tucson Bureau
Apr. 22, 2005 12:00 AM
Human rights advocates plan a series of boycotts and blockades from the Valley to the U.S.-Mexican border to protest the Minuteman Project and legislation moving through the Arizona Legislature.
Activists from Riverside, Calif., plan to block the border between Douglas and Agua Prieta, Sonora, on May 1 to protest the Minuteman Project, a civilian border patrol that started this month in southeastern Arizona.
Despite objections from the mayors of both cities, protest organizer Armando Navarro said he plans to bring 50 to 100 protesters to the border to call attention to the anti-immigrant sentiment growing in Arizona and across the country. The blockade is planned for "several hours," he said, at the port of entry on the Mexican side of the border.
"Unless something is done, the issue of immigration is going to become increasingly volatile and violent," said Navarro, an ethnic-studies professor at the University of California at Riverside.
Douglas Mayor Ray Borane, who has openly opposed the Minuteman Project, a cadre of self-appointed border guards who started staking out the Arizona border April 1, said, "With (Navarro's) attention-seeking actions, he's going to impact us worse than the Minuteman Project because he can hurt us economically by shutting the border down."
Also May 1, activists plan to meet in Phoenix to organize a boycott of Arizona Cardinals football games to show opposition to anti-undocumented immigrant legislation moving through the state Legislature. The Cardinals are scheduled to play a football game in Mexico, and organizers plan to pressure the Mexican government to pick a team from another, more immigrant-friendly state, Phoenix-based organizer Salvador Reza said.
Reza said organizers are alarmed by a series of bills targeting immigrants in Arizona. The Cardinals' spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment.
These morons threaten to escalate to violence and they use force to shut down legal traffic because they prefer to support criminals.