-Protesters Hit U.S. Government with Issues from All Sides

-(college)-

April 2006.

“Hey, hey! Ho, ho! KKK has got to go! Hey, hey! Ho, ho! KKK has got to go!” These are the cheers I hear from the side of the street on which I stand. Opposite me, is a group of counter-protesters, consisting of mainly middle-aged to senior-citizen Anglo-Saxon Americans. Surrounding me, a sea of Armenian flag-holders, students and workers who abandoned their jobs and classes for the day, along with the dozens of others—white, Latin American, and a few sprinkles of black and East Asian—pushing for immigrant rights.

It was a bit confusing standing there. It was an early Monday morning, outside the Hyatt Regency in Irvine, where President Bush was due to make a speech, but he had not yet arrived, or perhaps had already made it safely inside, undetected by the hundred protesters and counter-protesters waiting on either street corner.

It couldn’t be determined with what central cause they were protesting for, but three particular causes seemed to dominate the scene. The first, a clamor for the U.S. government to fully recognize the Armenian Genocide enacted by the Young Turks in 1915. The second, a fierce call for the justice of illegal immigrants. And the third, an all too familiar outcry against the war in Iraq.

Outside of the UCI campus, I’ve never witnessed a protest firsthand, and felt a bit taken aback by the futility of it all. Apart from the media coverage by news crews who hastened towards the scene, I wondered where all this was going. Chants were tossed back and forth, from one side to the other, so quickly and repeatedly, as if either side would be able to dominate the other—to bully them into silence.

But neither side could be silenced. In place of silence, loomed anger and aggravation. Insults remained surprisingly civil, that is, in content, but the nature of the loaded words implied bigotry, bitchery, and misguided loathing. To the counter-protesters, their challengers stood as a brazen incarnation of foolish ideologies, impractical desires, and values detrimental to the country both groups vied to call home.

The Armenians present persisted in their fight for recognition of the time of terror that plighted their people in the early 20th century. But their earnest words fell upon deaf ears for the counter-protesters didn’t seem to care much about them. Even the complaint over the war in Iraq could not seize their full attention. The men and women standing on the opposite side of me clearly came ready to boot the illegals out. I heard their cries, and I read their signs, and from where I stood, it was very clear that all other issues they fired upon that day took back burner to the “Alien Invasion” dilemma, (as one poster put it).

These offspring of immigrants, descendants of refugees, successors of those who struggled to come here—where did their compassion lie? Conveniently they’ve seemed to forget their predecessors were pegged as dirty immigrants in their day. Yet, they insist on assuming the role of Nativist in ours? How was the flight across the Atlantic of millions of people two hundred years ago any different from the plight of Mexican immigrants today? The Irish were ostracized in writing by signs placed in store windows during the mid-1800s, reading, “NINA”—No Irish Need Apply. And now ancestors of those ostracized Irish are standing with signs of their own, telling others to get out. Where is the sense in that, and why should any race or class of people reserve the privilege to call themselves “Americans” when they choose to forget the history of this nation?

One woman held a sign that said, “GOD SAVE US FROM MEXICO: NEIGHBOR FROM HELL.” A man with a megaphone kept dividing a line between Americans and Latin Americans, and later blared out, “Typical illegal immigrants! Don’t even know what it [KKK] stands for.”

The protesters shouted, “Si, se puede!” and “We didn’t cross the borders. The borders crossed us!”

A chant of theirs unrelated to immigration sounded as such: “Hey, Bush, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!” I’m not even sure Bush had made it into the Hyatt at the time. But, regardless, his name received much lashing with terms such as “racist” and “fascist”. Someone even challenged the size of his genitalia.

The protest, as a whole, was a very engaging scene, and though the chanting grew a bit monotonous after an hour, I had to hand it to the protesters. They might not have achieved much that day, legally or politically, but to those they were defending, I’m sure it helped to know they care.