Vexed in the Valley
While many of last night’s Los Angeles-area immigration marches coalesced into one, the San Fernando Valley march stayed separate and strong. I got there just as the march was beginning. The primarily Latino marchers had their banners and signs and the local news channels had their cameras and satellite trucks. I just tried to dive into the middle of it all with my entanglement of camera, microphone, tripod, headphones and extra tape.
In a previous post, one of my fellow journalists remarked about how she felt when she realized she was one of the few black people at the downtown march about a week ago. The sounds of Spanish flew back and forth with little English breaking it up.
This time the message had gotten out that the Mexican flag waving and the absence of the American flag was, to put it mildly, freaking some people out. While the march in the San Fernando Valley was primarily Latino, people were waving flags from all over the world. They were encouraging their children to grasp the handles of Honduran flags in the same hand as Old Glory. And they were willing to talk to me in English.
One of the first men I talked to thanked me for being black and being there. He said we needed to stick together. Another mixed-race woman spoke about why it was important for her to be there as someone who identified as black and Latina. And when English was difficult for some, there were willing translators.
It’s funny how the media can help alter a message. Just last week there was a piece by George Skelton in the LA Times about how “pictures convey the message.” He goes on to write,
“But those Mexican flags, the human traffic barricades, the school boycotts complicate the building of public support — and politically could hurt supportive Democrats among moderate voters.
“Marchers who carried American flags got it right,” says Republican consultant Wayne Johnson. “They were saying, ‘we embrace the American dream.’ That was really smart. Marchers who carried Mexican flags, that was really dumb.” (Read the entire piece here.)
This time the marchers got it right. The organizers are starting to understand the mixture of message and picture that they need to convey to make people sympathetic to the cause instead of scared.
Oh, and you know who else is getting it. The vendors who push their carts along the march selling an array of flags. Well, flags and balloons… you know… for the kids.
Video from Los Angeles, April 10 (1m 47 sec) [1:46m]: 
