FEBRUARY
They marched barefoot along downtown streets to City Hall to make the point that laws passed there had caused them suffering. They circled City Hall carrying brooms. They fasted for seven days on the building’s front steps. When one of their members died in a car crash returning from a protest, they held five nights of candlelight vigils at nearby Olvera Street, calling their departed friend a martyr to their cause. The demonstrations organized by Latino gardeners against a Los Angeles city ordinance prohibiting the use of gasoline-powered leaf blowers were among the most dramatic and photogenic events in the city this year. In the end, the Assn. of Latin American Gardeners did not succeed in persuading the City Council to overturn the law. But the gardeners won a symbolic victory when the state Assembly passed a bill that would prohibit leaf-blower bans. The bill moved to the state Senate, where a key legislator said he would kill it. The bill remains bottled up in committee.
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