Immigration protest evokes varied emotions

Re “What was lost in the crowd,” Opinion, May 3

Erin Aubry Kaplan was struck by the preponderance of American flags carried by the marchers “with no animus toward what it represented.” Did she believe the marchers had reason to feel some animosity toward a country they invaded, and then had the nerve to demand all the rights of a citizen of that country? Is Kaplan really so naive?

Why was she surprised about the absence of black people, when they are the ones being shut out of the kind of jobs that once supported their families?

DONA JONES

Placentia

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I was moved by Kaplan’s column in a way that took me by surprise. I had been browsing several news sources for different coverage of the immigration protests. I am a second-generation Italian American, and I thought the days when my family was identified as immigrants had passed away with my father years ago. The perspective of this article, through the poignant yet eerie observations Kaplan uses to relate the struggles and all that has been won and lost over time, induced an emotional reaction that is difficult to describe.

I found myself sitting alone in my kitchen responding to the immigrant experience, trying to hold back the tears that insisted on being recognized.

MARILYN T. PAVENTY

Red Bluff, Calif.

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Re “Boycott? More like bullying,” Opinion, May 4

Leslie Sanchez doesn’t buy the comparison of Monday’s demonstrations for immigrant rights to the 1965 Selma-Montgomery march. She calls the immigrant demonstration “a boycott whose explicit purpose was to inflict economic pain” (I wonder what she thinks about the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott sparked by Rosa Parks).

These demonstrations were as much for voting rights as Selma-Montgomery. It wasn’t by chance that one of the main slogans of the demonstration was, “Today we march, tomorrow we’ll vote.” Calling peaceful marches of more than 1 million people nationwide “bullying” is nothing more than the cheap propaganda Alabama Gov. George Wallace was known for.

I doubt Sanchez went to the demonstrations. Otherwise she wouldn’t quote the racist Minutemen group’s claim that a million people marched under the Mexican flag. The flag that was seen everywhere at these demonstrations was the American flag. In the future, this day will be remembered as a great American civil rights march.

BENJAMIN ROSENDAHL

Los Angeles