Marchers disappointed by turnout

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As the 10 a.m. start time for the march on City Hall nears, some protesters at the corner of Olympic and Broadway expressed frustration at the lower than expected turnout.

Marchers who attended last year’s May 1 rally recalled streets and sidewalks so packed with bodies that they couldn’t even sit down. This year, shortly after 9 a.m., only about a hundred flag-waving marchers had arrived.

‘This is not right,’ said Andres Meza, 41, an electrician from Placentia in Orange County who immigrated illegally from Mexico nearly 20 years ago.

Meza said the lack of comprehensive immigration reform has left him a life full of uncertainty, and prevented him from doing things like taking his 15 year-old daughter Arleth, a student of Japanese, to Japan, or even reporting simple crimes.

‘How can I complain to the police? How can I complain to the school? I don’t have papers, I’m afraid,’ he said.

Last year, Spanish language media played a prominent role in hyping the march. Now, Reza blamed them for the lower turnout. ‘They stay quiet,’ he said. ‘There’s no publicity. Last year, all of them were working as one to help.’

But Ricardo Robles, 21, who came to the United States illegally from Mexico about three years ago, said he wasn’t surprised that there were fewer people. Because Congress dropped some of the harshest immigration reform proposals, ‘a lot of people think that a second march isn’t necessary,’ Robles said.

But Robles, a landscaper from Oxnard who left his house at 6:30 a.m. to arrive at the march on time, said Congress can’t ignore the plights of immigrants. He hopes the march will force attention back on reform. ‘If you put your hands down,’ he said, ‘everything will stay how it was, and it will have just been a march.’

-Evelyn Larrubia at Broadway and Olympic