SAN DIEGO – Latino leaders from Southern California began a caravan this Friday that they expect to gather support on their way to Florida, where they plan to protest on July 1 when anti-immigrant law SB 1718 goes into effect in that state.
Less than a dozen vehicles set off in a caravan from Chicano Park, in San Diego’s Logan Latino neighborhood, to begin a tour of cities with significant Latino and immigrant communities in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana, before arriving in Florida.
“This caravan is equivalent to saying ‘enough is enough’ to policies that seek to criminalize and take away the most fundamental rights of our immigrant communities,” said Pedro Ríos, director of the American Friends Services Committee border project.
“It’s a pretty dangerous initiative because it points to immigrants as potential targets for violence,” Ríos warned of SB 1718.
The lawyer Estela Jiménez said, for her part, that the announcement of the entry into force of this legislation could cause an exodus of immigrant families to other states.
“There has really been a massive outflow of immigrants from Florida, and this affects everything, but more than the departure of farm workers, who are so valuable in this nation and whose rights are given very little visibility,” he added. .
Along with the caravan, the activists simultaneously promote a boycott of Florida products and tourism to that state.
The same organizers of the caravan started the boycott in the city of Chula Vista in San Diego County a few weeks ago.
Jiménez said he was unaware of the impact that this boycott has had, but indicated that this call “is already known here, but it can have a lot of impact if it continues in Latin America.”
Gloria Saucedo, an activist leader in the region for more than 30 years, pointed out that the caravan seeks to “show that there are politicians who want to use immigrant workers as tokens in their political and electoral campaigns.”
“It would be great for the people to rise up as they did in California when they opposed anti-immigrant Proposition 187, very similar to this SB 1718 in Florida, and for the community to achieve there what they did here, for California to be a very Since that racist law, a Republican became a Democrat and has not changed, ”he considered.
The composer Eduardo Parra participates in the caravan, who made adaptations to some songs to premiere them on the journey to Florida.
THIS WILL BE THE STOPS OF THE CARAVAN “WE ARE ALL FLORIDA”
The caravan is scheduled to arrive first in Los Angeles, where it will hold a rally, and plans to participate in a Sunday mass on Sunday before continuing on to Arizona. This is the itinerary they plan to carry out.
- June 23 – San Diego
- June 24 and 25 – Los Angeles, California
- June 26 – bound for Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona
- June 27 – New Mexico
- June 28 – Houston, Texas
- June 29 – New Orleans, Louisiana
- June 30 – Tallahassee, Florida
- July 1 to 4 – boycott
WHAT IS SB 1718 ABOUT?
Florida Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis signed SB 1718 into law on May 10, purportedly “to combat the dangerous effects of illegal immigration caused by reckless border policies.”
The law, written in terms that criminalize undocumented workers, requires employers in the state to verify the legitimacy of worker documents and information online, and disallows identification issued to them by other states, such as driver’s licenses.
At the start of the caravan in San Diego, Benjamín Prado, from Unión del Barrio, warned that DeSantis may launch SB 1718 with the idea that the jobs his state loses will be recovered, but from now on it has an impact on the economy of that state, so even the Republicans are beginning to oppose that law.
