On Sunday in DC, I attended the seventeenth ballpark protest of the
Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2011 baseball season. As in the other
actions-in cities from Houston to San Francisco to Milwaukee-people
chanted a loud and clear message to Major League Baseball commissioner
Bud Selig:
move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona
and make the state pay a price for enacting legislation that sacrifices
immigrant families at the altar of election-year politics. But
this demonstration was also deeply different from the sixteen others.
It was a day of rain, risk-takers, racists and rancor. And it couldn't
have been more terrific.
Nationals Security Guards Falls Chasing After Protestershttps://www.casualhoya.com/
First, the protest was publicly threatened by a pugnacious
anti-immigrant organization called Help Save Maryland. This past week, I
received a series of e-mails from people claiming to be connected to
the group in which they threatened to "swamp" the Move the Game
demonstration and drive immigrant rights supporters from the park. They
also taunted that my writing on the subject had led to them being
"overwhelmed with phone calls and volunteers." For the record, we had
100 people march during the two-hour protest. They had seven. The group
was so irrelevant that they went unmentioned-from
ESPN to politico.com - in the flurry of subsequent media coverage.
Second, the demonstration outside was combined with actions inside
the park where four daring activists stormed the field with one out in
the fifth inning, unfurling a banner calling for Selig to move the game.
In what could morph into
a youtube sensation,
an overzealous security guard attempting to accost them did a
less-than-graceful belly flop across the outfield. It might have been
the most exciting moment at a Nats game this season. Rosa Lozano, who
spent the evening in custody for taking the movement to the outfield
grass, said to me after her release, "I did it because when history
reflects this egregious time of civil and human rights violations I want
to be able to have pride in saying that I didn't stand idly by and
allow human beings to be treated like animals because of their
immigration status." Also, as the four were being arrested, two separate
banners with similar messages were draped over the outfield walls.
These banner bandits daring to display a message that didn't say "Drink
Budweiser" or "Buy Season Tickets" were banned from the ballpark for a
year
One of them, Brian Ward, said to me afterward, "I
find it funny how I am being banned from a stadium that I helped pay for
with my tax dollars. I say if that is what it takes to get the All-Star
Game moved, let's all do actions like we saw today and show that we are
willing to do whatever it takes to move this game and overturn SB
1070."
Another banner bandit, Navid Nasr, described to me a
scene in the crowd where "two fans to our left immediately became
extremely hostile and attempted to rip the banner away from us. Then
something kind of inspiring happened, two or three other fans leapt to
our defense, physically put themselves between us and the belligerents
and berated them, calling them assholes and telling them to leave us
alone and that we weren't harming anyone and that we have the right to
free speech."
Free speech at a publicly funded billion-dollar
park! What a concept! That description of political polarization
mirrored what picketers saw outside the park. Some fans were very
supportive, even joining in with the chants and doing a couple of turns
marching around in a circle, in full Nationals gear. Others yelled, and
heckled with all the zeal of Sarah Palin at a book-burning. Two demanded
to see the papers of a 17-year-old picketer, Nate Taitano, who happened
by sheer and utter coincidence, to have brown skin. After the
demonstration, the young man said to a gathered crowd, "I was born and
raised right here in DC. I should be asking them where the hell they're
from."
But most critically, thousands of flyers, detailing
how people could contact Bud Selig and insist that he move the game,
were passed out to open fans. By day's end, protesters were soaked,
hoarse and happy. As Gary Nelson, a firefighter from Baltimore who drove
an hour to be at the demonstration, said, "Evil flourishes when good
people do nothing. Today we did some good."