Lawyer Domingo Garcia is brushing off criticism that the involvement of activists like him held down the turnout at last weekend’s March in Dallas for immigration reform. The charge was made in a DMN op-ed Wednesday by Edward Retta, who wrote that “when certain personalities are preeminent, many Hispanics turn away.”
Retta is one of “four or five Hispanic Republicans” who don’t want immigration figuring in the November elections, said Garcia, buttonholed last night at the annual FightNight bash at the Hilton Anatole. Even if last Saturday’s turnout was “only” 25,000 or 50,000, Garcia said, it was still “the second-largest demonstration ever in the state of Texas.” In 2006, as many as half a million marched for immigration reform in Dallas.
Garcia, a former state representative described as a co-organizer of last Saturday’s march, said he’s gearing up now for something called the “Freedom Bus,” a bus carrying immigration-rights supporters that will leave Dallas next Thursday bound for Phoenix.
Garcia said the outing, sponsored by the League of United Latin American Citizens, will include stops en route–in Midland-Odessa (Garcia’s hometown); El Paso; Las Cruces, N.M.; and Tucson–and hopefully will become “a caravan” by the time it reaches Arizona’s capital city.
There, Garcia said, the bus riders–including members of DFW’s Jewish and African-American communities–will demonstrate against Arizona’s controversial new law cracking down on illegal immigration.
