This is a reflection by Jim Perdue of the United Methodist Southwest Conference.
Yesterday, people began to gather at the Arizona state capitol around noon on a beautiful May first day. It was partly cloudy and around 85 degrees. By 2 p.m., there we about two thousand people milling around various groups gathered on the front of the capitol lawn. It was more like the atmosphere of a state fair; only the overwhelming majority of the people were Latinos.
By 4 p.m. there were more like three thousand there, as people were beginning to arrive after work. Most Latinos in the U.S. do work on Saturday, too. By 6 p.m., when a lot of the national press had wrapped up and the counter demonstrators with them, around eight thousand had arrived. Religious music was being played by a local Pentecostal band. By 6:30 around fifteen thousand had gathered and the music and prayers continued, punctuated by cheers and chants of “Sí se puede” (yes we can), “un pueblo unido nunca será vencido” (a people united will never be defeated), and “Obama, escucha, estamos en la lucha” (listen, Obama, we have entered the struggle).
By 7 p.m., the street along the East side of the capitol grounds had disappeared and the sidewalks and the grass farther on were covered by a sea of people – more than twenty thousand were there. That’s when the prayer service and the prelude to a spiritual pilgrimage around the capitol grounds began.
At 7:30, the pilgrimage itself began, led by the small group of youth, now leaders of this great sea of witnesses, youth who had begun a simple prayer vigil with sleeping bags and snacks over two weeks ago – there were seven of them. Nobody paid any attention to them then, but things have a way of changing. They were one of the reasons why many times during the day, we all sang “Si tuvieras fe como un grano de mostaza.” (If you had faith like a mustard seed).
Most of those youth leaders will have a hard time going on to college; and that may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for this beleaguered Latino community, because tomorrow fifty of them begin intense training in organizing, under the direction of Arizona Reform Immigration for America and local evangelical youth pastors. What a winning combination!
The spiritual procession began along the sidewalk, but it quickly spilled into one lane of the five-lane streets. A parade of cars accompanied the procession of pilgrims and honked their horns in cadence to “sí se puede.” By the time the pilgrims were half-way around the perimeter of the three city blocks of the capitol complex, police had barricaded all streets adjoining it. The people began to amass in the street for the home stretch of the pilgrimage, where they waded through another five thousand people that had gathered, and processed together to the stage. The band was playing celebratory religious music. More than twenty-five thousand people sang their hearts out, after which they entered into a closing time of prayer and blessing. Then, even more miraculously, they peacefully gathered up their children and loved ones, and they went home.
Two colleagues and I laughed and wished the local sheriff well on his most recent “crime spree,” since he found no one at home to arrest or harass. They were all at the capitol singing, praying, and conducting a spiritual pilgrimage focused around faith, hope, and the vote.
How ironic that the people of whom the Arizona Legislature and Governor were so afraid chose instead to respond by conducting what may go down in history as the largest prayer meeting ever conducted in the State of Arizona. Talk about “heaping coals on the heads of your persecutors.”
The other special joy of the day was to listen to the cheers of religious excitement when this great congregation heard that they were not just twenty-five thousand Arizonans gathered today. Over half a million people throughout the nation and around the world were in the streets with one single message, “Today, we are all Arizona.” Cheers went out again as they heard that over 6,500 United Methodist Women in St Louis had prayed, sung, and marched with them this day. They, too, were Arizona this day. Cheers went up once more when they heard that Representative Gutiérrez was arrested today in Washington, and was reputed to have said to the crowd as he was taken away, “I am Arizona.” One more time they cheered wildly as they learned that six religious leaders, representing a broad cross-section of the Arizona faith community, would represent them on May thirteen before the Arizona Congressional and Senate delegations and Secretary Napolitano.
How will the political world deal now with this strong and gentle people who, while being oppressed by new laws and administrative practices every day, had a golden chance to demonstrate, but instead choose to pray? How can Arizonans continue to call a people on its knees before God a bunch of rapists and murderers? One day, perhaps we will be mature enough to thank our creator for this people that on the first day of May in 2010 taught us once more what we never should have forgotten. Let us pray Maranatha, even so come Lord.,/p>
(Photo via lclopez4)
Categories: Arizona, Civil Disobedience, May 1
Tags: Arizona, immigration, immigration reform, may 1 march, may 1st, phoenix may day, SB 1070
