-Yes U. Si/We S. Se/Can A. Puede

Had I found an opportunity to engage in conversation with a marcher, I might have asked the man citing Jesus to consider a re-examination of Matthew 22. But such a request would likely have been met with a chant, or a challenge. Orlando's May Day immigrant march, like those in any city, was not about debate or dialogue--it was about numbers, and feelings.

Whoever is responsible for counting at these events stumbled a bit on the job, using a margin of error in the thousands in reporting the number of marchers. From my perspective at the edge of Lake Eola Park, all I can share with certainty is that the parade of souls took 45 minutes or more to pass my park bench. Let's use 25, 000.

As with the other rally I attended recently, I went as a witness. In neither case would I count myself a neutral observer, but I carried no signs and failed to chant, even a little. Because I arrived at Lake Eola rather early, I joined professional witnesses from the Sanford Herald and Orlando Sentinel awaiting the marchers under the park's shade trees. We small-talked about the route, and how one can gauge a march's progress by the movement of the helicopters. At least three on-site broadcast vans were parked on the grass near us to provide complementary close-ups to the helicopter long shots.

The Sentinel reporter interviewed me at length about the day's events. My ideas, unfortunately, were not presented in the next day's print edition. That was my first, and likely last Sentinel purchase. Not that I had anything all that original or innovative to say, but I would have liked seeing it in print.

I can not remember where I first heard mention of the rally. We do a pretty good job of ignoring the local news, so it was not on television. Likely talk radio did the job--that's pretty much all I hear when driving a car.

Sheryl also found a printed sheet on the street in front of our house, and brought it inside. Black smudges of tire-track or sneaker-print cover each side, but the message is still quite legible. Addressed to a "Patriotic American", the sheet spews sterotypical "us" and "them" dualism, using the word "illegal" four times and specifying Mexicans twice. If you live here, and are worried that, "THEY ARE PUSHING US AROUND IN OUR OWN COUNTRY! !", you may wish to call your senators. I think the numbers provided for Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez were the only objectively factual pieces of information that the sheet provided.

I certainly heard about the planned "anti" rally scheduled for 12:00 at the corner of routes 436 and 50. About 5 minutes before noon, I was driving through that intersection. The row of evenly-spaced American flags on two corners tricked me into believing I had found a very well-ogranized group. The only gathering behind the flags, however, was a collection of late model used cars. I continued driving toward downtown Orlando.

Police and reporters coalesced with me around the 6 counter-demonstrators at the corner of Eola Drive and Robinson. I can't really define what it is that draws me to these folks--likely, it is a desire to see them confronted, and the threat of violence and retribution that possibility generates. The woman in blue is the Sentinel reporter with whom I spoke. I believe the man doing the video-camera interview was from the local NBC affiliate. The sentiments on the signs the antis carried align pretty well with those on my tread-stained flyer. None are articulate, nuanced or even particularly clever, though one man arranged his placards with such care that he was able to alternate between six different messages. All of them inspired frenzied chanting and pointing from the marchers. If it were not for the pacifying presence of two bike cops and an organizer in an orange vest, the potential for violence would certainly have been realized. I saw one rock the size of an acorn hit a sign, and a chip of bark land at the feet of the sign-carriers. I am pretty sure I am the only one who noticed.

Using rough math, the counter-demonstrators near me made up approximately 0.024% of the Orlando-area residents who felt strongly enough to skip work and/or bother to show up downtown to make their feelings known. Sort of a pathetic showing, really, until one considers that many of those who might have come did not because they could not, or because they were frightened.

They poke up from below--our flyer-making, sign-waving, counter-demonstrating neighbors--the tip of a popular sentiment iceberg. To say it plainly, part of what draws me to those folks is their verve, their nerve, their balls (to put it baldly) in standing up for wildly outnumbered beliefs. They are wrong and the tide runs against them, but they soldier on--they all smoked, too, as far as I could tell. "Got Green Card" guy is a Marlboro man--you can see them in his pocket. I am pretty sure he got some above-the-fold quotes in the Sentinel.

What is more difficult to admire is the ignorance and truculence these people represent. My hope for an equitable solution falters in the face of radio hosts whose alliterative insults dismiss participants as "marching Mexicans" or the "hispanic horde". I can admire strongly-held feelings more easily when they are even remotely defensible.

They're frightened, after all. Hiding under layers of connotation, our fear of the "horde" resists daylight. Only the brave and misguided few here in Orlando were willing to give it small voice. We couch our fear of the other (you remember, from the flier--us and them) in economic, cultural and labor terms. They're stealing our jobs [direct quote from the flyer], soaking up all the welfare money--meanwhile, they want bi-lingual classes in our schools and I have to choose English to use an ATM! What the fuck is that?

You say "horde", I think ostrogoths, visigoths and vandals. Rape and pillage.

I'm no Solomon. In this instance, I'm not even a particularly constructive critic. To all concerned, I'd say this: Put your signs away. Forever. If protests were ever efficacious, those days have gone, unless the goal is a strong dose of self-righteousness. What, in a tangible, measurable sense, was achieved by all that marching? A sign, or hundreds of them bobbing in tandem, are about as effective at changing minds as bumper stickers.

Demonstrations and signs are not bad tools--they are just the wrong tools. You know the old saw about all problems looking like nails to the person holding a hammer? Because we don't know what to do with our beliefs or which tools we should be holding to get to work, (or even if we do) you and I are left to rely on the law-makers. Pragmatism and compromise will rule the day.

We can be very sure that the millions will not be rounded up and deported. I think we can be similarly certain that universal amnesty is a real long shot. Whatever else happens, there will surely be more signs, flyers, marches and bumper stickers. Enough . . .

Try some phone calls and e-mails, if you like. I hear congressional aides get after their senators and representatives when the messages really pour in.