Photos from May 1st Immigrant Rights March in San Francisco

Enough already! Why does the patriotism have to be on volume 11? The point is that people should have no borders, so why do we have to promote American pride? And the appeals to being decent workers, I mean it starts to seem less like a sensible tactic and more like a bunch of stunted humans begging to be accepted as docile wage slaves.

I've never waved an american flag in my life but I understand the strategy behind it. I believe we are trying to reach out beyond our regular coalitions. And how come the flag can't mean what its supposed to: freedom, unity democracy etc. instead of imperialism, bully tactics, ignorance and a history full of intolerance...

waving the flag isn't a strategy.

at best, it's a tactic.

i just hope people are being insincere.

Too many "we are all immigrant' signs today...Lets remember the Indigenous People of this land that are so often forgot about...Turtle Island was not empty when settlers arrived...This is our land meaning not that we owned it but that we belong to. Next time I will bring my upside down ameriKKKan flag to wave.

I totally understand you folks about the flag issue. This was nothing compared to out here in New York where the USA flag shit is out of control. But it also includes flags from latin america, which still imposes the ideas of frontiers, lines, separations. How can we be against laws that militarize the borders and then wave a flag? That in itself is enforcing the concept of borders. Colonizers brought the flag, let them take it back.

Dear Marchers,
The SF Chronicle is claiming that only 30,000 people marched for justice yesterday. These photos prove the Chronicle is wrong. Please call their city desk at 415-777-7102 and tell them to retract that number and print the truth that AT LEAST 200,000 were in the streets.

borders exist to maintain the natonal zoos of workers and keep them somewhat managed. flagwaving is a crude way of saying that so and so belongs here too, but it adds up to, i think, a giant mystification of the nation state as something we all signed up for, rather than as something that is an efficient political tool for groups of capitalosts to call the shots in some region of the world. and the "true" or "original" values supposedly symbolized by the flag? oh, come on, every country pretends its the shit, pure and overflowing with good intentions, honor, blather...why do people need to externalize their sense of what is good to an abstract entity instead of just saying this is what humanity ought to demand of itself, regardless of where you live? you think capitalists really give a flying fuck about patriotism?

Not a day to rally behind the flag, the flag that means so much to so many people, oppression, imperialism, & a selling of a dream of class mobility and melting pot assimilationism. I understand that the flag represents peoples' willingness to become Americans and is a tactic that is being used to counter right wing media backlash.
But come on, didn't people chanting USA want to make you throw up? Some progessives that I talked to today actually told me that they felt patriotic for the first in a long time. for real.
Maybe the flag and the ideal of America is just one of those things that Radicals and internationalist just cannot accept. If you have any knowledge of US peoples' history then you just have to accept that we are past the ideal of the us government meaning what it stood for in the ideal. A history of immigrants and struggle, a promise of inclussion and class mobility, a reality of severe economic divisions, corporate slavery, and a county that is basically insane.
what do people think of this?

How are we suppose to appeal to most Americans. Most aren't knee-jerk anti-flag fanatics. We didn't come here to revolutionize the working class. We came here to work, and want to be treated like humans, not second class Americans. The flag waving helps us gain inclusion and not face hostility from racism veiled as anti-immigrant.

Since when does pandering to the rest of America make a movement successful? It seems to me that it only self-dilutes the more radical points of the politics and opens up the floodgates for tidy liberal reforms, sweeping all else under the rug until...

A more explicit radical message that embraced the fucked precarity of all low wage workers to begin with, no need to even bring up the flag, except for the fact that its used as a cover when practical by capital. If business can go anywhere, why not people? Thats at least a liberal argument that opens up debate. I just think that its fear that drives this flag tactic and makes the illusion of the american dream live that much longer.

every thing happens for areson. the march was about immigrants wanting a better tomorrow. we are not criminals for wanting a better tomorow im here legally im going to suport my people. they did this for a reason. they were tired of being mistreated they wanted to be treated rigth. the immigrants aren't the only opne here illegaly there are other cultures.