About 150 people from the Long Beach community, mostly youth of color, on Saturday, March 30 marched from City Hall to Caesar E. Chavez Park in support of comprehensive immigration reform.
Some marchers carried signs, which read, “No human being is illegal.” Another sign some marchers carried said, “This is what an immigrant looks like.”
The Filipino Migrant Center, Miguel Contreras Foundation, Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach, Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition and Bienestar (Spanish for wellbeing), which provides HIV prevention services in the LGBT-Latino community, each had a contigent.
One speaker at the park was Uduak Ntuk, from Organizing for Action, who characterized his organization as closely aligned with President Obama, said he was a neighborhood team leader, a second generation immigrant, born in southern California, whose parents’ backgrounds were German, Irish, French and Nigerian. Ntuk said, “Our city has more 125,000 foreign-born residents. The immigrant story is an American story. The immigrant story is a Long Beach story. We all deserve a common sense comprehensive immigration reform, that keeps our families together….The facts are immigrants are a net positive for our country and our community. They are paying more into the system than they are taking out.”
In an email the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community, a co-sponsor of the event, sent said the other co-sponsors were Filipino Migrant Center, Coalition for Latino Advancement, Future Underrepresented Educated Leaders, Miguel Contreras Foundation, Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project, Standing on the Side of Love, Orange County Dream Team, The Gay and Lesbian Center of Long Beach, Asian and Pacific American Law Center and Organizing for Action.
Barry Saks 
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