Published: July 9, 2010
NEW YORK, N.Y. - Pro-immigration groups gathered outside Major League Baseball headquarters in Manhattan on Thursday to protest keeping the 2011 all-star game in Phoenix.
Demonstrators said the game should be moved from Arizona in opposition to the state's strict new immigration law, signed in April. The statute, SB 1070, requires police, while enforcing other laws, to ask about a person's immigration status if there is reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally.
"It goes against the core of who we are as a country," Hector Figueroa, secretary treasurer of immigrant labour union 32BJ, said of the Arizona law.
Organizers played "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and the national anthem. Participants carried signs like "Steal bases, not civil liberties" and "Take me out to the ball game, don't check my papers first."
Commissioner Bud Selig has repeatedly said the game will remain in Phoenix. MLB had no immediate comment on Thursday's events.
Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said Selig would show a "lack of courage" if he doesn't move the game.
"People don't want baseball to be associated with ... all that the Arizona law represents," she said.
Andrea Callan of the New York Civil Liberties Union held a sign that read "Sheriff Joe is not a team player." She said it was important to directly take their message to MLB.
"Maybe if they see us in person they'll hear our message more loudly," said Callan, the incoming statewide advocacy co-ordinator for the group.
A smaller counter-movement of people in support of the Arizona law also gathered outside the MLB offices. New Yorkers for Immigration Control and Enforcement president Joanna Marzullo, wearing a cap said that "U.S. Border Patrol," said she isn't necessarily a big fan of baseball.
"I'm a big fan of the game remaining in Arizona," she said.
Also posted on: ballhype.com, San Francisco Chronicle, The Press-Enterprise (PE.com), timesunion.com, Metro News, The Canadian Press and USA Today.
