Peace Or Riot On May 1?

Nation editor and leftyblogger Mark Cooper has an op/ed on Monday's immigration rallies in today's LATimes that includes this:

The millions of workers in the nation's underground economy who pick our crops, cut our lawns, pluck our chickens and slaughter our hogs have gotten a bum deal. We make them run a perilous gantlet at a rough-and-tumble Mexican border.

I'll skip the cheap shot, because his point isn't that we push them into this, it's that we don't give them an easy way to do it legally. And if it's not easy to do it legally, we shouldn't expect them to be legal.

That's always been the liberal rub, eh? Quick, painless and easy could be the three platforms of the Democratic Party. Anything, like the war in Iraq, that's hard and drawn out is not a Dem platform-maker. "Raise a tax, create an entitlement, run and hide. Just don't make me work at it."

Cooper does a couple good things, though. He points out that International ANSWER is working hard to radicalize the march. People need to know that the Socialist- Communist- Anarchist faction is all in a tizzy about this little effort.

And he doesn't think people should walk off their jobs -- a late afternoon demonstration would be better. As if illegals get afternoons off. As if public transportation would deliver them in time. Cooper's a bit of an elitist here.

He's not anti-walkout because jobs are sacred or anything, but because he feels Big Mo is in the illegals direction now, with Congress working on an approach to reform he blesses as good, i.e., easy. A big to-do and Congress might just consider illegals to be illegal.

So, which are we pulling for on Monday, a calm, respectful march, or a huge walkout that gets out of hand?

Tags: Illegal immigration, Illegals, May 1, Demonstation, International ANSWER