Fort Worth Immigration Riot

There was a near-riot outside my office building yesterday when several hundred high school students decided to march up and down Main Street. They were protesting immigration reform and expressing their desire to stay in the United States and have their rights recognized by the US Government by waving Mexican flags and chanting "Mexico! Mexico", "U-S-A... let us stay!" and "What do we want? Freedom! When do we want it? Now!" Is there not a sense of irony in all of this? Trying to say you are an American by waving a Mexican flag? Chanting for freedom while exercising your freedom to assemble and pecefully protest the government?

Anyway, after a peaceful 45 minutes things inevitably got out of hand. The protesters tried to enter the hotel across the street. Some of the students thought it would be a good idea to kncok over some paper boxes. The Police tried to get the students out of the street so traffic could flow again. That's when a student pushed a bicycle cop off of her bike and all heck broke loose. Within 30 seconds about 15 bike cops and 30 squad cars were on the scene. Officers flowed into the mob, breaking it up into smaller groups. As we watched from our sixth floor conference room windows, officers grabbed students and threw them up against cars. They weren't cracking heads open but they were using quite a bit of force. The mounted police arrived and the horses did a good job of getting the rowdy crowd to settle down and start to disperse. Still, some of the more presistant students were cuffed as news helicopters circled overhead.

Within about 15 minutes the students regrouped and decided to parade around downtown in the backs of pick-up trucks. The police had a field day pulling them over and issuing tickets for expired regsitrations and driving without license plates. Who knows how many didn't have insurance.

It was a strange scene. Thursday I'm going to get my Canadian flag out and have my own march. Actually I think we're just going to go out in the street and play some road hockey. That's how Canadians get their point across best. CARRRR! Game on...