1199ers Join New Yorkers at Mets’ CitiField on July 30th
1199SEIU members will join with friends from SEIU Local 32BJ, Latino Sports, the Latino Sports Writers Association, and the New York Immigration Coalition at 6pm on Friday, July 30h in a rally outside of CitiField in Queens, the home of the New York Mets baseball team.
That evening, the Arizona Diamondbacks will be in town to play the Mets. The demonstration will demand that the 2011 All-Star Game be moved out of Arizona to protest recent apartheid-like racial profiling laws in that state. The protest is not against the Diamondbacks as a team, although their owner is a heavy contributor to the Arizona state Republican Party which pushed through the bill.
New Yorkers will now join baseball fans in Philadelphia, Denver, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and St. Louis, who have all mounted similar demonstrations when the Arizona team has visit.
The Major League Baseball Players Association, the players’ union, has condemned the Arizona racial-profiling laws. Many big league players have also spoken out against the law and some have declared that they will boycott the event if the All-Star Game remains in Phoenix next year.
On July 9th, 1199ers joined hundreds of others of New Yorkers at a lunchtime rally in front of the Manhattan headquarters of Major League Baseball, to demand that the 2011 All-Star Game be moved out of Phoenix as part of the national boycott of Arizona.
The demonstrators sang “Take the game out of Phoenix” to the tune of Take Me Out the Ball Game. U.S. Representative Jose Serrano, whose district includes Yankee Stadium, and former 1199er Melissa Mark-Viverito, now a member of the NY City Council, and other elected officials, were on hand to show their support. Moving the All-Star game from Arizona would be one more blow to the state’s economy, which is now being boycotted by countless entertainers, businesses, organizations and municipalities.
1199SEIU members and families concerned about comprehensive immigration reform are encouraged to join the CitiField demonstration on July 30th. For further information, call or email the office of Executive Vice President Estella Vazquez at estelav@1199.org or call our hotline at 212-408-8416.