Thousands Protest Arizona Immigration Law

Some 2,500 people marched to the state capitol yesterday to protest Arizona's new immigration law, with one speaker warning that the controversial bill has "awakened a 21st century civil rights battle." It was the third day of protest against the law, which is the first in the nation to require state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws and aliens to carry registration documents with them at all times, notes the Arizona Republic.

"We are human," read signs carried by chanting, flag-waving demonstrators. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon also attended the protest, calling the new law "just plain wrong, and vowing to challenge it all the way to the Supreme Court. "This is not what this country and state was founded upon," he told the cheering crowd.
(More state legislature stories.)