Advocates Picket Sox-Diamondbacks Game in Protest of Anti-Immigrant Arizona Law

BOSTON/Fenway - About 100 immigrant, labor, community and religious advocates held a picket outside the Boston Red Sox-Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game at Fenway Park on Tuesday in opposition to an Arizona law that they believe is discriminatory to immigrants. Organizers said that they were calling on Major League Baseball to reschedule the 2011 All-Star game to a city outside of Arizona - which is the target of growing international boycott since the April 23rd passage of the controversial legislation SB 1070.

The legislation is scheduled to go into effect on July 28th, and will mandate that all immigrants in Arizona will be required to carry registration documents required by federal law at all times. Opponents say that the law violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution which states that only federal authorities may enforce federal law - and that it will lead to racial profiling by Arizona state and local police, violating immigrants' civil rights.

The Boston New Sanctuary Movement - a coalition of over 20 local faith-based organizations and a chapter of the national New Sanctuary Movement - called the demonstration.

"We came to cheer for the Red Sox and to jeer Arizona's anti-immigrant, racist law, said Anthony Zuba," lead organizer of the Massachusetts Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice and member of the Boston New Sanctuary Movement. "And in our opinion a good way to overturn a bad law is to impose an economic sanction in the form of a boycott. We think Major League Baseball can do a world of good by moving next year's All-Star Game out of Phoenix."

"My fellow faith-based activists and I believe that God knows no borders and that no human being is illegal. It is in fact heretical for a Christian or any God-fearing person to make laws that criminalize or penalize a class of human beings simply because of the way they entered the country."

The anti-immigrant Mass. Senate budget amendment 172.1 was also criticized at the event.

The picket started up at 6 p.m. at the corner of Lansdowne St. and Brookline Ave in front of Fenway Park as baseball fans began streaming towards the stadium entrances. Activists chanted pro-immigrant slogans, handed out informational leaflets to curious onlookers, and encouraged people attending the game to hold up signs supporting their cause inside the stadium.

Apart from occasional derisive and derogatory comments from some fans - and two men holding an American flag and Arizona flag respectively while hovering next to the picket line - there was no organized counter-demonstration.

The activists continued picketing until game time and then dispersed peacefully. There was a light police presence and no arrests.