Advocates for Migrants Take to the Road
10/1/2003. The Washington Post
The apple and peach orchards here have long served as a beacon for migrants such as Hector Urive, who came from Mexico in 1977 to pick fruit alongside his father. He decided to stay for the opportunities the United States offers. ...

Marchers call for amnesty
10/1/2003. Herald Sun
In all of her years, the 40-year-old Mexico City native had never taken to the streets in support of anything.... Then she heard at church about Tuesday's march in Durham to advocate for immigrants' rights and felt that she should come to give her family a chance to reunite, she said. ...

Freedom Riders Of 2003
10/1/2003. The Washington Post
It seems only yesterday I was boarding a Greyhound bus in Washington to ride with a group of brave men and women into the Deep South, a part of America where decades-old Jim Crow laws still prohibited blacks and whites from sharing accommodations in bus stations and other public places. We called our journey a Freedom Ride, drawing on a tradition with roots in earlier 19th and 20th century moving protests against segregation. ...

Service honors those who died in '29
9/30/2003. The McDowell News
A service to remember the six workers killed in the bloody strike of 1929 took place in front of the Marion Manufacturing building Monday, 74 years after the tragic event. And the people who paused to remember these strikers from long ago said they found inspiration from this service to continue with their own struggles....

Workers resurrect '60s freedom rides
9/30/2003. The News Herald
Tommy Gallegos came all the way from Orange County, Calif., where he lives, to march through downtown Morganton on Monday afternoon in hopes of making a difference.Gallegos was marching with more than 150 other people in the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a national mobilization which focuses on immigration laws....

Representative Solis Introduces Resolution to Honor Freedom Riders
9/30/2003.
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Today, Representative Hilda L. Solis (CA-32), along with Representative Michael Honda (CA-15), introduced a House Resolution to express support for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, to honor the Freedom Riders for their courageous campaign, and to encourage the President and Congress to enact policies that support the goals of the Freedom Ride, including: legalization and a "Road to Citizenship" for immigrant workers, reunion of families in a timely fashion by streamlining our outdated immigration policies and protection and restoration of workplace rights for immigrants. ...

Immigrant freedom riders seek 'road map' for better life
9/30/2003. The Tennessean
Nashville stop brings out hundreds. Sylvia Carranza of Los Angeles got on the bus as a way to pay tribute to her immigrant parents. Federico Gonzalez of Tucson, Ariz., got on the bus as a way to tell the world: ''Hire me, watch me work.'' Genelle Gaudinez, from southern California, got on the bus to remind her how far her immigrant family has come....

Immigrants ride for rights in Atlanta
9/30/2003. Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last week Edna Silvester boarded a bus and began a mission that -- so far -- has taken her and about 100 other community activists and immigrants through the history-laden towns of Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham and Anniston, Ala. The group aboard two buses arrived in Atlanta on Monday singing "We Shall Overcome" and adding in Spanish "si, se puede" (loosely translated, "yes, we can") to the chorus....

Freedom riders gather to speak about immigrant issues
9/30/2003. Yale Daily News
Immigrants from around the globe stopped at the First and Summerfield United Methodist Church in New Haven on Monday as they continued on the ride of their lives from Boston to Washington, D.C., in pursuit of "The American Dream."...

Immigrants take long ride for freedom
9/30/2003. Financial Times
Gerthy Lahens-Justafort, a professional community organiser in Boston's low-income Roxbury neighbourhood, is indignant when she reflects on her experiences as an immigrant in the US workforce. Yesterday, Ms Lahens-Justafort began a fight for change by joining more than 1,000 immigrants for a cross-country "Freedom Ride". Buses leaving Boston and nine other cities will on Thursday descend on Washington, where participants will rally and lobby members of Congress to change the country's immigration policies....