Salt Lake City, UT – Taylorsville Park became the site of heated exchange between the right-wing Patrick Henry Caucus picnic and a wide coalition of progressive organizations protesting them, June 4. Gregory Lucero from the Revolutionary Students Union coordinated the protest along with the Autonomous Brown Berets of Salt Lake City. They targeted the Patrick Henry Caucus because it supports bringing the Arizona apartheid immigration bill SB1070 to Utah.

The Patrick Henry Caucus is a far-right branch of the Republican Party, which supports cutting all social welfare programs, militarizing the border and supporting bills which allow for the checking of immigration status for ‘reasonable suspicion.’

Representative Carl Wimmer who supports the Patrick Henry Caucus said, “Illegal is a status, not a race. The Patrick Henry Caucus, in no way, shape or form, supports racial profiling.” Gregory Lucero disagreed stating, “There's no objective criteria by which you could determine or have reasonable suspicion of someone being illegal. In this case, the only criteria that could be used would be coincidental criteria like skin color or voice or accent, which have no legal bearing whatsoever.”

The protesters sought equal rights for all workers and an end to national oppression and discrimination. They chanted slogans such as, “Brown, black, yellow, white, same struggle, same fight.”

Gregory Lucero explained, “You have an extreme double standard here. Capital in the form of investment and industry travels freely to devastate the Mexican economy, but labor is criminalized and restricted as undocumented workers search for a better life.”

Daniel Argueta, a Brown Beret member, chastised Republican Senate hopeful Tim Bridgewater, “Tim, you've got to do what's right regardless of whether its popular with your party – and you know this bill isn't right.”

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