Saturday morning, Cesar Chavez Park came alive with 1,500 marchers participating in the 10th Annual Cesar Chavez March.
Cesar Chavez Park marked the finishing point for the marchers, who initially began at Arteaga's Supermarket in West Sacramento. Al Rojas, first vice president of the California State Employees Association and executive board member for the Sacramento Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, said he believes the march had "a lot more enthusiasm, spiritually, compared to last year." The march has local significance dating back to 1965, when Chavez led grape pickers on a 340-mile march from Delano, Calif. to Sacramento.Jobs, education and immigration reform were some of the issues addressed throughout the day. Moreover, Rojas explained the march expanded to Yolo County this year in response to a perceived increase in recent oppression and racial profiling by judicial law enforcement in the county.
The festival in the park that followed the march was a much lighter side of the event as a whole. It featured traditional Mexican cuisine, classic cars and live musical entertainment, covering crowd favorites such as Santana.
Informational booths, like the Latino Democratic Club's, were set up to discuss current politics affecting the Latino community and ways to get involved. Other booths contained information on subjects like drug