Ethnic media galvanises protesters

If American politicians and pundits were clueless about the size and ambition of the immigrant rights' movement, it is because they live in a different media universe and speak a different language.

Much of the legwork for the big demonstrations in Los Angeles on 25 March and in Dallas on Sunday was done by local Spanish radio.

LA stations such as La Raza and La Nueva have been working for years, as have their counterparts in Chicago, Denver, Washington and New York, to offer advice to new immigrants on everything from accommodation, health care and schooling for their children to strategies for avoiding "La Migra" - the US immigration and border protection service.

Although the vast majority of the immigrants and their supporters have been Spanish-speaking, the radio campaign was mirrored by outlets such as Radio Seoul, Los Angeles's 24-hour Korean-language station. (An estimated one in five Koreans living in the United States is there illegally.) Despite talk of a "digital divide" separating wealthier Americans from the poor, the immigrants' rights movement has also been fuelled by mobile phone traffic, text messaging and e-mail bulletin boards.

An online chat network catering largely to young people, myspace.com, was particularly influential in organising Latino high school students in Los Angeles and elsewhere, getting them out on protests.