One day after the New York Times hailed a grand total of four protesters of immigration enforcement, another tiny left-wing protest of “dozens” against Arizona’s new immigration law made The New York Times on Friday -- outside a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Reporters Monica Davey and Michael S. Schmidt never used a liberal label for the protesters, even as they cited organizer Leone Jose Bicchieri, who’s hailed in one biography as a “Witness for Peace” when Marxist-Leninists ran Nicaragua in the 1980s. The leftists even called a black man a racist for opposing them:
At one point, a fan, carrying his own bullhorn and two large American flags, got into a screaming match with protesters as he declared that he was "standing with America's favorite pastime" and urged the crowd not to boycott Arizona at all. The protesters chanted at the man, who was African-American, "Racist, go home!"
Davey and Schmidt also relayed: “Outside Wrigley, Connie Andersen, dressed in Cubs gear, said of the Arizona law, ‘This is a speedy path to Nazi Germany fascism.’”
Arizona Republic reporter Nick Piecoro also reported the protest, and began by estimating “a boisterous group of roughly 50 people” protested. “Among the signs on display was one comparing Arizona to Nazi Germany, and another with a hooded Ku Klux Klansman replacing the star in Arizona's state flag.”
Bicchieri was featured on page A-12 shouting into a bullhorn in a color photo. The Times explained: “Protest organizers here called for like-minded people elsewhere to take the fight to other games - basketball, hockey, you name it - against any Arizona team. Leone Jose Bicchieri, one such organizer, said his group also was urging baseball teams (including the Cubs) to move their spring training headquarters out of Arizona.”
More context on how much of leftist Bicchieri is comes from the web site of the Main Street Project:
Leone Jose Bicchieri has almost 20 years experience organizing Latino and other immigrant workers. He is the executive director of the Chicago Workers Collaborative (CWC), a worker center which organizes low-wage workers to understand and fight for their rights. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Chicago-based Center for New Community. Leone has played organizing and leadership roles with Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, Interfaith Worker Justice, Oregon's Farmworker Union, known by its Spanish acronym of PCUN, and was an organizer for the Justice for Janitors Campaign with SEIU Local 1 and Witness for Peace in a rural war zone in Nicaragua.
Another biography elaborated on the Sandinista sympathizer: "Leone worked with Witness for Peace in a rural war zone in Nicaragua from 1988-1991, collaborating with the local catholic parish to document the effects of the Contra War." There's some details on his activities here.
Bicchieri went to Reed College, where his 1988 anthropology thesis was titled "Ideology and Expressiveness: The Russian Language in Soviet Society."
