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The migrant caravan was 300 miles away, but Rigo Gonzalez was ready to speak on its behalf Sunday as he took a microphone and stepped onto a wooden box at the Arizona State Capitol.

He wasn’t affiliated with any group, but he called himself the group’s “mouthpiece,” the loudest voice among more than 100 with the national “Stop the Tears” movement whose members spent Sunday in Phoenix chanting and collecting donations for families seeking asylum.

Gonzalez knew exactly what he wanted to say as he raised the microphone: The group had been abused at the border, asylum seekers should be allowed to apply and that, once again, their rights were under attack.

“Hold on!” somebody yelled.

One of the speakers hadn’t been plugged in. An organizer ran behind Gonzalez, connected two cables and nodded toward Gonzalez.

“OK,” he said, his voice booming from both speakers. “Twice the power!”

‘People are still paying attention’

It had been just one week since Border Patrol agents closed a port of entry and launched tear gas at a group of migrants who tried to rush the border near Tijuana.

Activists started planning Sunday’s protest the next day, pulling together 10 Phoenix organizations and joining a weekend of nationwide action.

They called it “Stop the Tears.”

“The main goal is to bring people together to talk about what happened at the border,” said Kevin Leora, a member of the activist group Living United for Change in Arizona —LUCHA — who helped schedule speakers for the rally. “And to also make sure people are still paying attention.”

Supplies to churches, cash for lawyers

They arrived before noon to set up speakers and a soapbox.

But the rally hit an early obstacle: It fell on the same day former U.S. Rep. Ed Pastor, who died Tuesday, was scheduled to lie in state at the Capitol. 

Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers were concerned about the protest’s noise, organizers said, and nobody had thought to get a permit. It took a round of last-minute phone calls to get permission to stay on Sunday. 

Eventually it came. Protesters walked into the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza carrying bags of blankets and sweatshirts, socks and shoes, toys and toothbrushes. Volunteers stacked them against a wall.

The physical supplies, organizer Veronica Monge said, would go to local churches, which have taken in more than 2,500 Central American families over the last two months. Any cash would go straight to the border, funding advocacy and legal representation.

Anjuli Morse brought all she could. She arrived midway through the rally, carrying a blue plastic tote of whatever might be useful.

“I definitely wanted to make a contribution,” she said. “This is just an incredibly personal issue for me, because of how my family came to Arizona.” Her great-grandmother rode a donkey from Mexico to Bisbee, she said, and her family had lived in Arizona ever since.

So Morse drove to the Capitol and dropped her collection of coats among the other donations. Then she walked into the crowd and joined their chants.

“Solid as a rock, rooted as a tree,” they chanted. “We are here, standing strong, in our rightful place.”

Among them was 12-year-old Leo Quiroz. It was his first protest, but already he knew what to do. He took a handmade sign — STOP THE TEARS — and held it high. 

“I don’t think it’s fair,” he said as his mother kept watch. “I want to fight for what I believe in.”

An incident as confrontation ensues

For two hours they rallied.

They chanted and sang and listened as speakers listed wide-ranging targets of their anger. President Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, Phoenix police and the media were all partly to blame, they said.

But they tried not to mention the opponents who were filming their every move.

A small group from the Patriot Movement AZ, a right-wing, pro-Trump, pro-ICE collective known mostly for yelling at local activists, stood on the edges of the plaza. They held a Trump banner and tried to interrupt every speech.

The two groups screamed sporadically at each other.

The rally proceeded peacefully until around 1:30 p.m. when a protester attending the “Stop the Tears” event sprinted across the plaza. At least four DPS troopers chased after him and wrestled him to the ground near a statue of a kneeling soldier.

More troopers arrived. At least a dozen surrounded him. The man kicked and tried to wriggle free, but he was detained, put in the back of a patrol vehicle and driven away.

It’s unclear exactly what happened. The man, who could not be immediately identified, had been screaming back-and-forth with Patriot Movement AZ members all afternoon.

DPS Capt. Jeff Sharp said only that the man had been “acting disorderly.”

‘How do we resist?’

In the plaza, the rally kept going before ending with a pair of poets.

First up was a man called Myrlin. He said he taught poetry across the country, working in prisons and schools, and had seen firsthand the pain caused along the border.

But he wasn’t an activist. He wasn’t an organizer.

He was just a writer, so he took the microphone and started to read aloud.

“And how do we resist?” he began.

The question hung in the air.

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