Well-Organized "Spontaneous" Demonstrations

Yah. We knew this instinctively, but here's the documentation:

Many of the 500,000 people who crammed downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to protest legislation that would make criminals out of illegal immigrants learned where, when and even how to demonstrate from the Spanish-language media.

For English-speaking America, the mass protests in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities over the past few days have been surprising for their size and seeming spontaneity. But they were organized, promoted or publicized for weeks by Spanish-language radio hosts and TV anchors as a demonstration of Hispanic pride and power.

In Milwaukee, where at least 10,000 people rallied last week, one radio station manager called some employers to ask that they not fire protesters for skipping work.

In Chicago, a demonstration that drew 100,000 people received coverage on local television more than a week in advance.

"This was a much bigger story for the Latino media," said Felix Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. "If the mainstream media had been paying better attention, there would not have been the surprise about the turnout."

...

In Milwaukee, the Spanish-language station WDDW 104.7 made a point of publicizing the House legislation and the protest against it on its morning and drive-time shows two weeks ahead of time. Operations manager Armando Ulloa said his goal was at least 10,000 people -- and police estimated that was what the rally attracted. After the march, Ulloa said, he called some employers and asked them to be lenient on protesters who missed their shifts.