With the surprise visit of Gustav – a category three storm-turned-hurricane – in New Orleans, the opening of the long-awaited Republican National Convention changed from a well scripted, carefully prepared political event to a tear gas-firing, glass-smashing anti-war protest in the blocks surrounding the RNC venue, the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

It was a day of unrest – and uncertainty at best – with the press waiting anxiously until noon to get a tentative schedule for the first day of the Republican National Convention, and tens of thousands of protesters took their messages to the street by means of slogan-shouting and, on several occasions, confronting the police officers who were equipped with pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets.

“It was a mess out here,” said Zyphus Lebrun, producer of CUNY TV's program “Independent Sources,” who traveled with six ethnic reporters sent by New York Community Media Alliance to the Twin Cities for the RNC.

According to the organizers – the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, the RNC Welcoming Committee and the Poor People's Economic and Human Rights Campaign – about 50,000 protesters joined the rally in front of the state capitol building and marched down the street around the Xcel Energy Center.

Although the turnout of protesters was a “success” in relation to the size of the metropolitan area of the RNC host city, it “ran out of control,” said Tomasz Deptula, senior editor of Nowy Dziennik / Polish Daily News, who witnessed the damage made by some protesters en route. At the intersection of Sixth Street and Wabasha Street, in downtown Saint Paul, three windows at Macy's were smashed by the protesters; about 15 feet away from the department store, the side and rear windows of a Minneapolis police vehicle were also crushed into pieces. Deptula believed the organizers were also responsible for this damage.

“I saw these people in masks, shouting offensive remarks both to the Republicans and the cops,” said the New York-based Polish-American reporter. “They [the organizers] should have predicted what would happen.”

Unlike the Democratic National Convention that ended last Thursday, where anti-immigration and pro-immigration rallies were held, in the first and last days respectively, no immigration-related activities are scheduled during the four-day Republican National Convention. The absence of such debate is most obvious when even the panel discussion on “Culture Wars: The Role of Gender, Ethnicity, and Values in the Fall Election,” hosted by the Hispanic Institute and originally listed on the event calendar as the only event that gave a slight hint of ethnicity and immigration issue by its title, was canceled due to a lack of sponsorship.

To ethnic reporters such as Deptula, who are always on the lookout for immigration references – by far the top issue of concern to immigrant readers – it was more than satisfying when he saw some immigrant rights advocates present at the anti-war rally on the first day of the RNC. “I didn't expect immigration to be a top issue [at the RNC],” he said. “[Yesterday] was primarily an anti-war demonstration, [but] I'm happy to see a sideshow on immigration.”

Nevertheless, to some others immigration and the military were issues that could intertwine with each other.

Gloria Barrios, who participated in the anti-war rally, is the mother of 27-year-old Blanca Luna, a Marine who was found dead, with a wound in the back of her neck, while serving in the Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas, in March of this year. To Barrios, who migrated from Guanajuato, Mexico, to the United States 24 years ago, the death of her beloved daughter brought not only devastation but also darkness to her family's pursuit of the American Dream; she could never believe that Luna committed suicide, the cause of her death according to the Marines.

“Luna was just in the Marines for four years right after she finished high school,” said the Mexican immigrant – wiping tears from her eyes – via a translator and advocate, Magda Castaneda, from the Committee Against the Militarization of Youth, a group that helps parents whose children are in the U.S. military forces.

“The issue is that our young men [and women] are losing their lives in the war,” said Castaneda. “They are children of immigrants. Immigrants want to live the American Dream – to have the liberty and beauty of a job, and the normal pursuit of happiness. And yet Barrios' daughter is now murdered, and the government has no answers but lies.”