City News Service, April 24, 2006, Monday

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April 24, 2006 Monday 8:16 AM PST

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

BODY:
An advocate for the homeless who organized an anti- illegal immigration protest in Leimert Park that turned into a shouting match and scuffle apologized today.
"I blew it and I apologize for my actions," Ted Hayes said in an interview with CNS. "I have no excuse."
The anti-illegal immigration rally yesterday drew about 100 people, including counter protesters who tried to drown out those who had a city permit to be in the park, Hayes said.
As Hayes tried to talk to reporters, an unidentified man pushed through the crowd and began heckling.
"That person was wrong, no question about it, but my response was even worse," Hayes said.
Hayes said he asked the man to leave, and the man threw his hands up in the air and said that if Hayes touched him he would sue.
"And like a dummy, I said 'yes, I will touch you,' and gently put two hands on his chest," Hayes said.
With news cameras recording the moment, the two men briefly scuffled, but no punches were thrown.
"I apologize to him, to the Latino community, I apologize to the black community, to the Minutemen," Hayes said. "I behaved out of policy."
The scuffle overshadowed the message Hayes was trying to send, he said, which is that most homeless people in Los Angeles are black and that illegal immigration compounds the problem.
"And that's one reason why black people are living homeless in the condition that we are living in right now, because we refuse to work for slave wages," he said.
A 2004 book, "The Impact of Immigration on African Americans," found that immigration has led to lower wages for less skilled and less educated blacks and their substantial displacement from the job market, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"In this era of mass immigration, no group has benefitted less or been harmed more than the African American population," one of the book's authors, Vernon M. Briggs Jr., a Cornell University labor economist, told The Times.
Hayes said he supports legal immigrants but resents the fact that immigration activists compare their movement to the black civil rights movement. He said they should wage their fight south of the border.