Rivera, a twenty-year-old Puerto Rican, was gunned down by an unidentified cop two weeks earlier. According to witnesses, the cop was investigating a purse-snatching incident. He spotted Rivera, shouted "Freeze," and three to five seconds later shot him in the back.

When two people who saw the suspect were asked to identify Rivera’s body, they told police, "That’s not him; he was taller and thinner."

Rivera’s father has filed a $4.5 million "wrongful death" lawsuit against the city.

Since the killing, the Chicano community has organized mass meetings, news conferences, and a petition drive demanding the identification and suspension of the cop; the firing of the police chief; and investigations by an independent citizens’ commission, the grand jury, and the federal government.

The unidentified cop is on a paid leave. "The policy of the National City City Council is that if you’re a cop and you want a vacation, just go shoot a Mexican," Herman Baca, chairperson of the Ad Hoc Committee on Chicano Rights, told a mass meeting prior to the march.

The spirited demonstration included friends, relatives, and neighbors of Rivera, families with young children, and older people who had never marched before.  
 
November 13, 1950
BUFFALO--The huge Lackawanna plant of the Bethlehem Steel Company was shut tight here this week by 17,000 workers in an unprecedented labor demonstration for Vincent Copeland, Lackawanna Steel union leader who was discharged by the company on a trumped-up charge of "instigating a wildcat walkout" of the blast furnace department where he is the chief grievance man. The demonstration showed the determination of the Lackawanna steel workers to reinstate Vince Copeland, who is widely known as an outstanding militant.

The company knew that a walkout would follow if they tried to discharge Copeland. It therefore issued instructions to bank the furnaces long before any of the workers knew that Copeland was about to be fired.

The first so-called "wildcat" walkout, which took place last week, was provoked by the company when it deliberately attempted to violate the seniority provisions of the contract, by announcing that it would hire men for its new sintering plant "from the outside" instead of from among the regular employees in accordance with their seniority status. The walkout lasted two days, and when the men returned to work, the company gave in on the grievance.  
 
 
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