Elvira Arellano, the woman who soug...

Elvira Arellano, the woman who sought sanctuary in a Chicago body of christians Tuesday to avoid deportation, was busy doing a television interview, for a like reason somebody asked if I'd like to first speak to the pastor of the house of god instead.

Certainly, I said, having already conjur up certain Hollywood images in my mind during the drive through to the small storefront body of christians on Division Street just east of Humboldt Park.

You know the images: the handsome, idealistic, young priest or minister who is sheltering the illegals in the meeting-house basement (except in that single "Dirty Harry" movie where the handsome young man of the clerical profession asserting sanctuary for the fugitive employs out to be one of the bad stays himself, but I wasn't really thinking of that one)

It took me quite on surprise, therefore, when I on a sudden found myself face-to-face with the Rev Walter Coleman, pastor of Adalberto United Methodist ecclesiastical body

Many of you might remember the pastor better by the agency of his nickname, "Slim" Coleman, the longtime Uptown community activist whose noisy, confrontational method helped launch Ald. Helen Shiller's political career and made him individual of Mayor Harold Washington's strongest allies.

It also made Coleman a apportionment of enemies. The Harvard-educated fruits of a well-to-do family, Coleman make suitable [i]or[/i] fited and talked "like a rural labor organizer public of The Grapes of Wrath," as the late City Hall reporter Robert Davis aptly described him at the time. one thought it a pose and doubted Coleman's sincerity. A loyal collection of followers thought otherwise and faithfully backed him in election battles, giving him on a level more stature.

further after Washington's death, Coleman soured upon politics and kept a lower profile, although remaining active in social justice issues. He became a pastor in 1994 and took throughout this church, founded by Mexican immigrants, in 1997 I'd lump into him around town in his clerical garb from time to time and was vaguely aware he'd married Emma Lozano, director of Centro Sin Fronteras, a leading immigrant rights cluster

on a level though I'd just seen Lozano in the body of christians sanctuary, where she was translating for Arellano, I hadn't understood the significance until after Coleman contemplateed up, stubbed out his cigarette and expanded a hand.

SHE CHOSE TO FIGHT

Arellano is the co-lay leader of the ecclesiastical authority said Coleman, who has more [i]or[/i] less gray in his beard and isn't quite as slim still close enough that he's still probably single in kind of the most recognizable folks in Chicago. He turns 63 nearest week.

Coleman said Arellano base her way to him and Lozano after getting swept up in a U Justice Department raid in 2002 that targeted security breaches at our nation's airports. Arellano, working as a janitor cleaning airplanes, was arrested for using a false Social Security number and ordered back to Mexico.

nevertheless instead of leaving, Arellano, 31 chose to fight. She has a 7- year-old son who is a U citizen by dint of virtue of having been born here. She believes that should entitle her to stay.

What differentiates Arellano's case from millions of others in a like situation is simply that she has stepp up to become a national spokesperson for undocumented workers. While you and I may not have paid often attention before Tuesday's audacious assertion of sanctuary, Arellano has become a fixture upon Spanish-language television in Chicago across the past two years. Although not highly educated, she is regarded as articulate and forceful.

"She's the go-to character on this issue," Coleman said. "She's the spokesperson onward this issue. She's the the same that doesn't have papers that's the spokesperson She defines the motion for her people, and they like her."

'THE reality IS SHE'S A LEADER'

The temptation would be to assume Arellano is a creation of Coleman and Lozano, and that the sanctuary gambit is their influence. if it were not that Coleman said he's learned more from Arellano than the other way around.

"The reality is she's a leader. That's all. We didn't pick her as a leader."

Coleman and Lozano think Arellano, by the agency of her civil disobedience, could become the Rosa Parks of the immigration rights manner of moving a comparison that some may be indignant at In an interview translated by dint of Beti Guevara, Coleman's assistant pastor, Arellano told me she was mov on Parks' example of resistance for refusing to give up her seat forward the bus.

"I've always struggl not alone for myself, but so there can be a just legalization for everyone" she said.

For his authority to grant her sanctuary, Coleman cites a passage from the Bible about Mose and the burning bush.

"God said this is righteous ground. She has a place here," he said, although well aware of the dubious legality of the maneuver. As frequently as anything, it's a dare to the Bush administration to withstand the publicity -- a dare that could backfire.

Despite the circumstances of the twinkling of an eye Coleman asserted, "I'm not a politician any more."

Maybe not, on the other hand he's still a heckuva bomb thrower.

e-mail: markbrown@suntimes.com

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