Speakers started to wrap up almost four hours after the procession began at 11 a.m. on Vine Street. The crowd ended with a song.

—Jesse Bunch

As the crowd, estimated to be in the thousands by organizers, reaches City Hall, they chant: “We don’t trust the process.”

Building an arena near Chinatown is an attack on every immigrant community in the city, said Sarun Chan, executive director of the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia.

Communities are for more than entertainment, Chan said, they’re where people live, fall in love, conduct their lives.

”Chinatown is more than a few city blocks. It’s a freaking beacon of light,” Chan said.

State Rep. Tarrik Khan (D., Philadelphia), a member of the Pennsylvania legislature’s AAPI caucus, joked that the arena was a litany of bad ideas from the Sixers, from drafting Ben Simmons to hiring Doc Rivers.

On a more serious note, he said the project would be six years of chaos for the city during its construction.

“Find another project,” Kahn said, directing his words at wealthy developers. He suggested fixing public schools or enhancing Roosevelt Boulevard transit.

Taryn Flaherty, who was recently recognized by Bread & Roses with its emerging leader award and is the daughter of former mayoral candidate Helen Gym, spoke passionately.

“On our march here to City Hall we passed by the Fashion District mall, one of the many billionaire-driven developments sucking up city resources and promise to deliver economic prosperity for our city and its developers have left us with nothing now but an empty promise and a failing mall and now a new flock of predatory developers who set their eyes on Chinatown,” she said.

The crowd was cautious to cheer when Shawmar Pitts of Philly Thrive pulled his shirt off to reveal a Sixers jersey underneath.

But the activist quickly explained himself: He loves the Sixers, but not developers and management.

“Bring us a championship,” Pitts said, directing his words at the team. “But no arena in Chinatown.”

—Jesse Bunch

—Jeff Gammage

The march has paused for speeches at Cuthbert Street, where the arena would abut Chinatown. The nearby Greyhound bus station would be demolished.

— Jeff Gammage

Hundreds of marchers closed down streets in Center City as they staged a loud, colorful march against the Sixers proposal, led by a dancing red dragon and followed by people carrying flags and signs that said, “No Arena in Chinatown.”

Drummers banged a lively beat, as people of diverse colors, ages, religions, languages and beliefs shouted out their message. The march stretched across 10th Street, from the Plaza at Vine to the Chinatown gate and beyond.

Parents pushed babies in strollers, small children held the edges of 10-foot banners, and older people stayed close to friends in the throng.

— Jeff Gammage

Before Wei Chen, president of Asian Americans United, took the megaphone to open the protest with calls against the wealthy developers behind the arena, musicians with Son Revoltura led hundreds of marchers in a simple chant: “Save Chinatown.”

Forty-five minutes of speakers are expected, from longtime advocates to business owners.

Chen said protesters were standing up for the “Asian community, the BIPOC community, the working class community.”

— Jesse Bunch

At 96, it’s not easy for Chang Kai Jong to get around. But on Saturday he made his way to the plaza at 10th and Vine, saying he had to be with those who marched against the Sixers plans.

”It will destroy Chinatown,” he said. “Of course I’ll be here.”

Another longtime Chinatown advocate, Mary Yee, came to Vine Street repping a bowl of ramen on her head. She called the arena an “existential threat.” “We’ve been threatened so many times before,” Yee said.

— Jeff Gammage and Jesse Bunch

For Lily Fisher, a 17-year-old student from Springfield, Pa., the fight to save Chinatown was worth the solo train ride in from the suburbs.

Fisher, the president of her school’s Asian culture club, came to Chinatown’s 10th Street Plaza determined not to miss her chance to advocate for the community she cares about.

For previous community movements, she said, she was too young to attend.

Though still in high school, she had a firm grasp of Chinatown’s historic fights against developers, including opposition to the Vine Street Expressway project that would eventually cut through the neighborhood’s core.

Now old enough to make her voice heard, she’s wary of claims that the arena would be far enough away from the neighborhood as to not cause harm.

”The arena is going to be so close to Chinatown that the gentrification and displacement it would cause would be so severe, it would be tremendously dangerous,” Fisher said.

Citing examples of similar displacements, she motioned to the cities drawn on her sign. Pittsburgh, Washington, Portland, and other major metros are where Fisher says developers have harmed historic Chinatowns, in some cases almost taking them off the map with infrastructure and business projects.

”These aren’t just places people come to eat,” Fisher said. “They’re home.”

—Jesse Bunch

Streets will close and reopen as the protesters move through the city, ending at City Hall. For a full list of road closures, go here.

The Sixers have not responded to a request for comment on the march.

— Jeff Gammage

“It’s vile. And it’s racist,” said the Rev. Joseph Wallace-Williams, a member of POWER Interfaith, of the Sixers’ efforts to generate support for the proposed arena. “To pit people of color against other people of color. By rich white men.”

Wallace-Williams, pastor of the church of St. Luke and the Epiphany in Center City, said the arena would destroy Chinatown, and African Americans who have faced gentrification in Philadelphia understand that loss.

”The vast majority of Black folks stand with Chinatown,” he said.

» READ MORE: On Sixers arena, opinions differ among Philadelphia’s Black clergy and leaders

—Jeff Gammage

Taryn Flaherty and Kaia Chau have been chosen for the Bread & Roses Community Fund’s Emerging Leaders Award for the activism against the proposed Sixers arena that they have led over the last year as cofounders of Students for the Preservation of Chinatown (SPOC). Founded in the ‘70s, Bread & Roses is a leading funder for grassroots activist movements across Philadelphia.

“Kaia and Taryn were nominated through a community call, and they were chosen by our planning committee because they have really stepped up to organize their peers to fight for Chinatown’s right to determine its own future,” Yahya Alazrak, board member of the fund, said in a statement. “The planning committee also admired how thoughtfully their organizing builds on the work of generations who have come before them.”

Through marches, teach-ins, and more, SPOC has been on the front lines, combating the arena proposed for the southern border of Chinatown — raising concerns about traffic, gentrification, and displacement among the historic neighborhood’s residents, business owners, and patrons.

» READ MORE: Bread & Roses names Chinatown activists for Emerging Leaders award

— Massarah Mikati

Certain streets in the area will be closed off due to the protest and will open on a rolling basis as they clear.

Beginning at 10 a.m.:

Beginning at 11 a.m.:

The march will conclude on the City Hall North Apron, where protesters are expected to rally.

Hundreds of people are expected to march through Center City on Saturday to oppose the Sixers plan to build a $1.3 billion arena on the edge of Chinatown.

Demonstrators in the “No Arena in the Heart of Our City” rally plan to gather at the 10th Street Plaza, departing at 11 a.m. and winding through downtown to City Hall.

More than a dozen activist, faith, art, and Asian organizations will take part in the march, from Juntos, the veteran Philadelphia Latino advocacy organization, to the Restaurant Industry for Chinatown’s Existence, a new group known as RICE.

“Communities of color across Philadelphia recognize what three billionaires are trying to do in Chinatown, because we have seen these land grabs in Black, Latino, and immigrant communities,” said march supporter Walt Palmer, a University of Pennsylvania lecturer who teaches about racism. “On Saturday we’re showing Philadelphia’s fierce resistance to those who seek to tear apart communities.”

Organizers are mobilizing to protect the city’s 150-year-old Chinatown community, which they say will be destroyed by the team’s development project.

— Jeff Gammage

During an interview on Crossing Broad’s Crossing Broadcast Thursday, Sixers co-owner David Adelman said he has spent the last year speaking with and listening to concerns over the team’s new proposed arena in Center City.

Adelman said he understood the apprehension among Chinatown residents, citing the construction of the Vine Street Expressway and the Pennsylvania Convention Center as projects that divided and adversely impacted those neighborhoods. But he said the proposed Sixers arena won’t have the same negative impact.

“We will not displace one business or one resident with the new arena,” Adelman said. “I’m taking one box and building another box in its place.”

Adelman also said the Chinatown community is diverse, and suggested that opponents aren’t the only voices that matter.

“There’s no one voice in Chinatown, as much as people want you to think that,” Adelman said.

— Rob Tornoe

The Sixers have pitched the proposed $1.3 billion arena as a huge win for the city, offering investment and development on a downtrodden stretch of Market Street East and moving the region toward a greener future with a focus on public transportation.

But Chinatown residents and leaders have voiced strong opposition, saying that putting an arena on their doorstep would ultimately destroy the neighborhood.

The venue would rise four blocks from City Hall, on the footprint of 10th to 11th and Market to Filbert Streets. Construction would claim one-third of the Fashion District mall and the bus station on Filbert Street — and touch Chinatown at Cuthbert Street.

By the team’s own reckoning, the arena would be empty about 60% of the time. The Sixers say they’re following an NBA trend that sees more teams moving to downtown arenas.

» READ MORE: Major Chinatown business and community group announces its opposition to planned Sixers arena

— Jeff Gammage

Since the announcement of the proposed Sixers’ arena last summer, Chinatown activists have made their opposition to the $1.3 billion project known in a variety of creative ways. Saturday’s march comes a little over a month after a protest at City Hall that included a fashion show featuring models with illustrations of Chinatown stapled to their clothes in various designs.

“Debbie is wearing a beautiful flowing dress that is 4% rayon and 96% opposed to the arena and billion dollar development,” the emcee said as one of the models strutted and spun in front of the chuckling crowd in April.

But even more substantively, the protesters also hand-delivered more than 15,000 petitions signatures and 3,300 handwritten postcards to each Council member, along with personal stories about what Chinatown has meant to them and their families over the decades.

“Chinatown means a great deal to my family. My mother emigrated from Taiwan in the ‘70s. They protested the Vine Street Expressway back in the ‘70s,” Will Gross, a small-business owner and Democratic Committee member, said in a meeting with Councilmember Mark Squilla’s legislative assistant, Sean McMonagle. “To us, [the arena] does represent an existential threat to the neighborhood and the city as a whole.”

To those who have been fighting big development projects in Chinatown for decades, Saturday’s march came with a dose of déjà-vu.

Twenty-three years ago, Chinatown residents, business owners and patrons took to the streets in protest of a different proposed sports stadium: a Phillies stadium, which then-Mayor John Street wanted to build at 12th and Vine Streets.

The concerns of residents were the same then as they are with today’s proposed Sixers arena: traffic, gentrification, and displacement. And on June 8, 2000, Chinatown business owners organized a neighborhood-wide strike, shutting down each business, so that hundreds of people could march in protest of the Phillies stadium.

Like today, supporters of the Phillies stadium at the time said it would revive a desolate area. And like today, Chinatown supporters said the project would threaten the historic neighborhood.

“They’re killing Chinatown,” then-82-year-old Dorothy Wang said at City Hall during the rally.

» READ MORE: More than 15,000 petition signatures opposing the Sixers arena are delivered to City Hall

— Massarah Mikati