County Cautions Motorists on U.S. 41 During Statewide March

MANATEE COUNTY – Manatee County officials are urging caution on one of the area’s busiest major roads as a parade route marches through the heart of Bradenton on Sunday and Monday. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers annual March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food will travel through Manatee County on March 10 and 11 as part of a 200-mile march of farm workers and their allies from Fort Myers to Lakeland from March 3-17.

As a part of a two-week trek, the group will pass through Manatee County on Sunday, March 10 and Monday, March 11. For the northbound duration of this march, the group will be marching in the rightmost lane of U.S. Highway 41, and can be treated like a traffic bubble/funeral procession. The group has hired off-duty law enforcement escorts that will lead the parade; motorists may pass the parade cautiously using the inside traffic lane.

Throughout Sunday, the group will travel north through Manatee County mostly on U.S. 41 until it reaches Manatee Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Church, 322 15th Street West at about 5:30 p.m.

The march will resume on Monday morning at 9 a.m. at Bradenton’s Riverwalk Park. It will travel north on the Green Bridge into Palmetto where it will continue north along 8th Avenue West/Valencia Drive/U.S. 41. The march is expected to exit Manatee County and cross into Hillsborough County at about 3:45 p.m.

The complete route for the march can be found on the Coalition’s website.