For some conservatives, Its all about Race

For Conservatives, It's All About Race

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/maxwell-for-conservatives-its-all-about-race/2116264

Author:    Bill Maxwell

Date of Source: 

Friday, April 19, 2013

Tampa Bay Times

When I was a journalism professor in 2005 at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, a white student from the University of Alabama came to my campus and handed me a bullet-ridden sheet of standard copy paper.

It was a target that had been used at a local shooting range.
The image on the target was an enlargement of my photograph published in the Tuscaloosa News with my weekly column. Most of my forehead was shot out, and my eyes and nose were gone. The student said many whites in Tuscaloosa hated me and advised me to be "extra careful."
I was reminded of that experience after reading about Sgt. Ron King, the white firearms instructor recently fired from the Port Canaveral Police Department. He allegedly offered fellow officers shooting targets with a silhouette resembling Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black 17-year-old shot and killed last year in nearby Sanford by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.

Developments in the immigrants' rights arena

Last Friday, President Obama announced he would grant "deferred action" on deportation to certain young immigrants eligible under specific guidelines for a two-year period. While we welcome this decision, we also recognize its limitations in scope and implementation. Some immigrant youth will have much-needed reprieve, but countless others in our communities will continue to fall through the net. Our struggle continues. Several key developments in recent months - from the SCOTUS hearing on SB 1070 to Alabama's HB 658 to the new Border Patrol strategy - illustrate the challenges that we continue to face as diverse communities and as a movement for rights, justice and dignity of all people. We hope you'll join us in this journey as we continue to affirm the need to offer real opportunities for adjustment of status, a generous legalization program that upholds our humanity and respects our dignity.
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Supreme Court ruling on SB 1070 expected  

Later this month, the Supreme Court is slated to announce their final ruling on Arizona's anti-immigrant racial profiling law, SB 1070. What does this mean for our communities and how will we respond? We have compiled a few key resources to help make sense of it all.  Read more... 

Alabama's anti immigrant campaign

SPLC Ready for Long Legal Battle Over Alabama’s Harsh Anti-Immigrant Law

            By Dan Werner, Deputy Legal Director

The Southern Poverty Law Center has won some encouraging victories in the months since we launched our effort to defeat Alabama’s harsh anti-immigrant law.

We’ve also had some disappointments. And we’ve seen this law bring fear and chaos to this state. More than 3,000 calls have poured into our hotline for immigrants affected by the law. But this legal battle is far from over. In fact, it’s just getting started.

Currently, the following provisions of HB 56 are in effect:

•                Police are allowed to check the immigration status of people they stop and reasonably suspect are in the country unlawfully.

•                All new contracts between an undocumented immigrant and another person are unenforceable in state court, with the exception of contracts for one night’s lodging, food purchases and medical services.

•                It is a felony for undocumented immigrants to enter into a “business transaction” with the state of Alabama. The scope of this felony remains unclear, but includes applying for a driver’s license or a business license. The provision also include transactions with subdivisions of the state, such as cities and counties.

Beginning April 1, 2012, employers will be required to use e-verify to determine the immigration status of prospective employees.

Alabama anti immigrant law

This summer, Alabama passed one of the harshest anti-immigrant bills (HB 56) in the nation and the parallels between that law and the old South’s Jim Crow laws are “all too real,” says William Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU). [ From the AFL-CIO blog]

Lucy was part of an AFL-CIO-sponsored delegation of prominent African American labor leaders who traveled to Alabama last month to see firsthand the law’s devastating impacts on immigrant workers and their families. Today, the delegation released its reporton its findings. The leaders, who have for years been deeply engaged in the struggle for human and civil rights—some for decades—write that they were shocked by what they found.

None of us expected to witness the humanitarian crisis we experienced—a crisis that hearkens Alabama back to the bleakest days of the state’s racial history. The parallels to Jim Crow were all too real, and the prejudice we heard about felt all too familiar.

The report sheds new light on the crisis Alabama immigrant families are facing as a result of HB 56. Many of those who went to Alabama will present the report to lawmakers on Capitol Hill tomorrow.

The law requires school officials to question students about their immigration status and that of their parents. Mothers told the delegation they fear they will be separated from their children and some undocumented parents are making arrangements with church members, friends and even strangers to care for their U.S.-born children in case the parents are deported.

I drop my children off for school, but I’m not sure if I will be around to pick them up.

Alabama reconsiders immigration law after not-brown person gets arrested

Alabama reconsiders immigration law after not-brown person gets arrested

The law was supposed to stop these folks.

Alabama Workers Leave crops in the fields

Alabama Workers Meet Harsh Immigration Law with Wildcats

EDUARDO SORIANO-CASTILLO

    |  OCTOBER 21, 2011

Tens of thousands of protesters marched through downtown Atlanta July 2 to protest an anti-immigrant law. Georgia's was one of four bills passed this year that are creating fear in immigrant communities, driving people out of state, and leaving crops rotting in the fields. Photo: Caitie Leary.

An all-out attack on immigrant workers, their families, and communities continues in the South and West. In Alabama, immigrant workers met it with a day of wildcat strikes.
The now-infamous Arizona anti-immigrant law SB1070 kicked off the current wave of anti-immigrant legislation last year. This year Georgia, Utah, South Carolina, and Alabama jumped on the “show me your papers” bandwagon with copycat legislation.
Immigrant rights advocates say Alabama’s law is the harshest. It gives police the right to stop and investigate anyone they “reasonably suspect” of being undocumented—in other words, an open invitation to racially profile.
The legislation also denies immigrants state medical aid and unemployment benefits. It forbids individuals and employers to hire, harbor, rent property to, or even give a ride to undocumented immigrants. Public schools must check the immigration status of children when they enroll.
One town, Allgood, announced that all water customers must have a state picture ID on file or “you may lose water service.”

ON HOLD

Most of Alabama’s law, and the other states’ laws, are on hold pending Department of Justice challenges. The government has argued that these state laws are unconstitutional because immigration is a federal matter.

From Jim Crow to Juan Crow: Alabama's Civil Rights Legacy - New America Media

From Jim Crow to Juan Crow: Alabama's Civil Rights Legacy - New America Media

Latinos flee Alabama

After Ruling, Hispanics Flee an Alabama Town

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

ALBERTVILLE, Ala. — The vanishing began Wednesday night, the most frightened families packing up their cars as soon as they heard the news.

They left behind mobile homes, sold fully furnished for a thousand dollars or even less. Or they just closed up and, in a gesture of optimism, left the keys with a neighbor. Dogs were fed one last time; if no home could be found, they were simply unleashed.

Two, 5, 10 years of living here, and then gone in a matter of days, to Tennessee, Illinois, Oregon, Florida, Arkansas, Mexico — who knows? Anywhere but Alabama.

The exodus of Hispanic immigrants began just hours after a federal judge in Birmingham upheld most provisions of the state’s far-reachingimmigration enforcement law.