Thursday, December 29, 2011

With Anti-Immigrant Law, Alabama is Again Ground Zero for Civil Rights

There's one way to reorient the dialogue toward rights and away from profits: help workers and organized labor understand that the zero-sum game of “competition” for the most degrading jobs keeps the economically disenfranchised divided along false lines of “legal” versus “illegal.”

By Michelle Chen, In These Times
December 16, 2011

It’s not often that human rights and business profits line up on the same side of a political debate, but Alabama is a special place. The Cotton State was not only ground zero for some of the worst abuses under Jim Crow; it was also the flashpoint for early struggles that fused economic empowerment with civil rights, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Today, Alabama is once again a focal point for racial and class struggles, ignited by an anti-immigrant law that tests our definitions of economic citizenship in a world of fluid borders. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12438/with_anti-immigrant_law_alabama_is_again_ground_zero_for_civil_rights/

Read the AFL-CIO report, "Crisis in Alabama: Investigating the Devastating Effects of HB 56":
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/enespanol/upload/alabama.pdf

No comments: