A New Kind of Southern StrategyOne year after Arizona’s dread SB 1070 took effect, progressives have transferred their fear and loathing to the 2011 winner in the mainstream media’s toughest-immigration-law-in-the-nation contest: Alabama’s HB 56. Its unconstitutionality and inhumanity go further than Arizona’s law by requiring children to prove legal residence before enrolling in public school and making it a crime to give an undocumented person a ride in your car.
he good news is that Alabama and Arizona are still immigration policy outliers. While legislators in at least twenty-four states filed Arizona-like legislation this year, just five—Alabama, Utah, Georgia, South Carolina and Indiana—passed watered-down versions of SB 1070. In many states—Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Nebraska and, most triumphantly, Mississippi—the threat of a viral SB 1070 has engendered and strengthened coalitions between immigrant supporters and African-American elected leaders who have played visible, pivotal roles in opposing, softening and defeating Arizona copycats.
“It is a new kind of Southern strategy,” says James Evans, a five-term Mississippi state representative, AFL-CIO organizer, minister and leading member of the legislative black caucus.
“This is a fight against a kind of venom that black people in Mississippi understand on that heart level,” Evans says, tapping his heart. “But this is hearts and minds working together. Walking together is how we all win, now and further down this long road.”
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Much more at the link, worth the read.
http://www.thenation.com/article/162694/new-kind-southern-strategy
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