A new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of SC Appleseed’s partners in challenging South Carolina’s immigration law, found that Anti-Latino sentiment in Alabama is up in the wake of that state’s new immigration statute. Latino US Citizens and other folks who are legally present are being told to “Go back to Mexico.”
Filed under: Alabama, Arizona-copycat laws, immigrant community, Law, Law Enforcement, Racism, Video Testimonial | Leave a Comment »
After the Alabama legislature passed its Arizona-on-steroids anti-immigrant law last June, Hollywood’s Chris Weitz, whose directing credits include About a Boy and The Golden Compass, took his camera down there to ask the locals, “Is this Alabama?“
Weitz’s camera captured some ugliness, but it also found the good people of Alabama denouncing their state’s major step backwards. A lot of us South Carolinians should be able to relate. Often we see our worst elements making the national news, leaving us to wish that outsiders could see what the rest of us have to offer. Just recently, the audience at the GOP primary debate in Myrtle Beach embarrassed our state by fiercely booing the African-American moderator who challenged Newt Gingrich’s racist lies about food stamps.
We know that lots of good people live here, but it was the angry mob of bigots that was broadcast across the nation. With that in mind, check out Weitz’s videos:
Filed under: Alabama, Arizona-copycat laws, Deportation, immigrant community, Racism, S.B. 20, South Carolina | Tagged: Christ Weitz, Civil Rights, Is this Alabama? | 1 Comment »
South Carolina peaches, they’re meant to be eaten.It looks like farmers have woken up to the threat that “show me your papers” legislation poses to their livelihoods.
Case in point: In a recent article decrying the effects of state-level anti-immigrant laws on fruit and vegetable growing, Southeastern Farm Press described Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina as “three states that have become self-destructively hostile to migrant farm workers.”
Here’s what a couple of anonymous S.C. growers had to say in the article:
“We’re looking for alternative sources for our peaches, even for use as biofuels, because we don’t have the labor to pick the crop or to run our packing house,” says a South Carolina peach grower (he doesn’t want his name used because he fears it will bring down investigations of his farming operation and his use of migrant laborers).
The state’s vegetable industry is equally challenged. A Charleston County vegetable grower says he ended up burning 25 percent of his 80-acre tomato crop, because he had no labor for hand picking.
“I could have used 300 pickers,” he says. “I had 40. These people don’t cause any trouble — they just come here to work.” Like the South Carolina peach grower, he fears reprisals and is hesitant to say too much about the labor situation in his state.
I’m not sure that the peach farmer didn’t mean to say that he’s looking for “alternative markets” for his produce, but I do know that allowing even one delicious S.C. peach to skip our plates and go toward biofuel would be a crime against nature.
Seriously though, farmers, we welcome y’all to this fight and trust you will find numerous reasons to stand with us against these needlessly fearful laws.
Filed under: Alabama, Arizona-copycat laws, immigrant community, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Migrant Workers, S.B. 20, South Carolina | Tagged: farmers, Georgia, peaches, tomatoes | 1 Comment »
Sign up for e-info. Please email us and let us know you want to receive it.
