Martin Luther King III and Richard Trumka wrote a column/op-ed on cnn.com today talking about Alabama's draconian "immigration" law.
The passage of Alabama's anti-immigrant legislation, HB 56, invokes inhumanity reminiscent of the Jim Crow South. And the police state it has created is equally cruel.
If the law stands, children will be denied admission to public schools if they can't prove their citizenship, and schools will be turned into enforcement operations. Poor people of color will be ripped from their families if they are caught in public without their papers in order. Samaritans and people of conscience who employ, harbor or help undocumented workers will be severely punished.
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For all the differences that divide us, we are in this together. In these harsh economic times, we are more than ever wearing the "single garment of destiny" of which King wrote in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail."
When communities suffer discrimination and degradation, we all suffer. When some citizens are denied fair treatment, we are all denied. When any group of workers can be underpaid and overworked, all workers are victimized. When families are threatened if they dare organize or speak out, America is threatened.
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We call on President Barack Obama to oppose and terminate all programs -- including collaboration between state and local law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security -- that result in racial profiling and target immigrant communities.
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We also hope the good and righteous people of Alabama will rise up, oppose and repeal the abomination that is HB 56.
cnn.com, By Martin Luther King III and Richard Trumka:Alabama's immigration law: Jim Crow revisited
Please read the entire article.
MLK III refers to his father's message in the Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Letter from a Birmingham Jail
The attacks on Latinos by this horrble law arise from the same pernicious doctrine Dr. King fought: the disgusting idea that white skin and anglo culture makes one "superior" in some way.
There is a new day coming in which the racists and apologists for super-exploitation of all kinds will no longer hold sway. We see the new world arising with the growing Occupy movement and it's alliance with labor; we see it in the alliance between MLK III and the head of the AFL-CIO to fight the New Jim Crow in Alabama. And the election of Barack Obama struck a big blow against the sick and false ideas of white supremacy. They cannot undo that, even if he is not re-elected. White supremacy is dying, but it's death throes are harming many.
Alabama will and should fall further behind so long as it engages in the New Jim Crow. In time, as with South Africa, a divestment and boycott strategy should emerge against businesses in the state, including the car manufacturers.
As Dr. King said so elequently so long ago:
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Letter from a Birmingham Jail
A lesson for us all shown by the words and life of Dr. King.