Yep, That Makes Sense
Why shouldn’t teachers be paid more? Because the Bible says it would be wrong, according to an Alabama Republican state legislator.
Really.
“It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach,” said State Sen.
Shadrack McGill, who was quoted in Dekalb County’s Times-Journal.
See, teaching is a calling, not something a good teacher would do for money. Raising a state legislator’s pay, though, is cool with the Bible because it makes for less vulnerability to corruption. “He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation.”
Wonkette does a nice job of explaining it here.
AFL-CIO, National Immigration Forum Call for Immediate Suspension of Secure Communities in Alabama
This from Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs.
The AFL-CIO and the National Immigration Forum (NIF) sent a joint letter yesterday to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stressing the urgent need to change the Secure Communities program.
The Secure Communities program, implemented a few years ago by Homeland Security, was created to empower local law enforcement agencies to report undocumented immigrants with criminal records to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. But rather than making America’s communities safer, a recent investigation by the Justice Department confirmed the program has in many instances led to racial profiling.
AFL-CIO Report Spotlights Devastating Impact of Alabama’s 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).
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 report on 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 Read the rest of this entry »
Fear of Anti-Immigration Law Leaves Empty Classrooms, Idle Farms
More from Alabama, where a delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders is investigating the state’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.
A grade school child is there one day and gone the next. Dependable laborers don’t show up to pick crops on a farm.
“It’s incredible,” said local AFT President Vi Parramore.
I have teachers tell me that kids are disappearing overnight. Not unenrolling and leaving. Just all of a sudden gone, just gone! Crops are rotting in the fields!
Parramore shared what she knew at a roundtable at the Beloved Community United Church of Christ in Birmingham, Ala. The roundtable was part of a tour by national African American labor and civil rights leaders to help shed a light on one of the harshest immigration laws in the country and how it invokes inhumanity reminiscent of the Jim Crow South. The delegation has investigated firsthand the impact of Alabama’s H.B. 56 on the lives of Latino working families.
Early in the day, the group toured a trailer park. Later, they met with small business owners. Alabama’s punitive anti-immigration law has cast a chill over the state’s Latino population. According to news reports, the new law says that police must report to federal authorities anyone they detain if they have a “reasonable suspicion” the person may be in the country illegally.
Voices from Immigrant Alabama: Scared Workers, Conflicted Families
More from Alabama, where a delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders is investigating the state’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.
DREAMer activist Victor Palafox took a delegation of national labor leaders and community and faith activists on a tour of a trailer park in Pelham, Ala., about 15 minutes from Birmingham, to give them a taste of how Alabama’s H.B. 56, which is one of the most punishing anti-immigrant state laws in America, hurts typical working people.
“My name is Pedro,” said one young man who spoke to the delegation in a community center in the park.
I don’t speak English very well because I’ve spent my time working. I work for a cleaning company. Ever since the law, my employer has used derogatory language and threatened not to pay me. I can’t leave. I have to work to feed my family.
People were nervous to come forward to talk to the delegation for fear that the news coverage Read the rest of this entry »
Alabama Deli Owner, Businesses Stand Strong for Immigrant Rights
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More from Alabama, where a delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders is investigating the state’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.
Alabama’s new anti-immigrant law instantly intimidated the nine Latino employees of Max’s Delicatessen, owned by Steve Dubrinsky, who says:
They are good solid people, and I don’t like how they feel right now.
Dubrinsky also quickly adds:
They’re all here legally.
His qualifying statement has become obligatory for everyone in Alabama these days who mentions an employee, friend or family member who’s Latino.
Dubrinsky wants that to change. Today, he hosted a group of local business owners to meet with African American union and civil rights leaders from as far away as Michigan and Washington, D.C., to enable owners to talk about Read the rest of this entry »
[#CrisisAL] Welcome to Alabama
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This is a cross-post from This Week in Blackness.
Visiting Alabama was something I already had in my mind. In fact, I have this whole elaborate plan on how I will teach my children about the history of being Black in America with trips across the country to cities that are historically linked to our experience. Birmingham, Ala., is one of them.
I don’t believe I can effectively convey the impact of the civil rights experience without bringing them to the place where the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth organized, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. penned “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” where four little girls lost their lives with an act of domestic terrorism or the amazing leadership of women like Diane Nash and Lola Hendricks was displayed.
But I don’t have any children yet, and I am not here for a civil rights tour. Instead, I am here because the state of Alabama has enacted legislation that unjustly targets Latino families and subjects them to harassment, employer abuse and other violations of their basic human dignity.
African American Delegation Arriving Now in Alabama
Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this from Alabama, where she will report on the delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders as they investigate Alabama’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.
With the passage of H.B. 56, Alabama has taken a huge step backward, into the 1950s. Today, an African American delegation of labor and civil rights leaders traveled to Birmingham, Ala., to help shed a light on what is seen as one of the harshest immigration laws in the country and how it invokes inhumanity reminiscent of the Jim Crow South.
The delegation will investigate first-hand the impact of Alabama’s H.B. 56 on the lives of Latino working families. National, state and local leaders will hear from the families directly impacted by the law, document the impact of the law on Latino communities, acquire a better understanding of the civil rights implications of the legislation and assess the impact of the law on workers and businesses.
African American Union Leaders Bear Witness in Alabama
Today, an AFL-CIO-sponsored delegation of prominent African American labor leaders who are actively engaged in the struggle for civil and human rights will travel to Birmingham, Ala., to see first-hand the impact of H.B. 56 on Alabama’s communities. Members of the delegation will meet with labor and community leaders, families, elected officials, civil rights organizations and educators to observe the impact of H.B. 56 and stand in solidarity with Latino working families and communities that have been harmed by what is seen as one of the harshest immigration laws in the country. Follow the delegation through photos and blogs here and at our We Are Alabama site.
From Alabama, Marvin Bing on the Special Committee on Labor-Community Partnerships sends us these thoughts.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, yhe wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless; tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
These are the words that are placated on the most visible symbol of Freedom in the United States of America. Yet, many people in our country do not believe that should be a reality to all of America’s children. In the past two years we have seen governors and Republican legislatures across our country enact laws that take away basic and fundamental civil rights that each of us deserves—from voting rights, collective bargaining and fundamental social services necessary to make it through these tough economic times.
Beneath a strategic and heartless campaign, there is another issue that has at times shaken the very core of our hearts—immigration. I know immigration is a difficult subject and people have Read the rest of this entry »
USW Members Aid in Tornado Recovery Efforts
Doug May, a communications intern at the United Steelworkers, sends us this.
Volunteers from United Steelworkers (USW) locals from the South and Midwest aided communities this spring after a burst of tornadoes killed more than 500 and left a swath of destruction.
A day after a tornado tore across Pleasant Grove, Ala., USW Local 2122 set up coolers outside the union hall and distributed water to patrolling state troopers, National Guardsmen and storm survivors.
“The next thing you know strangers began driving up and dropping off donations at our hall,” said Local 2122 President Bob Irwin.
Our hall became a full-fledged relief center.
