Thousands rallied at the Georgia state Capitol last week, protesting anti-immigrant legislation. While Arizona-like bills are advancing in other Southern states, Georgia was the first to have a big show of opposition.
The bill, which has passed both Republican-controlled chambers and is awaiting reconciliation, would institute a “show me your papers” approach to law enforcement, mandate use of the faulty E-verify system for authorization to work, and make it a felony to work if the job was obtained with false documents.
Like Arizona’s bill, Georgia’s stands little chance of surviving court challenges, advocates say, since the federal government alone has the power to set immigration policy. But the fear and uncertainty the legislation produces is enough to destabilize communities. Already, four counties in Georgia have signed on to 287(g), a federal program that allows local police to enforce federal immigration law, which has led nationwide to 108,000 immigrants in two years being detained and put in line for deportation, mostly over minor matters, such as traffic violations.
Labor Notes spoke to Adelina Nicholls, executive director of Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, a grassroots group that helped pull the rally off.
LN: Why did the outpouring of dissent happen first in Georgia?
AN: Because this is a community effort we’ve built for a long time. We had 5,000 out for May 1 last year. This affects not only Latinos—the true story is that it affects all kinds of groups. The word went out, and we had immigrants from China, Korea, refugees from Africa. We work in coalition, and students, LGBT groups, elected officials came out, too.
LN: Organizers estimated 9,000 people came out to the rally. Are more people getting involved now?
AN: People are feeling the impact of 287(g). We set up a hotline in 2007 for people to call if they’re involved in a detention. We hear the voices of many women left behind, left alone, because the person who took care of the family is gone. A lot of sorrow, a lot of pain.
LN: During debate on the bill, Representative Al Williams read from a Georgia woman’s old slave pass, which stipulated where and when the woman could walk around by herself. You’ve seen a lot of support from black lawmakers.
AN: There is a historical parallel there. These actions—the discrimination and racism—are still embedded in the South. Denying education, separating families, challenging the Constitution in order to segregate one group into a second class, that should tell you something is not correct.
LN: Some reports suggest people are packing up and leaving, not wanting to find out what the bill does to Georgia.
AN: There are people leaving, people closing their businesses because of this. But most immigrants have nowhere to go to. We have houses, apartments, kids in school. So we stand up and fight or wait for the traffic stop, and wait for (immigration authorities).
LN: There wasn’t much union presence at last week’s rally. Are Georgians making connections between what’s happening in the Midwest and in the South?
AN: People are inspired by what’s happening in Ohio and Wisconsin. But we’re living two different moments—it’s not just jobs, it’s racial profiling, detention, family separation. It’s different fruits of the same struggle. Anti-labor, anti-immigrant, anti-everything these days. Something is wrong when the moderates are called radicals and the extremists are seen as normal. Ours is a struggle to come back to sanity, to come back to the struggle for civil rights.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.