Atlanta rally vs. anti-immigrant bill

For more than three hours in midday on March 24, thousands of people packed the street in front of the Georgia State Capitol to protest Arizona copycat bills that would legalize racial profiling and institute a series of anti-immigrant measures.

HB 87 and SB 40 each passed through their legislature chamber and are going to a reconciliation committee. The bills are nearly identical, but the House bill has even more draconian elements.

Organizers of the “Rally for Truth and Dignity” are mounting an appeal to recently elected Gov. Nathan Deal to veto any such new Jim Crow legislation. “Jim Crow” refers to laws that instituted racial segregation for African Americans from 1876 to 1965 before they were eradicated by the Civil Rights Movement. The new law would provide a cover for racial profiling so that police agencies could demand citizenship papers from those they “reasonably” suspect are undocumented.

Failure to carry the proper identification would result in arrest and a trip to jail. Local law enforcement would then be mandated to deliver the person into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

Georgia legislators have focused on bills targeting undocumented immigrants while making little or no progress to alleviate the massive number of foreclosures, lack of trauma care, record unemployment, transportation gridlock and education shortfalls that impact millions of people throughout the state.

More than 70 organizations endorsed the March 24 rally. Faith leaders, students and business people; elected officials including U.S. Rep. John Lewis; immigrants from Korea, China, Sudan, the Caribbean, Burma, Mexico and elsewhere; and representatives of organized labor, lesbian/gay/bi/trans/queer, and civil rights organizations took the stage to denounce the bills. Hundreds of high school and college students joined workers from dozens of cities and counties who came with their families.

The Grammy-winning duo, the Indigo Girls, performed to the crowd’s delight.