Don’t go to Alabama!
Don’t go if you’re not white, that is. On June 9, 2011, the State of Alabama passed the HB56 Immigration Bill. This bill allows for the state to profile, harass, and destroy the lives of those who don’t look like they were born in the United States.
The law forces schools to determine their students’ legal status and it encourages police officers to profile by giving them the power to file criminal charges against anyone who doesn’t look white. That’s right. The law states that the police can do this if the person has no documentation or if “they appear to be in the country illegally.” Law enforcement officers are never going to stop anyone who is white and if they happen to be here illegally, they will never be questioned simply because of their color. The same can’t be said for the Latino immigrant. The moment the person looks like they “do not belong” it gives the state the right to mess with them.
To the New School Community:
New School students are encouraged to devise peaceful, practical solutions to long-standing problems of inequality. As events that began on Wall Street over the last few weeks continue to unfold on the international stage, some of our students are working with peers, questioning long-held assumptions, and picking up the mantle of leadership…
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I read in The New York Times yesterday that Joe the Plumber has penned a book. The news was in an op-ed piece written by Timothy Egan, in which he takes publishers to task on allocating what little money they have to giving voice to people who perhaps don’t deserve it. Egan also writes of a possible [...]
“Books have particular qualities that are lost in translation into code. A book isn’t just its text, it’s also a material object with a particular history, written in stains and stamps and underlining.…The body of the book is part of what it says.” —Shelley Jackson, from her interview in the first issue of 12th Street [...]
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