Evidence of things not seen

Remember when CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper asked Alabama State Senator Hank Sanders what evidence he had that the Republican opponents would take Alabama back to Jim Crow days after Sanders Mad as Hell robo call to democratic voters during the 2010 election?

 Remember how he and his all white, and one black panel accused Senator Hank Sanders of race baiting and using "over the top rhetoric", something white people say when they want to belittle black folks concerns?

At the time Senator Hank Sanders was asked for evidence of things not seen, which is something the media does to minimize and marginalize black folks to make them look like they are whining.

Well here is your evidence Anderson Cooper and Company.  Hank Sanders knew a red, republican, Alabama State Legislature would pass an Arizona style immigration bill.

MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- The House of Representatives voted 73-28 this evening to pass an Arizona-style immigration law that gives law enforcement officers authority to detain people they suspect of being illegal immigrants.

Bill sponsor Rep. Micky Hammon, R-Decatur, told legislators that the bill, "attacks every aspect of an illegal alien's life."

"This bill is designed to make it difficult for them to live here so they will deport themselves," Hammon said during debate. The bill now goes to the Senate.

Note no one asked Micky Hammon what evidence he had illegals would deport themselves, but that is exactly what happened.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Alabama's strict new immigration law may be backfiring. Intended to force illegal workers out of jobs, it is also driving away many construction workers, roofers and field hands in the country legally who do backbreaking jobs that Americans generally won't.

The vacancies have created a void that will surely deal a blow to the state's economy and could slow the rebuilding of Tuscaloosa and other tornado-damaged cities.

Employers believe they can carry on because of the dismal economy, but when things do turn around, they worry there won't be anyone around to hire. Many legal Hispanic workers are fleeing the state because their family and friends don't have the proper papers and they fear they will be jailed.

Hank Sanders said the republicans wanted to return to the days of slavery and guess what, he was right (no pun). Inmates can replace Hispanic farmhands.

Alabama farmers frantically looking for workers to replace those that have fled the state in the wake of its tough new immigration law should just stop by their local prison, according to the head of Alabama’s agriculture department.

John McMillan, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries, told the Montgomery Advertiser on Thursday that inmate labor through the state’s work-release program offers a short-term solution to the sudden labor shortage that has hit Alabama since enforcement of its illegal immigration law kicked in.

The majority of Alabama prisoners are black. They won't be able to get a paying job once they are released from prison because they will have a record, but they can be trained and work for free while in prison. What's wrong with that picture?

Alabama republican Congress Critters are all against the Jobs Bill which could hire and train unemployed Americans to fill the void, but they would rather use slave, I mean inmate labor.

THE sight of groups of chained prisoners working by the side of Interstate 65, dressed in white outfits marked "Chain Gang", delighted passing motorists and attracted many a television camera last week. The chain gang, not seen in America for some 30 years, was back. The press duly descended on Limestone Correctional Facility, near Huntsville in northern Alabama, to savour a story smacking of the bigotry of the old, segregationist South. Officials proudly made statements of stereotypical crassness (the chains were humane, said the state's prison commissioner, because they prevented prisoners from escaping and hence from being shot). Prisoners, about 60% of them black, obligingly …

Hank Sanders knew the red, republican, controlled House would pass the Voter ID bill to disenfranchise black/poor/brown voters.

The Alabama Legislature, under Republican control for the first time since Reconstruction, passed a voter ID law this year. The law takes effect in 2014.

Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin have passed laws this year that allow voters without the required photo ID to cast provisional ballots, but the voters must return to a specific location with that ID within a certain time limit for their ballots to count.

Indiana and Georgia already had such laws. Other states have photo ID laws too, but provide different way to verify a voter’s identity without a photo ID. Texas and South Carolina are awaiting approval for their laws from the Justice Department because of those are among that states with a history of voting rights suppression and discrimination.

Alabama is a good place to be from if you are black, brown, poor, a public school employee or an immigrant. It's a good place for good, rich, republican,Christian, compassionate, conservatives though.

BAY MINETTE, Alabama --
Non-violent offenders in Bay Minette now have a choice some would call simple: do time behind bars or work off the sentence in church.

Operation Restore Our Community or "ROC"...begins next week. The city judge will either let misdemeanor offenders work off their sentences in jail and pay a fine or go to church every Sunday for a year.

If offenders elect church, they're allowed to pick the place of worship, but must check in weekly with the pastor and the police department. If the one-year church attendance program is completed successfully, the offender's case will be dismissed.

Hank Sanders knew Immigrant Detainees were languishing in detention centers in Sweet Home Alabama.

In 2010, after years of controversy around Etowah’s dreadful conditions, the Obama administration promised to move toward a more civil form of detention by building newer, better facilities located closer to detainees’ homes and families, to legal service providers and to good medical care. As a result, Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) was set to terminate its contract with the facility and stop detaining immigrants there.

Realizing that the loss of the only ICE contract in Alabama would mean the loss of dozens of jobs and $5.2 million in revenue for the county, local officials went to Washington, D.C., and lobbied federal lawmakers to renew the contract. Federal officials succumbed to this pressure, and in April 2011, ICE renewed its contract with Etowah, to hold up to 325 immigrants there.

Hank Sanders knew the red, republican House Legislature would legalize racial profiling.

Mohamed Ali Muflahi, the first person arrested under Alabama's strict new immigration law, is actually residing in the United States legally, his attorney proved on Monday.

Muflahi, a 24-year-old born in Yemen, was arrested Friday during a drug raid in Etowah County, Alabama, along with two other Yemenis, the Gadsden Times reported last week. According to local Sheriff Todd Entrekin, the three men were taken into custody for obstructing a government operation, and upon processing at the jail, only Muflahi was unable to produce documentation of his legal status.

This is a misdemeanor violation according to the new Alabama immigration law that went into effect late last month, and, Entrekin told the Times last week, the first arrest carried out under the new measures.

Is that enough evidence the republican opponents would take Alabama back to Jim Crow days Mr. Anderson Cooper, Sir?

The New Jim Crow (complete title The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness) is a 2010 book and a name given to a category of race-related social and political phenomena in the United States by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. Alexander deals in the book primarily with the issue of the current mass levels of incarceration and other means of societal suppression of African-American men (Latino men to a lesser degree), and the social consequences of the policies described, for the "people of color" and for the country as a whole.[1]
According to Alexander, the majority of young black men in large American cities are "warehoused in prisons" (their labor no longer needed in the globalized economy) or, having criminal record, labeled as "felons", permanently trapped in a second-class status. The communities of color are targeted and decimated by the U.S criminal justice system, with the War on Drugs being the primary tool chosen by the establishment intent on continuation of many of the traditional and new forms of discrimination, discrimination, which according to the conventional point of view, had mostly ended with the Civil rights movement reforms of the 1960s.[1]