By Victoria Carmona, Communications Department, NCLR
Chris Weitz, Oscar-nominated director of Twilight, partnered with the Center for American Progress (CAP) to challenge the widespread notion that residents of Alabama stand behind its harsh new anti-immigration law, HB 56. Is This Alabama? is a campaign featuring a series of four short films that show a diverse group of Alabamians talking about how the bill would negatively affect their communities. The stories are especially poignant in their depiction of how community members who remained silent became unwilling partners to conservative lawmakers in the passage of HB 56. Check out one of the films below.
The short films draw parallels between the era of racial discrimination against Blacks in the 1960s and similar attacks against racial and ethnic minorities in Alabama. However, instead of focusing solely on the perspective of Latinos—who are the primary targets of this law—the films also portray how these changes would affect low-income, religious, and political communities. For example, the Alabama law would open the door for the overexpansion of government into the private lives of constituents.
Is This Alabama? features Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas, and journalist Tom Baxter, author of the report Alabama’s Immigration Disaster: The Harshest Law in the Land Harms the State’s Economy and Society. Is This Alabama? is moving and heartwarming, while communicating the important messages of outreach and civil rights in America.