South leading in the new civil rights movement

"There is a new Latino labor force all over the South that will be the foundation of the next civil rights movement in the U.S. -- a movement that is going to have a brown face."- Baldemar Velasquez, leader of Farm Labor Organizing Committee, in Southern Exposure magazine, 1999Across the country, the faces of the new civil rights movement are pouring out. And with the Southern states experiencing some of the fastest growth in Latino and new immigrant populations, it's no surprise that the movement is exploding in the South. The Associated Press dispatched this news an hour ago: In Atlanta, police estimated at least 40,000 people, many in white T-shirts and waving signs and American flags, had gathered Monday morning for a two-mile march from a largely immigrant neighborhood in Atlanta. The protesters had a dual purpose in Georgia: supporting immigrant rights nationally and protesting state legislation awaiting Gov. Sonny Perdue's signature that would require adults seeking many state-administered benefits to prove they are in the country legally. [...] In North Carolina, hundreds of Latinos prepared to skip work or boycott all purchases on Monday to demonstrate the financial impact of the Latino community on area businesses. In Charlotte, some employees planned to skip work, including some with the blessing of their Latino bosses. "We're hoping that employers stop to consider what this is all about," organizer Adriana Galvez said. "That if you need people here to do the work, to buy, then give them a legal channel to get here." In Dallas, where a march Sunday drew between 350,000 and 500,000 people, activists also were urging immigrants to showcase their spending power by not buying anything during an economic boycott. Rallies also were planned Monday in Houston, El Paso and Austin. Several hundred people gathered in Lexington, Ky., where demonstrators waved American flags and signs that read "We were all immigrants once," and "We are not terrorists." In Birmingham, Ala., demonstrators marched along the same streets where civil rights activists clashed with police in the 1960s and rallied at a park where a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stands as a reminder of the fight for equal rights and the violence that once plagued the city.As those examples show, the new civil rights movement is joining with the old. Those alliances, plus the sheer numbers, energy and force of the protests -- which defy the leadership of any one group or organization, a true outpouring of "the masses" -- are changing the debate about immigration in this country (and capitalizing on the divide between the right's cultural/anti-immigrant and corporate wings).Make no mistake: these protests are throwing fear into the hearts of our nation's leaders. Politicians worried about votes, and corporate leaders seeking a docile workforce, are nervously watching an uprising that throws into question their control over people who they assumed would keep quiet.As so often happens in history, the subjects of power have other plans.UPDATE: This post is getting some good debate going over at DKos, where I cross-posted it earlier.