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IBEW Activists Join Selma-Montgomery March

March 8, 2012

Nearly 47 years ago, civil rights activists of different races, ages and walks of life were brutally attacked by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala,. as they marched for racial justice. The day became known as Bloody Sunday.

After a years’ long struggle that played out in countless acts of nonviolent protest against the violent forces of the status quo, activists persevered to win the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited many of the methods used to keep African-Americans from voting—like paying poll taxes and harassment at polling locations.

Today, Alabama is once again a target of protests and some IBEW members are part of a labor contingent retracing the steps of the 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery. The annual commemoration has been taking place since 1993. But the 2012 march is marked by irony and immediacy since Alabama recently passed a voter ID law that takes effect in 2014 and could make it harder for citizens to vote. The new voting regulations are coupled with a law that could lead to widespread intimidation of immigrants.

Alabama IBEW Political Coordinator Bill Blackman says the immigration law that requires police to determine citizenship status during traffic stops and mandates government offices to verify legal resident status of applicants for auto licenses and of parents of children being enrolled in school is “going after the wrong people.”

He says:

 All the focus is on the guy who is trying to make a living, not the guy who makes a profit off the backs of workers who come to the U.S. for jobs.

And the state’s voter ID law, says Blackman, isn’t about stopping nearly non-existent voter fraud. He says:

The rightwing knows that the harder they can make it to vote, the more they get to preach to their choir.

Several members of Los Angeles Local 11 and members from other local unions in the Fifth District joined the five-day march that began on March 4.

The April issue of The Electrical Worker will carry photos of the march and a story on how voter suppression efforts across the U.S. threaten the outcome of the 2012 elections.

Click here to sign a pledge of solidarity supporting the march.