Every day in Alabama, thousands of people report to work at vast poultry processing plants. Inside these frigid plants, workers stand almost shoulder-to-shoulder as chicken carcasses zip by on high-speed processing lines. Together, small teams of workers may hang, gut or slice more than 100 birds in a single minute. It’s a process they’ll repeat for eight hours or more in order to prepare birds for dinner tables and restaurants across America.
This report contains stories of individuals and families across Alabama who have fallen into this trap.
This report, updated in February 2013, details the systematic exploitation of foreign workers who come to this country for temporary jobs under the nation's H-2 guestworker program. Based on dozens of legal cases and interviews with thousands of guestworkers, it documents how guestworkers are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs, and held virtually captive by employers.
This guide, to a process known as "community asset-mapping," rejects the habit of describing communities in which many of our children live by listing their problems. Instead of focusing on deficits, asset-mapping spotlights methods of tapping into the hidden wealth of knowledge in all communities for the benefit of children.
The belief that corporal punishment is a difficult, but necessary practice continues to persist in a minority of Florida school districts. It persists, even as administrators who support it say they are aware of its potential to damage children and that it may spark lawsuits. It persists even though corporal punishment has been found to increase youth hostility, antisocial behavior, and the likelihood that a child will drop out of school.
This report features a general essay on the history and nature of the skinhead movement.
This report contains stories reported to the Southern Poverty Law Center. They illustrate the devastating impact HB 56 has had on Alabama Latinos, regardless of their immigration status. The stories also illustrate that HB 56 has unleashed a kind of vigilantism, leading some Alabamians to believe they can cheat, harass and intimidate Latinos with impunity.
Alabama has made many important changes to the juvenile justice system. There is now an opportunity to create a statewide model for girls. Developing a statewide, locally run model system of care for girls will again demonstrate the state’s commitment to move away from a typical correctional institutional approach to troubled youth.
Together, the Family Research Council (FRC) and the American Family Association (AFA) may comprise the most important anti-gay lobby in this country.
The American Family Association (AFA) is one of most powerful religious-right groups in the nation, with a $20 million budget, a network of 200 radio stations and two Internet television channels The AFA and its spokesman, Bryan Fischer, are famous for their anti-gay bigotry. What’s less known is how ‘mainstream’ Idahoans jump-started Fischer’s career.
