How Alabama taught me that immigration is a civil rights issue

This post is re-produced with permission from Sarah Stuteville (one of the producers of Barzan, which recently completed touring the Southern Circuit). It originally appeared in the Seattle Globalist.

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Living in the Pacific Northwest, arguably the political and cultural opposite of the Deep South, it's easy to think in stereotypes. Until recently, my knowledge of the region was limited to a short list that read something like: powerful hospitality, complicated history, good food, bad politics.

I spent the past couple weeks traveling to small towns throughout the South screening a documentary I had worked on. It played in museums, community centers and tiny rural theaters through a program called the Southern Circuit.

My film (titled “Barzan”) is largely about immigration issues, and I was curious, even a little nervous, about how the film might be received.

I was particularly anxious about Alabama. In 2011 , the state passed one of the country’s harshest immigration laws, House Bill 56 .

This law, among other things, banned landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants, required schools to check the status of students and police to arrest suspected immigration violators. Much of the bill has since been dismantled in the courts, but I wondered what sort of attitudes had set the stage for the bill’s passing in the first place.

The night of our Alabama screening, the audience was small — 10 people clustered in back of the theater. The house lights came up to polite applause, but the topic hit home and had folks lingering over a well-stocked snack table long after the credits rolled.

“Immigration has been used to pull people further into the conservative movement here,” said Matthew Glover, 29, who serves on the Good Hope, Ala., City Council when he's not working as an auto-parts delivery-truck driver. “They really beat into your mind that (immigrants) are stealing from you ... that they're taking money out of your pockets.”

Glover said that, ironically, it was negative economic impact that ultimately turned people in his town against HB 56. Businesses, especially Alabama's chicken farms, lost profits when many of their undocumented workers disappeared, seemingly overnight.

For that night's moviegoing crowd, immigration issues were inextricably linked to economic challenges and many felt that immigration had been used as a political tool to help explain much of the state’s struggle with poverty and unemployment.

An hour south, in Birmingham, home to some of the most significant civil-rights protests of the 1960s, it is the connection between immigration issues and civil rights that motivates a new generation of activists.

“People felt that we had gotten past the '60s,” said the Rev. Angie Wright describing the passage of HB 56, “and then we were being seen again as that place of hate.”

Wright was across the street from the site of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing with other immigration activists at Kelly Ingram Park — a memorial to the civil-rights struggles of the 1960s. The group was there to call for national, comprehensive immigration reform. Speakers called for a country that “has no second-class citizens” and “welcomes all equally” in a city that, only a generation ago, had some of the strongest segregation laws in the nation. The connection between the civil-rights movement and the push for immigration reform felt very real. The most real, perhaps, to immigrants like Maricela Garciá, who came to Alabama from Oaxaca, Mexico, 14 years ago in search of a better life.

Garciá, who has been working to organize her community to fight for immigrant rights ever since the passage of HB 56, says the lessons of the civil-rights movement inform her work.

“There is strength when you get together,” she said, adding that she believes that the darkest of circumstances often offer the greatest opportunity for change.

“HB 56 was bad for us, it's true,” she said after placing a yellow daisy at a memorial for the victims of the 1963 church bombing, “but it's good for us, too, because now there are many groups organizing, and there's power in this community.”

Much more power, and complexity, than this Seattleite could have possibly imagined just a few weeks ago.

Sarah Stuteville is a multimedia journalist and co-founder of The Seattle Globalist, www.seattleglobalist.com, a blog covering Seattle's international connections. Sarah Stuteville: sarah@seattleglobalist.com. Twitter: @SeaStute

Bradley Hutchinson - Final Thoughts

Some final thoughts from filmmaker Bradley Hutchinson, who recently completed touring his film Barzan on the Southern Circuit:

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While riding on a 4am shuttle from Athens to the Atlanta airport I am trying to find words to describe the last two weeks I have spend on the Southern Film Circuit. In between the perils of travel and sickness I have met a lot of genuinely engaged and passionate lovers of film. Whether in Gallatin, Tennessee or Louisville, Kentucky or Augusta, Georgia or Hanceville, Alabama everyone in the audiences were amazingly receptive to our film.

For Gallatin and Louisville our films Executive Producer Cassidy Dimon joined the tour. Both of these screenings went really well, the staff at both venues were great and both Tennessee and Kentucky are really interesting places for something who has rarely been outside of Washington State. Cassidy and I went to the Mammoth caves on one of our driving days and if you ever get a chance to go there... do! It is amazing.

After Cassidy and I wrapped up the Louisville screening she had to head home. At that point co-director Alex Stonehill and our film's reporter/producer Sarah Stuteville joined me for the remained of the tour. They are the production team that went to Iraq and conducted all of the interviews so they added a lot of first person experience and stories to the rest of the Q&As. Creatively the three of us were the core that made the film so we spent a lot of our time talking about the experience over the last two years of making the film the pitfalls and the successes. By the end of our final week I think we really felt like the Southern Film Circuit was a big part of our general feelings of accomplishment and success. Our final screening in Winder, Georgia was particularly good in part because the audience really seemed to love the film but also because we had a fantastic moderator for our Q&A Mr Christopher Childs. He asked some great questions that got us talking about this film and saying things I don't ever remember saying in a room full of people.

Now back in Washington State going through pictures and writing this I can't help thinking that my experience on the Southern Film Circuit is one that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life. There really is nothing else like it that I know of and that is something to have a lot of pride in.

So thank you to all the people at the Southern Film Circuit who manage and facilitate it, thank you to all the venues and the people who run them, and of course thanks you to all the people who came out and watched our movie.
-Bradley Hutchinson

For all of you who missed the chance to see Barzan on the Southern film Circuit look for it on Amazon, iTunes and other VOD services starting in June 2014.

Alex and Sarah at Wallace State

Winder Screening

Bottomless Pit inside Mammath caves

Cassidy and Brad

Clifton Center in Louisville

Mammath Caves sign

Palace Theater Gallatin

Bradley Hutchinson's Barzan - Miramar, FL

The latest from Bradley Hutchinson, touring his film Barzan on the Southern Circuit:

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Traveling for the Southern film circuit for me started with a leisurely drop off at the Spokane (WA) airport and an easy check in. I got a coffee and sat down to wait. As the time to board approached I heard the airline counter rep tell a room full of people that "we are sorry your flight is cancelled due to a mechanical issue." That was noon on Wednesday. I wasn't that concerned because we had booked flight into Miramar (FL) a day early so as long as the airline got me to Florida before the screening I'd be fine. After an hour and a half on the phone with an airline rep waiting to be rerouted, they got me another series of flights. Waiting for the next flight, I heard the same words again "we are sorry your flight is cancelled due to a mechanical issue." Not cool. A lot of stress and craziness followed for me but the end of that story was that after 25 hours of being either in an airport waiting or flying on a plane, I finally made it to the hotel with time to spare. I remember laying on my back staring at the textured ceiling in the hotel and giggling out of delirious joy of not being in an airport and pure body exhaustion. That was Thursday at 2pm.

Dinner in Miramar

In seemly direct opposition to my troubled experience traveling, the screening was great. When I first arrived I was struck by how big their facility is. The Miramar Cultural Center seats 600+ and our film Barzan has played in all kinds of theaters as a part of festivals all over the world but this is one of the largest in terms of sheer size. The difference between Miramar and everywhere else we have played is that their theater was a stage theater whereas most places we have played have been theaters made for watching films. Upon first arriving, I was taken back to a green room where I stayed until the Q&A. In the green room they served me one of the biggest and best steaks I have ever eaten and I'm a man who loves a good steak.

The staff was really lovely and made me feel like I was some sort of a VIP. The crowd that showed up for the screening was a small but very engaged. I always prefer a small but interested crowd that wants to talk about what they have seen over a large dispassionate silent audience every time. Our film is meant to elicit a lengthy conversation and Miramar was ready for that. I think our Q&A lasted an hour+ and for a film with an 80 minute runtime that is an amazing ratio. In the audience in Miramar there was a retired immigration judge in the crowd who was very into how our film dealt with our lead character’s immigration court case. It was very intense but also very good. I think the general consensus from everyone in the crowd that night was a general appreciation for the chance to see it, which is one of the biggest compliments an audience can give to your film.

So thank you Miramar! Now onto Gallatin and Louisville!