U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois travels Alabama on Saturday to protest immigration law
Published: Friday, October 21, 2011, By Mary Orndorff

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., one of the most vocal advocates for immigrant rights in Congress, will be in Alabama Saturday joining protests against the state's immigration law.

Gutierrez will start Saturday morning at the 59th Annual NAACP Alabama State Conference Convention in Eufaula, hold a press conference in Montgomery mid-day, and then attend the rally at 4 p.m. at Fair Park Arena in Birmingham.

"Alabama's 'papers please' law has created a huge civil rights crisis for Latinos and all Americans across the nation," Gutierrez said in a statement Friday. "When people are scared to send U.S. citizen kids to school because a state has asserted its alleged right to sow discrimination and division, there is something very wrong in America. When local governments deny access to water unless you can prove your status, when judges say you can only press charges against an abusive husband if you are willing to be deported, when a law turns neighbor against neighbor, we have to shine a spotlight on it and say: this is not America."

Gutierrez will also acknowledge the work of the late Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, whose funeral is on Monday in Birmingham.

"The nation learned a great lesson from the civil rights struggle that was centered in Alabama and the South and led by great Americans like Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth," he said. "Indeed, a Puerto Rican born in Chicago could never have had the opportunity to rise to be a member of Congress were it not for that civil rights struggle."
He is the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus task force on immigration and a leading proponent of immigration reform.

http://blog.al.com/sweethome/2011/10/us ... illin.html