A dozen Latino workers at a Tennessee cheese factory went weeks without pay and endured an abusive work environment before demanding paychecks from an employer, who then had them arrested, jailed and threatened with deportation.
A dozen Latino workers at a Tennessee cheese factory went weeks without pay and endured an abusive work environment before demanding paychecks from an employer, who then had them arrested, jailed and threatened with deportation. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit charging the company, its president and members of the local sheriff’s department with conspiring to violate the rights of the workers.
Repeatedly in our country's history, economic troubles have created conditions that are ripe for demagogues and hatemongers to whip up public anger against minorities and recent immigrants.
A federal judge's ruling this week means that thousands of foreign guestworkers represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center will recover wages owed to them by one of the nation's largest forestry contractors.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and more than 40 other advocacy organizations have asked the Department of Homeland Security to scrap proposed regulations that would open the door for more abuse of foreign guestworkers who already face rampant exploitation.
An Arkansas forestry company accused of cheating its foreign guestworkers out of their wages has been held in contempt of court for allowing supervisors to threaten workers and spread misinformation about a class action lawsuit filed on the workers' behalf by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Driving through Alabama with a lot of cash is not a crime. But for migrant worker Victor Marquez, it might as well have been.
The final days of Boubacar Bah's life read like an account of a political prisoner in a gulag.
Migrant farmworker Victor Marquez was traveling to his hometown in Querétero, Mexico, to pay for his new home, only to have his life savings seized by police who alleged it was drug money. During the May 5, 2008, traffic stop in Loxley, Ala., a police officer confiscated more than $19,000 from Marquez even though he earned a majority of the money by working the bean harvest in south Florida. Marquez was not charged. The Southern Poverty Law Center won the return of the money after the state refused to provide documents and information requested by SPLC lawyers representing Marquez.
An April 16, 2008, article in The New York Times about the loot taken home last year by hedge fund managers, provides us with the starkest – and most obscene – evidence yet about the growing disparity between the rich and the poor in our country.
