Despite promising a veto, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) on Friday signed into law revisions to the state’s notorious anti-immigrant measure HB 56. The new version (HB 658) maintains the worst of the original law’s provisions.

Union and civil rights activists said they were “encouraged” today when German automaker Daimler—one of Alabama’s major employers with its Tuscaloosa County Mercedes-Benz plant—acknowledged it had engaged other businesses and state and federal lawmakers in discussions about Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law, H.B. 56.

On April 4, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s tragic assassination, labor and civil rights group representatives will be in Berlin, Germany, at the Daimler shareholder meeting, calling on the automaker to back the repeal of Alabama’s recently enacted H.B. 56. The harsh anti-immigrant law legitimizes racial and ethnic profiling and has drawn criticism nationally and globally.

More than 1,000 union members and immigrant, civil rights and faith activists rallied for immigrant rights and against attacks by Alabama and other states on immigrant workers and families on day four of the re-enactment of the historic 1965 Selma to Montgomery, Ala., march for justice.    

This summer, Alabama passed one of the harshest anti-immigrant bills (HB 56) in the nation and the parallels between that law and the old South’s Jim Crow laws are “all too real,” says William Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU).

More from Alabama, where a delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders is  investigating the state’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.

DREAMer activist Victor Palafox took a delegation of national labor leaders and community and faith activists on a tour of a trailer park in Pelham, Ala., about 15 minutes from Birmingham, to give them a taste of how Alabama’s H.B. 56, which is one of the most punishing anti-immigrant state laws in America, hurts typical working people.

This is a cross-post from This Week in Blackness.

Visiting Alabama was something I already had in my mind. In fact, I have this whole elaborate plan on how I will teach my children about the history of being Black in America with trips across the country to cities that are historically linked to our experience. Birmingham, Ala., is one of them.

Today, an AFL-CIO-sponsored delegation of prominent African American labor leaders who are actively engaged in the struggle for civil and human rights will travel to Birmingham, Ala., to see first-hand the impact of H.B. 56 on Alabama’s communities. Members of the delegation will meet with labor and community leaders, families, elected officials, civil rights organizations and educators to observe the impact of H.B. 56 and stand in solidarity with Latino working families and communities that have been harmed by what is seen as one of the harshest immigration laws in the country. Follow the delegation through photos and blogs here and at our We Are Alabama site.

From Alabama, Marvin Bing on the Special Committee on Labor-Community Partnerships sends us these thoughts.