Staff attorney Chris Brook spoke at Carolina Law on February 21, detailing SCSJ and the Carrboro community’s successful 2011 effort to repeal the town’s unconstitutional anti-loitering law and how it represented the capacity of the North Carolina immigrant community to overcome the challenges it faces. The panel discussion, entitled “The Street Corner Next Door,” was sponsored by the Immigration Law Association and the National Lawyers Guild and also featured representatives from the North Carolina DREAM Team, the UNC Center for Civil Rights, the North Carolina Immigrants Rights Project, and the ACLU of North Carolina. Brook highlighted how the ordinance applied only to the Carrboro street corner frequented by predominantly Latino day laborer, making it more difficult for them to find employment as well as infringing upon their First Amendment rights. The panelist agreed immigrants faced an inhospitable climate through the nation as well as within North Carolina currently, but held out the Carrboro example, among others, as demonstrating the power of community-drive efforts.
