Alabama Politics in
Doc’s Political Parlor
& Home of Lawn Mower Repair

Helen Hammons finds herself in a church basement Saturday with over 300 other people and writes this report for us.

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This writer, along with many others in the state, writes a lot about the woes of the two-year college system. On Saturday, at an event having nothing to do with that system, I stumbled upon what’s right with that system. I came to what was billed by organizers as an “Alabama Town Hall Meeting,” to listen, and, every now and then, to talk myself.

They came from around Alabama, from Montgomery, Mobile, Eutaw, Huntsville, Selma and many other communities large and small. They were from all walks of life - professionals, average working stiffs, people who would never worry about where their next meal would come from and people who struggled to have rice left to go with the beans at the end of the week. Some were black, some were white, some were Hispanic, and I even had a wonderful conversation with a gentleman who was originally from Europe. There were many youngsters from elementary through high school and college and many folks on the receiving end of Social Security and those in between.

They came as people of faith and people of no faith. If one had taken a poll, most would probably have been labeled Democrats, but be careful about generalizations, for they came from conservative political positions and liberal political positions, some thought we were taxed too much, some thought more taxes were needed, some believed all immigrants should be welcomed, some felt immigrants were a problem in the state. Some participants had lived their whole lives in small towns in Alabama, some had traveled the world, some never graduated high school, and some graduated from the best colleges in the country.

What brought such a diverse crowd of 300-350 people to a church basement in Birmingham, Alabama on a rainy, dreary day, and a day that curling up to watch the Final Four on television would to many seem more important?

These people came, because they care about the future of their state, their community, their schools, and their families. They came to discuss issues important to lower-to- middle class working families in the state, to listen to the visions people had for their communities, and to set priorities for the future. They came to have a voice or give a voice to those not often heard, a voice that is rarely listened to in the hallowed halls of the Alabama State House.

The setting was the basement of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Birmingham, located next door to the historic 16th Street Baptist Church, where I was reminded about what the result of hatred and anger can breed. The church next door is where four young girls senselessly lost their lives when a bomb ripped through the basement of the church in 1963. St. Paul’s has its own history as the oldest African-American church in Birmingham, founded in 1869 by newly released slaves and, along with 16th, a player in the civil rights history of the city.

As I made my way through the crowded basement door of the church, I anxiously tried to find a spot to be seated and ended up making my way to the very back of the room to basically the only spot left - a table where two young black women sat waiting for things to get started. In a room of hundreds of people, I had managed to find myself talking to a young woman who this year will finish her education at an Alabama technical college.

Our charge from the session leaders was to get to know each other and discuss what families need to do to improve their lives and what people should tell decision-makers about how society should be.

I’m a Mencken-like cynic, and as I looked over at the young woman’s first drawing on a chart that was later to be shared with the crowd, I knew I had an optimist on my hands. On the big white sheet of paper were wonderfully crafted stick figures, holding hands and smiling - the title, “Family Happiness.”

“You’re an optimist aren’t you?” I asked. “That’s the only way to look at the world,” the young woman replied.

I introduced myself and then had my two table mates tell me who they were. Deanna Bracy and Shanooka Hendricks are residents of Montgomery. One, Bracy, is a student at Trenholm Tech in Montgomery. The other young lady, Bracy’s relative, is a high school student who will graduate in May and then follow in Bracy’s footsteps and go on to Trenholm.

Chancellor Bradley Byrne and Trenholm President Samuel Munnerlyn would have been proud of Deanna Bracy. For one, Byrne, a noted optimist himself, would have loved a fellow traveler in optimism land. Second, Bracy, is an example of what’s right with the two-year college system, and she would become a topic of conversation at Saturday’s event. She is studying to be a medical assistant at Trenholm. She is a graduate of Carver High School in Montgomery. She thinks one day she may like to be a veterinarian, but for now she’s satisfied to start her career in a human-related medical field. She and Hendricks want to “help people.”

Before we got to the topic at hand, I wanted to know about Bracy’s experience at Trenholm, what was good and what was bad. Bracy is overall very happy with her experience at Trenholm. Sam Munnerlyn got the kind of marks Byrne expects from his college presidents. “He really cares about students. Whenever students are doing something, he’s there. It doesn’t matter when it is. Our previous president died. I didn’t know him, but this president really cares about all the students.” She was very happy with the student support services of the school and said many of the teachers “are very caring” about the students. Because she is still a student at the school, I will exercise caution in writing about some of the room-for-improvement-things Bracy talked about.

She did bring up a problem that is well known at the school, so I don’t have a problem writing about it. It’s the problem with accreditation, a problem the school has been working on. “If I decide to eventually go to school someplace else, I have to start all over. My credits don’t transfer and it’s not right.” I asked her if the school had told her about that when she first started at the school, “No,” she replied. But, Bracy still says, “I would recommend anyone go to Trenholm.”

Bracy told me she was an ambassador for the school, it was easy to see why.

We then turned to the project at hand. Bracy has a simple philosophy,”The problem,” she says, “is the lack of love in most families. There’s too much negativity. Parents need to talk about how important education is. Leaders need to talk more about how important education is and children show too much lack of respect for their parents.”

Her comment about leaders talking more about how important education is prompted me to ask her if someone like the chancellor would be listened to if he went into her community and talked to young people. “They would listen to him,” said Bracy. “Now he would have to make it interesting, maybe make a game out of it. But, they would listen.” I couldn’t help but remember when Byrne mentioned a popular TV show and used the phrase, “Pimp my Ride,” during this year’s budget hearings as he talked about reaching out to young people.

She said while many kids have an attitude, many adults have an “I’ve got mine, now you go get yours” attitude instead of trying to be more helpful and supportive.

We continued our table discussion, joined by others, and I’ll jump to what followed.

The session leader asked for people to come to the front and share what the group had talked about. Deanna Bracy becomes shy around a camera, but this youngster knows how to talk to a crowd, knows what she believes and speaks from the heart. For people who only see problem with today’s youth and think these kind of events bring only people looking for someone else to do something for them, all of the speakers during this portion of the day’s events, including Bracy, talked about changing the community predominantly from within.

“Putting God first would change a lot of things,” Bracy told the crowd to enthusiastic applause. She had them in the palm of her hand. She told the crowd how important she and her group thought education was and described the drawing of the car pulling up to the school and parents going to the PTA meeting. “Parents have to be more involved,” said Bracy. She told the crowd children needed to listen more “to the wisdom of older people” and stop messing around.

She said there needed to be “more money” put into her community, “better jobs” and that employers needed to quit picking and choosing relatives and friends for jobs, people who often aren’t qualified, and instead hire those that are qualified.

That brought back to me a discussion of the Hyundai plant we had at the table where both young women said their community had not really seen any jobs from the Hyundai plant even though they were right next to it.

She told the crowd, people without jobs needed to get training and try to work instead of drinking and carrying on. But in the end, Bracy got back to her favorite theme - love. “To have happier families, we have to have love. There’s too much negativity.”

Now I have to confess I didn’t write down all of Bracy’s short speech. I was too busy listening and so was the crowd. She minced no words discussing the problems in her community, she was, as they say, “real.” When she finished, the crowd gave her prolonged applause and people wanted to talk to her. She was never to be seen at our table again, before we adjourned to other sessions.

We all know what’s been wrong with the two-year system, Deanna Bracy showed a crowd what’s right about the two-year system. She is obviously articulate, well educated, and ready to tackle whatever her future brings. She is also not self-absorbed, has thought about serious issues that impact her community, believes Alabama can be a better place and believes she can make a difference. She is an excellent ambassador for her school and her parents, her church, her community, President Munnerlyn, and Chancellor Byrne can be proud of such a fine representative. The two-year system gives individuals like Deanna a start, a place where they can begin to make a difference not only in their lives, but in the lives of others. While some members of the warring factions over control of the two-year system are more concerned about who’s got power and money and forgetting what’s important - people’s lives, this youngster clearly gets it.

I would be negligent however in not writing about other things that happened at the town hall meeting. The meeting was organized by a group called the Equal Voice for America’s Families Campaign, which describes itself “as an effort by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and its grantees to build support for a national family-issues platform created and advanced by families.” The campaign says that “no family should live in poverty.”

Some readers of this blog may be inclined to describe the group as “do good, bleeding heart liberals,” but if you had been there to listen to the dialogue, you would have seen all of the attitudes and many more I described at the beginning. Organizers may have one thought, the people involved wanted to set their own path.

I found myself unexpectedly in a group led by the lead voice for Alabama Arise, which was one of the event’s organizers, Kimble Forrister. I don’t know Forrister well, but his work on behalf of those not often heard in legislative circles is well known. Our group had a lively dialogue on things ranging from education to workforce development to taxation.

The first question discussed was what people would want to see in their communities in the next five years and a general list included, but was not limited to, the following:

• a drug-free environment,
• more educational opportunities for young adults and their parents,
• literacy centers and workforce education and training, higher paying jobs with a living wage, no poverty
• better leadership,
• a better and healthier environment,
• affordable housing,
• lower crime rates,
• halting the dropout rate, more after school activities for youth and a requirement for community service for high school students,
• variable hours for day care to accommodate the hours parents now have to work.

When asked about issues they might want a candidate for public office to take up the following issues were among those mentioned:

• eliminating the grocery tax
• lower gas prices
• daycare options for children and seniors, help for funding
• literacy education
• fairer court systems
• moratorium on the death penalty
• community centered workforce development as well as a transition system to help people get to places where training is available and workers are needed
• change in the tax system to provide equal funding for schools, lower taxes
• incentives to provide affordable housing
• more help for people taking care of elderly parents
• ensuring accountability for programs and money sent to communities and in programs such as the foodstamp and foster care programs to make sure people who should be getting help get it and not those who don’t

In the end, things had to be boiled down to five issues to be passed on to the next level and the broad general areas receiving the most votes(each person got five votes to allocate as they wished) were healthcare, education, good paying jobs and training, child care, and affordable housing. Immigration was a touchy subject for the group, breaking from what appeared to be the feelings of organizers that immigrants are not being fairly treated, many in this group felt illegal immigration, and to a certain extent even legal immigration, was having an impact on their community that at least needed to be addressed. One person suggested and got support from some members on a statement that government should not grant business licenses to individuals who could not show they were legally in the United States.

When the separate groups came back together to hear from Congressman Artur Davis at the end of the day and the votes from all groups were tallied, overall issues fell into the same general order:

1. Healthcare
2. Education
3. Good paying jobs
4. Child care
5. Affordable housing

While I felt to some extent organizers had set their agenda of broad areas they seemed most interested in, at least in our group the debate was rich and Kimble Forrister let the discussion move where the group wanted it, even when at times it may have been different from where he might have wanted to lead it.

Healthcare, though not initially brought up with our group, garnered a lot of talk because of what some saw as more money coming out of their paychecks for less service and lack of affordability. With the cost of everything else, people in the group had problems or knew people having problems getting the quality, affordable care they needed and paying insurance premiums, among other issues. Help for people taking care of seniors was also mentioned. Opinions on how all this should be accomplished were varied, but most believed it important for people to have access to one family doctor, and help making that a reality.

Education brought lively discussion later after formalities had concluded on how Alabama funds its education system. One person from Birmingham believed there was plenty of money for the Birmingham schools but that it was disappearing down a wasteful hole and not used for what the money was intended for. Accountability for education dollars was heard from several people. There were differing opinions on what steps Alabama should take to ensure all schools were adequately and equally funded, but the consensus was the education of Alabama’s children had to be better for all children and not just some and some kind of equitable funding had to be accomplished. In an earlier discussion with a couple of child care providers, Governor Riley’s technology program giving students in rural areas access to the educational courses taught in bigger schools was mentioned as a plus.

One of the participants in the after group discussion brought up political corruption in Birmingham and talked about watching where the money’s going then surprised me by lashing out at Judge Johnny Hardwick. “That man, Burns (sic) is trying to clean that mess up, what that judge did was wrong. That two-year system was corrupt.” I had come to the meeting with my preconceived notions of what the political viewpoints of the participants would be. I discovered that most of the people I talked to were more concerned with what was right and what was wrong, than about political party labels or ideologies. They were all very independent minded and you got the sense they had had enough of anyone telling them what to think on any issue.

During the small group discussion, good paying jobs and training received discussion. Getting people trained in their communities, getting people to where the training and jobs are, and the issues of transportation, housing, and child care which impact on the ability of people to take advantage of the training and jobs was discussed. Also subsidies businesses were receiving to locate in the state, including tax breaks, was a sore point with some.

It was clear people were feeling the wages being paid in the state in general were not keeping up with the cost of living and that people were experiencing difficulty or knew people who were having difficulty finding an affordable, safe place to live on what their income was. People I talked to outside our group voiced concerns about underemployment, people who were taking jobs well below their qualifications just to keep money coming into the household. Others inside and outside the group in smaller discussions voiced frustration at the affordability and access, particularly in smaller more rural areas of the state, to training and good paying jobs, voicing the opinion not everyone could pick up and move to places like Mobile, where jobs are growing.

Representative Davis, sounding like a candidate for something, concluding the day with a brief speech discussing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King and telling the crowd he was glad to be with people who had “a vision of a better Alabama, “people who “love the state enough to challenge it to be stronger and better than we’ve ever been.”

“He was the best kind of revolutionary…He reminded us and called us to be who we (as a country) promised to be.”

Davis couldn’t help himself and offered the crowd what in politics is referred to as “red-meat,” telling some what they wanted to hear about the current direction of the state.

“They will not announce to you that they are mean-spirited, but they will give you an agenda that is as mean-spirited as there is…I love the old Biblical principle, you shall know them by their deeds and not by their words.”

But the overall tenor of the day was not the political divide, it was a discussion of issues, from differing perspectives, it was democracy in action.

One speaker said it was about how people could come together, from their various backgrounds and experiences, to encourage lawmakers, present and future, to have the courage to “do justice” for all, and not just some, people of the state. Rhetorically she asked, “And what’s justice? It’s treating others the way we want to be treated. It’s that simple.”

It’s a simple time-honored concept. But in the environment of Alabama politics, in the heart of the so-called Bible Belt, it’s a lesson most of those engaged in politics have yet to learn. By events such as that which took place Saturday, as well as events scheduled in the future, people coming together from all walks of life may be able to show the state’s politicians there’s a better way and by coming together, empower themselves to force the people in Montgomery to listen.

Many people at Saturday’s event feel politicians are all crooks, liars, and thieves. Kimble Forrister reminded our group, and yes I took the opportunity to chime in, that there are some legislators who are not - and who will listen and believe the state can become all that it’s capable of, not just for a few. Some of them just need a little encouragement to do the right thing. People can vary on ideas of how to accomplish the goal of improving the lives of all the state’s people. That Alabama should strive to be the best, should be an example to the rest of the country of how to enable all of its people to meet their God-given potential, and that everyone benefits when everyone else is doing well is not a left or right, Democrat or Republican issue. It’s a moral issue and one on which people from all walks of life and political persuasion should rally. On the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, what could be more appropriate?

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