At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
— Abraham Lincoln
I love Alabama. I love it unconditionally, and stand ready at all times to take issue with anyone who doesn’t. That is true especially of willfully ignorant Yankees — and most especially so-called and/or self-described “liberal” ones — who, without ever having set foot within our borders, nurture their pretensions to superiority and elide their own civil sins by passing blanket judgment on my state and its people.
Having said that, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I love Alabama because of some things — its stunning natural beauty, its millions of fine people, the style and pace of life that I am able to enjoy here — and very much in spite of others — its lingering racism, its crushing poverty, the utter and dispiriting absence of political vision and courage among its presumptive leaders. For any thinking person — and, for that matter, any person who is by nature compassionate, or otherwise inclined favorably to the notions of equality and justice — Alabama is a mixed bag of blessings and burdens.
Of course, that’s true of pretty much every place on this beautiful but deeply troubled planet. While we have plenty about which to be concerned here in the erstwhile Heart of Dixie — particularly since we now have entered unto what has become the most dangerous season on the calendar to our individual and collective lives and limbs; no, not tornado season, but the annual session of the Alabama Legislature — a quick glance at headlines from across the country over the past few days alone reveals indisputably that we are far from alone in our continuing trek through social, economic and political wilderness.
In our neighboring state of Florida, officials at the state’s Department of Environmental Protection have been directed not to use the terms “climate change,” “global warming” or “sustainability” in any official communications, including emails, reports and public presentations. That’s according to The Miami Herald, which spoke to former employees, consultants and volunteers for the department for a story that also cited records obtained by the nonprofit Florida Center for Investigative reporting.
According to the story, the unwritten policy was instituted after current Gov. Rick Scott (R) — who, much like our own local meteorologist and media personality James Spann, says that, contrary to overwhelming scientific evidence, the impact of human activity on climate change is negligible — took office in 2011. According to scientists who study climate change, the Herald noted, nearly one-third of Florida’s beaches could disappear over the next 85 years due solely to changes in sea levels.
Both Scott’s office and a spokesperson for the Florida DEP denied the existence of such a policy. But at least eight people quoted by the Herald say otherwise.
Meanwhile, out in Arizona, recently inaugurated Gov. Doug Ducey (R) pushed a bill through the state legislature in a closed-door session last Saturday. The bill decimates education funding in the state, with K-12 losing $123 million, public universities losing $99 million, and Arizona’s community college system receiving zero funding for the next fiscal year. Ducey also backed a measure that changes eligibility requirements for the state’s Medicaid system, enacting a five-year limit on eligibility that will eliminate an estimated 213,000 adults and 253,500 children from the program.
Even Ducey’s predecessor, the singularly awful (or so it previously seemed) Jan Brewer, vetoed the same bill last year, saying it would stretch healthcare resources in Arizona “to the breaking point.” For his part, Ducey declared that dropping nearly a half-million of his state’s residents — more than half of them children — from Medicaid rolls would “ensure that we have a responsible Medicaid program that protects taxpayers and provides care to those who need it most.”
In Missouri, the now-famous town of Ferguson has been on the receiving end of a double news whammy. First, in what many conservative observers and commentators trumpeted as a vindication of their view that teenager Michael Brown got what was coming to him when he was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson last year, the U.S. Justice Department announced last week that its investigation had cleared Wilson, who is white, of any civil rights violations in the shooting of Brown, who was black. That brought an official end to the chain of events that last summer fueled violent clashes between police and protesters on the city’s streets.
At the same time, however, the Justice Department investigation also documented a shocking pattern of civil rights violations by the Ferguson Police Department and municipal court system against black citizens. As reported by The Washington Post, the investigation found that, in a city that is roughly 52 percent black, black people comprise 85 percent of people subjected to vehicle stops, 90 percent of people issued citations and 93 percent of arrests.
In its review of the Justice Department report, the Post also noted the finding that staff in Ferguson’s municipal court “patted themselves on the back for charging more for petty offenses than other municipalities.” Among examples cited in the report were $302 for a “manner of walking” violation; $427 for disturbing the peace; $531 for uncut grass and weeds; and $777 for resisting arrest.
And when people couldn’t pay, the Post story said, they were arrested. In 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 32,975 arrest warrants for minor offenses — in a city with a population of about 21,000. In one single instance cited in the report and by the Post, a black woman was fined $151 for parking illegally. She couldn’t pay the fine in full, which launched a seven-year saga that included additional fines, fees and charges and, ultimately, six days in jail. As of December, the woman had paid the city $550, and still owed $541 — all stemming from a single parking violation.
And finally, in Oklahoma, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon social fraternity was summarily booted off the campus of Oklahoma University — and, subsequently, two of its members expelled — by OU president David Boren. That action came after a video surfaced on social media, showing members of the fraternity engaging in a racist chant declaring that, to paraphrase, no black man would ever be welcomed as a member of their august club.
Boren, by the way, is a former Democratic governor and longtime U.S. Senator from Oklahoma. I mention this only by way of contrasting him with the state’s current representatives in what once was known as the world’s greatest deliberative body: James Inhofe, who last week brought a snowball into the Senate chamber and threw it at a page to demonstrate that global warming is a myth; and Tom Cotton, the author of a letter signed by 47 Republican senators — including, of course, Alabama’s Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions — that, in an unprecedented breach of the Constitutional separation of powers, essentially advised Iranian leaders not to negotiate a nuclear treaty with the Obama administration.
Misery, it has been said, loves company. And, judging from what’s happening elsewhere in our blinded, hobbled, staggering giant of a nation, Alabama — the beautiful, hospitable and yet perpetually miserable state where I have chosen to make my stand — has plenty.