At Occupy protest encampments across the country this week, the controversy that was all the rage had to do with the defense budget bill just passed by Congress. The paranoia was palpable, and for good reason, considering how the issue was covered by the mainstream, corporate news media — and the implications for protesters worried about being arrested and detained indefinitely without due process as they carry their protests into an election year in 2012.
While much of the debate over the policy on detaining suspected terrorists on domestic soil was probably lost on much of the country now in a shopping frenzy with only a week to go before Christmas, even at the Occupy Birmingham encampment downtown activists were not happy with President Barack Obama. One even suggested he was taking a look at voting for Mitt Romney, the Mormon from Massachusetts, “because at least he represents a minority.”
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Someone once said that practicing journalism is like capturing “history on the run.”
Sometimes when you are a fly on the wall at important events you think you are witnessing a historical moment. But it is sometimes hard to tell for sure. Like they say, only time will tell.
Did any of the reporters covering George Wallace’s inaugural address in 1963 have any idea what a seminal moment that would be in American political history?
Could anyone have anticipated that the groundswell of rage embodied in Wallace’s fiery rhetoric would lead to such a transformative movement for full-scale civil rights in the United States? Or that Wallace’s message and style would result in such a rising tide of so-called “conservatism” in American politics, a tide that has not yet fully dissipated over the country — or Wallace’s homeland of Alabama?
Woke up this mornin’
there was frost on the ground.
Opened up Facebook,
and there was hot air all around.
I’ve got the bad news blues,
the bad news blues, baby.
What you gonna do…
The bad news is, the Republicans are still in charge of all three branches of government in my home state.
The good news is, more and more people are waking up on the Web and finding out that is a bad thing.
In the interest of keeping you abreast of what is in store for you in year-two of the Republican so-called “super majority” in the Alabama legislature, check out this article from the Dekalb County Times-Journal.
Conservative Senator Shadrack McGill, who replaced long-serving Democrat Lowell Barron, gives some indications of what is in store next year. In addition to “tweaking” the much criticized anti-immigration law, getting rid of the state retirement system for public workers and destroying teacher tenure, McGill indicates he will be doing everything he can to get rid of the Forever Wild program for preserving some of the state’s most valuable and environmentally sensitive areas for future generations.
The skies are grey. Rain’s on the way. It’s about time to take the canoe off the Chevy van for the winter and remove the futon mattress from the back too.
But I’m not quite ready for that. There must be one more useful trip in the works before the holidays take over the news and the weather turns ugly.
Oh, wait. Checking my Facebook events, it appears the Occupy Birmingham group is planning a road trip protest on Dec. 3 to the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden where Alabama prison officials tend to hold all the alleged illegal immigrants before deporting them back to Central and South America. This might be a newsworthy trip.
The first I heard of the place was in an interview I did with Democratic Party chair Mark Kennedy recently at the AFL-CIO convention near Montgomery. In case you missed it, he referred to the place as a “gulag,” named after Gulag the government agency in Russia that administered Soviet forced labor camps.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Heavy hitters from American labor are now on the ground taking a special interest in Alabama due to the growing controversy surrounding the state’s draconian immigration law.
An AFL-CIO sponsored delegation of union leaders actively engaged in the struggle for civil and human rights recently spent a day in Birmingham and Pelham getting a first-hand view of the law’s impact by hearing from local community leaders and undocumented workers.
Fred Redmond, International Vice President of the United Steelworkers and Vice President of the national AFL-CIO, said the whole immigration situation in Alabama is very disturbing and the AFL-CIO is now committed to the battle.
“It’s disturbing to us as working people. It’s disturbing to us as a movement, and it’s disturbing to us as a country to realize that in 2011, here in the state of Alabama, people are being disenfranchised. They’re being discriminated against. Kids are being denied the right of an education,” he said. “This is not the America that we know.”
The Locust Fork News-Journal can now claim the distinction as one of the first Web only publications to hold a membership in a state professional press association in the country, an indication that the Web is growing up and moving beyond the era of the anonymous blog.
The board of the Alabama Press Association, made up exclusively of newspaper publishers and editors, voted this week to approve membership for Glynn Wilson’s Web publication, according to Member Services Coordinator Tay Bailey.
“We are extremely pleased that the board saw fit to approve our membership in the state’s professional press association, and we hope to work with the board to write some guidelines for what constitutes the Web Press to pave the way for the future of online news,” said Wilson, editor and publisher of the News-Journal, a daily Web publication started five and a half years ago on the so-called “Information Superhighway” at the domain name or Web address LocustFork.Net.
While the association’s board has discussed the Web in the past, and considered adding a Web category to its annual awards for the Best Newspaper Contest, it has yet to be approved, according to Ms. Bailey.
This move is just one building-block step to constructing an alternative, independent Web Press in this state and country, Wilson said, where all the founding documents, laws and court precedents use the term “press,” as in Freedom of the Press, so Web publications that replace print newspapers cannot be called “blogs.”
An autumn view of the Lake Chinnabee campground with no one around (click on the image for a larger view)
Secret Vistas
by Glynn Wilson
LAKE CHINNABEE, Ala. — It drizzled rain in the dark all the way from the Oxford, Alabama exit off Interstate 20 through Munford on Highway 21, making it hard to find all the turns that lead to Lake Chinnabee in the Talladega National Forest. But somehow between a detailed atlas and the Google iPhone map, we found the turnoff at McElderry Road that led to Cheaha Road, which took us past Camp Mac and wound up into the mountains toward the highest point in Alabama at Cheaha State Park.
All the way there, photographer Kenny Walters and I had gone back and forth over whether we would find the place empty, or whether other knowledgeable campers would have found the place and staked out a position in the middle of the second week of November. I figured it was 60-40 the place would be deserted.
It was still drizzling when we pulled into the Lake Chinnabee campground on Wednesday evening at about 6:30 p.m. — and there was not another vehicle or camper in site. The place was deserted, just the way we like it.
A pair of pileated woodpeckers dryocopus pileatus hang out regularly in the vicinity of Lake Chinnabee Recreation Area in the Talladega National Forest, just down the mountain from Cheaha State Park, Alabama’s highest point. These huge birds are nearly as large as a crow and are sometimes mistaken for the ivory-billed woodpecker, believed by many experts to be extinct, making this the largest woodpecker in most of North America. Its loud ringing calls and large rectangular excavations in dead trees reveal its presence in forests across the continent, although try getting close enough to one to get a full frame sharp photograph. They are shy and elusive for the most part, and dip when they fly, making them hard to photograph in flight. I got a few frames of this one Saturday morning, from too far away, across the creek running out of Lake Chinnabee.
Woke up this mornin’
Turned on the Mac.
Got the coffee started,
Then looked out the window.
The skies are gray,
Rain’s on the way.
It’s daylight savings time,
What can I say?
It is that time of year again, time to make the transition from the best of times, autumn, to the worst of times, winter. Although I must say with global warming these days, it is a toss up to say whether I don’t like summer or winter more. I am a spring and fall man all the way.
There is an 80 percent chance of rain Wednesday in Middle Alabamaland, and I would like nothing more than to just sleep through it all.
Alas, we have made plans to go camping again this week for one more chance to get outside in nature before the leaves all fall off the trees and turn the landscape brown.
So I will suck it up, pack the van and get out into the woods one more time before putting the canoe up for the winter. The skies should be clear and the weather cool over the next few days.
Besides, there is some good news in the headlines.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
