CAMP MARGARETVILLE — The scene is so green here now it almost makes my eyes hurt to look upon it for long. The air is so cool it makes my heart slow down here listening to the birds sing on the porch. Slow moving fluffy white cumulus clouds drift across a pale blue sky, and the temperate hovers in the mid-60s, with fairly low humidity.
It’s a perfect spring day on Easter Sunday. I feel no need to shine my shoes and dress up in a suit to join the Christians in a big show of going to church. If there is a god he is sitting right out there in a tree admiring the birds with me.
I wonder if a single preacher will bring the subject on my mind today up in a sermon anywhere. I doubt it. I am thinking of the question: How do we heal a divided world?
Rep. Jack Williams and the AFL-CIOs Al Henley respond to my questions on the prevailing wage destruction bill (see another video below).
by Glynn Wilson
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Republicans in the Alabama House of Representatives voted to move two bills out of committee this week that would outlaw the state government and any local government from establishing prevailing wages for skilled work on public works projects as required by federal law under the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 on one hand, but provide prevailing wages for convicts working for private industry on the other.
“It’s rotten politics and it’s very insulting to regular old working folks to put middle class construction workers in a race to the bottom and it’s just totally unacceptable,” said state AFL-CIO President Al Henley. “They voted to pay prevailing wages to convicts doing work inside the prison and then voted to take prevailing wages away from construction workers. That is just beyond belief and I don’t think they’ll ever be able to explain it.”
Richard Franklin, president of the Birmingham chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, said the bill was just another in a long line of bills this year being passed by tea party Republican legislatures across the country at the behest of the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, a corporate-funded organization based in Washington that provides training, support and other services to conservative state legislators all over the country, according to Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“One of its prime functions is to draft (big) business-friendly ‘model legislation’ that is then disseminated to state legislators around the country to be introduced and enacted,” Bookman reported. “When you see a spate of similar bills suddenly pop up almost simultaneously in legislatures around the country, ALEC is almost always behind it.”
Republicans in the Alabama Legislature had Richard Franklin, president of the American Federation of Teachers in Birmingham, Alabama, kicked out of a public hearing on a bill that would take public school tax money and give it to private corporations to set up charter schools. Their reason? He was “smiling.”
He said he also thinks it was because he is black, and with a union that opposes charter school legislation. Watch this video to see our exclusive interview with Franklin.
Other union officials say they don’t think the Republicans have the votes to pass the legislation.
For more information, read our earlier story about the issue below.
MARGARETVILLE, Ala. — It is a lovely Sunday morning and amazingly quiet in the suburbs on this April Fool’s Day. The Carolina Wren’s are feeding new young in the hand-crafted birdhouse attached to the screened-in porch. They stop only occasionally between feedings to sing, and they sound about as happy as I feel with my new dog and best friend Jefferson laying at my feet.
If I didn’t know better, I would finish by saying “all’s right with the world.”
But you and I both know better.
As I peruse the headlines from my hand-made html news page, which may go the way of the Dodo bird soon and be replaced by a Word Press front page, and as I look through the Google alerts and other e-mails, I run across an interesting column from Phil Rockstroh, who calls himself a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City but who is from the South. He laments the fact that his white male Southern buddies cling to the Republican fantasy of “free-market capitalism,” while their jobs disappear and their lives diminish into a political bitterness they cannot seem to escape.
A mountain meadow along the Davidson River during the spring blooming season.
(Click on the images for a larger view. More photos and videos below.)
Secret Vistas
by Glynn Wilson
ASHEVILLE, N.C., March 25 — Sitting in a camp chair in front of the computer by the French Broad River, one of those rare stretches of water that flows north — from the Eastern Continental Divide through the Appalachian Mountains to Tennessee — I witnessed a true optical illusion, without the need of a magician or a television set.
While watching the cold water run fast over the rocks through the shallows, a section of river too treacherous for a man and a dog in a canoe, I watched a freight train loaded with coal for TVA’s power plants traverse the track on the other side of the river heading south. With the water running north and the train moving south, when I held my head and eyes just right I got the feeling I was moving sideways — while sitting still.
It reminded me of being a kid again, watching puffy pink and white clouds move across a cobalt blue sky on a beautiful spring day, while laying back in a moving swing looking at the world upside down.
You can’t experience something like that sitting in the suburbs watching television or staring at the news feed on Facebook. Although I guess you could get a similar thrill playing computerized video games.
The point being: This is why we travel. This is why we camp. For a change of perspective on the world that makes us think.
The regional conservation organization Wild South presented the 2011 Roosevelt-Ashe Society Conservation Awards Friday night, otherwise known as the Green Oscars, honoring outstanding work to protect wild places and recognizing “conservation heroes” across the South. Watch this photo slide show in YouTube to see who was there at the Celine & Co. Catering On Broadway.
The AFL-CIO and other labor unions joined the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights March this year on the 47 anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Alabama AFL-CIO Al Henley addressed a night rally in White Hall on Wednesday night. Watch the video to see what he had to say. To see our full coverage of the events, check out this story and links.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The dogwoods, azaleas and cherry blossoms are in full bloom a full three weeks before Easter here, but of course that’s no sign of global warming and climate change, according to the Republicans and the media in Alabamaland.
The so-called Christians could care less. It must all be part of god’s plan. Right.
Nevermind that if there was a god, even the people who know a little about science yet believe say he gave the human species free will, which has led him to greedy pursuits that in fact do impact the climate.
Now if I was a Christian and I was searching for an answer to this riddle, I would conclude that if there were any such thing as a plan based on a “creation” event, if there was a god he would hold man in contempt for screwing up that creation.
Sharon McClendon Price speaks at The First Baptist Church of Selma on women’s issues on March 6, 2012 at one of the night rallies during the commemoration of the 47th Anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery March. This will make you cry.
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.
