Living in a Land of Rising Right-Wing Hate
April 1st, 2010Editor’s Note: This article was originally funded by and published at Truthout.org, but for unknown reasons, it does not appear to be in the searchable archives anymore. When this was discovered on Monday, October 24, 2011, we re-published it here.
by Glynn Wilson
Northeast Jefferson County east of Birmingham, Alabama, has long been known as a white flight suburb and home to a crowd of racist rednecks, mostly good old boys and gals who work for the power company, the gas company, the phone company and in construction. Bordered by rural and mostly white Blount and St. Clair counties to the north and east, it has become the poor side of town. The money went south. The black migration from the city has in recent years about taken over what was at one time the largest, mostly white suburb in the country called Center Point, which was the half-way point between the industrial city of Birmingham and the countryside in the 1950s and ’60s.
Now that the citizens of the United States have elected the first African-American president in U.S. history, however, there are racist, conservative activist groups popping up all over the place — and not just the Tea Party. One man has put the area on the map like no other.
Michael B. Vanderboegh of Pinson hit the national spotlight last week and is now under serious federal law enforcement scrutiny since calling for right-wing militia-style activists to toss bricks through the windows of Democrats on his SipseyStreetIrregulars blog, designed to appeal to the so-called Three Percenters, or three percent of American gun owners with the most radical view of the Second Amendment.
