Alabama Forward sat down with some of its partners to discuss their objectives for the upcoming session. These organizations are paying close attention to how our state leaders engage topics on race, religion, education, equality, poverty, criminal justice, sexuality, health care, voting rights, and other issues progressives advocate for across the state.
This is a three-part table read concerning some of the initiatives, legislation, engagements, and events they will either be leading, involved in, curious about, or paying close attention to while championing the labor of civic engagement and social impact. In the final part, we sat down with Executive Director Scott Douglas, Organizing Director Tari Williams, Senior Organizer for Political Education and Research Amanda Cherry, and Lead Voter Rights Restoration Specialist Dori Miles. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read part one with Alabama Arise and part two with ACLU of Alabama.
What are three top issues you hope this state legislature tackles this session? How have you been engaging these topics within your organization? What steps will you take to directly engage legislators on the issues you seek to address?
Tari: We are an organization with three different program areas centered on compassion and justice. Those three program areas are Direct Services, Faith in Community, and Systems Change. Our direct services assist low income families, and that’s where we get a lot of the narratives that define our priorities. Our main priority is voting rights and voting rights restoration. And Dori represents GBM on a number of different coalitions and groups around these issues.
Dori: There are probably close to about 300,000 Alabamians that are disenfranchised because of a felony conviction, or they mistakenly believe their felony conviction keeps them from voting, so Greater Birmingham Ministries has been working on these issues for many years, and when the law changed in 2017, it provided an opportunity to accelerate those efforts. We work with a voting rights coalition, and legislation has been introduced during the last two legislative sessions to try and improve the voting rights restoration process in Alabama, trying to make it easier and expand voter access. We tried to make headway against the requirement that people have to pay back all their fine and fees and restitution concerning disqualifying convictions in order to get their voting rights back. We, like many people, view this as a modern day poll tax. If you are wealthy, you can easily pay back any fine, fees, or restitution a court requires. But if you don’t have any money, you will be disenfranchised, possibly, for the rest of your life, because you don’t have the money to buyback your voting rights and we see that as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and an immoral way at looking at people who are in these situations. We are hoping that there will be a bill this session that moves the needle on this.
Tari: We have also worked on issues related to criminal justice reform, health care and Medicaid Expansion. These are things we want to see the legislature tackle. We are very much aligned with the legislative priorities of Alabama Arise. We are members of Alabama Arise. We vote in their annual meeting on issues we feel are important to us and our base, including tax reform, and addressing the grocery tax. Last year, we worked on legislation related to the shackling of pregnant women in prison. This year, we are looking into alternatives for pregnant women and women who have children under the age of five in the home and are primary caretakers of those children, especially if it is a minor crime. We want to do what we can to keep the family together.
Are you all familiar with the new Secretary of State’s decision to take the state out of ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center), an organization assisting 32 states in improving the accuracy of voter rolls? What is your position on this?
Tari: I have read and heard of this. We have been following the purging of individuals from the state voter rolls. We did a campaign where we called individuals, particularly in Jefferson County, who had been purged to notify them of their voting status, and we found some issues. So, we are open to being a part of a database that safeguards people’s rights and ensures they aren’t being purged from voter rolls improperly. If Alabama is going to move away from ERIC, what are they moving to? That’s what we want to know. We are interested in the options the state is considering and want to make sure the process isn’t eliminating individuals based off information that can be corrected.
Amanda: We want voting to be accessible, easy, and straightforward. We haven’t seen past Secretary of States have that same desire as us.
To someone who may read this and has never heard of GBM, can you tell me what resources you all offer to the communities you are engaging. Sounds like you are city-focused but have a state-wide reach and objective – from addressing voting rights to confronting Medicaid Expansion.
Tari: We have a local name. We are a fifty plus year organization. And overtime, our priorities and organizational reach have expanded. We’ve worked on state-wide and national issues. We do have a direct services program where we offer groceries on a regular basis, emergency financial assistance, a clothes closet, and providing school supplies. We do a number of different things for those in the community in immediate need. We also organize – looking at what brings people to us in the first place and seeing what we can do to empower them and make their voices heard to better themselves and their family. We have a faith and community component, where we get our faith communities directly engaged in organizing and advocacy. We want our faith communities to understand that you can’t do mission work without justice work, and you can’t do justice work without mission work. You need them both. And when it comes to our immigrant community, we are making sure we keep our eyes open to what’s happening to families impacted in Birmingham and beyond when it comes to policies and enacted legislation.
Scott: GBM was formed as a tri-part thing, where compassion, assistance to families in need, and then interfaith dialogue collaborate in the struggle for compassion and justice. At the peak of the pyramid is systems change. The point of it is, as someone once said, “The highest form of compassion is justice.” We get our agenda from analyses and things, but it primarily comes from the narratives and stories of what’s hurting our people. Transportation is about access – access to education, recreation, family, food, arts, and music. It’s access. Medicaid expansion is a governance call. Housing and homelessness – we fought to expand Alabama’s Housing Finance Authority, where a .25 percent increase on mortgage deeds could be dedicated to affordable housing. While it passed, it was implemented badly. Alabama, as a state, either doesn’t know to care or doesn’t care to know, so we have to fight at all sides: the legislative as well as the implementation. A lot of our fights are about the implementation stuff already passed – like the board of corrections and paroles. They don’t want to follow their own rules.
The best solutions are those that impact those who are left behind, amplifying their voices, and giving them power to build their own futures through participation, activity, and access. And that’s for voting rights and civic participation. Our legislative stuff is backed by our litigation stuff. We have joined the NAACP and others in being represented by the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund around redistricting, trying to fight against Alabama’s corrupt redistricting plan. People of color, in this state, qualify for two congressional districts, but the state legislature kept it at one. The other thing I want to mention is how a lot of our work is at the county and city level, especially when it comes to the stories told about people’s water bills here in Birmingham and the corruption behind it. And this isn’t just about bill pay. This is about family coherence.
Representative Ed Oliver (R-Dadeville) has filed a “divisive concepts” bill (HB7) to restrict the teachings on issues like race, sexuality, and religion in K-12 schools, higher education, and other state entities. This legislation comes amid national conversations and misinterpretations of critical race theory (CRT), Black History, African American Studies, and our country’s inability to reckon with its history of enslavement. What are your thoughts about this bill, and how do you challenge the legislature when bills like this come up? It seems you all are more focused on the practical rather than “cultural warfare,” am I correct in this assessment?
Amanda: I would say that the practical work we do is connected to culture, speaking against injustices and certain bills that are anti-justice. We do educational pieces and workshops around voting – from its history to its suppression, remembering and recognizing how they operate today. We have these election guides, and we feature local artists on the cover. I think that culture, art, and writing make the pursuit of justice more fun and beautiful. We are trying to change hearts and minds. Whether it be talking to faith groups or doing the day-to-day practical things such as poverty simulations. We do the educational piece to push back against what you call the culture war.
Scott: We have played a major role in this kind of work. In 2002 to 2010, I think the constitutional reform movement was a large unsuccessful movement in the history of 21st century Alabama. It brought together young people, high school students, college students, conservatives, liberals, and progressives into a campaign to rewrite the Alabama constitution of 1901. I am talking about CRT stuff. We see now folks are banning books and trying to scare teachers. Schools still require teaching of the Alabama Constitution. Progress is inhibited by the Alabama Constitution of 1901. Despite the amendment we saw in this previous election to address racial language, there are still some structural barriers to overcome. You can’t go out to people suffering at the governance spear and say, “Let’s change with the constitution.” We got to deal with the spears and the spear throwers, and address what gives them the power to do what they do. This is really not just counter-cultural but “counter existence” of the reality and lives of people, particularly Black people. It is an assault on our humanity – not just our history. So, I think it is going to take some initiative to combine the reasonable forces in this state to fight against this like no other state does. White supremacy by law. That’s what this is and has always been.
What do you think Alabama is getting wrong about intersectionality – whether it be religious, queer, or cultural phenomena? And how is it impacting our state as a whole?
Tari: We take positions that are not always popular. We’ve lost funding for talking about and standing up for LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, and immigrant rights. All the things we’ve taken a part of reflect the bests interests, and quality of life, of the people we serve. That didn’t always align with what some of our funders and board members thought, especially being a “faith based organization.” It puts us in a unique position.
Scott: Since 2006, GBM has been really conscious in our board and staff openings for LGBTQ people. We have been allies from pride marches in Birmingham to demonstrations at the State House. The first openly gay state legislator, Patricia Todd, was a member of our board. We are fighting against those who are anti-black, anti-people of color, and anti-trans. And now, thanks to our volunteers like Dori and others, we are allies with TAKE (Transgender Advocates Knowledgeable Empowering) Birmingham. We are still working to educate ourselves and our board. We want new ideas on how to fight. We are recognized as an ally among our partner organizations. Our enemies keep building off ramps on the pathway to equality for all. Based on fear. We have got to have more conversations on the legislative and community level. The future is dangerous for all humanity amid these powers of division, hate, and racism.
Amanda: As Scott says, “We were doing intersectionality before intersectionality was a word.”
Tari: Before it was cool.
Are there any events that your organization plans to host during the sessions, and if so, what are your plans for them?
Tari: We have a number of different things on the horizon. Nothing set in stone, but we are in the plaining stages. Amanda is going to lead an expansion of the election guide to be more of a “peoples’ guide” to elections. Dori is going to lead a group of students at the University of Alabama with Return My Vote. We are in the midst of a media campaign to get more people to call our hotline more and working out the details of connecting with the Julia Tutwiler Women’s Prison to get more women involved with voting and uplifting their voices. Dori also went to Saint Clair, where we are talking conducting additional classes there.
Dori: There is the March 11, 2023 rally on the steps of the state capitol, led by the Alabama Poor People’s Campaign. GBM is the fiscal sponsor. Caroline Foster is our Faith and Community Director and one of the chairs of the Alabama’s Poor People’s Campaign. It is kind of a cool event because governor Ivey gives her state of the state address the day before. A number of people will be speaking – I’ll be speaking on voting rights, for example – rebutting the governor and providing the real state of the state. It’s a traditional kind of rally, but it should be fun.
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