Posts Tagged: Alabama
Alabama Councilman, Tommy Bryant, Must Be Held Accountable For Using A Racist Slur Against His Colleague
Tommy Bryant does not care about black people. On Monday, July 19, 2021, Alabama councilman Tommy Bryant was caught on video using the n-word towards fellow councilmember Veronica Freeman in a derogatory manner during a council meeting. Bryant has rejected requests to resign and has faced no consequences since the incident occurred. The city of Tarrant, which Bryant represents, has a 53.06% population of Black Americans who deserve to be represented by a councilman that doesn’t use slurs in government buildings and gets away with it. Tommy Bryant needs to be held accountable for his blatant disrespect towards his fellow councilmember and his constituents. Growing up as a young black woman in the South, I am no stranger to microaggressions hidden under the guise of southern hospitality. I have also attended a predominantly white institution (PWI) for most of my life which means… Read more »
A Reflection On The Midterm Elections
The midterm elections were a tough time for anyone invested in seeing progress for reproductive rights. While most were focused on candidates, wins in the House of Representatives and the Senate, many narrowly missed reproductive rights amendments that passed that set states back years in regards to protecting the safety of those seeking effective reproductive rights legislation. Alabama and West Virginia both rolled back the rights of so many on November 6th. West Virginia’s Amendment 1, which blatantly states that “Nothing in this constitution secures or protects a right to an abortion or requires the funding of an abortion,” will roll back any and all state funding to abortion providers in the state in the future. Alabama’s Amendment 2 goes one step further by saying explicitly to “declare and otherwise… Read more »
Alabama Amendment 2 and Other Trigger Bans: A Poem
They’re coming They’ll say they don’t want to control our bodies They just want to protect the innocent The pure, the precious, the untouched, unborn The hardworking, the virtuous, the God-fearing men They’re here, If they’re “woke” they’ll preach protection But he calls my “protection” “abortion-inducing pills” He who lays the law of the land, the law of my body Spits out the words like they are venom Calling our trauma “a joke, a farce” Commanding a gold star commendation From our ever faithful commander-in-chief But how did it come to this? They’ve always been this way, Preaching “abstain” From such a young age, Don’t distract him! His natural male urges Are pushing too hard against his zipper of self control “He doesn’t know any better, You know boys will… Read more »
Alabama Anti-Marriage Equality Bill Also Hurts Victims of Domestic Abuse
In an example of post-judicial infantilism, the state of Alabama is doing everything it possibly can to discourage same-sex marriage. Early last month, the Alabama Supreme Court ignored the stamping of feet from certain special interest groups in the state by affirming the fact that they would (reluctantly) follow federal law to the letter by offering marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Despite this, the Alabama Supreme Court refused to recognize same-sex adoptions if they occurred out-of-state, a decision overturned by a per curium opinion handed down by the Supreme Court itself later that same month. Now, the Alabama legislature is attempting to change the way marriage works in the state altogether. Senate Bill 143, introduced by Sen. Greg Albritton this February, would effectively end the distribution of all marriage licenses in the state. What… Read more »
Alabama Debates Anti-Choice Amendment
While most of Alabama has spent the past few weeks following the sexual misconduct scandal surrounding Governor Bentley, the Alabama House of Representatives quietly began debating a resolution that would add an amendment to the state constitution claiming that life begins at conception. The bill was sponsored by Decatur representative, Ed Henry, with five speakers acting on his behalf during the March 23 meeting of the Health Committee, who took no vote on the subject. According to the ACLU, such an amendment could spell the end for all abortion clinics and medications in the state, as well as removing existing exceptions to abortion laws based on rape or incest. Perhaps the biggest thing working against the law is that many forms of contraception, including birth control products like Plan B,… Read more »
WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT FLINT’S WATER CRISIS
Since we’ve covered it here on ChoiceWords before, I’m not going to tell you exactly why the Flint Water Crisis is a reproductive justice issue. Others have done that with more tact than I might have. What I want to do today is tell you how important it is to muster a response to this crisis, from my own experience. I used to report on business news in Birmingham, Ala. It was an interesting job, to say the least. I got to interview everyone from cookie barons to the Japanese Consul-General of the Southeastern United States. And while I worked there, I would have to do a great deal of research on the companies I wrote about. If I was going to interview someone from Caterpillar, I needed to know how their distribution… Read more »
Young People Need More Than “Don’t Have Sex”
I know at least three people who didn’t know how babies were made until they were old enough to drink. To me, that’s a problem. The state of sex education in the state of Alabama, like many Southern states, is abysmal. The only sex education I ever personally received was in my eighth grade life science class. A nurse from a nearby health center came in and, instead of telling us what was going to happen to our bodies during puberty, what sex was, or anything about STIs, the only useful information we got was that we needed to start buying deodorant. This was reiterated to us nearly a dozen times, but we still never found out exactly what sperm was, or how it mingled with the egg to make… Read more »
What I Learned Escorting at an Abortion Clinic
When a friend of mine told me she went “escorting” on weekends I wrongly assumed she meant either she was joking or working nights to pay for college. What she actually meant, I learned, was that she helps escort people into an abortion clinic in town. On Saturday mornings, she will stand in front of a local abortion clinic with a bright orange vest and an umbrella, offering to walk into the clinic with patients. Her job involved calmly talking to the patients, offering to help them into the clinic, asking them about their day, and other things of that nature. This may not seem necessary to some readers, except these patients have to, on a weekly basis, deal with overt and cruel harassment from a crowd of people standing… Read more »
