- The Florida teenager who was arrested two weeks ago for causing a small exp...
- As some of you might know already, Nuns on the Bus will be making a pass th...
- As the shutdown of LSU’s Earl K. Long Medical Center in northern Baton Ro...
- Neither soaking rain nor the lack of permit from the City of Atlanta preven...
- Spokane City Councilman Jon Snyder and President of Aging and Long Term Car...
- One of the consequences of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s policy of shrinking state ...
- The Boston Marathon bombings happened more than 2,700 miles away, but fo...
- On Saturday, as Texas hosted the National Rifle Association’s annual conv...
- Clean energy opponents turned to dirty tactics this week at the North Carol...
- Last week, an exchange between Jeff Flake, Janet Napolitano, and Chuck S...
- An arbitrator said that a picket line of retired longshore union workers ...
- Within hours of renowned climate scientists announcing a staggering milesto...
As some of you might know already, Nuns on the Bus will be making a pass through the south in June. Below are the dates in our states:
- 6/3 - Orlando, FL, 3pm - Daniel Webster - lobby visit
- 6/4 - Tallahassee, FL, 10 am - Marco Rubio - lobby visit
- 6/5 - Birmingham, AL - civil rights rally
- 6/5 - Atlanta, GA - Chambliss - lobby visit
To give you some background: Sister Simone, who runs NETWORK (a Catholic social justice lobby in DC), and other nuns will be taking a bus tour along the East Coast, through Florida and the South, then the Southwest and up California, to push for immigration reform. Our hope is that the faith angle, calling for equal treatment for the 100% and for family reunification, will be a powerful message to sway members on CIR.
While the nuns will be the message deliverers here, their focus is on fighting for a strong bill. The first Nuns on the Bus tour last summer got a pretty remarkable amount of press, and we're expecting a similar level of interest this time around.
Add a commentStates - Alabama
Alabama Articles
Nuns on the Bus
As some of you might know already, Nuns on the Bus will be making a pass through the south in June. Below are the dates in our states: 6/3 - Orlando, FL, 3pm - Daniel Webster - lobby visit 6/4 - Tallahassee, FL, 10 am - Marco Rubio - lobby visit 6/5 - Birmingham, AL - civil rights rally 6/5 - Atlanta, GA - Chambliss - lobby visit To give you some background: Sister Simone, who runs NETWORK (a Catholic social justice lobby in DC), and other nuns will be taking a bus tour along...
Edward Savela 14 May 2013 Hits:94 Alabama
Read moreLabor Council and Plumbers’ Local in Gadsden, Alabama, Endorse HR 676
On April 15, 2013, the Northeast Alabama Labor Council in Gadsden endorsed HR 676, national single payer health care legislation sponsored by Congressman John Conyers. President Garry "Gabby" Frost brought the resolution before the council in response to an appeal from the All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care--HR 676 and from Pippa Abston, MD, Ph D, a board member of Physicians for a National Health Program and a Huntsville, Alabama, pediatrician. "Health care is a necessity not a privilege," said President Frost after the adoption of the resolution for HR...
Kay Tillow 22 Apr 2013 Hits:212 Alabama
Read moreAnniversary, significance of King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" observed on House floor
The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was observed with events throughout the city and extended to Washington D.C. where Rep. Terri Sewell marked today by reading an excerpt of the famous treatise. Sewell, D-Birmingham, used her time on the House of Representatives floor to read a portion of the letter. "The letter became one of the most preeminent documents of the civil rights era," Sewell told her colleagues. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail stands as a reminder of how far we have come in our nation in...
Jseoph D. Bryant | AL.com 21 Apr 2013 Hits:270 Alabama
Read moreAlabama gunman kills bus driver, seizes boy
MIDLAND CITY, Ala. (AP) — Police SWAT teams and hostage negotiators were locked in a standoff Wednesday with a gunman authorities say intercepted a school bus, killed the driver, snatched a 6-year-old boy and retreated into a bunker at his home. The gunman, identified by neighbors as Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old retired truck driver, was known as “the crazy man” of the neighborhood, a paranoid and menacing figure who once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children...
Phillip Rawls | Associated Press 30 Jan 2013 Hits:340 Alabama
Read moreAlabama Abortion Clinic Struggles; Mississippi’s Forges On
When Diane Derzis shut the doors of the New Woman All Women Health Care clinic in Birmingham, Ala., last May, she did not expect the clinic to be shut for good. Derzis, known as the “Abortion Queen” by both her opponents and her supporters in the Deep South, was under investigation by the Alabama Department of Public Health after two of her patients were given an improper dosage of medication. Though Derzis self-reported the incident, which resulted in transporting the two women to a hospital via ambulance but no...
by Lauren Barbato | Ms Blog 22 Sep 2012 Hits:526 Alabama
Read moreFormer governor Don Siegelman lobbies for presidential pardon at DNC
The former Alabama governor was perhaps the highest profile victim of Karl Rove's political machine, sentenced to six years for bribery. Now his last hope for freedom is a presidential pardon Don Siegelman, the former governor of Alabama, has a particular reason to be lobbying for Barack Obama's re-election at this week's Democratic national convention. Siegelman is in Charlotte at the pleasure of a federal judge, and is just days away from resuming a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence, following a widely publicised conviction on bribery charges stemming from...
Andrew Gumbel | The Guardian UK 10 Sep 2012 Hits:825 Alabama
Read moreAlabama immigration law protestors picket on Federal Courthouse steps in Tuscaloosa
Protestors from Tuscaloosa and as far as California gathered in front of the Federal Courthouse Building on University Boulevard to sound off over the Alabama anti-immigration law on Monday afternoon. The demonstrators included several undocumented Hispanic immigrants, who said so via megaphone on the courthouse steps as they called the Alabama law an injustice to immigrants living in the state. The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals today ordered a lower court to block enforcement of a section of Alabama's immigration law that required ...
Ben Flanagan | Blog AL.com 21 Aug 2012 Hits:546 Alabama
Read moreFEDERAL COURT STRIKES DOWN KEY PROVISIONS OF ALABAMA’S IMMIGRATION LAW
NEWSFLASH: A federal appeals court struck down key sections of Alabama’s immigration law in a ruling released today, including a provision mandating that school officials check the immigration status of newly enrolled students. And the 11th Circuit ruled that Alabama and Georgia cannot punish people for harboring or transporting an undocumented immigrant. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling that allowed a somewhat narrowed version of Arizona’s “Show-Me-Your-Papers” provision to go into effect, the appeals court letAlabama and Georgia to begin enforcing a law allowing state and local police to investigate the...
Amanda Peterson Beadle | Think Progress 20 Aug 2012 Hits:438 Alabama
Read moreDon Siegelman, Persecution not Prosecution
I guess most people know that I have been working with Governor Siegelman for over seven years. I'm very proud that we have a very close friendship. I was with him when he was being investigated. I was there when he was indicted. I attended every hearing, every day of the trial, and was an eye witness to everything that has happened since. This phase of Don's long battle ended Friday, so I think this is a good time to correct a few things people...
Chip Hill 05 Aug 2012 Hits:810 Alabama
Read moreDon Siegelman, Former Alabama Governor, Going Back To Prison For Bribery
Following years of appeals and a vocal campaign by supporters, ex-Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman is heading back to prison after being sentenced Friday to more than six years for bribery and other convictions. Siegelman and former HealthSouth chief Richard Scrushy were convicted in 2006. They arranged $500,000 in contributions to Siegelman's campaign for a state lottery to fund education programs in exchange for the governor appointing Scrushy to an important hospital regulatory board. Before his sentencing that his lawyer called "cruel and unusual," the...
Bob Johnson | Huffington Post 04 Aug 2012 Hits:639 Alabama
Read moreForced to Work on a Broken Ankle? Workers Defy Abusive Supervisors for Big Union Win
In December of 2004, while working at a massive poultry plant in Alabama, Delores Smith slipped on the greasy floor and collapsed into a heap. In considerable pain, she limped over to the nurse’s office. The company nurse, however, didn’t even bother to look at the injury, instead sending Smith home with ibuprofen. When she got to her car, Smith looked down and noticed that pieces of bone were poking out through her sock. She had broken her ankle in three places. That episode stirred Smith...
Gabriel Thompson | AlterNet 02 Aug 2012 Hits:592 Alabama
Read moreAlabama Defeats Communism with Anti-Sustainability Law
Thanks to the John Birch Society, "environmentalism" is no longer an issue in Alabama -- by state law. Who knew fixing it all would be that easy? With chronic budget shortfalls, dangerously overcrowded prisons and the nation’s biggest municipal bankruptcy filing, we here in Alabama have a lot on our minds. But at least we can cross one worry off the list: Our property cannot be confiscated by the United Nations or any of its myriad stealth agents in the name of “sustainability,” “smart growth” or “environmentalism.” For that, we...
Leah Nelson | SPLC Hate Watch 21 Jun 2012 Hits:752 Alabama
Read moreImmigrants Languishing Away in Alabama Detention Center at Tax-Payers' Expense
Immigration violations are civil, not criminal infractions. But for many non-criminal immigrant detainees living alongside criminal inmates at the Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama, that distinction carries little meaning. Far removed from families and legal orientation programs, many of the 350 immigrant detainees housed at the Etowah Detention Center have received deportation orders, but for various reasons cannot be deported. Many are serving the maximum allowable time in detention, and are doing so under poor living conditions at a great ...
Travis Wentworth | Sourced from Immigration Impact 17 Apr 2012 Hits:575 Alabama
Read moreAlabama Anti-Choice Group Wants "Meth Mom" Battle To Backdoor in Personhood
When is an anti-choice group actually for abortion? When it comes to defending a law that could help them in their endless quest to give full legal rights to fertilized eggs. The Liberty Counsel is taking up the "chemical endangerment of children" law, usually meant for prosecuting those who cook meth in areas where children live. But the anti-choice legal group is hoping that an extension of the law could be applied to pregnant women who use the drug, essentially classifying the embryo...
Robin Marty | Sourced from RH Reality Check 02 Apr 2012 Hits:504 Alabama
Read more"Right to Professional Medical Judgment Act," Crafted by Doctor, Introduced in Alabama
AL Senator Linda Coleman A little over a week ago, Alabama pediatrician Pippa Abston had enough. In response to Alabama's forced vaginal ultrasound bill, Abston posted a video expressing her outrage, as a doctor and woman, over the power grab by GOP extremists to act as elected physicians. I wrote a piece on her video at RH Reality Check shortly after the video posted. During an initial phone conversation with Abston she mentioned in passing that she was working on a piece of legislation that could potentially be taken...
Andy Kopsa | RH Reality Check 20 Mar 2012 Hits:1009 Alabama
Read moreHow the "Pro-Life" Movement Puts Women Behind Bars
Numerous organizations and leaders who identify themselves as pro-life have assured the public that their efforts to re-criminalize abortion and establish the unborn as separate legal persons will not result in the prosecution and imprisonment of women. Yet, in Alabama alone, the claim that eggs, embryos and fetuses have separate legal rights has provided the basis for arresting approximately 60 women. These women are being prosecuted under Alabama’s 2006 law designed to provide special penalties for people who bring children into methamphetamine ...
Lynn Paltrow | AlterNet 18 Mar 2012 Hits:855 Alabama
Read moreInmate Labor Used In Alabama Primary Election
TV images are searing reminder of disenfranchisement of African American felons. CNN’s Dana Bash stirred Twitter election watchers Tuesday when she tweeted, “something u (sic) don’t see every day. Inmates will help bring ballots here in (Jefferson) county Alabama…” Early evening video, pouring into the network’s Alabama and Mississippi presidential primary broadcast, showed two local jail inmates, one black and one white, seated on folding chairs and staring miserably into space. The two waited to assist county election officials with carrying bags of paper ballots and electronic memory...
Aaron Morrison | Loop21 17 Mar 2012 Hits:787 Alabama
Read moreFederal Court Blocks Two Key Pieces of Alabama’s Immigration Law
Previously, the Eleventh Circuit court of appeals blocked several parts of Alabama’s immigration law, including a provision requiring teachers or principals to determine the immigration status of their students. Today, a Federal appeals court blocked two more sections of the law, known as H.B. 56: A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked two sections of Alabama’s tough new law targeting illegal immigration pending the outcome of legal challenges. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order blocking a section that says courts can’t enforce contracts involving...
Annie-Rose Strasser | ThinkProgress 12 Mar 2012 Hits:590 Alabama
Read moreAlabama: Voting Rights, Workers’ Rights Top Today’s Selma to Montgomery March
More than 1,000 participants in the five-day Selma to Montgomery, Ala., march are carrying on their journey today, focusing on the renewed threat to workers’ rights and voting rights around the nation. The crowd began its march at the Viola Liuzzo memorial, some 24 miles outside Selma. Liuzzo was a Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist from Michigan, who was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members after the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. The march is more than a re-enactment of the historic Selma to Montgomery march carried out 47...
Tula Connell | AFL-CIO Blog 07 Mar 2012 Hits:679 Alabama
Read moreAlabama Agriculture Department Advances Plan to Replace Immigrant Workers With Prisoners
ThinkProgress has been reporting on the catastrophic economic consequences of Alabama’s harshest-in-the-nation immigration law. Undocumented workers are the backbone of Alabama’s agriculture industry, and their exodus has already created a labor shortage in the state. Farmers say crops are rotting in the field and they are in danger of losing their farms by next season. GOP politicians have crowed that driving immigrants out of the state will reduce unemployment by letting native citizens fill those jobs. But they’ve quickly discovered that Americans are simply unwilling to do the back-breaking...
Marie Diamond, ThinkProgress | Report 05 Feb 2012 Hits:983 Alabama
Read moreThe scandal of the Alabama Poor Cut off from Water
Banks stand to lose millions of dollars in debt repayments if the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history is allowed to proceed. But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama's most populous county are its poorest residents - forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply. And there is widespread anger in Jefferson County that swingeing sewerage rate hikes could have been avoided but for the greed, corruption and...
Brian Wheeler | BBC News Alabama 18 Dec 2011 Hits:7142 Alabama
Read moreOccupy Birmingham: I…
On Saturday members of the Occupy Birmingham movement branched out from their camp and marched with other Alabama civic and religious organizations to the Etowah County Detention Center…
Black Leaders Get Cl…
Recently I was invited to be a part of a delegation of labor leaders heading down to Alabama to speak out against one of the worst immigration laws in the…
Protests Escalate Ag…
Called “the toughest immigration law on the books in any American state” by the New York Daily News, Alabama’s House Bill 56 has managed to keep a relatively low profile…
Alabama DREAMers Spe…
When the cameras aren’t rolling and the nation’s not looking on, does the Obama administration abide by its own deportation policies? The answer, undocumented immigrants have long said, is a definitive…
Decatur Utilities Fi…
No legal immigration status? No electricity, no gas, and no water service. This is the criterion Decatur Utilities in Alabama has decided to use when determining who gets necessary home…
Hispanic Alabama Sch…
In a sadly predictable development, Hispanic public school students in Alabama — some of whom are United States citizens — are now facing racially motivated bullying in the wake…
Maddow, Vargas on Wh…
In Alabama, a horribly racist law targeting immigrants has been the source of great consternation for civil rights, human rights and civil liberties advocates because of its …
Blocked! Court Grant…
Two weeks after a federal judge largely upheld the nation’s harshest anti-immigrant state law, an appeals court stepped in today and blocked two key provisions of Alabama’s HB 56…
HB 56 Reigniting Civ…
Ed. Note: Alabama's recently-passed law targeting undocumented immigrants has had a ripple effect across the state. A court of appeals decision Friday blocking several controversial portions of the…
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Issue Team Calls
| Tue May 21, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM Healthcare for All Issue Team Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 733525# |
| Wed May 22, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM End Corporate Rule IOT Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 754227# |
| Mon May 27, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM PDA ERA 3 State Strategy Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 787085# |
| Tue May 28, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections IOT Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 314363# |
| Wed Jun 05, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM Economic and Social Justice Issue Team Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 781761# |
| Mon Jun 10, 2013 @ 8:30PM - 09:30PM End Mass Criminalizations IOT Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 331473# |
| Tue Jun 11, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM End Wars and Occupations Issue Team Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 952870# |
| Tue Jun 18, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM Healthcare for All Issue Team Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 733525# |
| Wed Jun 19, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM Stop Global Warming Issue Team Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 661274# |
| Mon Jun 24, 2013 @ 9:00PM - 10:00PM PDA ERA 3 State Strategy Call (559) 726-1300; Access Code: 787085# |
PDA Issues
PDA is organized around several core issues. These issues include:
- End Corporate Rule
- Healthcare for All/Single Payer
- ERA 3 State Strategy
- Economic and Social Justice
- End Wars and Occupations
- Stop Global Warming
- End Mass Criminalization
- Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections
- Stop Voter Suppression
Each team hosts a monthly conference call. Calls feature legislators, staffers and other policy experts. On these calls we determine PDA legislation to support as well as actions and future events.
Alabama Events
| Fri May 17, 2013 @11:30AM - 02:00PM Over-the-Mountain and Progressive Democrats Lunch Meeting |
| Mon May 20, 2013 @ 3:30PM - 05:00PM Alabama Supports Immigration Reform |
AL Legislators with ALEC Ties
House of Representatives
- Former Rep. Greg Canfield (R-58; resigned July 11, 2011 to accept an appointment to Governor Robert Bentley's administration)[16][17]
- Rep. Victor Gaston (R-100)[18]
- Rep. Richard Laird (D-37)[17]
- Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin (R-43), State Chairman[19]
- Rep. Howard Sanderford (R-20); Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force
- Rep. Jack Williams (R-47)[20]; Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force
- Rep. Greg Wren (R-75)[17]