Esquire

The Bombs, the Church, the City, the State

What was Alabama back then? And what is Alabama right now?

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By Charles P. Pierce      December 11, 2017

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA—There are certain iconic places from our history on which we can all pretty much agree—Bunker Hill, Fort McHenry, the Motown studios in Detroit and the Stax studios in Memphis. There are some iconic places from our history that are, at best, unsettling and, at worst, divisive as all hell. We saw that exercised over the past years in places like Liberty Place in New Orleans, where a monument to a successful act of white supremacist terrorism was finally moved into the obscurity it has long deserved.

And then there are certain iconic places from our history that make us avert our moral inner eyes because, while we admire the people that made these places historic, we remain uncomfortable with the situations that made that courage necessary. They put a flinch in our historical memory. Since the 1950s, Alabama has been awash in these places. There is Montgomery, where the bus boycott began. There is the bus station in Anniston, where a mob tried to burn the Freedom Riders to death. There are the stops along Route 80, where the great march from Selma to Montgomery passed in 1965. There is the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

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And there is the 16th Street Baptist Church here in Birmingham, which has been a gathering place for African-Americans since it was finished in 1911. Paul Robeson sang there. W.E.B. DuBois and Mary McLeod Bethune spoke there. And, at 10:22 a.m. on September 15, 1963, a Sunday morning, a group of four white supremacist terrorists planted 15 sticks of dynamite in the church and blew it up, killing four little girls and injuring at least 20 other parishioners, and converted the 16th Street Baptist Church into one of those places that all Americans of a certain age know about instinctively, and one of those places that many Americans talk about with a familiar flinch in their memory.

The flinch keeps too many of us from remembering that this was the third bombing in Birmingham over the previous 11 days, and that the campaign of destruction came in the wake of a federal court decision mandating the integration of Birmingham’s public schools. The flinch keeps us from remembering that the people of the church rebuilt it in less than a year, that a stained-glass window was donated by some people in Wales who were shocked and disgusted by something that had happened in America. The flinch never has left our national mind. It keeps us from remembering that the forces that brought down the walls of the church still maintain a certain destructive power. The flinch is caused by something real, something dark, something alive.

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In the years between 1995 and 1997, the Department of Justice under Bill Clinton was examining a series of arsons that had struck largely African-American churches in the South. The head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights division was a Massachusetts lawyer named Deval Patrick. It was the largest DOJ investigation ever conducted, prior to the probe into the attacks of September 11, 2001. (The investigation resulted in more than 100 arrests, but no evidence of a conspiracy linking the attacks ever was found—which, in some ways, makes the whole thing worse.) During the course of that investigation, Patrick and his team picked up some information regarding suspects in the church bombing who never had been brought to justice.

In 1977, a Ku Klux Klan member named Robert Chambliss had been tried and convicted for his part in the crime, but the FBI and other investigators long had been convinced that Chambliss hardly acted alone. Now, over 30 years later, the FBI went back through the vast files it had accumulated at the time of the bombing. Eventually, two aging Klansmen, Bobby Cherry and Thomas Blanton were arrested and tried for their part in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. The two were convicted. Cherry died in prison and Blanton is still there. The prosecutor who put them there was an assistant U.S. Attorney named Doug Jones. He looked at the two old murderers and the flinch was not in him. He put them away.

THE FLINCH IS CAUSED BY SOMETHING REAL, SOMETHING DARK, SOMETHING ALIVE.

On Sunday, in the middle of a crowd on the sidewalk in front of Jones’s Birmingham headquarters, a fine Stetson hat on his head, Armond Bragg was making a lot of noise, leading chants and cheers, and generally having a high old time for himself, listening to Senator Cory Booker. Bragg ran his own pest control business for 30 years until he retired. He did not go in much for politics until Barack Obama ran for president in 2008. Now, though, he has worked day and night for Doug Jones because Armond Bragg remembers when they called his town “Bombingham.” He is a member of the 16th Baptist Church, and, as such, he is not afflicted at all by the flinch.

“I’m a member of the 16th Street Baptist Church and Doug convicted the bombers there back during a time when that wasn’t popular to do, especially for a white man. Then, he prosecuted the guy who bombed the abortion clinic. (Eric Rudolph, who later bombed Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.) I’ve just been impressed with his career.

“It wasn’t popular to do back in the day. It’s not popular now. Look, you got a guy who’s running who’s got an impeccable record, when you look at his history. And we got on the other side, a guy who’s done everything wrong to tell you the truth. It’s a no-brainer, when you look at the records. When you look at the two individuals, there’s no comparison.

“Doug Jones has run an impeccable campaign. I mean, you can’t just reach for African-American votes. You got to reach into other communities, too. That’s what I think needs to be done. You got to have a man who can go into—well, ‘Flour Country,’ I guess we call it—and also come to the city. Somebody’s got to do that. Doug Jones is that man.”

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In so many ways, while Roy Moore is running a ghost campaign, Doug Jones is running a haunted one. He called the entire city out on its flinch, and some people resent the hell out of the fact that he did. He called the anti-choice movement out on its toleration of its wilder fringes, and some people resent the hell out of that, too. But not all the ghosts in our history are evil. The spirits of Addie Mae Collins, Denice McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley called out over the decades for the peace and the justice they deserved. In 2001, their cries finally were heard.

On his stump speech, Doug Jones often quotes, from memory, a passage taken from The Cure at Troy, Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s magnificent re-imagining of Sophocles’s ancient play, Philocetes.

History says, don’t hope on the side of the grave.’

But then, once in a lifetime, the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up.

And hope and history rhyme.

Sometimes, that rhyme is an epic poem, an Iliad from inside a Birmingham jail. And sometimes, often, that rhyme is a nursery rhyme, sung by children playing hard at double-dutch, but only after Sunday school is over.

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Newsweek

Alabama has the worst poverty in the developed world, U.N official says.

by Carlos Ballesteros     December 10, 2017

“I think it’s very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees. I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this,” Philip Alston, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told Connor Sheets of AL.com earlier this week as they toured a community in Butler County where “raw sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open trenches and pits.”

The tour through Alabama’s rural communities is part of a two-week investigation by the U.N. on poverty and human rights abuses in the United States. So far, U.N. investigators have visited cities and towns in California and Alabama, and will soon travel to Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.

Of particular concern to Alston are specific poverty-related issues that have surfaced across the country in recent years, such as an outbreak of hookworm in Alabama in 2017—a disease typically found in nations with substandard sanitary conditions in South Asia and Subsaharan Africa, as reported by The Guardian.

A pedestrian walks through a neighborhood with run down homes on March 6, 2015 in Selma, Alabama.(JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES)

The U.N. investigation aims to study the effects of systemic poverty in a prosperous nation like the United States.

According to the Census Bureau, nearly 41 million people in the U.S. live in poverty. That’s second-highest rate of poverty among rich countries, as measured by the percentage of people earning less than half the national median income, according to Quartz.

These income and wealth disparities affect minorities the most. Black, Hispanic, and Native American children, for example, are two to three times more likely to live in poverty than white kids, according to a study using Census data by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Minorities in the United States have also historically had higher rates of unemployment, worked longer hours, and gotten paid less than their white counterparts on average, as reported in a 2013 article in The Atlantic that analyzed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics stretching back to 1975.

Economic inequality and racial discrimination have also been linked with civil rights abuses, particularly in Alabama and other states across the South. Police shootings of unarmed black men and women are also of deep concern to the U.N.

Alston, who’s also a law professor at New York University, said in a statement announcing the start of the U.N. investigation that poverty in the U.S. has been overlooked for too long.

“Some might ask why a U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights would visit a country as rich as the United States,” Alston said. “But despite great wealth in the U.S., there also exists great poverty and inequality.”

Alston also pointed out that the U.S. “has been very keen” on other countries being investigated by the U.N. for civil and human rights issues.

“Now, it’s the turn to look at what’s going on in the U.S.,” Alston said. “There are pretty extreme levels of poverty in the United States given the wealth of the country. And that does have significant human rights implications.”

Tires lay in the grass in front of a shuttered auto parts business on March 6, 2015 in Selma, Alabama.(JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES)

Despite these concerns, the Republican Party, which controls all three branches of the federal government, is on course to pass a tax bill before the end of the year that will increase the federal deficit by $1 trillion in 10 years—costs that GOP leaders have said will be offset by reducing an already-weakened social safety net.

For Alston, these political decisions are at the root of systemic poverty in the U.S.

“The idea of human rights is that people have basic dignity and that it’s the role of the government—yes, the government!—to ensure that no one falls below the decent level,” he said.  “Civilized society doesn’t say for people to go and make it on your own and if you can’t, bad luck.”

“Politicians who say, ‘there’s nothing I can do about that’ are simply wrong,” Alston told WKMS 91.3 FM, a public radio station in Ohio near one of the other sites under investigation by the U.N.

The Telegraph

‘Please don’t kill me’: Police officer cleared of murder after shooting a sobbing man as he crawled along a hotel corridor

https://www.yahoo.com/news/video-shows-fatal-police-shooting-161242848.html

Rozina Sabur, The Telegraph     December 8, 2017

A former Arizona police officer has been acquitted of murder after he shot and killed an unarmed man outside his hotel room.

Philip Mitchell Brailsford, 27, shot Daniel Shaver in 2016 when he was responding to call that someone there was pointing a gun out of a window.

The shooting occurred in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa after officers ordered Mr Shaver to exit his hotel room, lay face-down in a hallway and refrain from making sudden movements.

Mr Shaver, a 26-year-old father-of-two, sobbed as he begged police not to shoot and was ordered to crawl toward officers.

Video of the shooting, which Shaver’s family has referred to as an “execution”, has finally been released.

It shows a sobbing Mr Shaver lying on the floor and crawling towards the police officer. He can be heard begging “please don’t kill me” at the officers.

Daniel Shaver (pictured with his daughters) was heard saying “please don’t shoot me, please don’t shot me”, according to audio heard on a police video of the incident

As he inched forward, he reached toward the waistband of his shorts. Mr Brailsford said he fired his rifle because he believed Mr Shaver was grabbing a handgun in his waistband.

While no gun was found on Mr Shaver’s body, two pellet rifles related to his pest-control job were later found in his room.

The detective investigating the shooting had agreed Mr Shaver’s movement was similar to reaching for a pistol, but has said it also looked as though Shaver was pulling up his loose-fitting basketball shorts that had fallen down as he was ordered to crawl toward officers.

The investigator noted he did not see anything that would have prevented officers from simply handcuffing Mr Shaver as he was on the floor.

Mr Brailsford’s attorney Michael Piccarreta put an arm around his client after the verdict was read.

Mitch Brailsford was fired from the Mesa police force and charged with second degree murderCredit: Mesa Police department

“There are no winners in this case, but Mitch Brailsford had to make a split-second decision on a situation that he was trained to recognize as someone drawing a weapon and had one second to react,” Mr Piccarreta said.

“He didn’t want to harm Mr Shaver… The circumstances that night that were presented led him to conclude that he was in danger. Try to make a decision in one second, life or death. It’s pretty hard.”

Mr Piccarreta also said he wasn’t sure his client would be interested in trying to get his police job back.   Mr Shaver’s widow, Laney Sweet, and Mr Shaver’s parents have filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the city of Mesa over the shooting death.

Ms Sweet shook her head after the jury’s decision and said she was not going to answer any questions.

During his trial testimony, Mr Brailsford described the stress that he faced in responding to the call and his split-second decision to shoot Mr Shaver.

Mr Brailsford told jurors that he was terrified for the safety of officers and a woman who was in the hallway. He also said he felt “incredibly sad” for Mr Shaver.

Mr Brailsford served as a Mesa officer for about two years before he was fired for violations of departmental policy, including unsatisfactory performance.

He is one of the few police officers in the US to be charged with murder for shooting someone while on duty.

The shooting occurred as police departments across the US became focal points of protests over deadly encounters with law enforcement.

Some Comments:

Tower: Tell the guy not to move, police officer can then go to him and cuff him. Why would you tell the man to crawl, making everything more dangerous and confusing?!?!

SkywardSword: More training? Nope. convicting them and holding them accountable will work better.

LDC4: A case where the jury totally got it wrong. This police officer murdered this unarmed civilian. The video more than shows this. This cop just plain panicked and did not know how to do his job and as a result an innocent human being is dead. And people wonder why the police are not trusted?

Mary: What was the point in making him crawl? This is murder.

Hank: i’m in New Zealand even makes me sick looking at the father with his 2 beautiful little girls now left without their father for the rest of their lives to read this article

James: Any reasonable person can see this cop had ZERO reason to fear for his safety. The man had already complied for a good 3 minutes. The officers commands were confusing and contradictory. Just awful.

Live Long And Prosper: Really? Made him crawl? Once he was on the floor, all they had to do was handcuff him. Idiots. Hope the family is planning for a HUGE civil trial…this dept. deserves being bankrupted.

Fish’nFinatic: How can anyone look at that video and not think the cop executed this guy?

Franz August: It’s honestly amazing. I am an American Soldier. If I did this to an Iraqi I would be in prison for war crimes. It is absolutely insane that police can treat citizens worse than enemy civilians

Arturo: Mr Brailsford you murdered this man.

Esquire

Roy Moore’s Spokesperson Just Brought His Senate Campaign to a New Low

And, with seven days left, Moore’s team will likely sink further.

CNN

By Jack Holmes     December 5, 2017

It’s easy to forget that, even before multiple women came forward to allege sexual misconduct against Roy Moore, his United States Senate campaign was already insane. The former Alabama state supreme court judge, thrown out of office twice for disregarding the rulings of higher courts, is uniquely unqualified for public service. If you needed a reminder of that, take a look at the people who have agreed to work on his campaign, such as his spokesperson, Jane Porter. She joined CNN Tuesday morning and kicked things off with a totally normal pregnancy congratulations for anchor Poppy Harlow:

“That’s why I came down as a volunteer to speak for Judge Roy Moore,” Porter said. “He’ll stand for the rights of babies like yours in the womb, while his opponent will support killing them up until the moment of birth.”

Moore’s campaign is hitting the abortion issue hard. Doug Jones, Moore’s Democratic opponent, is firmly pro-choice, though he opposes late term abortions. So, in a true shocker, Porter’s riff is shall-we-say, inaccurate. It brings to mind those Planned Parenthood “sting” videos from the 2016 campaign, which Carly Fiorina harped on incessantly. (Much of the contents turned out to be fabricated.) It also rings a bit hollow when you talk about protecting unborn children, but support a candidate whom one woman says lured her to his house when she was 14 years old and he was 32 and tried to get her to touch his genitals through his tighty-whities.

That woman, Leigh Corfman, is one of at least eight women to accuse Moore of sexual misconduct. We’re getting to the stage where some standup comedian would say, “Anyone here not a Roy Moore accuser?” Actually, that’s close to what Porter said on national television:

Yes, many women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct. But there are 150 million American women who haven’t. Why won’t the Fake News talk about that? This is both shameless and unsurprising. Oh, and that claim about Corfman’s mother undermining her story? That’s based on an attempted Breitbart smear job that admits(remarkably far down the page) that Corman’s mother clearly said the original Washington Post report was “truthful and it was researched very well.”

Sadly, the campaign’s relentless extremism is successful. Moore still incredibly has the support of 6 in 10 white women, evoking the triumph of Donald Trump in that category last year. It’s a stirring reminder that the motivating factor in the Alabama Senate race—as in every contest of this political era—is identity. Specifically, white, Christian, Real American identity versus The Other. White Alabamians will vote for Roy Moore because, like Donald Trump, he’s the White Candidate. Doug Jones, who prosecuted members of the Ku Klux Klan after the Birmingham church bombing, is the candidate of The Other. No matter that Moore is accused of molesting a 14-year-old. He’s tough on crime, while Jones is weak. Maybe that has something to do with who the crimes’ perpetrators are.

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That’s been a running theme of Moore’s public career, where he has enforced the most reactionary line on every public policy issue available. Moore is lawless, as his defenestrations from the state supreme court for disregarding higher courts suggest. He is a theocrat, in that one of those removals involved his insistence on keeping a statue of the Ten Commandments on the courthouse grounds, in obvious violation of the First Amendment. He refused to recognize the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, an assertion that Christian law reigned supreme over United States civil law. Then, in a wicked piece of irony, he yelled and screamed that Sharia law was on the loose in Illinois, with the frightening idea that religious law was taking precedence over civil law. And of course, he once said Muslim Americans elected to Congress should not be seated because they are Muslim.

Oh, and he said women should not be permitted to serve in public office, either.

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Moore is probably the worst American politics has to offer, although one hesitates to draw the line based on what’s happened over the last two years. His continued presence in our politics is only possible because the Republican Party has allowed it. That began with the Alabama GOP’s steadfast defense of the candidate, which involved some officials citing the Bible to defend Moore even if he did indeed sexually assault a 14-year-old. It has continued with the national party’s decision to re-enter the race on Moore’s behalf this week, after making a big show of pulling support. That mirrors Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Moore’s future colleague who went from declaring he believed Moore’s accusers and would demand an ethics investigation into him if he won to simply saying he’ll leave it up to Alabama voters. Oh, and the President of the United States fully endorsed him.

Truly, there is no bottom to the depravity. Moore will likely win the election, and McConnell will seat him in the Senate. His Republican colleagues will probably welcome him as another vote for plutocratic tax “reform,” and for conservative judges nominated for the federal bench. They might think twice about next year’s Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, though.