You probably missed it. While most of us this past week were keeping track of the ongoing Republican Primary battle or the President’s birth control mandate, events were quietly unfolding in Montgomery that promise major ramifications for our day-to-day lives: On Feb. 7, the Alabama State Legislature convened for its 2012 regular session.
You remember, don’t you? These are the leaders who won the state’s historic first Republican majority since Reconstruction. These are the leaders who, with the passage of Alabama House Bill 56, prompted a sizeable day-long student protest on our very own promenade this past fall. Remember that Senator who characterized Greene County’s black citizens as aborigines while wired by the FBI as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged corruption? And what about the senator that said raising the salaries of public schoolteachers would be un-Biblical? Funny, right? Well, like it or not, these caricatures are all assembled on South Union St. for the expressed purpose of governing our state.
The purpose of this column is not to offer up my own political opinion or party preference, but merely to insist that we as University students and citizens of Alabama pay closer attention to state and local politics. We should because the actions of the state government have a more direct affect on our local communities than the further removed federal government in Washington D.C.
The unfavorable portrayal I grant our elected officials isn’t personal, or political for that matter. It is to demonstrate that too often we only involve ourselves in state government as reactionaries. We only enter the fray after our government officials have either embarrassed us or passed a piece of legislation so extreme that citizens of all political persuasions are outraged. This is a problem: It shouldn’t take an HB-56 to draw us into state politics.
The truth is that we should already be involved. After all, our state legislature is only in session for a few months out of the year. During those three to four months, we should stay informed. We should keep track of major legislation. If we do, we can use civil protest to preempt the passage of bills like HB-56, rather than merely protesting their passage ex post facto.
Why don’t we do this already? Well, frankly, national politics possesses a kind of sexiness. We are infatuated by the mystique of the Presidency. We are possessed by the sham drama of extended, made-for-TV political campaigns. We are caught up in the exaggerated clash of ideologies. We love to play liberals versus conservatives. We fancy ourselves participants in an epic struggle. If we aren’t fighting desperately to keep the dark forces of socialism at bay, then we are crusading for the idealized little man, beating back evil corporations. These political idols are overplayed within our own heads, and they prevent us from thinking pragmatically about politics.
The truth is, when constructing our own political awareness, we should begin locally and build outward rather than focusing first on the apparatus in Washington. Too often, we take the same opinions we hold on national issues and quickly apply them to local issues. Just because we support certain types of solutions to national problems, doesn’t mean we necessarily have to apply those same solutions to local problems, and our political consciousness should reflect this. To those tempted to simply write off our state officials as less successful versions of their Washington counterparts, who, while occasionally embarrassing, are ultimately harmless, I say think again. A not-oft-enough discussed provision of Alabama’s infamous immigration law actually grants the state Department of Homeland Security the ability to hire and maintain an immigration police force. The fact that a government that is already so short on funding would devote public money to the hiring and training of a heretofore nonexistent and unnecessary state police force is inexplicable. In the same way, we shouldn’t forget the manner in which the Republican majority killed a measure that would have allowed bankrupt Jefferson County a measure of home rule – denying Jefferson the freedom to adjust their own tax structure and claw their way out of a financial hole.
For a group advocating limited government, this Republican majority seems quite comfortable concentrating power in Montgomery, and wherever power is concentrated, we should direct a watchful eye. I’ll be the first to admit that Montgomery cannot match Washington when it comes to political drama. State government isn’t sexy, but it is real, it is earnest and it affects our lives every day. We should take notice and involve ourselves in state government.
