It’s been a couple of years since I updated Birmingham Raw, and I live in Georgia now, so I’ll have to see about a way to resume writing about history and politics. Obviously, my perspective has changed, but I’m still proud of a lot of the content, which deals with growing up in Birmingham during the Civil Rights Movement, and later with various political campaigns I was involved with. I’m still trying to figure out what’s next.
About Carl
Your back room is evil. Mine is good. Got it?
By Carl Carter
Can we talk about political back rooms a bit? Because I’m hearing from some folks complaining about “back room stuff” as if it’s some evil process when they know better. How do I know? Because most of these same folks have been in back rooms themselves — some with me.
I’ve been in a lot of back rooms — both the kind with walls and the kind that are little more than lunch meetings and phone calls. They’re where the planning and grunt work get done, starting long before most people even start thinking about an election. Often as not, this has very little to do with picking candidates.
It is axiomatic that my back room is good, and yours is nefarious, especially if you win. We all feel that way, but we have to remind ourselves that it’s malarkey.
Joe Reed and Nancy Worley, who are themselves world class back-room operators, are whining because Sen. Doug Jones assigned a small part of his campaign staff to do the work the state party is supposed to do. Like line up meeting spaces, get lanyards, print credentials, collect signatures, make phone calls and the like.
That’s how things work. If you don’t do your job, somebody else may horn in and do it for you. And it wasn’t just the Jones folks. There were scores of Democrats using their gifts and time to absorb various versions of bylaws, analyze numbers and more. Tabitha Isner did a lot of logistical work herself.
Some supporters of Tabitha’s are complaining that she lost (104-63) because the senator somehow favored England. And they complain that England stepped in late, as if that somehow makes a difference.
I was never sold on Tabitha. I was completely candid with her that while I felt she was the best of those who were in the race until recently, I was hoping someone else would get in.
That’s not to say Tabitha wasn’t a great candidate. I met her during the 2018 campaign and immediately liked her a great deal. I had to follow her at a meeting to pitch union leaders for their support, and she was a tough act to follow. This woman is really, really good.
What’s more, the election for chair was better because she was in it. She brought ideas and energy to the process, and I hope she’ll continue to do so.
You can’t campaign for months without rubbing some folks the wrong way. Candidates and their supporters get invested heavily in the outcome, and feelings run high. It is, after all, a campaign. A contest. And all good teams have skilled and hardworking folks in their own back rooms planning, adjusting, jockeying for support, and whipping votes. I think of these as “locker rooms” for athletic teams. You don’t invite the other team’s coach into your locker room.
So yeah, some conversations happen in private.
I hear complaints that the senator somehow put his thumb on the scale for England. But let’s not forget that while England may not be a household name, he’s been working for our party a long time. He’s won elections. He’s earned people’s respect. Any suggestion that Doug Jones says “jump” and more than 100 members of the SDEC obey is just silly. Let’s not forget that a lot of those were new youth, LGBTQ, Hispanic, Native American and Asian/Pacific Islander caucus add-ons. These new SDEC members are fiercely independent, and they’ll be a pain in the ass of us old timers because they won’t do what they’re told.
Thank goodness.
Democracy happens in the ballot box or on the voting floor. It takes place in Waffle House booths and living rooms and offices and hotel ballrooms. At every stage, in every venue, candidates appear, gain momentum and lose it. Things ebb and flow. Sometimes things get rough. It’s part of the game. Nobody ever said it was easy, but it can be immensely satisfying, because it enables us to more effectively work for positive change in our state.
And there is a great deal of satisfaction in store for Alabama Democrats.
Don’t call me a Christian any more
By Carl Carter
All my life, I have gone by the name “Christian.” No more. The term has no meaning for me.
We tried to save it by using modifiers like fundamentalist and evangelical, but those have become hopelessly muddled along the way. I saw the first signs in the late 1970s, when I was one of the first reporters in the country to start writing about a budding “Christian conservative” movement – before Jerry Falwell jumped in and announced his “Moral Majority.” They weren’t content to call themselves “fundamentalists.” They claimed the whole name of Christianity for their own narrow aims. They first flexed their muscle backing Ronald Reagan (an actor who hadn’t been inside a church in decades except to look for votes) over a truly devout Sunday School teacher from rural Georgia. The same year, the “Christian” political activists at Briarwood Presbyterian, Shades Mountain Independent and other churches went all-in for a Mountain Brook insurance man to oust a second-generation Baptist minister, John Buchanan, a Republican who had long represented central Alabama well in the 6th Congressional District.
I knew all these people well. Those who stole the name “Christian” didn’t give a whit for the good people who worshipped in the black churches. They cared only about a narrow range of issues like abortion, tax cuts, and making sure gay people couldn’t have sex without getting arrested.
They never missed a chance to cite Sodom and Gomorrah in their condemnation of gay and lesbian Americans. Meanwhile, they ignored their beloved Ten Commandments completely, especially the ones about bearing false witness against others (especially Democrats and moderate Republicans), adultery (they embraced adulterors as long as they voted right) and covetousness, which they elevated to an art form, turning greed into an idol they worshipped more than God.
And all that was before Donald Trump showed up with his third wife, his boasts about pussy grabbing, his multiple charges of sexual assaults, and his flagrant worship of money. The “Christian” leaders like Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Roy Moore scrambled to proclaim Trump God’s anointed.
So why not Roy Moore? Why would a little thing like forcing himself on teenage girls and raising a kid who’s been arrested nine times get in the way? After all, there’s a Methodist in the race, and these folks know Methodists aren’t real Christians. Besides, he wants to abide by the First Amendment and let people love whom they will. And he thinks being “pro-life” means taking care of children once they’re born. Such notions cannot be allowed among “Christians.”
So I’m out. I reject the label of Christian. I haven’t rejected Christ, but I want nothing to do with the hate, bigotry and perversion that word has come to define. You can call me a believer, a disciple, an Episcopalian, of any number of other things. And I know that a lot of folks will say, “He never was a Christian to begin with,” and by their definition, maybe they’re right.
I’ll sing the hymns and use the word of others, because there’s no way around it. But for me? No thanks.
Our communication channels are corrupted. Now what?
By Carl Carter, APR
Let’s talk about corruption. Not the kind that involves bribery and kickbacks, but the kind that makes stuff stop working.
Remember what happened when a file in your computer got corrupted? Everything came to a halt, whether it was a document you couldn’t read, a program that wouldn’t run or (God forbid) an entire hard disk garbled.
The corruption I’m talking about is destroying our channels of communication. Public relations professionals used to refer to the “corruption of channels of communication” in our Code of Ethics, but it’s been sanitized in recent years to gentler language. I decided a few months ago to find out when and why it disappeared. I called a PR professor who teaches ethics and even the national office of the Public Relations Association of America. Nobody I talked with could remember.
Channels get corrupted in a lot of ways. Most of those ways involve lying in one form or another. And all of us learned from our mamas that if people catch you lying, they won’t believe you next time.
Our ways to communicate quit working.
Right now, the problem is much, much bigger than the lies of children. We can’t even trust communications are coming from our own friends, because phishing scams are impersonating them. As treasurer of an organization, I’ve received dozens of emails from the president, requesting that I send money to vendors. None of those actually came from her.
Our phones are inundated with junk calls from spoofed numbers that use our own area codes and exchanges, to make them appear local. Robocalls are disguised – with response programs – to appear to be real people. Facebook accounts get hijacked, and I’ve had to resort to vetting “friends” contacting me before I will communicate to them – usually asking a question only the real person could answer.
Just this week, the Washington Post nailed an attempt to trick the newspaper into running a fake story about Roy Moore. A couple of other reporters have been secretly captured on video talking loosely about their colleagues – mostly harmless stuff, but a good reminder that talking too much out of school can get you into trouble.
I had a phone conversation this week in which the organization on the other end of the phone told me they were recording the conversation to capture a voice print for use in confirming future conversations.
In that environment, who cares that the White House has become a fountain of easily documented lies? Who cares that the rules of logic are ignored? Terms are reversed and abused. Fact checkers can debunk a lie, but it doesn’t go away. Instead, the same lies can be repeated and amplified, and they work just as well. In short, we’ve developed a preference for lies over truth. This is why the labeling of legitimate media as “FAKE NEWS” is so destructive. In a society based on lies, the truth tellers must be executed.
Now, in the last two weeks of the special Senate election in Alabama, Roy Moore seems to have retaken the lead simply by repeating the words that “anything is better than a Democrat.” How did we reach a point where a public official credibly accused of attempting sex with a 14-year-old is preferable to anyone belonging to one of our two major political parties?
It only happens “when logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead.” My God, I’m having to dredge up stoned-out Jefferson Airplane lyrics to make sense of it all.
I communicate for a living, and our tools for that have become so corrupted we can’t trust them any more.
Until we find a way to get them back, things will only get worse. I’m open to suggestions.
A new start for Birmingham
Randall Woodfin faced a hard challenge Tuesday — how to start fulfilling his promise of major changes as Birmingham mayor while showing respect for the mayor he soundly defeated. He pulled it off perfectly, praising former Mayor William Bell for his long years of service to the city. Woodfin went even further, recognizing the past contributions of past mayors Richard Arrington, Bernard Kincaid and Larry Langford. (The Langford reference felt a little weird, give that the former mayor is still in prison.)
Woodfin’s nod to the past was one of two remarkable moments. The other came when he invited the nine members of the new City Council to line up behind him and said, “The 10 of us collectively not only represent you, are not only committed to fighting for you, but wholeheartedly we believe in you. We believe in our city. We believe City Hall has something to offer you.”
That was a jarring contrast to the fighting between Mayor Bell and the last council, and even the new council has had some tense moments already. Still, we’ll hope for a honeymoon that lasts long enough to allow new relationships to form. And I’ll be watching closely to see how well Woodfin keeps his promises of a more open city government.
Evangelicals were fine with abortion until the Right needed an issue
By Carl Carter, APR
My article on how conservative Christians sold out to the far right got a lot of response, and it made me realize how few people remember that most evangelicals were fine with abortion until the late 1970s.
This is conveniently documented in historian Frances Fitzgerald’s outstanding new book, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America. I covered these issues as religion editor of The Birmingham News in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so I have a personal memory of much of this background, but I’m leaning heavily on this history.
I’ve argued elsewhere that if you wish to pinpoint the tipping point at which the conservative churches and the secular far right joined forces, it was 1979. This was especially the case with abortion, which became the driving issue in evangelical churches. The “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” film series featuring Francis Schaeffer and physician Everett Koop came out that year, just in time to rally the troops for the election of Ronald Reagan.
That was also the year in which the Southern Baptist Convention, after years of tolerant leadership, took a sharp turn to the right with the election of a fundamentalist as president. The leaders made it clear that they intended to stack the seminary and college boards with fundamentalists who would purge the schools of “liberal” professors, defined broadly as those who did not believe the entire Bible was literally, historically and scientifically true.
Until then, even very conservative Southern Baptists had steered a moderate course on most issues. In 1971, the Convention called on Baptists to work to relax abortion laws to allow legal abortions “in the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental and physical health of the mother.” Even fundamentalist former SBC president W.A. Criswell, according to Fitzgerald, said after the Roe v. Wade decision that “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person.”
But in 1979, the film series flooded the Baptist churches with the idea that life begins at conception, and any abortion is murder. This was declared true even in cases of rape or incest. (In an interview in 1980, I pressed Dr. Koop on this point of rape and incest, and his response was clear: “It’s not the baby’s fault.” He would allow no exceptions.)
That teaching flooded evangelical churches in 1979 and 1980 and made the churches the tools of far right political thinkers Paul Weyrich and Ed Fuelner of the Heritage Foundation, which had been founded by the ultra-right Coors family. It has always struck me as funny that the Baptists were so quick to cozy up to the ideas of a think tank started with beer money.
What strikes me as odd about this is that up until the late 1970s, evangelicals — including those who later became pro-life firebrands — were pretty much OK with abortion. In 1967, a major symposium of 25 prominent evangelical physicians and theologians “showed consensus … that abortion, while possibly sinful, was necessary and permissible when it served to safeguard ‘greater values sanctioned by the scriptures,’ such as individual health, family welfare and the social good.” (Fitzgerald, p. 254)
Goldwater supported abortion rights, and even Ronald Reagan had signed a 1967 law in California allowing abortion in cases of danger to the mother’s health.
The extreme position that emerged in 1979 and afterward made for some horrendously absurd situations over the years that followed. In my church (which had shown the film series on Sunday mornings), the pastor regularly called out the name of a mother-to-be who was refusing to abort a baby that doctors had said would be badly deformed. She became a local hero within the church. As it turned out, the doctors were right, and the baby was severely handicapped.
I ran into the father of that child a few years later and asked about the situation. It turns out that when it was time to enroll the child in school, the church-operated Christian school told them they weren’t equipped for special needs, and they dumped the child on the public school system.
How conservative Christians sold out to the far right
By Carl Carter, APR
I grew up in a Southern Baptist church. And when I say “grew up,” you can take that pretty literally. We were at church Sunday morning and evening, not to mention Wednesday nights. But it was bigger than that.
We talked about what it meant to keep the Lord’s day holy, and whether that meant we couldn’t watch Tarzan on Sunday afternoons. There were long conversations about tithing (well, Dad was church treasurer), and telling the truth, and other matters of life.
I went off to college and, in time, wandered into the world of fundamentalist religion, where God seemed to be in control and life was good, right up to the point where things started to get weird. When I went to the pastor’s home each week for Saturday morning prayer breakfasts (followed by tennis on a member’s private court), I started seeing copies of Conservative Digest and other right-wing political books and magazines lying about.
Almost overnight, we seemed to be talking less and less about prayer and truth telling. The ministers were circulating lists of “big-spending” liberals in Congress. There were conferences on the need to keep prayer and Bible readings in public schools.
And there was the film series.
If you were around back then, you know the one I mean. A Presbyterian minister living in Switzerland teamed up with a baby surgeon named Everett Koop to produce a 10-film series called “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” I don’t know who paid for the prints, but suddenly the films were everywhere. They featured the doctor and the preacher (Francis Schaeffer) walking through 1,000 naked baby dolls that represented aborted babies, accompanied by scary music. Another scene showed a lengthy line of rabbits and mice in lab cages, followed by a crying, naked baby in the final cage.
Schaeffer and Koop (who later served as Ronald Reagan’s surgeon general) laid out the case that the Roe v. Wade decision and legalized abortion were a virtual replay of the Nazi Holocaust. They threw out stark parallels — 6 million babies aborted = 6 million Jews killed by Hitler. It was only a matter of time before the U.S. would begin executing the handicapped, mentally challenged and other unsuitable specimens.
Before that film series, you almost never heard a preacher give a sermon on abortion, because the Bible has nothing to say on the topic (unless you count a vague reference to John the Baptist kicking in his pregnant mother’s womb when she saw a pregnant Mary).
Ever since that film series (which is still available on YouTube), abortion has been the most reliable fuel for the Christian Right. When things are bogging down, you can get them re-started in a jiffy with a few words about abortion and baby killing.
When you have a tool that works that well, you use it and use it, and you keep on using it until it gives out. The party that beats the anti-abortion drum is the one on the side of God. Therefore, whatever they say goes. If they assert that tax cuts for rich people will jumpstart the economy and fix the deficit, they’re right — even if the notion has never worked before. If they say the deficit doesn’t matter any more, that’s fine. If people are poor, they just didn’t work hard enough. Or they had sin in their lives. Any government effort to take care of the poor smacks of socialism and puts us on the road to godless communism. And yet, if the good guys say that Putin is OK even though he was the chief spy for the godless communists, then by God he is.
Because, you know, abortion.
Abortion fever is the gateway drug to the whole package, provoking fear, disgust and anger — a trifecta of powerful emotion. Trying to talk logic to people driven by this mindset is like trying to teach math to someone on LSD.
Remember that evangelical and fundamentalist churches were rooted in the feelings of powerlessness. Now they have tasted power. It has long ceased to be about God or the Bible, but it is most assuredly about the churches.
So candidates line up and take the God pledge. Mo Brooks will read the King James Version on the floor of the house until we build a wall. Sen. Strange declares Trump’s win to be a miracle of God. And God help us (so to speak), Roy Moore hasn’t even gotten started yet. But we know what’s coming.
Just remember that it’s not about God. It’s not about faith. It’s about power.
In a world where people have nothing, a tutu can change a life
*Personal note: I first met Heather Hood at Banks High, where we were seniors in 1972. But we didn’t really know each other, because she hung out with the cool kids, and I was just the geeky transfer from Woodlawn. In recent years, we connected by Facebook, and I began following her stories of Project Grace. Over time, her stories inspired me to offer to help. Since I tell stories, I asked if I could tell folks the story of Project Grace, in hopes that some of you will step up and help them keep this work going. — Carl
By Carl Carter, APR
It started with a little girl crying for a baby doll.
Heather Hood was visiting Haiti in 2010 on a relief trip after the earthquake that ravaged the island. The objective in those days of urgent need was basic — taking new shoes to kids in orphanages.
As they were leaving an orphanage in Port Au Prince, a little girl refused to stop crying and kept asking for something, but Hood wasn’t sure what. “Finally, through her broken English and my terrible French/Creole, I figured out that she was asking for a baby doll,” said Hood, whose day job is working as wardrobe supervisor for Red Mountain Theater. “I promised I”d bring her one.”
Back home in Alabama, Hood started organizing another trip to deliver baby dolls to the area. “Our idea was to just go, give out some dolls and go home.” But before that got off the ground, the host in Haiti asked what else Hood could do.
“I said, well, I dance with a local ballet company, but not very well.”
The was enough, and soon, Hood was planning ballet classes, collecting leotards, and putting together costumes. With a few hiccups, the trip was a big success, and Hood decided to follow up with Project Grace, to organize more trips.
Now in its seventh year, after 10 trips, Project Grace is facing the reality that even on a shoestring and run by volunteers, the trips are expensive. “We’re getting more teachers, and offering classes to more kids in ballet, tap and yoga — something that would normally be available only to the very rich in a poor country like Haiti. But it costs about $2,000 per instructor. We’re planning to take six on our next trip in late August, but I don’t know where the money is going to come from,” said Hood.
“We also take hygiene supplies for the yoga and ballet camps. To really understand the power of this, you have to realize just how destitute and backward these areas of Haiti are. The earthquake of 2010 killed and displaced hundreds of thousands. We’re going to areas where there’s no running water, no power grid. People are just barely surviving,” said Hood.
And yet, they are people — humans with needs for a life with meaning and beauty.
“There’s not a lot of beauty in many parts of Haiti. So when we can show up with some tutus and teach some kids about dance, it has a huge impact. We leave, and the kids are so excited to have something new that they wear their tutus every day, or wear them to school and to weddings,” said Hood.
And it’s changed lives, she said. “We’re not saving the world. But I hear from parents that children continue to dance even when they get adopted into new homes. Our goals are modest. Maybe we can expose them to something they’d never experience otherwise. They learn some trust, and perhaps a little structure and discipline. I like to think that these will, at a minimum, make their lives richer,” she said.
To remain viable, Project Grace needs help.
“We are hoping to find some people willing to make a five-year commitment. Being part of the arts community here in Birmingham, I’m around people who understand the power in a tutu or some dance slippers. I just hope they’ll be willing to share that with these kids,” she said.
Here’s where you can send your donations for Project Grace:
Project Grace (not tax-deductible), contact Hood at heather.hood@aol.com. Those who need to donate to a tax-deductible organization may send contributions to ProjectHouseofHope.org, designating the donations for Project Grace.
Forget the Independence Day myths. There’s more power in the truth.
By Carl Carter, APR
We fly our flags this week and celebrate a divorce document. That’s it.
It’s not about the creation of a new nation. I’d argue that America had been a nation from the first time people whose religions weren’t welcome in Europe started settling in Jamestown and Plymouth, a century and a half before Thomas Jefferson put his quill to paper. And for thousands of years before that, because the Native Americans who lived here have a rightful claim on the title of Americans too.
It has nothing to do with the wisdom and foresight of the Founding Fathers in establishing a bicameral Legislature. That didn’t come until 11 years later. It’s not about freedom of press or religion, or the right to own guns. The Bill of Rights didn’t happen for another 13 years.
It’s not about sending off soldiers to defend our rights, either. The Revolutionary War was already well under way. George Washington was already in charge of the Army, which had been fighting for a year.
It’s not even about freedom — at least not the way we use the word today. Despite Thomas Jefferson’s eloquent words that “All men are created equal,” half of our economy was built on the enslavement of black people who were captured or bought and brought here against their wills. Jefferson owned slaves. George Washington owned slaves. My ancestors owned slaves. I have copies of the sales documents showing the names of black humans, the dates on which they were bought and sold, and the price paid for them. (Have you ever held in your hand the bill of sale on another human your family owned? It can change how you look at the world.)
It’s not about establishing a government on religious principles. Ben Franklin, who drafted Jefferson to write our Declaration, was an atheist. Jefferson carried a prayer book but had no beliefs that resemble the fundamentalism that many claim now to be our birthright. Independence Day has little or nothing to do with religion.
So what happened on the July 4, 1776? We finished signing our divorce papers with England. We declared that the relationship was no longer good for us, that they had treated us badly, and that we were showing them the door. Read past the famous parts and you’ll find a laundry list of grievances very much like those you’ll read in any divorce. The King wouldn’t let us have any relationships with the rest of the world. He kept armies marching around, hovering and threatening us. He wouldn’t let us think for ourselves or work out issues among ourselves, telling us where we could live and where we could not. In short, we were in an abusive relationship with a domineering spouse.
To be sure, the Declaration contained fighting words, so the war that was already under way became even more fierce. It gave us many stories of inspiring heroism. My favorites, of course, involve two of my ancestors — an old woman in North Carolina whose husband and sons were off in the war. The old lady saw the British coming and burned her own house, declaring that she wouldn’t give them a damn thing to help in their war against her menfolk.
Or Jesse Carter, the first of my Carter ancestors to immigrate to the New World, who got caught up in the disastrous Siege of Charleston and likely either deserted or ended up on British slave ship. It’s OK, though, because he went back home, stole some land from the Cherokee and ended up rich. As hero stories go, that’s not much of one. But that’s the point. To make this country work, we have to be honest about who we are. We have to understand how we really got here so that we can make good decisions and find our way into a better future.
I’ve never had to go through a divorce myself, but I’ve seen plenty. They’re always messy, and nothing ever ends up the way you intended it to. One decision leads to another — some good, some bad. We go through good and bad times.
So here we are. Pretty messed up at the moment, from where I sit. It’s hard to imagine a time when things were screwier, but they were. Many times. We’ll get through it.
I remain an optimist. A few folks think I’m crazy, or not seeing the full picture. I heard the same thing when I didn’t join the fight against the godless secular humanists who were destroying our country behind the tyranny of a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher named Jimmy Carter. Some folks questioned my grasp on reality when I said we didn’t have to fear Iraq, a country with no functional navy or air force or (as it turned out) weapons of mass destruction. Somebody always seems to think I’m just not worked up enough about the dangers we face.
But when faced with whether we can rise to meet these crises and challenges, my answer is always the same: We always have. Along the way, we’ve done horrendous, terrible things. We’ve beaten slaves, denied people their votes, marched Native Americans along the Trail of Tears, incarcerated people because they were Japanese, and much more.
We go crazy. A lot. But we always come back to our senses. And that process starts with understanding what really happened at the beginning.
The leadership we need now: Darrell O’Quinn
I’ve seen generations of Birmingham leaders come and go, and most fade easily from memory. But from time to time, when we stood at a crossroads and needed them most, we have had a few with the vision, integrity and leadership we desperately needed. Leaders like David Vann, Richard Arrington, and Nina Miglionico.
From the time I first met him several years ago, I knew Darrell O’Quinn was that kind of leader. One who’s out working in the community early in the morning and late in the evening. Organizing events. Serving as President of the Citizens Advisory Board. Working to improve streets, parks and commerce. And most of all, bringing people together.
For years, friends have encouraged Darrell to take the next step and run for citywide office, and I am proud to announce that I will serve as Media Strategist for his campaign for Birmingham City Council District 5. In the coming weeks, you’ll hear a great deal from Darrell as he communicates his vision for our city.
Now, he needs your help. We need volunteers to organize neighborhoods, register voters and spread the message. We need money. And on August 22, he’ll need your vote.