Update~ What Looks Like #VoterSuppression on an Ordinary Day in #SweetHomeAlabama

#MediaDrivenNarrativeAlert:   Gov. Robert Bentley, left to right, Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., and Peggy Wallace Kennedy, daughter of former Gov. George Wallace, in a commemoration of the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery (Julie Bennett/ jbennett@al.com)

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Alabama get voter suppression right!  (pun intended).

Alabama has followed its voter ID requirement that went into effect last year with closing drivers license offices in eight of 10 counties with majority black voting populations. The voter suppression effect is complimented by raising the fee for driver license renewal from $23.50 to $36.25 earlier this year.

EYE don't know why the Alabama Media Group , EYE am look at Y-O-U, Kyle Whitmire, John Archibald, and Dale "Jackson", are acting all shocked and awed Alabama has figured out a way to remain the reddest of the red, Confederate Slave States... today, tomorrow and forever.

EYE don't know why some people are acting all shocked and ashamed to learn Alabama to stop issuing drivers licenses in counties with 75% black registered voters.  Didn't Alabama State Senator Hank Sanders (D. Selma) try to tell y'all?

Hank Sanders knew the red, republican, controlled House would pass the Voter ID bill to disenfranchise black/poor/brown voters.

The Alabama Legislature, under Republican control for the first time since Reconstruction, passed a voter ID law this year. The law takes effect in 2014.
Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin have passed laws this year that allow voters without the required photo ID to cast provisional ballots, but the voters must return to a specific location with that ID within a certain time limit for their ballots to count.
Indiana and Georgia already had such laws. Other states have photo ID laws too, but provide different way to verify a voter’s identity without a photo ID. Texas and South Carolina are awaiting approval for their laws from the Justice Department because of those are among that states with a history of voting rights suppression and discrimination.

EYE knew when the republican majority Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act because things had changed dramatically in the south,  clearing the way for republicans to gerrymander their way to a permanent majority,  this was going to happen.  And it's too late to call for a justice department investigation into the closings Mr. Archibald, Sir.

Maybe if the Alabama Democratic Party had joined with The Alabama Democratic Conference instead of fighting with the Alabama Democratic Conference we wouldn't be in this mess.

EYE am just saying...

Still think Voter ID laws aren’t meant to keep folks from voting? What other purpose can they possibly serve? Back in 2011, Alabama passed a voter ID law requiring Photo ID. For most Americans, that’s a driver’s license.
Unfortunately for folks living in Alabama’s “Black Belt” – the state’s 15 mostly Black counties – those driver’s licences are about to become a LOT harder to get. Why? Because on Thursday, October 1, the state’s shutting down a staggering 31 driver’s license offices, leaving only four open.
Officials claim they’re doing this because of budget cuts, but it looks a lot more like the GOP-controlled state legislature wants to keep Black people from voting. After all, this certainly isn’t the first time the state of Alabama’s tried to keep Black people from voting. And now that the majority -GOP Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, they’re free to do it again.

EYE Report.  YOU Decide. 

About that "when facts don't fit the narrative" thingy

Alabama's segregationist Governor George Wallace blocking the entrance to the University of Alabama to prevent two black students enrolling at the University of Alabama, 11 June 1963. Photograph: AP

 

Sigh.  So not only is today the 50 anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Evers it is also the 50th anniversary of the former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace's famous stand in the school house door  preventing Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood from enrolling in the University of Alabama. 

So what is the media driven narrative of the day......White Americans are the good guys of history.

The truth is, like everyone else, White Americans are a mix of good and evil.
That said, they are nowhere nearly as good as they imagine. That for several reasons:

1. American exceptionalism. They see themselves as being above history, the shining city on the hill, a light to all the world, what the whole world wants to be like. God is on their side. This goes back to the Puritans. They thought God was on their side too – as they burned peaceful Pequot Indians alive. Little has changed.
2. Moral blindness. To maintain their self-image as Basically Good they do not face up to the evil they do – which makes them yet more evil.
3. They write the history books - as winners do. But, as if basking in their own whitewashed mythology was not good enough, they also believe in the Teflon Theory of History:  that anything bad that took place over 30 years ago is Ancient History – it has Absolutely No Effect on the present.
4. They control the world’s biggest media machine – meaning they live in a land filled with their own self-serving lies and point of view.

Case in point, a quick Google Search regarding the Anniversary will take you A daughter's Struggle to Overcome A Legacy of Segregation: NPR and A view from the football office:  Assistant Coach remembers Stand in the Schoolhouse Door.  It's more about whites than blacks.  But that's to expected from the Alabama press.

On another note, I can't figure out how blacks can forgive and forget former Governor George Wallace's real sins,  yet some white American's (not to be confused with all) can't forgive Joe Reed for standing up and fighting for equal, civil and human rights and standing up for public education, and public school educators?

SMH