PMJA Award for Best Democracy/Election Coverage, "...a U.S. House seat, if you can keep it." Alabama Public Radio
“There is some sense of, oh my god, like all of this that's going on,” said Deanna Fowler of Alabama Forward.
Fowler is referring to the U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering deep red Alabama to redraw its Congressional map to better represent African Americans. She was left uneasy that the same Justices who overturned Roe V. Wade thought Alabama was being unfair to blacks. It doesn’t help that new GOP court challenges are already underway to flip the map back to the conservatives.
Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the RTDNA Murrow Award for Best Democracy Coverage, titled…a U.S. House seat, if you can keep it.”
Please click here to listen to the program...
Alabama Public Radio Democracy/Election Coverage 2024
The APR news team spent nine months investigating critical issues in Alabama’s new Congressional District 2. Rural healthcare was just one.
“It was a freak accident. My five-year-old daughter was rolling down the hill and her arm snapped in half,” said Caila Savage said of rural healthcare in District 2. “I think about an hour, maybe two hours, we had to wait on the ambulance.”
Minority business owners in District 2 are looking for support from their new member of Congress. The Democratic candidate is promising money, the Republican wants fewer regulations.
“A lot of people don’t see us making it,” said D’Angelo Harrison who works at his family’s minority owned seafood restaurant in Monroeville in District 2. “But you know we don’t let these people you know tell us what we cannot do. We just keep our head up and we keep going.”
Then, there’s the issue facing Alabama’s only black U.S. House member, Terri Sewell.
“I think that it's a matter of, I definitely think I can say this as a black voter like I think that it is a matter of, we trust you more,” that how one of Sewell’s staffers describes the typical phone call from outside the district from an African American.
If a black voter needs help in Alabama, and they live in a U.S. House District with a white Republican, they typically call Sewell. She’s just one house member out of seven in the state, but the de facto representative of one third of Alabama’s population that’s black.
Alabama’s new District 2 was created by the U.S. Supreme Court case Allen versus Milligan. That may sound like a one-of-a-kind event from this part of the state, but it’s not. APR finishes out our investigation by looking back at the 1960 SCOTUS case Gomillion versus Lightfoot. Fred Gray, the attorney to Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, argued the Tuskegee case that codified the constitutional rights of black voters years before the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Respectfully submitted.
Fowler is referring to the U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering deep red Alabama to redraw its Congressional map to better represent African Americans. She was left uneasy that the same Justices who overturned Roe V. Wade thought Alabama was being unfair to blacks. It doesn’t help that new GOP court challenges are already underway to flip the map back to the conservatives.
Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the RTDNA Murrow Award for Best Democracy Coverage, titled…a U.S. House seat, if you can keep it.”
Please click here to listen to the program...
Alabama Public Radio Democracy/Election Coverage 2024
The APR news team spent nine months investigating critical issues in Alabama’s new Congressional District 2. Rural healthcare was just one.
“It was a freak accident. My five-year-old daughter was rolling down the hill and her arm snapped in half,” said Caila Savage said of rural healthcare in District 2. “I think about an hour, maybe two hours, we had to wait on the ambulance.”
Minority business owners in District 2 are looking for support from their new member of Congress. The Democratic candidate is promising money, the Republican wants fewer regulations.
“A lot of people don’t see us making it,” said D’Angelo Harrison who works at his family’s minority owned seafood restaurant in Monroeville in District 2. “But you know we don’t let these people you know tell us what we cannot do. We just keep our head up and we keep going.”
Then, there’s the issue facing Alabama’s only black U.S. House member, Terri Sewell.
“I think that it's a matter of, I definitely think I can say this as a black voter like I think that it is a matter of, we trust you more,” that how one of Sewell’s staffers describes the typical phone call from outside the district from an African American.
If a black voter needs help in Alabama, and they live in a U.S. House District with a white Republican, they typically call Sewell. She’s just one house member out of seven in the state, but the de facto representative of one third of Alabama’s population that’s black.
Alabama’s new District 2 was created by the U.S. Supreme Court case Allen versus Milligan. That may sound like a one-of-a-kind event from this part of the state, but it’s not. APR finishes out our investigation by looking back at the 1960 SCOTUS case Gomillion versus Lightfoot. Fred Gray, the attorney to Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, argued the Tuskegee case that codified the constitutional rights of black voters years before the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Respectfully submitted.
Pat Duggins