A letter from a Birmingham mother about her daughters being pepper sprayed by police!!! "Back in the USA..."

I once trusted the Birmingham Public Schools. I sent my children to school thinking they were safe and protected. I found out different.

My 17-year old-daughter Gloria was sprayed in the face with pepper spray by a Birmingham police officer assigned to protect students in the school.

She wasn’t being violent and she certainly wasn’t a threat to the officer. Gloria was upset because a boy had pushed her. While she was confronting the boy, the police officer grabbed her from behind, pulled out his canister of pepper spray, and sprayed her in the eyes, face, and mouth. My 15-year-old daughter Patrice saw her sister sprayed and ran to her side. As Patrice reached Gloria, the officer sprayed Gloria with a second burst of pepper spray. The second burst also hit Patrice in the face.

When I saw Gloria, I couldn’t believe how red and swollen her face was. She was crying out to me to help her and I couldn’t do anything. She had red welts all over her face and her eyes were red. Days later the welts turned to black scabs that took two weeks to go away. Every time she washed her face, she cried again because water only made the pain worse. For weeks she refused to come out of her room and fell into a deep depression. It was a nightmare knowing my child suffered physical pain and depression because she reacted emotionally at school. She’s a teenage girl, not a criminal.

After Gloria was sprayed, I was shocked to learn that this was not an isolated incident. Nearly 200 Birmingham high school students have been sprayed with pepper spray in just the last five years. The Southern Poverty Law Center hasn’t been able to find another school district that uses pepper spray on students for normal teenage behavior.

The Birmingham Board of Education and Superintendent know about the routine use of pepper spray in schools and have done nothing to stop it. Birmingham Mayor William Bell knows about and authorizes the use of pepper spray against our children. Birmingham’s elected officials, who are supposed to represent the interests of parents and residents, know this is happening and have done nothing to stop it.

We need to make it stop! Our children should attend schools without fear of being sprayed with dangerous chemicals and abused by police officers that should be protecting them. Help me tell Birmingham’s city officials that the police department needs to change the way it operates in schools. We want the Birmingham Police Department to:

1. Provide comprehensive and repeated training on dealing with young people and nonviolent conflict resolution to all officers stationed in Birmingham schools.
2. Adopt a specific policy on the use of pepper spray in schools, limiting when pepper spray can be used on children.
3. Institute screening procedures for officers before assigning them to schools.

Help me show my daughter that there are people willing to stand up for her.

Black, Hispanic, or other and poor in the USA = you might be just less than a citizen if you don't wake the *&$! UP!!!

Protesting voter ID laws


Thousands gathering outside South Carolina's capitol Monday heard a message that wouldn't have been out of place during the halcyon days of the civil rights movement a half-century ago: the need to protect all citizens' right to vote.

A similar tone was struck at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King preached from 1960 until his death. There and in South Carolina, speakers condemned the voter identification laws they said are meant to suppress black voter turnout.

For most of 13 years in South Carolina, the attention at the NAACP's annual rally has been on the Confederate flag that still waves outside the Statehouse. But on Monday, the civil rights group shifted the focus to laws requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast ballots, which the group and many other critics say is especially discriminatory toward African-Americans and the poor.


South Carolina's new law was rejected last month by the U.S. Justice Department, but Gov. Nikki Haley vowed to fight the federal government in court. At least a half-dozen other states passed similar voter ID laws in 2011.

"This has been quite a faith-testing year. We have seen the greatest attack on voting rights since segregation," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The shift in tactics was also noted by the keynote speaker, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Last month, Holder said the Justice Department was committed to fighting any laws that keep people from the ballot box. He told the crowd he was keenly aware he couldn't have become the nation's first African-American attorney general without the blood shed by King and other civil rights pioneers.

"The right to vote is not only the cornerstone of our governance, it is the lifeblood of our democracy. And no force has proved more powerful, or more integral to the success of the great American experiment, than efforts to expand the franchise," Holder said. "Let me be very, very clear — the arc of American history has bent toward the inclusion, not the exclusion, of more of our fellow citizens in the electoral process. We must ensure that this continues."

Texas' new voter ID law is currently before the Justice Department, which reviews changes in voting laws in nine mostly Southern states because of their history of discriminatory voting practices. Other states that passed such laws in 2011 included Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Similar laws already were on the books in Georgia and Indiana, and they were approved by President George W. Bush's Justice Department. Indiana's law, passed in 2005, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008.

Critics have likened the laws to the poll taxes and tests used to prevent blacks from voting during the civil rights era. Republicans, say such laws are needed to prevent fraud.

At the Atlanta church where King once preached, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock said some in America disrespect King's legacy by "cutting off those for whom he died and the principles for which he fought."

He called voter ID laws an affront to the memory of the civil rights leader.

"You cannot celebrate Dr. King on Monday, and undermine people's ability to vote on Super Tuesday," Warnock said.

Italy's motto "Thank God for Alabama!!!"

Jefferson County, Alabama, commissioners voted 4-1 to file the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy after reaching an impasse over concessions with holders of $3.14 billion of bonds.



JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which arranged most of the debt to fund a sewer renovation, will likely take the biggest loss in the process, which begins with a hearing 10 a.m. local time tomorrow.

A provisional agreement with creditors that commissioners approved in September included $1.1 billion in concessions and called for sewer-rate increases of as much as 8.2 percent for the first three years. The county, which encompasses the state’s largest city, Birmingham, couldn’t get signed commitments from creditors, Commission PresidentDavid Carrington said today.


In addition, the 25-member legislative delegation for the county was unable to unite behind bills needed to implement the tentative settlement.


“We’ve reached that last resort,” said Commissioner Joe Knight. “We could continue and keep kicking this can down the road, but I think the people of Jefferson County have had enough.”


Governor Robert Bentley, a Republican, said he was disappointed by the commission’s vote.