“Pushback helps us expand our work and build strategic partnerships over time. They’ve given us the tools and resources to measure our impact at the polls.”
– Scott Douglas, Greater Birmingham Ministries
Alabama is an increasingly urban state containing the four major centers of Birmingham, Mobile, Montgomery, and Huntsville. While each of the four urban areas has its own rapidly expanding suburban environment, the cities themselves suffer from severe decay in infrastructure, housing, living wage employment, health care and public education.
The world-class health care available to the wealthy residents of Birmingham and Mobile is not accessible to low-income residents of Alabama. An antiquated Alabama Constitution keeps education and public transportation funding at a minimum. The Black Belt region of Alabama is one of the poorest regions of the country, reporting unemployment rates as high as 16%, and is rapidly losing population because of the shortage of jobs, the shortage of resources to fund public education, and the low quality of housing stock.
Stories from the Ground
Alabama Anchor Organizations
Greater Birmingham Ministries
GBM is an ecumenical and interfaith organization that has been engaged in direct services to low-income families and community organizing since 1969. GBM’s membership includes some 17 faith bodies, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, with membership state-wide. Greater Birmingham Ministries is located in Birmingham, Alabama, where the metropolitan population contains some 25% of the state’s voters as well as 25% of the state’s African-American population. GBM has a two-prong, multi-organizational, multi-year strategy combining statewide issue, base-building work in metropolitan Birmingham with the state’s constitutional reform effort in ways that develop ongoing leadership among our precinct level grassroots constituencies and engages targeted populations, especially among people of color, in enhanced electoral participation.
Learn more about Greater Birmingham Ministries on their website.
PBN News: AL
- Pushback Network at the US Social Forum
- Pushback Network Announces new Executive Director!
- Securing tax relief for lower-income Alabamians
- Ten Tips for Effective Collaborative Organizing
- Collateral Damage
more AL news…
Arise Citizens’ Policy Project
Arise Citizens’ Policy Project (ACPP) is a statewide coalition of 150 congregations and community groups. For 20 years ACPP has promoted public policy changes to improve the lives of low-income people. Arise’s policy analysts develop workable policy proposals, while its organizers equip the members to engage in statewide conversations on tax reform, health care, and other issues. Arise’s annual issue agenda is chosen by a vote of the members every September.
Learn more about Arise Citizens’ Policy Project on their website.
Issues
- Constitutional reform
- Tax reform
- Campaign finance reform
- Asset-building
- Public transportation
- Health care
- Environmental justice
- Moratorium on death penalty
- Fair distribution of hurricane relief funding
What’s going on in Alabama
Alabama’s progressive advocates are working to build on two recent successes. In 2006, Alabama enacted its first-ever landlord-tenant law. Alabama had been the only state with no tenant protections. The state also passed a $60 million income tax reform plan that lifts the income tax threshold for a family of four from $4,600 to $12,600.
