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Opinion March 17, 2002 What’s wrong with this picture? The black caucus of the Alabama House of Representatives voted unanimously last week to oppose a citizens’ convention to rewrite the state constitution. Caucus Chair Laura Hall said the vote came after black House members saw so little involvement of blacks in the constitutional convention movement. Never mind the very public involvement in the Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform of Birmingham’s Odessa Woolfolk, secretary of its foundation, or of members including Birmingham lawyer J. Mason Davis, Mobile County Commissioner Sam Jones, Mobile community leader Jimmy Knight and former Tuscaloosa County judge Dennis Steverson, all of whom are black. Or that the white supremacist framers of the 1901 constitution crafted it to take away voting rights from blacks and to perpetuate separate but unequal school systems for white and black children. Or that much of the state’s immoral, unfair tax system which hammers hardest the state’s poorest families, many of them black is locked into the constitution. Never mind, even, that Rep. Demetrius Newton, speaker pro tem of the House and a member of the black caucus, is co-sponsoring the ACCR-backed plan to allow citizens to vote in November on whether to hold a convention. None of that registers with members of the black caucus. Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, chairman of the powerful Ways and Means General Fund Committee, says the caucus is against a citizens’ convention because “the likelihood of diverse representation may not be there.” That’s bunk. Convention delegates would be elected from each of the state’s 105 House districts. Right now, there are 27 black representatives in the House. Surely, voters would elect a comparable number of black citizens to serve as convention delegates. If any group ought to be pushing for a citizens’ convention, it’s the black caucus. Yet the caucus is aligning itself with fringe groups such as the Alabama Association of Judeo-Christian Values, which opposes rewriting the constitution because it’s a “godly” document. Members of the black caucus say they want constitution reform, but favor the Legislature doing it article by article. This is the same Legislature that has refused for 100 years to fix the flawed document. This is the same Legislature that in the past few years hasn’t passed even one rewritten article to place on the ballot for citizen approval, in spite of Rep. Jack Venable’s efforts. This is the same Legislature that decries the influence of powerful special interests on a convention, even as these special interests dominate Montgomery. The caucus’ opposition to a citizens’ convention the best way to a new document makes no sense. Constituents should be seeing red. Return to: Editorial Index |
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| Alabama Citizens for
Constitutional Reform Foundation, Inc. P.O. Box 34 Montgomery, Alabama 36101-0034 E-mail: accr@constitutionalreform.org |
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