#alabama

[angelx1992]

[federer7]

Black Woman Working in Field near Eutaw, Alabama. 1936

Photo: Dorothea Lange

[queerism1969]

[animentality]

[kuchipatch1]

yall have got to be more normal about Southern people and I'm not kidding. enough of the Sweet Home Alabama incest jokes, enough of the idea that all Southerners are bigots and rednecks, and enough of the idea that the South has bad food. shut up about "trailer trash" and our accents and our hobbies!

do yall know how fucking nauseating it is to hear people only bring up my state to make jokes about people in poverty and incestuous relationships? how much shame I feel that I wasn't born up north like the Good Queers and Good Leftists with all the Civilised Folk with actual houses instead of small cramped trailers that have paper thin walls that I know won't protect me in a bad enough storm?

do yall know how frustrating it is to be trans in a place that wants to kill you and whenever you bring it up to people they say "well just move out" instead of sympathizing with you or offering help?

do yall understand how alienating it is to see huge masterposts of queer and mental health resources but none of them are in your state because theyre all up north? and nobody seems to want to fix this glaring issue because "they're all hicks anyways"

Southern people deserve better. we deserve to be taken seriously and given a voice in the queer community and the mental health space and leftist talks in general.

[liberalsarecool]

Voting Blue in Alabama! 🌊🌊🌊

She won by 30 points!

[randomnoteforfuturereference]

This is exactly how typically red regions such as the South are an untapped potential and should not be written off.

It doesn't mean progressive candidates in blue strongholds watering down their message. But it does mean actually thinking strategically to bolster messaging and candidates in conservative (yes, even if we are "sure" that they'll lose the nearest election) areas to bolster defenses and ultimately go on an offense.

[reasonsforhope]

"When considering the great victories of America’s conservationists, we tend to think of the sights and landscapes emblematic of the West, but there’s also a rich history of acknowledging the value of the wetlands of America’s south.

These include such vibrant ecosystems as the Everglades, the Great Dismal Swamp, the floodplains of the Congaree River, and “America’s Amazon” also known as the “Land Between the Rivers”—recently preserved forever thanks to generous donors and work by the Nature Conservancy (TNC).

With what the TNC described as an “unprecedented gift,” 8,000 acres of pristine wetlands where the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers join, known as the Mobile Delta, were purchased for the purpose of conservation for $15 million. The owners chose to sell to TNC rather than to the timber industry which planned to log in the location.

“This is one of the most important conservation victories that we’ve ever been a part of,” said Mitch Reid, state director for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama.

The area is filled with oxbow lakes, creeks, and swamps alongside the rivers, and they’re home to so many species that it ranks as one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, such that Reid often jokes that while it has rightfully earned the moniker “America’s Amazon” the Amazon should seriously consider using the moniker “South America’s Mobile.”

“This tract represents the largest remaining block of land that we can protect in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. First and foremost, TNC is doing this work for our fellow Alabamians who rightly pride themselves on their relationship with the outdoors,” said Reid, who told Advance Local that it can connect with other protected lands to the north, in an area called the Red Hills.

“Conservation lands in the Delta positions it as an anchor in a corridor of protected lands stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Appalachian Mountains and has long been a priority in TNC’s ongoing efforts to establish resilient and connected landscapes across the region.”

At the moment, no management plan has been sketched out, but TNC believes it must allow the public to use it for recreation as much as possible.

The money for the purchase was provided by a government grant and a generous, anonymous donor, along with $5.2 million from the Holdfast Collective—the conservation funding body of Patagonia outfitters."

Video via Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, August 7, 2020

Article via Good News Network, February 14, 2024

[where-our-stories-start]

Last Week Tonight, March 16, 2022

[politijohn]

Source

Reminder that 53% of Alabama’s prison population is black people who are incarcerated at 3x the rate as white people (source).

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[angelx1992]

[yodaprod]

Computer Store, Tuscaloosa (1991)

Source: Youtube/Theleeoverstreet

[catfindr]

[vintagegeekculture]

Enterprise, Alabama built a monument to the Boll Weevil in 1919. In 1915, the weevil destroyed a majority of the town's coffee and cotton crop. On the advice of Alabama's famous black agronomist George Washington Carver, the town switched instead to growing peanuts, which circus owner PT Barnum started to roast to use as concession stand food in his circus, leading to widespread popularity for them as a snack (along with the previously unknown drink, pink lemonade).

The Alabama town made so much more money with peanuts as a cash crop, and so they built a monument to the boll weevil for pushing them to switch away from coffee and cotton. It is the only statue dedicated to an insect.

Contrary to popular belief, George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter, but a black Canadian, Marcellus Gilmore Edsen, did (he called it peanut paste). It was not popular until John Kellogg (yes, the cereal guy) was able to create a process to make it in batches industrially, and mass market it as a diet food for people who needed protein but couldn't chew.