Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1552: Come with me as we share the continuing Jubilee experience!

  Come with me as we share the Bridge Crossing Jubilee on the 52nd Anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the Selma-to-Montgomery March and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. I cannot share everything because I could not attend all of the more than 40 events. I don’t even have space to share all I participated in over these five days. Come with me as we share the continuing experience of the Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

  Let’s start on Thursday of last week. I returned from a Senate session in Montgomery. Two television reporters had set up interviews about the Jubilee. I agreed to do the interviews in spite of the potential for negative publicity. I met them at Tabernacle Baptist Church. Rather than respond to the controversy, I tried to address the big picture: the Jubilee would go on; the forty-plus events would go on as planned; and only one event, the Jubilee Festival, would be moved.

Unfairness in class action: A new attack on civil rights

  President Donald Trump’s budget proposal may eliminate the single greatest funder of civil legal aid in the United States, the Legal Services Corporation—a long-standing goal of Vice President Mike Pence. At the same time, Congress is working to block Americans from seeking justice on their own with the Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017. This bill was drafted to address an imaginary problem; if it passes, it will have very real, devastating consequences.

  For those who face systemic corporate abuses and failures of government, class action lawsuits are a critical tool for seeking justice. Through a class action, a few people or organizations can represent a larger group that has been harmed in a lawsuit against the perpetrator to seek a remedy, whether a change in practices or monetary damages. Actions that aim to force actors to change their behavior—for example, to follow the law or cease a bad practice—are referred to as seeking injunctive relief.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Prisons bill will fail

  The premier issue of this year’s legislative session will be whether to borrow a massive amount of money to build new prisons in the state. This initiative appears to be our lame duck Gov. Robert Bentley’s primary agenda.

  Last year Bentley proposed an $800 million bond issue for new prisons. He has come forward with a similar proposal this year. His plan would close all existing prisons and replace them with three new super men's prisons and one smaller women’s prison.

  Folks, $800 million is a lot of money. There is no question that we have a prison problem. Alabama’s prison population is at 175% of capacity. It is among the highest in the nation. This overcrowding obviously causes violence and safety problems for our prison guards.

Naomi Tsu: This family was targeted by Trump's dragnet

  Last Tuesday night, President Donald Trump once again insisted that the immigrants he is targeting for deportation are criminals.

  “As we speak tonight,” he told a joint session of Congress, “we are removing gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our very innocent citizens. Bad ones are going out as I speak.”

  The speech echoed his earlier calls to rid the country of the “bad hombres” from south of the border.

  But as a civil rights lawyer representing immigrants in the Southeast, I’m not fooled.

Joseph O. Patton: Jim Zeigler's Confederate flag panties are showing

  Though I shouldn't be surprised, Alabama Auditor Jim Zeigler has once again slinked into the spotlight to flash his unique brand of embarrassment and dysfunction to taxpayers. Following President Trump's address to Congress, Zeigler felt compelled to share a disturbing, unfair and borderline slanderous bit of material on social media, equating female members of Congress to Ku Klux Klan members.

  The congresswomen in question simply wore white to the address, a classy, non-confrontational nod to the American suffrage movement. In Zeigler's post, it included the inflammatory and insulting text, "now appearing without hoods," and "Nancy Pelosi and the Klannettes" along with an actual photo of Klan members.

Sam Fulwood III: A black history lesson for the ages

  Black History Month drew to a close last week, and I’m guessing the White House is relieved. After all, the month that is reserved to celebrate African Americans began with President Donald Trump boasting his abject ignorance about the mortality of Frederick Douglass. Then the observances concluded with his education secretary revealing her lack of knowledge about the history of black colleges.

Charles C. Haynes: “Welcoming the stranger” in the Age of Trump

  On Feb. 8, a group of Latino men were leaving an overnight hypothermia shelter at Rising Hope Mission Church in Alexandria, Va., when they were surrounded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, arrested and taken away in vans.

  The church’s pastor, Kerry Kincannon, worries that ICE is now targeting churches, abandoning long-standing ICE guidelines that treat houses of worship, hospitals and schools as “sensitive areas” to be avoided when rounding up people for deportation.

Hank Sanders: Senate Sketches #1551: Standing on history is never a party

  I could not believe my eyes. I just could not be seeing what I saw. It was a Facebook message posted by the Mayor of Selma and forwarded to me. The Facebook message said that the Bridge Crossing Jubilee was a “four-day party for Senator Sanders and his wife.” After all the years of hard work, this was unbelievable. I could not believe my eyes.

Rethinking Tobacco Policy: The federal government should stop blocking alternatives to smoking

  Cigarette smokers who are trying to quit smoking have many new and innovative options to help them break the habit. At least they do as of now. E-cigarettes, as well as even newer products which heat but do not burn tobacco, allow those who are unable or unwilling to quit using nicotine to dramatically reduce their exposure to the deadliest components of cigarettes, the products of combustion in the smoke.

  However, the federal government is about to prevent individuals who desperately want to stop smoking from having access to these options.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: The legacies of Alabama governors

  We have unbelievable natural resources in Alabama from the Tennessee Valley to the beautiful white sands at Gulf Shores. Many of our natural resources have been exploited over the years. A prime example would be the exploitation of our rich vaults of iron ore discovered in Jefferson County in the early 20th Century. It created the city of Birmingham, the Steel City of the South.

  U.S. Steel swept in and bought the entire region, used cheap labor in the mines and steel mills, and kept poor whites and blacks in poverty wages and shantytowns. They owed their soul to the company store. Finally they organized into labor unions. The United Steel Workers Union Local in Birmingham became the largest in the nation. Alabama also became the most unionized state in the south.