Alabama Organizing Project  ---  Under Construction

Were it not for Mississippi, we jokingly remind ourselves, Alabama would be last in every category that describes progress. What is not a joke is that Alabama's tax structure is the most regressive in the nation and hardly begins to produce revenues necessary to address the barest minimum needs in the state. Alabama is one of only seven states that tax families that live in poverty. If Alabama were to increase property taxes by 100% we would still be 49th in the nation. Mississippi is about to spend 130 million dollars on education, which will raise them from dead last. In our vying for the perennial last place, Alabama is attempting to cut spending on higher education by 15%. Only 57% of Alabamians 25 or older have completed high school; another last place distinction.

Even though Alabama by all social, economic and educational demographics, is far behind all other states, with the possible exception of Mississippi, there remains a sort of ignorant and blind commitment to isolation and regression by our. Race, though a bit more subtle than thirty years ago, is still the defining issue in the politics of change and progress in our state. Welfare and race are effectively used to focus attention away from lack of opportunity, low quality of life, and poor educational opportunities that effect the lives of all Alabamians. From every quarter poor leadership is intoned as the most decisive factor prohibiting progress in Alabama.

The Alabama Organizing Project (AOP) was formed to help change the leadership dynamics in the state. The pendulum must begin to swing away from the negative to the positive. The view from our position of strength reveals that Alabama has more black elected officials than any other state and we still have a very long way to go to have true representation of the needs and wishes of the black community. This is true because a system of accountability does not exist. We lack the means to effectively inform and educate black elected officials as well as the means of holding them accountable. The first step in the democratic process is being taken. We are electing African Americans. The next step, and a most critical one, is to stay with our representatives through that most arduous process; making laws that support and preventing the creation of laws that harm our communities. Poor whites are in even worse political condition as issues are not even defined to address their particular situation. Poor whites in Alabama are, for the most part, politically invisible.

The Alabama Organizing Project recognizes the need to help raise better informed, more unified, wiser, and larger numbers of leaders from grassroots communities, black and white, and support their entrance into decision making in our state. While we are working with and supporting existing leaders, AOP seeks to expand the power and influence of poor and working peoples in our state through the strategy of community organizing; the only dependable and effective source of power available to these groups.

Leading this effort is six well experienced and influential community based organizations in the state. In this year, 1997, they combine over 144 years of advocacy and service to poor and working class citizens in Alabama.

E-Mail: Webmaster   *  P.O. Box 4404, Montgomery, AL 36103   *  PH: 334.834.2929 *  Fax - 334.834.2722