Old, white, homophobic GOP lawmakers in this state protest a little too much against diversity, is what people have been feeling. The Alabama Republi-chickens are scared to death of diversity, equity and inclusion a lot lately. The chickens see ‘DEI’ and they think it spells ‘DEVIL’. They are also quite obsessed with and threatened by everything they don’t even understand.
Here a few excerpts: “They are running scared.” These are Alabama Republicans. On a day when they were to squash diversity, equity, and inclusion—daggumit—throughout the state. It is when they were going to defund programs that create safe, welcoming spaces for the employees. The list also included students, and citizens; when they were going to emphatically ramrod Alabamians with a bill based on their ill-informed, unfounded fears, they shrank, hid, and squirreled away.
Moreover, “They avoided more than 100 students—children!—from colleges and universities across the state who came to the statehouse in Montgomery Wednesday to protest divisive (yes, I’m boomeranging their word back on them) SB129. To share what DEI is to them. To tell their elected officials how DEI, as University of Alabama senior Sean Atchison bravely told my AL.com colleague Rebecca Griesbach, “saved my life.”
They even ducked, dived, and dodged the mosaic of students waiting patiently in the hall outside Room 200 where legislators were lunching. It was when they were done, They ran out the back door to avoid us said University of Alabama-Birmingham sophomore Sydney Testman.