Originally published at: Elected mayor of Newbern, Alabama sues to take control of government after incumbents change the locks | Boing Boing
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No Jason Aldean song about how he’d like to see these bastards try this in a big city, eh?
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Wow. Even in Alabama, wow. They’ve been so crooked for so long that forgot to even pretend.
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Even tyrannical oligarchs like Putin usually take the time to have sham elections for the sake of keeping up appearances.
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People really underestimate open public meetings legislation. Part of my job is reading minutes for school districts, cities, counties, you name it. If it’s public I read the minutes. Our states auditors office puts out a lot of issues with them too. They always start like at exit item levels and walk up to findings after repeats. Cities that get findings for anything end up in the news.
I can’t say for Alabama, but for my state you have to have the expenditures listed int eh meetings. Like general fund warrant # start to general fund warrant # end with the dollar amount. This also includes payroll.
We get a lot of citizen hotlines becuase of this. Your weird uncle that reads all this stuff is sometimes the best person to catch grift. It’s how they caught a city offloading all it’s finances to a family group that worked for it, because someone did a back of the napkin calculation and realized all the funding mentioned in the minutes was going to a related party that was a family member.
I am big on reading the minutes for any city if you want to know what’s going on, but I am biased.
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These people admit what they’re doing because that’s part of the power trip.
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Braxton is being extremely brave and I wish him and the town all the best!
If the white clique has been running the town for so long, one can just imagine the status of law enforcement. The whole scene is so corrupt. The fact they the council hadn’t been holding regular meetings shows that even town employees weren’t doing their jobs.
And I think most people here already know this, but the death of the local newspaper is a contributing factor to this kind of corruption. 
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The expression on his face speaks volumes.
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Newbern only has a population of 133, so it probably doesn’t have its own police department. The Hale County sheriff’s department might well be racist AF, but at least the clique who run Newbern would not have any direct control over it.
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I noted the population. That’s why I used the term law enforcement instead of police department. 
These kinds of stories always remind me of how, a lot of times when we’re posting about how police act or just general injustices in the US, a lot of times posters show up (and this isn’t aimed at you, just venting now) and point out how the cops can’t do that, or such and such isn’t allowed. It’s really frustrating to those of us who’ve lived through it, including basic small town corruption, because, yes, they are allowed. They just might possibly face consequences for it if the victims have a lot of advocacy and time and are able to get child care during all the court hearings, yadda, yadda.
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With the White population outnumbered that heavily by the Black population, it’s a stone guarantee there’s more law enforcement there than you’d expect. Most of the purpose of law enforcement these days is policing non-white people, and a town too terrified of its Black residents to hold a fair election probably has more law enforcement than it needs.
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I first read about this last month with this story. It is a damning statement about this country that this shit still happens
eta: learned about it from @chgoliz
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The instant I read the headline, my brain said, “He must be Black.” 
God DAMN this shit is sickening.
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My town has been run by the same family my entire life. Not illegally (they have a 3-1 registration advantage), but no term limits.
One is the mayor, his brother is the State Senator, all his family members have jobs, and all their friends are the judges and police.
Not a small town, either. 62,500 residents.
I’m sure it’s the same all over the globe. But these Alabama guys, whoo! That’s basically still a plantation!
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Something roughly similar happened in the city of Vernon, which has close to the same number of voters as Newbern btw. The state came close to disincorporating it, which I think they should have, but in the end they decided not to.
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While reading this article, Rachel Maddow was on and she was interviewing an Alabama Rep. who is fighting the a$$holes who REFUSE what SCOTUS has ordered and have another Black majority district. The answer seems to me to have the Federal gov’t do it if the state won’t, but who knows what kind of trouble that will cause! Alabama is a pit.
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Man this train is never late…
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