reporting live from somewhere
a friend of mine from columbia just sent this out about his experiences in alabama. it's rare to get a non-white, non-black, non-American (he is singaporean) view of the south, and his observations are interesting and telling.

Apologies for the mass mail, but I said I'd send a proper update since school ended, and if I haven't mentioned it, I spent over a week in early June in Alabama reporting thanks to a grant. I managed to get out of the Deep South in one piece. I was in the thick of a white supremacist (the Council of Conservative Citizens a.k.a. the 'Uptown Klan') rally and protest against the Southern Poverty Law Center, where 50 marchers draped themselves in Confederate
flags and sang Dixie. All at the heart of where the Civil Rights
movement began, and barely an hour after I'd been to Dr. King's
barber.

I'd gone in search of a story on how some activists were working for a
moratorium on executions and the challenges they faced. The state bar
association wanted to publish a booklet on the pros and cons of a
moratorium on the death penalty, and the attorney-general's office
refused to write the section on cons so the project had to be dropped.
I spoke to a death row inmate, exonerees (one after 18 years),
families and attorneys, and it was plain shocking how capital cases
were still handled in this day and age - drunk and inexperienced
attorneys, prosecutors hiding evidence, forced confessions, the works.
Alabama is the state with the highest per capita rate of death
sentences handed down, and it's not over with the execution/s - Grace
Singleton, whose mentally retarded son Cornelius was executed in 1992,
still wants to right the record. Her son, IQ 57, confessed to murder
while his girlfriend was sitting on his lap. She was excited to read
about the trial of the men involved in Emmett Till's murder 50 years
before that she wanted to clear her son's name before she died. Oh,
she also wants to get on Oprah to help her case.

Two blocks down the avenue facing the state Capitol, a man was
painting the Ten Commandments on slabs of stone. I stop to chat, we
get round to the death penalty, and he wishes he'd brought along his
concordance as we spend a half hour flipping through the Bible looking
for passages that justify the death penalty.
But that Sunday, I was shocked to hear the pastor at Dr. King's old
church slam missionaries for having wreaked as much damage as military
force had, destroying whole cultures and civilizations. He criticized
congregants for not speaking out against this travesty, war included.
And watching the local (baseball) team, the Montgomery Biscuits, at
the ballpark, the cultural significance of "three strikes, you're out"
finally hit me.

A local talk radio host found me at an execution day vigil, and I went
on his talk radio show on Radio Montgomery for two hours, where
redneck "hang 'em all" legislators and flaming liberal "we're still in
the dark ages down here" pastors called in, and talk (I only had under
a minute to report what I'd discovered before being interrogated) went
from caning and flogging (like in Singapore) and hanging/lethal
injections to the Downing Street memo. Anyhow, 'Bama is an experience
I'd highly recommend if you get a lead or story or any excuse to
travel there.