A Black man who says he was elected mayor of a rural Alabama town but has been kept from taking office by White leaders of the town has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit.
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Inheriting political positions is literally anti-American. We fought a war over this. Fucking Alabama.
Braxton was allegedly the only person who qualified for the position of mayor, according to the lawsuit. Stokes “did not bother to qualify as a candidate,” the lawsuit said, even though he knew Braxton was planning to run. No candidates qualified for town council positions, either.
Braxton was elected mayor by default, making him the first Black mayor of Newbern in the 165 years since the town was founded.
That’s an important bit of context, they still didn’t have a proper election.
They did have a proper election. There was only one candidate, so he won. Then they had a second, improper election where only the previous council was allowed to qualify for office or vote.
Legally yes, but part of the article makes it sound like there was a regular election between two candidates with everything you expect and the winner is being denied. That’s not the case and we don’t know how the citizens actually feel about this. It did, after all, take decades for someone to do this.
Not that any of this should have ever happened in the first place, they should have just run the elections normally.
There are a large number of local elections decided because only one person applied for the job and they don’t have any issues like this.
Yes, but in this case a different (much dumber) system had been established for decades without objection it seems. That’s different than just having regular, official elections with just one candidate, which is what they should have done in the first place. We don’t know who would have won if it was a normal, two-candidate election.
This going to court is a good thing because a) anyone could have filed the paperwork and won by default, including someone who would abuse the position and be really terrible for the town and b) this is certainly the end of the unofficial-official system they’ve had and might bring bad stuff to light. But keep in mind that the article’s coming on very strong because they mostly cite the prosecution.
If this happened in 2021 and 2022 why wait till now to file a federal lawsuit?
No one would take his case.
Not just that, the first lawyers he approached scammed him I think.
America needs free and reformed education and more psychedelics.
Do you see either of those happening anytime soon?
There’s 130 people that live in that town. No one there really gives a flying
The real story is they don’t even have a mayoral position, so a nothing story ginned to stoke hatred toward white people.
They do have a mayor position, they just didn’t care for it until someone decided to run for it.
Disagreeing with those specific people for their actions is not the same as hatred for white people. An asshole is an asshole whether they’re black, white or green.
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Hating racists isn’t the same as hating white people.
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