NABJ Salute to Excellence Award, Best Public Affairs segment, "...A day in the life of Terri Sewell." Alabama Public Radio
I think that it's a matter of, we trust you more.”
That’s what African American voters in Alabama typically say when they call U.S. House member Terri Sewell. If a black Alabamian needs help, and they live in a U.S. House District with a white Republican, they often call Sewell. She’s just one house member out of seven in the state, yet the de facto representative of one third of Alabama’s black population.
Please find Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the NABJ Salute to Excellence Award for Best Public Affairs, titled “A day in the life of Terri Sewell.”
Please click here to listen to the program.
"A day in the life of Terri Sewell."
Sewell was among the people who anxiously watched the campaign for the state’s newly redrawn Congressional seat in District 2. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered deep red Alabama to change its U.S. House map to better represent black voters. Those are the same Justices who overturned Roe Versus Wade and ended affirmative action at the nation’s universities. That’s leaving supporters of the new District 2 uneasy.
The APR news team spent nine months investigating issues related to black voters in the new Congressional District. Terri Sewell and her staff handling phone calls from outside the District, is an example. The news team arrived in Washington, D.C. on the day Sewell cast her very first “no” vote for the Pentagon budget as a member of the Armed Services Committee. That opposition, delivered from the floor of the U.S. House, was prompted by “poison pill” amendment from Republicans against diversity and reproductive health provisions in the measure.
Sewell remained hopeful that Democrat Shomari Figures would win, so that the burden of representing Alabama’s black population would be more evenly split, and that there would be another Democrat voicer to advocate on behalf of African Americans in the State. Even if a Democrat were to win the new District 2 seat, Republicans in Alabama are already sharpening up their legal arguments to try to upend the court decision that created the new African American majority U.S. House district.
Respectfully submitted.
That’s what African American voters in Alabama typically say when they call U.S. House member Terri Sewell. If a black Alabamian needs help, and they live in a U.S. House District with a white Republican, they often call Sewell. She’s just one house member out of seven in the state, yet the de facto representative of one third of Alabama’s black population.
Please find Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the NABJ Salute to Excellence Award for Best Public Affairs, titled “A day in the life of Terri Sewell.”
Please click here to listen to the program.
"A day in the life of Terri Sewell."
Sewell was among the people who anxiously watched the campaign for the state’s newly redrawn Congressional seat in District 2. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered deep red Alabama to change its U.S. House map to better represent black voters. Those are the same Justices who overturned Roe Versus Wade and ended affirmative action at the nation’s universities. That’s leaving supporters of the new District 2 uneasy.
The APR news team spent nine months investigating issues related to black voters in the new Congressional District. Terri Sewell and her staff handling phone calls from outside the District, is an example. The news team arrived in Washington, D.C. on the day Sewell cast her very first “no” vote for the Pentagon budget as a member of the Armed Services Committee. That opposition, delivered from the floor of the U.S. House, was prompted by “poison pill” amendment from Republicans against diversity and reproductive health provisions in the measure.
Sewell remained hopeful that Democrat Shomari Figures would win, so that the burden of representing Alabama’s black population would be more evenly split, and that there would be another Democrat voicer to advocate on behalf of African Americans in the State. Even if a Democrat were to win the new District 2 seat, Republicans in Alabama are already sharpening up their legal arguments to try to upend the court decision that created the new African American majority U.S. House district.
Respectfully submitted.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
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AP