David McElroy

This picture isn’t from urban fighting in Iraq a few years back. It’s from Tuesday in Birmingham. More than a hundred officers — local police, sheriff’s deputies and DEA agents — stormed a housing project to conduct seven simultaneous drug raids.

Reporters and photographers from The Birmingham News were along for the ride and recorded the action. The pictures make it look like something from a TV show such as “COPS.”

And what was the result of this massive show of force? Six people were arrested and two weapons were confiscated. That seems to be it. The newspaper said that “the operation was aimed at the ongoing problem of people selling crack cocaine, meth, marijuana and Lortab out of apartments there, and even on street corners.”

So an entire housing project was disrupted with more than a hundred heavily armed officers just to pick up six suspects? All so they can’t conduct voluntary transactions with other people? It seems like an open-and-shut case of state overreach — which is typical of the so-called drug war.

But at least some residents were happy to see police. For instance, 31-year-old Kimberly Coleman told the newspaper that she woke up a couple of weeks ago to discover a bullet hole in her living room window.

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Wednesday was a terrible day for me. It started out badly when I woke up and found a picture and some text that someone had sent me in the night. Someone who I love has been depressed and suicidal for some time. There were times when it was better and times when it was worse. Right now is one of the worse times.

But this isn’t her story. Instead, it’s the story of someone who loves a depressed and suicidal person. It’s about how it’s affecting me.

All day Wednesday, I felt physically sick and mentally anxious and emotionally heartsick, simply because someone I love needs help that I don’t know how to provide.

I’ve been through things in my own life that scared me, but I’ve never been as afraid as I am now about this situation. The most recent crisis point had passed by the time I knew it was going on, but I still walked around in a daze all day. At different times, I felt fear, despair, anger and determination.

I can’t be sure how much of my fear is for her and how much is the realization that her death would destroy me. So am I feeling empathy for her or am I selfishly fearing the loss of someone I value? I keep thinking about that, but I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters, because the same outcome is in the best interest of both of us, even if she doesn’t see that now.

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To me, 50 years seems like a very long time. That’s more than half of the life of the average person. For us, a decade can seem forever. We’re so impatient that a year can seem like a long time to wait for a thing. But I sometimes forget that history is measured on a very different scale.

It was 50 years ago this week when Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace made his theatrical stand against federal demands that the University of Alabama admit black students. It’s remembered as “the stand in the schoolhouse door,” but it was purely symbolic.

In his 1962 campaign, Wallace had promised to fight to prevent racial integration of any Alabama schools. His dramatic stand was a popular political position at the time, but he knew he couldn’t win the battle. It was merely important for his political future that he be seen as standing up to the Kennedy administration.

Hundreds of Alabama state troopers and Alabama National Guard troops were surrounding the building on the UA campus where registration took place at the time. After President John F. Kennedy federalized the National Guard troops, Brig. Gen. Henry Graham officially told Wallace that he was acting at the direction of the president — and he ordered Wallace to step aside.

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