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Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin spoke on CNN Thursday. (Screengrab)Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin spoke on CNN Thursday, discussing President Donald Trump’s executive orders and his views on how they might impact the city.
Trump signed executive orders Monday rolling back protections for transgender people and terminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs within the federal government in what he described in his inauguration speech as a move to end efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”
Both are major shifts for the federal policy and are in line with Trump’s campaign promises.
Alabama has had DEI laws in place before the executive order.
“Americans are witnessing the Alabamafication of federal government,” Woodfin said in the interview. “We’ve seen in Alabama, legislators create laws to get rid of DEI and the governors signed into law that removing DEI from colleges and universities and other aspects throughout the state. We’ve seen this dance and the unfortunate part is other Americans have to witness this at the national level.”
Democratic leaders in Alabama pointed to America’s history of preventing prejudice.
“The importance of that is in recognizing the law that’s been a law of our land since 1964 when the civil rights bill was passed and when it became illegal to discriminate,” stated Judith Taylor chair Tuscaloosa County Democratic Party.
Republican leaders from Alabama acknowledged the future without D.E.I.
“Everyone must be treated equally regardless of race so I think he’s following where the legal landscape is in the country in the year 2025 stated,” Paul DeMarco former Alabama state representative.
Woodfin went on to discuss what he believes about the use of the words and how they are used across the country and in politics.
“We’ve made the words ‘diversity.’ We made the words ‘equity.’ We, as in others, have made those words ‘inclusion’ bad words. Inclusion is not a bad thing. There’s no such thing as going too far as it relates to being inclusive. There’s no such thing as going too far as it relates to equity. This is America. Equity is the right thing to do. There’s no such thing as diversity being bad. America is a very diverse place. I think diversity, equity and inclusion has been weaponized for some to use to say it’s taken away from others, but what it’s really doing is making sure we’re intentional…,” Woodfin said in the interview.
Asked about how Birmingham will handle the executive orders, Woodfin responded with the following.
“Birmingham has always been a welcoming city. … I think our police force is really focused on the public safety of our citizens. We’re focused on gun violence. We’re focused on the things that we deem necessary to keep citizens safe. We also have a priority to hire more officers and we’re already short officers, if that makes any sense.
“Our key priority is making sure that we are actually policing our streets. Our priority is making sure that we can tackle gun violence and when you think about it, there’s this conversation on one hand about ICE and immigration. And then we’re not paying attention to the fact that a city like Birmingham is facing gun violence at a unfortunately high rate. They’ve just gotten rid of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention at the White House.”
He ended the interview by saying, “The real focus should be on the American people and making sure people are safe, making sure we improve quality of life. We haven’t seen that in the last 48 hours.”
English (US)