When I see a story like this one in the NYTimes, I particularly regret that DennisG is too busy in the meatspace to explain it for us. All I can summon is Faulkner’s “The past isn’t dead — it isn’t even past”:
Secret Society Dips Toe in City Politics, Prompting Lawsuit
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The college students began arriving a little before lunch at Calvary Baptist Church, far more than usual for a local election. The poll workers knew immediately: the Machine was here.The school year at the University of Alabama has barely gotten started, and already the campus has found itself in a charged self-examination on issues of politics, power and race, with the exposure of tenacious segregation among fraternities and sororities drawing national attention.
But the turmoil began some weeks earlier. It raised the specter of the Machine, a secret society representing a league of select and almost exclusively white fraternities and sororities, which has been around for a century or more. Once a breeding ground for state political leaders, the Machine (it has long been known by that nickname) today maintains a solid hold on student government through an effective, and critics say coercive, brand of old-fashioned organization politics.
But the Machine’s apparent involvement in an August school board election, a rare appearance in municipal politics, has prompted a lawsuit, accusations of voter fraud and an outcry that in many ways primed the campus for the larger storm over inclusion and tradition that is now taking place….
Accounts of intimidation tactics attributed to the Machine over the decades include cross burnings, threats and boycotts, although students these days speak mostly of social pressure, both implicit and overt and at times intense. Despite changes that the university has made to student government — like expanding polling days and switching to online voting — and despite the fact that Machine-affiliated organizations account for less than one-third of Alabama’s student population, its candidates have continued to win, if not as decisively as in the past…
jl
A secret group of privileged white kids named ‘the Machine’. How quaint. What could be scary about that?
They should change the name to ‘the Mechanicals’ and their secret officers should be given titles like ‘Quince’ and ‘Bottom’, and put on a comedy once a year. All would end well.
dollared
Jesus. 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, and these little bastards might as well speak Afrikaans. Exactly why is it that we spent the 60s bombing Vietnam into the Stone Age when we should have done it to Alabama?
Suzanne
Arizona is a hotbed of liberalism in comparison to this.
amk
You got to hand it to the rw’ers. They know how to vote and how to get political power.
The Dangerman
Krazy Kollege Kids!
Suzanne
I am trying to decide if this is funnier than the girl who goes to Smith who wanted to form a sorority of straight girls who would wear pink on Wednesdays and bake bookies.
The Moar You Know
I was the last member of my family to be born in the fine state of Alabama. Two weeks later and I’d have been a California native. Oh well. Trust me when I say that Alabama was already in the Stone Age in the 1960s, and that has not changed one whit.
Last time I was back there was in 2004 for my grandfather’s funeral. Only time in my life I’ve seen election signs with no Democrats – and I mean none – running. Just Republicans fighting over which one is more conservative. Can’t even really blame the denizens of the state, most of them are apolitical to an extent that most of us really can’t understand. They’re too busy just trying to get by for another day to listen to some bullshit politician that is obviously lying to them, and won’t do a single fucking thing to make their lives better. And in that respect, both sides really have done exactly jack shit for them.
Chris
Given how fond they are of bitching about “Chicago-style politics,” it’s funny that the local Right Wing Nutjob chapter blatantly call themselves “The Machine.” And almost quaint.
So, the Klan still exists, eh? Shocker, I guess.
jl
@efgoldman: Dude, when they run up against those Smith girls, the bookies get baked and the runners get roasted. Those girls are tough and they know their business.
Mike E
I’ll be doing another GOTV campaign, this one is an off off year election, starting Saturday. I’ll let you know how it’s going.
Suzanne
@efgoldman: LOL. Damn you, autocorrect!
xenos
@jl: If you want to see Smith student break out the rough stuff, go to Northampton and refer to them as “girls”.
I actually did this by mistake once in South Hadley, and it was good that I was amongst friends, and had time to apoligise before the tire irons came out.
Joseph Nobles
There’s no reason to think that the Machine is made up of students. In fact, it’s much more likely that it’s alumni. It was alumnae who made the final decision to keep the minority students out of certain sororities at the U of A this year.
Things are just truly screwy in Alabama. There’s a situation in Marengo County, where I’m from: the local high schools in Linden, Alabama share a single football field. Linden doesn’t have enough people to justify one high school, probably, but they have two, the public school and the white flight academy. In order to facilitate the sharing of the field, there is some weird thing called the Linden Athletic Association that’s been around since the 1970s. And it seemed that the academy always got the preferential treatment in how the field was used. How about that?
Then this happened in 2011:
The changes resulted in the Linden High School team being without a field for 2011. The Board of Education wouldn’t pay the increase and moved their games to an out-of-town field. It started choking the local businesses. Come to find out, The LAA had not paid any kind of taxes whatsoever for more than 30 years, not property tax, nothing.The Alabama Department of Revenue decided they would look into the group’s tax status.
That is, for about a couple of days….
Well, it just went back and forth from there. The LAA kept “bending over backwards” to accommodate the public schools, sez them. They would paint over the permanent signs and make all the signs temporary for the teams, etc, etc, etc. But the school board wouldn’t budge. They wanted the field bought by the city. It wasn’t until July 2012 that they finally all worked that out, right before the next season started.
Now all of that noise was for a small town high school football field. Alabama won’t be rid of the Machine for another 100 years, if ever. And the purpose of the Machine is the same as it was 100 years ago, back when they had Democratic Party painted on the door and now that they’ve got Republican Party there. It’s the same reason the Alabama constitution was written in 1901. And that is, “within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State.”
The past is not over. It’s not even past.
dp
As an LSU alum, let me assure everyone that anything associated with the University of Alabama (including but not limited to political issues) is highly suspect and, at best, likely un-American.
Freaking gumps.
mai naem
There’s a piece in Time about how there’s only been one black girl in a traditional white sorority in the past 50 years -http://nation.time.com/2013/09/16/university-of-alabama-moves-to-end-segregated-sorority-system/
I’d like to know who the single black girl was. I’m figuring either a famous college level athlete or a child of a celebrity or the child of a wealthy local. Just wondering what Artur Davis has to say about this since he was talking about voter fraud in the black voting machine. Also too, wonder if Mornin’ Ho is going to mention anything since Ho is an alum.
Lurking Canadian
@Suzanne: I know this is snark, but I don’t get it. It sounds like you’re implying white racists are a scarce minority at U of Alabama, but that doesn’t seem right.
Matt
Just another reminder that it shouldn’t have been “with malice towards none”, it should’ve been “put every traitor to the sword and salt the fucking earth”.
evilbeard
@efgoldman: and cooking the books. ;)
Paul in KY
@The Moar You Know: They’re stupid. The Democratic candidate would do more for the poor – middle class ones than any Repub.