By Samuel Mattison
Alabama Political Reporter
Alabama’s only Democratic US Representative, Terri Sewell, will join city leaders in Birmingham, Alabama today to tour a Civil Rights memorial as a part of a campaign against a policy decision by President Donald Trump
Sewell will be joined by Birmingham Mayor William Bell, Members of the Birmingham City Council, and other community leaders.
They will meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church. This same church was the site of a Ku Klux Klan bombing which killed four children back in 1964. The site is included within the official Birmingham Civil Rights Memorial.
The event is being organized by the League of Conservation Voters as a part of their “Our lands, Our Vote” campaign against the decision by Trump to reduce the budget for the United States Department of the Interior—who oversee national parks—and to conduct a review of national monuments.
The new White House proposed budget would cut the Department of the Interior’s budget by $1.5 billion or about 12 percent. The official budget said the plan would focus on maintaining land rather than purchasing new land.
This has put Trump at odds with his pick for Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. In his US Senate confirmation hearing, Zinke expressed concern for the billions of dollars needed to repair national parks.
Zinke expressed he hoped the President would include this money in his plan to rebuild American infrastructure. So far, the infrastructure plans do not include maintenance for National Parks.
In April, Trump signed an executive order calling on the Department of the Interior to review Federally owned land to assess whether to relinquish ownership of the land back to individual states. The review of the land is due on August 24.
