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Various organizations from across Alabama will be coming together on Sunday, Jan. 19, from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m., to participate in the inaugural “Alabama March for Progress” at the State Capitol in Montgomery.
APR spoke with Bryan Fuenmayor, one of the grassroot organizers behind the event, to learn more about the march, its goals, and the organizations involved.
“The purpose of [the march] is to bring together forward-thinking organizations from across the state into one place with the goal of raising awareness about these organizations, issues, and people who are trying to make progress in Alabama,” Fuenmayor explained. “It’s connecting organizations with people across the state in the hope of getting more supporters, more members, but its also an opportunity for these organizations to strategize, to create coalitions, to be stronger together.”
“We are not a formal organization, we’re just volunteer grassroot organizers from across the state… we met on a FaceBook group,” he continued. “Primarily it was as a response to the Trump administration’s inauguration and also the upcoming Alabama legislative session, so that was the intention behind it and we chose the day before Trump’s inauguration for that reason.”
However, Fuenmayor explained that the event is not motivated by partisanship and that the organizers do not intend to tie it to any political party.
“As we morphed and went on, we wanted this to be a non-partisan event focused on the issues in Alabama and what we can do to help move it forward,” he said.
The Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, Alabama Equality, Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, Montgomery Pride United, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity (URGE), and the Action Coalition for Transit are just some of the organizations already involved in the march, with the organizers looking to add even more.
In addition to providing a platform for these organizations, the organizers also hope that the event will encourage greater civic engagement in Alabama.
“What we would love to see is to get more people involved and informed about the legislative session, to know who their elected officials are, how to contact them… so that when they hear about these bills from these organizations they know who to contact, [and that] they also know how to watch the livestreams, keep up with bill tracking, all that stuff,” Fuenmayor added.
Anyone is free to participate in the march which will also include various vendors, food, activities, and speakers. Interested organizations or volunteers can also contact the organizers to join the march through the event’s official website.
