Alabama county celebrates official Obama holiday

[Kadie]

Alabama county celebrates official Obama holiday

By BOB JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Bob Johnson, Associated Press Writer – 7 mins ago

MARION, Ala. – The sign going on the front door at the Perry County courthouse reads: "Closed for the Obama Holiday."

The rural, mostly black county has proclaimed Monday as an official holiday celebrating the election of the nation's first black president, Barack Obama. It's one of Alabama's poorest counties, but it's sparing little during five days of festivities.

County employees, as well as city workers in Marion and Uniontown, will get a paid holiday Monday as government offices close, culminating a series of events including an old-fashioned civil rights rally and march, a golf tournament, a weekend carnival and a parade Monday through Marion.

"I feel great about the holiday," said county maintenance worker Leon Brown. "It's history. It's the first time ever we've had a black president. I hope it's not the last time ever."

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The Obama holiday was proposed by Commissioner Albert Turner Jr., whose father was one of the marchers beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" voting rights march in Selma. Many of the marchers were voting rights activists from Marion upset about the shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson during an earlier demonstration in the town.

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"We hold holidays for Columbus and for Lincoln. There's been no event more historic in my lifetime than the election of Barack Obama," Turner said.

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"It's not that we're celebrating Obama. We're celebrating America living up to it's creed that all men are created equal," Turner said.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_holiday;_ylt=ApV_icHbcZAOHzpVML291jVsaMYA

[Bucky]

1. Ugh, I loathe cult of personality crap like this. Celebrating his election is cool, but...

shutting any public facilities down to honor a current office holder is an insult to the notions of open, service-minded government. The president got elected to serve, not to be feted. I had the same reaction when they named both a post office and an elementary school after Ronald Reagan here in Houston back in the 80s. This is only less offensive than naming a school or post office after Reagan while he was still in office because Obama doesn't support terrorists in Nicaragua or give arms to Iranian dictators, but it's still offensive.

There are so many heroes and martyrs in the struggle for racial equality in our history--why not honor them instead? Why not have an Equality Day or Empowerment Day? For the same reasons we don't put living persons on our stamps and currency, we shouldn't have holidays for leaders in office, no matter how awesome they are. It smacks of authoritarianism. In a democracy, we should celebrate our communities, not our current leaders. Leave hailing Big Brother to North Korea, or Venezuela, or Zimbabwe, or Syria. We should be small-d democrats first.