More important to the future of Alabama is a constitutional amendment that would end our current model of a popularly elected state school board in favor of one appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state senate.
Author: Matthew Stokes (Matthew Stokes)
Post
Matthew Stokes: Political Realities and the Mobile Bayway
Until voters are willing to trust their elected officials and reject local demagogues in politics and media who only tell them what they want to hear, I worry that our wonderful state will be stuck in the mud of our own making.
Post
Matthew Stokes: Gratitude and School Choice
As our children return to school this fall, we should be grateful to see our schools with fresh eyes. We should be proud of what our communities create, and we should make every effort to allow those less fortunate than us the same opportunity to create schools that give their children the opportunities they deserve.
Post
Matthew Stokes: The Vitality Index
Communities need people to thrive, and no amount of funding can compensate for a community that continually loses its best people year after year.
Post
Matthew Stokes: What’s behind the shootings?
If we are serious about the various freedoms entangled in this discussion, particularly freedom of speech and the right to bear arms, we have to explore creative ways of dealing with these problems.
Post
Matthew Stokes: GOP will miss Martha Roby and Will Hurd
If bright lights like Roby and Hurd find that serving as a member of the House is a fruitless endeavor, other young leaders are likely to arrive at the same conclusion.
Post
Matthew Stokes: Talking about race
Southerners are hardly of a uniform mind on the topic of race. Most of us don’t want to talk about it, and those of us who do should probably stay quiet every once in a while.
Post
Matthew Stokes: Mueller comes to Congress
It is tempting to pass off the whole matter as partisan wrangling, but we should push past that inclination. The question that should haunt us is this: “how would you react if the other party was found to have engaged in this behavior?”
Post
Matthew Stokes: Let’s try optimism
Admittedly there is a disconnect between the intensity of fandom in our state and much of our day to day existence in a state that often ranks near the bottom of many national rankings.
Post
Matthew Stokes: The tragedy of the Marshae Jones situation
By MATHEW STOKES, Alabama Daily News The state of Alabama has spent considerable time in the national news of late, as television pundits and presidential hopefuls have debated the merits of the state’s new abortion law. Even pro-life conservatives have engaged in a rather intense debate over the merits of the bill and whether an...
Post
Matthew Stokes: A GOP generation gap
Generation X and its millennial siblings are no longer responding to political arguments the way voters once did. The despair and angst that marks much of Republican rhetoric the last two elections is not resonating with young voters. It seems that what young voters want is something markedly more hopeful and optimistic.
Post
Matthew Stokes: Let Jefferson Davis go
Last Monday, June 3, was the birthday of Confederate Jefferson Davis, and state government observed the day as a holiday. This has to end.
Post
Matthew Stokes: A positive step for reading
This legislation forces our state’s institutions, from the state board of education down to every elementary school, to reckon with the fact that too many children have managed to move up the ladder without achieving the appropriate level of literacy.
Post
Matthew Stokes: Why not do more?
Despite a lot of progressive caterwauling to the contrary, anti-abortion sentiment is not rooted in racism or in a bizarre desire to control the bodies of America’s women.
Post
Matthew Stokes: Abortion Endgame
The problem with cultural issues in our politics is they often force us to move by inertia.