By Rep. Merika Coleman, Assistant Minority Leader for the Alabama House Democratic Caucus

This has been a dark week for our state.

This week, the legislature met for organizational meetings, which include setting session rules for the next four years. The new rules passed by the Republican majority will drastically limit debate and transparency in the House of Representatives. In essence, they will silence the voices of House members that represent the majority of Africans Americans and other minorities in our state.

Yet, despite the enormous impact these changes will have on the lives of Alabamians across the state, most citizens are likely unaware of them because there was minimal media coverage and no media outcry at the clear curtailing of transparency and accountability.

Television crews didn’t cover, for the most part, the five-hour filibuster of the Black Caucus and Democratic Caucus, which were fighting for the voices of minorities, poor people, children, seniors, educators etc. in this state to be heard, to be considered in developing legislation, and to have a fighting chance to have any influence on legislation that passes.

When Republicans silence my voice, they also silence the voice of the 44,000 constituents I serve - Republicans, Democrats and Independents. And, they silence the voices of the other 27 Democrats. (Yes, that number is correct. There are only 28 Democrats out of 105 members of the Alabama House of Representatives.)

So when I can’t get an amendment on a bad piece of legislation to make it a little less painful, or can’t get meaningful legislation passed that raises the quality of life for the people I serve, you’ll know why.

Debate and the length of debate allow us to negotiate. When you take away our ability to debate for any meaningful time, then you’ve taken away our ability to negotiate.

And, our statewide media just let them get away with it.

The Republican majority’s actions won’t just stop with these moves. The supermajority will continue to operate in this manner if it thinks nobody’s watching.

That’s a far cry from when I first was elected to office in 2002. The media would stay with us for the long haul. If we were in session until 4 a.m., they were there, too.

Not only were they present, they truly understood the process and knew how to cover not just hot-button legislative issues, but were nuanced enough to identify the issues that were going to have sweeping positive or negative impacts on the state or the local municipalities and counties we serve. Now, when they do show up, no matter what is happening on the floor at a certain point, they just pack up and leave except for a few people in print and often times, Alabama Public Television.

It’s no wonder people back at home think we don’t do anything because no one’s reporting on the major fights the Black Caucus and the Democratic Caucus have to endure most session days that we are there.

When one of the Republicans sent out a racist email last session and the Black Caucus ended up on the Floor of the House singing “We Shall Overcome,” while there were some print reporters, there was not one broadcast news outlet that was present.

It’s a shame and detrimental to our government, state and democracy in general when the most powerful lawmaking body in our state is not adequately covered.

There are always more than 500 new laws proposed each session. People’s lives are impacted through every vote we take on issues including access to healthcare, jobs, education, mental health, roads and bridges, new crimes, gun safety, licensures, equal pay for women, money for large scale economic development projects, human trafficking, transit funding or lack there of, constitutional reform, banking regulations, restructuring of local municipalities government and how they vote, domestic violence regulations, retirement funds, voter restoration, funding the courts and on and on and on.

We sponsor bills on these issues, fight bad bills on these issues and vote on these issues. The people of our state need to know what is happening in regard to them. Frankly, they DESERVE to know.

Did you know that during session, the Democratic Caucus in conjunction with the Black Caucus held weekly press conferences to inform the public of the issues facing the legislature that week? I bet you didn’t know because very few members of the press showed up for those press conferences. I know that some of these issues are complicated, but when I graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a degree in Mass Communications with an emphasis in Broadcasting, we were taught to not shy away from the complicated issues. We were taught to simply do the research and the work to break down those complicated issues so that even an 8th grader could understand it.

While I, and many of my colleagues will do our best on our own to get the word out, our media statewide, the free press, a major institution in American politics, must step up and do more to ensure better transparency and accountability in our state government. I know your budgets are tight but without the free press reporting about these complicated issues and injustices that occur in the Alabama Legislature, it will be much more than a dark week because in darkness, democracy dies.