T

hey're talking secession in Greene County.

Over bingo.

Alabama Rep. Mary Moore, a Democrat from Birmingham, was in such a twisty-tie over this week's gambling task force raid on Greenetrack that on Thursday she let us in on a secret.

She's been studying the law, she said, to see what it would take for Greene County to secede from the state of Alabama.

I thought she was kidding. I thought she was blowing more hot air into the scorching Eutaw haze. I went back to make sure, to ask her ... Are you serious?

Yep, she said. She's eyeing, for her potential new state, the entire 7th Congressional District, which runs from Birmingham southwest to the Missisippi line, and includes much of Birmingham and the University of Alabama.

"It includes the majority of Alabama's black counties," she said. "Alabama has done nothing for us."

Moore was mad Thursday, speaking to an even madder crowd along with other members of the Legislative Black Caucus. The more folks spoke, the madder they got.

In the space of an hour Gov. Bob Riley was decried as a terrorist and a criminal; a liar, racist and hypocrite; a scoundrel; a lame duck trying to pay off debts; a wet nurse to Mississippi casinos; a Grinch out to steal the Fourth of July; and my personal favorite -- "a mean, lowdown raccoon."

Like I said, they're mad.

It's easy, outside the wasteland that is Alabama's Black Belt, to laugh at the rhetoric, to wonder when bingo became a civil rights issue worthy of a "We Shall Overcome" soundtrack.

It's easy to laugh, but it is not funny. For while the words are sharp, they dull the point of the protest. In the end they only obscure the real suffering that will take place if Greenetrack closes.

Because Greenetrack is pretty much all there is in Greene County. It employs almost 400, and funds schools and police, 911 service and the nursing home. It gives scholarships for any Greene County kid who makes it to college, and provides insurance and opportunity.

It is easy to feel the pain of people like Latoya Pelt, a Greentrack cashier. She just bought her first house. She fears she'll lose it.

Riley's task force types dismiss the sob stories. They say the economics are sad, but are not the issue. The law is the law, after all, and you wouldn't let a county run a dope ring just because it makes money.

But that's hard for Greene County to understand. The Legislature did pass a constitutional amendment allowing county residents to vote on electronic charity bingo, and voters said yes. The Alabama Supreme Court later issued guidelines for electronic bingo machines. The way the task force interprets those guidelines, machines at Greenetrack are illegal and therefore ... something like dope.

And thus the anger. Greene County thought it played by the rules, even if it did not. People want to know ... Why now? And what next?

There's no good answer.

So when they hear Riley called a terrorist, they cheer. When Moore talks of secession, they listen. Even if it is like listening to the wind.

I asked Moore, by the way, what she would name her new state.

"Seven," she said, after the district that spawned it.

I've got a better one, though:

"777."

John Archibald's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write him at

jarchibald@bhamnews.com.