What happens when a handful of people gather in a barbershop to talk politics? People tend to speak their minds. That was the idea behind an event Monday evening at Moore Styles Barbershop in Birmingham’s Civil Rights District.
It wasn’t a totally spontaneous political discussion. Hillary Clinton campaign officials organized the event to tout Clinton’s policies on everything from criminal justice reform to her support of historically black colleges. The goal: drum up as much support as possible among Birmingham’s African-Americans.
“She has a base of history with a lot of people in the African-American community, which is important,” former State Representative Earl Hilliard Jr. says. He says people tell him all the time they were much more excited when Barack Obama ran for president.
“I think what we have to understand is every president, every elected official, everybody that represents, everybody has their own aura, they have their own thing that they stand for,” Hilliard says, “but it doesn’t make anybody less important or more important.”
State Representative Oliver Robinson told the group that even if Senator Bernie Sanders has great ideas, he in all likelihood can’t make them a reality.
“And so you have a person in Hillary Clinton that’s pragmatic, and want to be able to work through these things and figure them out,” Robinson says.
Quincy Moore, owner of Moore Styles Barbershop, says prison reform is a top issue when it comes to supporting Clinton. But the thing people really wonder about: Can she make America great again?
“When her husband was in office, people felt like they had a lot of money,” Moore says. “So, is she going to make that a possibility again?”
Moore’s talking about the overall state of the economy and jobs. Since we’re talking about Democrats, I ask him which candidate he thinks has been paying the most attention so far to African-Americans here.
“Nobody,” he says. “I mean, they’ve got campaign offices here. But as far as paying attention, like coming around meeting the needs of the people, nobody.”