Mayor Lifts Birmingham’s Curfew And Protest Ban At Midnight
By Sam Prickett, BirminghamWatch
Birmingham’s public safety curfew and state of emergency will expire tonight, a week after they were enacted by Mayor Randall Woodfin in response to violent protests in the city’s downtown area.
“I want to thank the people of Birmingham for uniting and working together during this challenging time,” Woodfin said in a statement Monday. Both the curfew and the state of emergency will end at 11:59 p.m.
The curfew prevented residents (excepting essential workers) from leaving their homes between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. The state of emergency had established a 24-hour ban on public demonstrations and gatherings of all kinds in the city.
The curfew was enacted after a May 31 demonstration at Linn Park to protest the killing of Minneapolis man George Floyd by police.
Protestors attempted to dismantle the park’s Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument; Woodfin appeared at the protest and vowed to “finish the job.”
The monument was removed from the park the next day, but protestors also had toppled a statue of park namesake Charles Linn, attempted to set fire to another statue of Thomas Jefferson and defaced two other monuments on Sunday night.
The protestors then moved into the city’s downtown area, setting fires and breaking out windows of local businesses. Woodfin would later attribute that violence to looters looking “to smash and grab” and outside anarchists looking to “smash, destroy and burn.”
Birmingham city law allows the mayor to “prohibit or regulate any demonstration, parade, march, vigil or participation therein from taking place on any of the public ways or upon any public property” during a state of emergency.
After several organizations, including the ACLU of Alabama, questioned the constitutionality of the state of emergency order, Woodfin softened his stance to allow permitted protests to take place at Legion Field and W. C. Patton Park.
Meanwhile, Linn Park was surrounded with a chain-link fence to prevent further gatherings. Woodfin told reporters last week his office had become “aware of credible threats against the city, certain locations, individuals and protestors,” and that the curfew and ban on demonstrations was an attempt “to balance the right to assembly with the absolute need for public safety.”
Though some protestors were arrested for violating the curfew — and despite unfounded rumors of a Ku Klux Klan rally in downtown Birmingham on Thursday — further demonstrations in Birmingham remained largely peaceful.
Lawyer says an Alabama teen who was killed by police was shot in the back
Authorities have not released police body camera video of the June 23 encounter or disclosed the name of the officer who shot 18-year-old Jabari Peoples in the parking lot of a soccer field in the affluent Birmingham suburb of Homewood. They also haven't released the findings of the county's official autopsy.
An Israeli restaurant owner quits a controversial Gaza food program after criticism
Shahar Segal, who runs popular restaurants around the world, has left his role as a spokesman for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation amid calls to boycott his businesses.
Trump’s pick for U.N. Ambassador grilled over Signal chat scandal
Former national security adviser Mike Waltz, who was removed from office amid the Signal chat controversy, spent Tuesday in the Senate confirmation hearing for his nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
5 takeaways from the 2025 Emmy nominations
Apple TV+ must be happy about how many nominations they've raked in this year for hit shows including Severance and The Studio, NPR critic Linda Holmes says.
The White House took down the nation’s top climate report. You can still find it here
The National Climate Assessment is the most influential source of information about climate change in the United States.
The Trump administration reverses its promise to publish key climate reports online
Earlier this month, the government websites that hosted the authoritative, peer-reviewed national climate assessments went dark. Officials say they're only obligated to give the reports to Congress.
