Selma, Alabama Swamped with Murders and Violence Since Obama’s Visit to Celebrate Bloody Sunday Anniversary

Since President Obama so triumphantly marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge earlier this year to celebrate Bloody Sunday–the attacks on civil rights activists that helped bring the 1964 Civil Rights Act–the city of Selma has descended into a morass of gang warfare, drug use, murder, and crime. So, what was really won on Bloody Sunday?

Civil Rights activists descended on Selma in March to celebrate the incident that led to civil rights success in the U.S. but then they all left leaving Selma a burning cauldron of crime and destruction.

The triumphant moment left many observers around the world with a sense that perhaps Selma had transcended its violent, racist past in the decades since Bloody Sunday.

But in the months since the reenactment of the March on Selma, the city’s slums have descended into a period of frequent gang shootings and open-air drug dealing, leaving residents gripped by fear and police struggling to clean up the streets.

The peak of Selma’s gang violence problem came about seven weeks ago, when shootings were being measured per week, rather than per month or per year, according to Michael Jackson, district attorney for Alabama’s 4th Judicial Circuit.

Local authorities say they encounter gang members armed with heavy weaponry including AK-47s, MAC-10s and 40-caliber handguns with high-volume clips in Selma area’s worst neighborhoods, where fresh bullet holes still pepper the sides of some homes.

So, what was really won? And why have Democrats now turned their backs on Selma?

Warner Todd Huston

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, BigJournalsim.com and all Breitbart News' other sites, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, and many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs across the country to discuss his opinion editorials and current events as well as appearing on TV networks such as CNN, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and various Chicago-based news programs. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture" which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston and follow him on Twitter, on Google Plus , and Facebook.

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