Environmental Racism

A better man than most--Otis McCrimmon

To cause someone suffering based on their skin color, economic position and ideals is one of the highest forms of insult applied to human beings. It has already happened in Vincent, Alabama when White Rock Quarries came to town and it continues to happen to the minority people of the River Loop.

Otis McCrimmon has lived in Vincent all of his life on ancestral family land. The River Loop is home for him, it always has been.

They live right next to the Greene property, which is now owned by White Rock Quarries. You can sit on the McCrimmon's porch, throw a rock at the fence that divides the two pieces of land, and hit it without much effort. The Greene property fetched almost one million dollars for forty acres, which is vastly over inflated for land values in this area. Since Robbie Greene was a Vincent Zoning Board member and sister-in-law of the current Mayor, she was paid a pretty penny for her "cooperation."

No one offered the McCrimmons a thin dime for their land; it was as if any land sought after by WRQ had an invisible line drawn at the minority residents properties. Some even say in Vincent that the "Quarry didn't want no black folks land, they just want to put it on top of us and make us suffer."

It appears they are right. No one here has ever come up with a good reason why only white folks were offered so much money for their land, including the City officials and Shelby County.

The McCrimmon's, like most of the River Loop residents are fine, hardworking, God-fearing people and well thought of by all who know them in these parts. At least most people feel that way. 

Someone clearly does not and has brought trouble to Mr. Otis by way of the "big daddy" state agency ADEM.

Mr. Otis is against the quarry.

Now, it seems, the quarry is against him in more ways than one.

On June 9, 2010 a certified letter arrived at the McCrimmon Farm from ADEM declaring the two acres he owns on 231 to be the "Highway 53 Pit" (a mine) and he was in violation of their rules. "You have until June 30th to comply or face enforcement," threatens the ADEM notice.

Mr. Otis never knew he had a mine, until now.

The acreage ADEM is calling "a mine" is a place that everybody and their brother has brought their front loader to and scooped up earth from to use as they saw fit. No one ever asked permission, they just took it from the land, including Shelby County and the Town of Vincent. It has been going on for a long time. Fill dirt isn't cheap; Mr. Otis has really been doing everybody a favor indirectly.

But, after all these years, now it is an issue and a serious one since ADEM is in the mix.

Coincidence?

No one in Vincent believes it is.

If Mr. Otis was for the quarry and wore white skin instead of black this would this have happened?

It is a slap in the face. It is an insult. It is environmental racism rendered upon a good man simply because he disagrees with the powers that be about having his land, his life and everything he has worked for destroyed by this quarry.

It is a heavy handed attempt to make him fall in line and "act right."

And it is a classic "Big Mule" tactic driven by the evil men that have claimed this town as theirs to oversee.