Transcripts of Interviews

1. Tell us about yourself. What is your name? How do you self-identify? What are your pronouns? What is your connections to the City of Montevallo or the University of Montevallo?

Okay, so, [my name is] Andrea Eckelman, assistant professor of Political Science, [my pronouns are] she/hers. I moved here in 2016 when I started at the University of Montevallo because I wanted to live in town, and just jumped right in.

2. What does the community of Montevallo mean to you? How would you describe it?

That’s a good one, I think that’s changed over time, honestly. So, I sort of, I feel like that, sort of there’s two communities, right? There’s the community that is here at the University, and that’s a very different community than like, the people I have breakfast with on Saturday, right? The town, the people who have lived here their whole lives. So, I think particularly in the context of something like the non-discrimination ordinance, and you know, there’s a new sort of project in the works for a lynching memorial, so that’s promising to be an equally sort of contentious issue. That’s really where the disconnect is, but, that being said, I think you can’t separate the town from the University, because in 2019, this town would not be here if it weren’t for the University [of Montevallo]. All of the plants, all of the other things, so many things have closed down. So, yeah, I sort of think historic, I think about women’s rights, since we were a women’s college, and we had people like Hallie Farmer, and then now, that we passed the non-discrimination ordinance, I think about progress and progressiveness.

3. What is your role in the community?

Ah! So, I get a lot of jokes about how I’m campaigning for mayor. [Laughter] I’m not, by the way. But, yeah, so again, I think that’s kind of a dual role, right? But, I’m very active. I serve on a couple city boards, I’ve already been doing stuff with the community remembrance project [lynching memorial], and of course did a lot with the non-discrimination ordinance. So, I don’t know, I guess in a lot of ways I find myself, or I feel like a little bit of a cheerleader. Like this town is really cool, and can be even cooler, and we can attract more people if we do these things. So, yeah! I guess I kind of try to be a town cheerleader, and just try to make it a better place.

4. When did you first learn of the proposal for a non-discrimination ordinance?

When did a first learn about it? Let’s see, so I moved here in the summer of 2016, and I know that the conversations were already going. So, the conversations had started, I think two years before we did the whole, before we actually had the text and voted, right? So, I think it was September of 2017 that we did the first town meeting. That might’ve been when I first got involved, because if it was after that that I was like, “Okay, we need some education and we need some more stuff.” Yeah, I think it was probably in late 2017, yeah.

5. What was your initial perception of non-discrimination ordinance?

Oh, I mean, I thought it was great. So, I moved here from Houston. Houston did a similar thing. So actually, Houston city council voted, they called it an “equal rights ordinance”, but same principle. The city council [in Houston] voted for the equal rights ordinance, some of the city’s social conservatives got upset, sued, and were able to do this petition to basically recall the city council’s vote and put it to the electorate for a vote, so it ended up on our ballot in 2015, I think. So, off year election, low voter turnout, lots of mobilization around this one issue, and I was just so struck. Of course, lots of commentary about how, this is why you don’t put the rights of a minority up to a vote by the majority. I just thought that was so, so true. Anyways, so I’d just kind of been through that. I was excited to learn that we were not doing it that way, we were having community input, but still doing a city council vote. So yeah! I was really excited about it, and I think, I thought it was a great idea. Because, people think these protections exist at the federal level, and they don’t. Even less so now than in 2016.

6. How was your role in the community crucial to your participation in forums, panels, and/or community discussions regarding the non-discrimination ordinance?

I mention I went to the first community event that we had. I was in, I think we had three rooms at that event. But, I was in the room where, when people got there late, they just came into our room, and we were in UMOM [University of Montevallo on Main, Social Sciences building] 201. So, you know the size of that room, and I bet you we had close to 100 people in that room. I mean, there was so many people, and maybe that’s an exaggeration, it was a ton of people though. Standing room only, like, people were sitting in the aisles, you know, in between the chairs. That turned out to be very problematic for the discourse, for a number of reasons. There were too many people and too many people trying to get their voices heard, and then I think there was a, I don’t even know how you would phrase it but, like, when you’ve got somebody standing and talking about something and somebody sitting and talking, it’s like a very unequal think of thing [dynamic]. Anyways, so, after that, we filled out a form saying what we thought needed to happen next, right? And [things like] what questions did we have, and what did we think was promising or problematic. So, then the Mayor’s office [Dr. Holly Cost’s administration] got all that stuff together and emailed it out, and it just became abundantly clear to me that so many people didn’t understand, like, what was even going on. The issue that people think that there are federal protections for LGBTQ rights in housing and all that, and the misunderstanding about what precisely a local ordinance does, a misunderstanding about what it means to be transgender or queer. So anyways, through all of that, I mentioned to the Mayor [Dr. Holly Cost] and said, “Hey, I think we need to have an educational panel.” It’s not a discussion, it’s a here are the answers to your questions, and in a town the size of Montevallo, you need to be careful when you say we need something, because then you do it. So, I moderated an educational panel about four months after we did that initial thing [the first non-discrimination ordinance meeting/discussion]. I don’t think, necessarily, any minds were changed. I think, I know one mind was changed, just because we had two transgender individuals serving on our panel, and so people got to meet someone who is transgender and put a face to the ‘issue’, and it made a huge difference. So, I did that and then I tried, in a way, that was as minimally pushy as possible to get students interested, and at least attending stuff. I try not to push my politics on it [the students/classes], so that was really hard, it’s a hard issue to not kind of push. So yeah, I think it was kind of both as an educator, I was able to serve that role in the town, but then also as an educator, try to use that platform to get students involved.

7. What was your most memorable moment during the process of the creation, debate, or passage of the non-discrimination ordinance?

[Laughs] I think you know what I’m going to say. [Laughs] So, as I mentioned, that first initial conversation, lots of misunderstandings about what this would ultimately be. And, we have a townsperson who expressed a grave concern about the non-discrimination ordinance passing, and that giving gay people license to make out in public spaces like our bank. And, he was dead serious. [Laughs]. I think he was really truly afraid of that. So, it was that kind of stuff that made me realize how few people realize that they know somebody who is LGBTQ [identifying], and that, you know, they’re just like us [heterosexual people]. [Laughs] You know, that kind of thing. So, yeah, I think it was that. And maybe a little bit, to an extent, it made me realize what a bubble, I guess, sometimes the University life is. Yeah, because I hang out with a lot of University [of Montevallo] people [Laughs]. Yeah, I think that was it.

8. Did your personal beliefs or identities influence your advocacy for or against the non-discrimination ordinance?

Yeah, absolutely, so my mom, I just remember my mom having several gay friends when I was growing up. I didn’t realize that anything was different. That made a really big impact on me because, then I’ve never felt like anything was different. Yeah, I just have a real problem with denying rights to people. I don’t think that is appropriate in any context. I just feel very, very, very  strongly about that. I do not identify as LGBTQ, but I know so many people who do, friends and family and students alike, that it just makes me sad that there are people who think that that identity means you don’t have rights. That makes me want to fight for that.

9. Did you have any experiences prior to the creation of the non-discrimination ordinance which prompted your advocacy for or against the non-discrimination ordinance?

Of course, the HERO [Houston Equal Rights Ordinance] was a big one. I think just having friends who are members of the LGBTQ community, and you know, just having friends who couldn’t get married for so long and listening to them talk through that, and yeah, I don’t know, it just really made me feel for them. And too, the constant fear of being fired from your job, or being evicted from your housing, you know, that stuff is real and I think there are a lot of people who look like me and are like me that don’t ever have any kind of fear like that, so knowing someone on that personal level makes a huge difference.