Earl Hilliard Interview, Jan. 4, 2006, Part 1

Earl Hilliard, Jr. is a filmmaker living in Alabama and has decided to run for public office in 2006. During a January 4, 2006 interview about his intended district he discusses some of his legislative concerns for the film industry in Alabama.

Editor's note: Mr. Hilliard spoke casually for this interview and may revise and/or expound certain points and statements at a later date. Brackets [ ] used during the interview are an editorial insert to clarify certain topical points for the reader.

Reelscene : Earl Hilliard, Jr. is a local filmmaker [Birmingham, Alabama] and has decided to run for public office here, tell us which office you're going to run for.

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : It's the State House, the State House Representative House District 60. The area is like western Birmingham, parts of Fultondale, Westwood, Adamsville, it's basically a wide swath.

Reelscene : And what prompted you to decided to run?

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : Well, I've been considering it for years actually. Really the last two years, from everything from wanting to do more with several of the issues I work on. And I had tried to contact other people to work on those actual projects or to work on different things, other elected officials and people I thought could help. And from not getting phone calls returned to people not being sincere in helping out or doing the things that I wanted them to do, I think it was all of those things culminated in me realizing that I needed to do it myself or at least attempt to do it myself.

Reelscene : What do you see as a need for your District or what do you want to bring as a public servant to the people?

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : Well in my District it's actually quite interesting. There's a lot of things we need in my District. My District is losing population, a lot of that is because of housing. We need housing programs. The schools, people who have the kind of income where they can move, they move to areas where they can go to public schools, they'll pay more for their house or pay more for their apartment so they can get free public schools that are very good for their kids or they'll move to be closer to a nice private school. So you people moving [for that reason]. Then you have areas like on 78 Highway, which is a large part of my District, goes from Birmingham up to Jasper, even there it used to be a very viable and populated area with shopping malls and slowly but surely they started moving up the street, virtually, almost moving out of my District. And so what's happening is like, even a company say Wal-Mart moved maybe a mile up the street. And they're slowly moving. So as the jobs move there's less places for people to work and so people move closer to those. So between the educational system, between housing programs, those are the kind of reasons that people, those are the kind of things my District needs.

Even on the local level, things like our local parks, there are things there that need to be funded, where you have older equipment or non-secure areas, that kind of thing, you know, small things.

Reelscene : Well are you looking for certain quality of life issues to help remedy the situation?

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : Well, if I'm catching your meaning, I think that things like senior citizen programs, programs to identify people having problems in school, and things [like] more funding for the local schools and local programs to help and identify different people [needing support], that kind of thing, so yeah, I am looking to do those kind of things.

Even as far as the parks, I've talked with some of the neighborhood association presidents about what we can do with the local parks to make them more safe and secure with the local area, I'm trying to get that done. And part of the thing is in talking to people who are in different areas of the community, because my District is rather large, you find out the needs of those kind of things and what other people want in the District.

Reelscene : Do you have any specific plans or ideas at this point or you going to kind of wait and see what else develops?

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : No, I defiantly have certain things. One of the things I think I mentioned to you earlier was about the foster care. A lot of the kids that are on the streets are people who have moved out of the foster care system, people who have run away from foster care system, people who's parents were in an abusive relationships, I mean parents who are abusive and the kids run away, all that kind of thing. So in helping to strengthen that system, what that allows is you get more kids off the street.

I just talked to someone earlier who wants to introduce a program where they bring drug programs into the schools, programs that aren't already there, that they feel are more effective than the ones that are in place. Those kind of programs can help the area.

But even things like film incentives. One of the problems that Alabama has, well actually my District has, is that most people don't consider filmmaking, acting, any of that a viable vocation. Because they wouldn't even know how to start trying to make money from doing that. So if we could bring in little local programs to actually train people, even training people to be grips, those are jobs that people who didn't go to college or maybe even high school dropouts or whatever, those are the kind of jobs that those kinds of people can do and make a good living, a good life. So it's just about bringing a skilled programs, those kind of projects to those areas.

Reelscene : Most of the demographics of the population is going to be slowly ageing over the next ten or fifteen years, is that something you're going to be addressing? Concerns for the older citizens.

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : Yeah, that what I was mentioning earlier about the elderly. In my District there are several, like residential facilities, retirement centers like that, helping those kind of things. As a matter of fact, one of them that would be directly in the center of the district that I'm trying to represent has a very good idea. What they did was also created a place, an apartments for people who want to live closer to the people that are in the facilities. They've been trying to get zoning things for roads and sewage to expand and do other things. Increasing places like that to give people support and still living viable lives without just locking them up somewhere, just kind of throwing away the key. So doing social programs that help people, community centers, giving them projects so people have a places to go. I have an elderly grandmother and every morning she goes to the "Y" to do crochet and to do ceramics. Those kind of programs give people stuff to do, programs that even take people to vote, programs that keep them active.

Reelscene : You mentioned the economic development along the highway [Hwy 78] and all, do you have anything specific for any of the businesses, the general businesses, retail or manufacturing or anything.

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : I don't have anything specific for that right now. Now, what I do have is several people have brought projects to me and programs that they thought would, with incentives, almost like, I don't know if you remember what Century Plaza [a shopping mall] did, where they actually invited independent entrepreneurs to come in. If you have a company, if you have something, we'll support you in getting you in here and setting up. So I've had several people come to me with those kind of ideas that I want to look into and see how good they work for our area.

Reelscene : Like an incubator type of thing?

Earl Hilliard, Jr. : Well, an incubator but also the kind of incentive programs that actually, say, normally this would take you this much money and you have to have this much backup in proof or whatever, but we can let you come in this kind of place at less money or whatever.