Warren Tidwell and Hometown Action in East Alabama

By: Ava Bourbeau

CAMP HILL—When Warren Tidwell was 19, he was fired from working at Papa John’s because he accidentally said “I love you” to a customer. He recalled this story with a laugh.

Now, he is a little more careful with his words. He uses “folks” to avoid assuming anyone’s preferred pronouns—though that could also just be the Alabamian in him—and uses terms that lift up minority communities, rather than those that demoralize them.

Understandably, his time in food service was short-lived. He moved to Auburn, Alabama, in 2002. He said he grew up here in the ways that matter. He was making a living as a mechanic until his interest was piqued at a Facebook post by the community organization Hometown Action.

Justin Vest, Hometown Action’s director, is to thank for the post, and the solidification of Tidwell’s community organizer role. Even Tidwell admitted, “I didn’t know I was a community organizer for 20 years.”

His friends rarely see him without a ball cap.

That’s how Tidwell describes himself. The hat is both literal and metaphorical because while he would rarely be caught ‘bare-headed,’ he also would not be caught withholding a helping hand. He wears many hats and involves himself in many pursuits, but they all have a related purpose: enacting positive change.

On Wednesday, Feb. 23, he started his morning with a three-hour phone call, followed by a 30-minute drive to Camp Hill and an hour-long meeting with community organizers. He followed that up with a 145-mile trip to Brookwood, Alabama, to protest with striking coalminers who have been fighting for fair wages since April 2021.

Tidwell is the head of the East Alabama chapter of Hometown Action. Hometown Action is an activist organization that’s goals include: “fighting corporate power, developing small town and rural leaders, and transforming politics for our movement,” according to their website.

The organization works tirelessly to change not only the stigma around the exclusivity of southern politics but to make actual bipartisan progress.

The work Tidwell is doing in Camp Hill, and other rural towns like it, is in partnership with Hometown Action’s sister organization, the Hometown Organizing Project. The differences between Hometown Action, a 501(c)(3), and Hometown Organizing Project, a 501(c)(4), are important because each organization fulfills a separate role. Both are non-profit, charitable, organizations, but Hometown Action is permitted to participate in political campaigns, while the Hometown Organizing Project cannot.

“People don’t trust the groups that have come before,” said Tidwell. Plenty of organizations come to rural Alabama, either as white-saviors or habitual empty promise makers and leave without making lasting change. “These systems gave us exactly what Camp Hill is.”

Tidwell also acknowledges that these systems were built for people like him: “regular white guys.”

So, instead of gentrification, Tidwell is working toward change that starts with the locals. He contrasted this change to how Auburn has changed.

“I don’t recognize downtown Auburn anymore,” said Tidwell. This opinion was a shared topic of discussion at a meeting with community organizers in Camp Hill. Reverend Joanne Finley, a pastor and business consultant, added that to help Camp Hill, they needed people like Tidwell to be the inspiration for change, not the recipient.

He plans to shake every hand he can and attempt to recruit residents to attend community organization meeting and marketplaces. In his opinion, the best way to do that is through the church. It is a guaranteed, pre-destined community meeting. It is also the heart of much of the South.

Progress toward a unified town is already being made in Camp Hill. The first community marketplace is scheduled for the first week in May 2022.

To the north in Triana, Alabama, the organization is hoping to bring the community together for a heritage day and concert to celebrate the Black community. The town, whose population went from 400 to 2,800 in four years, according to the U.S. Census, is under threat of being absorbed by Huntsville, Alabama. The black residents in Triana are now the minority. This is a common theme in the rural South.

The goal is to “highlight the history for a lot of the new folks who live there, so that they understand the community where they live,” said Tidwell. Tidwell doesn’t seek erasure, but embracement of rural communities.

Tidwell does not bask in the limelight. He can subtly redirect any conversation away from himself. He claims to be a regular ‘ol white guy, but he also claims that, though they might be rare, there are others in Alabama like him, who want to stand apart from the system built for them. These days Tidwell uses this drive to proclaim his love for rural communities, rather than pizza shop customers.