The picture below wasn't taken in Alabama. Sadly, it was taken in 2014 in mostly Blue Maryland, in largely Republican, Carroll County. Today you can see plenty of #MAGA (Make America Great/White Again) and Trump signs wherever you look. Of course a town awash with intolerance and xenophobia would be against anything that is perceived to help anyone who isn't great white.

Remember 2014? Democrats took another midterm 'shellacking,' thanks to highly-motivated voters in places like Carroll County: A local publication noticed that Carroll County was gaining notoriety "for All the Wrong Reasons." It is the quintessential rural area, exactly the type of place you'd find many of the rally-goers who attended Saturday's Oh-come-let-us-adore-Trump rally in Florida. Carroll County is:

...a mostly white, middle-to-lower class area northeast of Baltimore, has been getting a notable volume of media coverage over the past year. This rural wonderland of pickup trucks, country music, and cookie-cutter housing developments squeezed between farmland has entered the limelight for controversial positions on hot-button issues—most notably for mixing religion and politics and for taking a hard stance on immigration.

The Carroll County Times explained the latest Trump-inspired controversy at Westminster High School.

Posters put up by teachers in a few classrooms at (the high school) were removed on Thursday when it was deemed that the teachers were taking a political stance.

A few teachers were involved in putting up posters in their rooms that had a negative view of President Donald Trump, Carroll County Public Schools spokeswoman Carey Gaddis said.

The posters were "We the People" posters showing Latina, Muslim and African-American women in the same red, white and blue schematic of the "Hope" election posters for Barack Obama. Both were designed by Shepard Fairey, who told the Los Angeles Times in January that his imagery was "a pointed reference to people who have felt attacked by President-elect Donald Trump."

When they were initially told by administrators to take the posters down, teachers said the posters dealt with diversity and were allowed to put them back up. But Gaddis said after researching the posters and what they stand for, they were deemed by school system officials to be anti-Trump and were taken back down.

Is it any wonder that the educators of this Republican-controlled county are simply trying to teach the next generation to welcome diversity but are stifled by those in charge who want to keep hate alive?

There's some good news that came out of this aggravating suppression of free expression: a GoFundMe campaign has raised over $5,000 to oppose the intolerant Trump-supporting county officials:

Westminster students decided that they would wear shirts with the "banned" poster image to show solidarity with their classmates and respected teachers. We as a community of alumni, parents, and friends can do our part by supporting them financially. The funds raised in this campaign will go directly to defraying costs for shirts to hand out to WHS students. The artist behind this beautiful work did not want anyone to profit from his work, so we will buy as many shirts to distribute as funds will allow.

Many of these students will be of voting age in 2018. I hope they keep up the resistance and use our most powerful tool: the right to vote, which we cannot ever take for granted. I hope they wear those shirts proudly.