This weekend is the weekend that retail shoppers spend the rest of the year preparing for. Black Friday is a time when some of the best deals can be found in stores and online. It just so happens that today is also a chance to support local businesses in the county and Selma city.

Small Business Saturday encourages all of us to go back to the roots of our community and support those that bring most dollars earned back to the places that we live in.

Before the rise of the chain stores where you could buy clothes, groceries and home supplies in one place, and the rise of web services like Amazon and eBay that gave you the convenience of shopping and not even leaving the comfort of your couch, people relied on local stores.

Local merchants remain a large part in any community, and in places like Selma, they are a necessity to keeping the city alive.

We need our local retailers.

The local retailers have taken the plunge to provide services to their neighbors and friends, and rely solely on us.

Where would downtown Selma be without the few local retailers that are still occupying space?

The buildings would be empty, and the majority of downtown would just be empty buildings.

Most of these business owners are people that you know. People that you go to church with, your kids might be friends with each other or people you see every day at lunch.

It is not an easy task being a local business owner in Dallas County. Poverty continues to hit the community on a grand scale, and tourists really only stop to cross the bridge and then move on to Montgomery.

Yet the small businesses still remain.

We hope that you will all include these local businesses during your holiday shopping this weekend.

With Thanksgiving over, and the Iron Bowl coming up today, we still encourage everyone to make time for these people.

We also hope that the support of these local businesses goes on even beyond Small Business Saturday.

The income they bring to the community is too valuable to not.

According to Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Sheryl Smedley, the day is extremely important for small towns. Smedley noted that for every $1 spent locally, 67 cents remain in the community. Of that 67 cents, more than half goes toward paying employees and the rest is spent investing in other local businesses.

Happy shopping, and don’t forget to shop locally.