Written by Norman A. Constantine, Eva S. Goldfarb, Danny Ceballos, and Carmen Rita Nevarez for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

See all our coverage of Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education here.

A recently updated list of federally approved “evidence-based” teen pregnancy prevention programs has been causing a stir. This list specifies the programs that are eligible for federal funds and serves as the cornerstone of President Obama’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative.  Among the three programs making the list for the first time is the Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage program Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education. Our friends and fellow advocates in the adolescent sexual health promotion field have denounced this program as medically inaccurate, biased, fear- and shame-based, and otherwise inappropriate for the classroom. Here we all agree, completely. A program like this has no place in our schools and communities, and especially not with government funding.

But we take issue with criticisms of the Obama administration for “backroom deals and secrecy,” “political expediency,” and “blatant hypocrisy,” among other barbs and arrows recently launched by understandably frustrated advocates. Rather than blaming Obama for this unfortunate development, we’d all do better to recognize that it was the result of a fundamentally flawed system operating according to explicit agreed-upon rules—a system sorely in need of review and repair.

What’s wrong with this system? Simply put, it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of scientific evidence and its appropriate use. To earn a place on the list, a program needs only to produce one statistically significant outcome in one evaluation study–no matter how many outcomes were tested across how many studies. Yet it is a well-known principle of research statistics that the likelihood of a false finding increases as the number of outcomes tested increases. In fact, if a program has no effect, for every twenty outcomes tested one outcome can be expected to be incorrectly identified as a statistically significant effect merely due to chance alone. Even testing just two outcomes raises the probability of a false finding of effectiveness beyond the traditionally tolerated level of less than five percent. The technical name for taking advantage of this principle to obtain a statistically significant finding is “fishing for significance.”

Continue reading….

Alveda King

Dear Ms. Alveda King,

Bayard Rustin

I have watched your “career” as an “activist” and a “leader” over the years with a mixture of amusement and annoyance. I was amused as to how you were suddenly anointed as a voice for the black community simply because you are Martin Luther King, Jr’s niece.

And I was a bit annoyed at your nasty attack on Coretta Scott King two years ago when you implied that you knew MLK’s heart better than her because you “had his DNA and she didn’t.”

However, your recent comments have led me to a state that goes beyond annoyance. Comments you made about the late Bayard Rustin make it necessary that I call you out for your blatant dishonesty.

You said:

“The 21st century homosexual lobby likes to point to the professional relationship between my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bayard Rustin, his openly homosexual staffer who left the movement at the height of the campaign. Rustin attempted to convince Uncle M. L. that homosexual rights were equal with civil rights. Uncle M. L. did not agree, and would not attach the homosexual agenda to the 20th century civil rights struggles. So Mr. Rustin resigned.

I would like to know where you received your information concerning this claim and until you show this information, I feel safe in calling you out as a boldfaced liar.

According to several sources, most specifically the excellent book Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin by John D’Emilio, Rustin resigned because prominent black leaders, specifically the late Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, had gotten jealous of King’s influence and were going to accuse him and the openly gay Rustin of being lovers.

It was some of these same leaders who did not want Rustin to have anything to do with the 1963 March on Washington, but labor leader A. Philip Randolph insisted that Rustin be involved. And as you SHOULD know, this was a good move because Rustin was the architect of that successful march.

Furthermore Rustin began speaking about gay issues in the 1980s at the behest of his partner, Walter Naegle. This was over two decades after MLK’s death.

Ms. King, you like to talk about the so-called sin of homosexuality, but let me remind you that the Bible also says something against bearing false witness.

And between me and you, from one African-American to another, I would personally like to know just what constitutes you as a genuine leader in the black community?

To my knowledge, no one has taken the initiative to ask you that question, so I would like to. Do you really think that your relationship to one of the greatest American leaders of the 20th century makes you a leader?

I don’t think so. On my father’s side of my family, I am a distant cousin to the rapper Lil Bow Wow, but at no time have I rushed to a record company demanding a contract.

Ms. King, it takes more than familial connections to make one a leader. Allow me to school you on the qualities.

A leader sacrifices for others.

A leader does not seek the spotlight.

A leader works his or her fingers to the bone for a cause.

A leader inspires others.

A leader puts him or herself on the line more than once even though success of the cause may not be assured.

Bayard Rustin had all of these qualities. You have none of them. Ever since you have shown your face in the public arena, the only person you seemed to have cared about is yourself. You inspire no one. You do the least amount of work. And worst of all, none of your fame comes from anything you have done, but only due to the fact that you had the good fortune to be related to Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you didn’t have this familial relation, no one would care about anything you say.

So please stop lying to yourself as to your status and your impact. You have neither.

And while I detest how you are reaping the benefits of your uncle’s hard work, I have nothing to do with it.

BUT I will be damned if I say nothing while you besmirch the name of a man whose hard work put you in your pseudo-prominent situation.

Bayard Rustin was a leader in every since of the word.

You aren’t. And while you may have King’s DNA, you are sorely lacking in his integrity or love.

You go and make your money, now.

Consider yourself checked and dismissed.

Written by Andrea Grimes for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

We at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) are used to baseless, slanderous attacks. As the sole organization looking out for the constitutionally guaranteed civil rights of armed service members who suffer the horrors of religious oppression and unsolicited, aggressive proselytizing, it comes as no surprise to us that we are daily the specific target of those same perpetrators of religious zealotry who victimize our clients.

Sometimes, though, we can only sit back and chuckle in amusement at the ignorant calumnies and insinuations tossed about by our Christian fundamentalist foes.

Case in point: David Barton’s recent rant about yours truly. According to this foolish moron, in addition to being Founder and President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, I am now the new Secretary of the United States Air Force (USAF). Why is that? As Barton explains, “Every stinkin’ case he files against the Air Force, the Air Force says ‘oh my Gosh, we didn’t realize we were doing that, we’ll stop that!’”

Imagine that: Mikey Weinstein, the Honorable Secretary of the Air Force! While I’m flattered by such an honorific and homage, nothing Barton says can ever possibly find residence within the realm of credibility. While we at MRFF do constitute an advance guard among those who seek to restore the shattered wall separating church and state in the U.S. military, Barton gives both MRFF and USAF top brass far more credit than we deserve. Likewise, while his spin implies that there’s little more to MRFF than hues, cries, and litigious excess, the facts testify to an altogether different reality; our civil rights foundation represents well over 27,000 clients, 96% of whom are practicing Christians. What compels them to approach our humble organization to seek redress? Intolerable, wretched conditions of religious oppression against both religious minorities (and especially even fellow Protestants and Roman Catholics), fundamentalist and racist contraband embedded in training material, coerced attendance at uber-sectarian, evangelical Christian fundamentalist rock concerts, and countless other heinous examples of the widespread encroachment upon the armed forces being driven forward by Barton and his ilk.

For those who may be unaware, Barton has served as vice chair of the Texas GOP and is a skilled, veteran propagandist operating under the guise of his phony self-designation as a “historian.” Barton’s “craft” consists of surpassing historical revision of the most pernicious kind. The website for his political Christian fundamentalist group, WallBuilders, is a treasure trove for those seeking a hagiography of U.S. history consisting entirely of false, Christian nationalist mythologizing. There you will discover, among myriad fabrications, that the Founding Fathers of our “modern Christian nation” were cut from the same sectarian ideological cloth as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and other “level-headed,” freedom-loving Americans.

Barton has become one of the foremost ideologues of American Christian extremist exceptionalism and Tea Party-style militant fundamentalism. This ignominy has earned him the reverence of powerful figures in the Republican Party, many of whom have clamored and lined up to “kiss the ring” and earn the endorsement of this vile, base truth assassin. He has even earned the distinguished honor of being a lecturer at the esteemed online “Beck University,” whose owner and “Dean” is the renowned pedagogue and schlock-jock “super-patriot,” Glenn Beck.

Our Senior Research Director here at MRFF, Ms. Chris Rodda, has done an absolutely splendid job haranguing, deconstructing, and otherwise comprehensively exposing this Dominionist tool. She even wrote a book comprised of razor-sharp refutations of Barton’s amateurish compendia of counter-factual, pseudo-theocratic lies.

Indeed, Mr. Barton, you yourself are responsible for Chris Rodda joining forces with MRFF. This was back in 2007, when Rodda adeptly tore apart your tortured misrepresentation of the meaning behind Thomas Jefferson’s letters discussing the separation of church and state. The craftsmanship and skill with which she upheld the truth about our foundational values as a nation immediately caught our attention, and she soon became our top Researcher here at MRFF. For this, o exalted “Liar for Jesus,” we are truly indebted to you!

The confession from Barton that he believes me to be the Head of the Department of the United States Air Force shows the extent to which this man has been bewitched by his own Dominionist hocus-pocus. To paraphrase the great English scientist and critic Sir Peter Medawar, Barton “can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself.”

If I were the Secretary of the Air Force, would our civil rights foundation have to fight tooth and nail for even the slightest shred of information from the Pentagon in the form of Freedom of Information Act disclosures?

If I were Secretary of the Air Force, would Brigadier General Dana Born, Dean of Faculty at the United States Air Force Academy, be instructing her subordinates to launch counterinsurgency (COIN) operations against our four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominated civil rights organization?

According to Mike Huckabee, the obnoxiously hokey Fox News personality and has-been presidential contender who never was, “All Americans [should] be forced – forced at gunpoint, no less–to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.”

At the time, we thought that such a bizarre statement, once confined to the lunatic fringe of evangelical fundamentalism, starkly revealed the tyrannical aspirations of the religious right’s mainstream leaders. However, Barton’s “message” that yours truly is the Secretary of the Air Force changes things up a bit. By assigning me such an august position, perhaps Barton is actually interested, for once, in doing some good for our country and the religious freedoms enshrined by the U.S. Constitution? We trust that Mr. Huckabee, M-16 in hand, wouldn’t take exception to this latest David Barton message.

From my secret desk here at the shadow Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, however, one thing is certain: Hell hath frozen over, and the pigs are flying overhead in Delta formation.

Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily

by David Harris-Gershon

Southern Tel Aviv is home to a number of blighted and struggling neighborhoods – areas where Israel’s income inequalities and economic disparities are acutely on display in the shadow of the city’s high rises. And it is here – in the neighborhood of Shapira – where large numbers of African refugees and asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea have sought shelter from forces much more dire than poverty.

On Wednesday evening, that shelter was shattered by a 1,000-strong protest which turned violent and, ultimately, into a race riot targeting those seeking relief from violence.

An Israeli mob in Tel Aviv burns garbage and sings, "The people want the Africans to be burned."

How did this happen?

The short answer begins by examining the protest, which was organized by Likud activists and attended by several Knesset members, who (for obvious political reasons) stood before the masses and blamed their hardships on African refugees with incendiary catch phrases.

Addressing the “infiltration problem,” Knesset Member Miri Regev (Likud) criticized the Israeli government for not sending the African refugees from whence they came, calling them “a cancer in our body.” Danny Danon (Likud) followed up his incendiary speech by posting on Facebook, “Israel is at war. An enemy state of infiltrators was established in Israel, and its capital is south Tel Aviv.” And Michael Ben-Ari, a former member of the racist Kach party, incited the crowd by tapping both into their economic despair and xenophobia, warning them that the Africans would take all available jobs and leave everyone else with nothing.

A woman with a shirt that reads, "Death to the Sudanese." Photo by Tomer Neuberg.

The crowd, already gathered to vent their rage, in part, at the African community – blaming them for a rise in crime and the theft of opportunity – suddenly turned violent and streamed into the Shapira neighborhood, attacking Africans on the street, in cars, smashing storefronts belonging to migrants and vandalizing shops.

Eritrean refugees react moments after their shop was attacked by an angry mob.

"A mother with her baby cries minutes after she was attacked by a mob, with the baby thrown to the ground, following a protest against African refugees and asylum seekers in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood." - caption by Activestills

The violence and rampaging through Shapira happened spontaneously, as though a tinder box had suddenly been set alight by a flint’s sparking surface. And Israeli parliamentarians are to blame for creating that spark, for setting alight a crowd already on the edge of combustion.

Regarding the refugee community in Israel targeted last night, Noam Sheizaf writes:

According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there are presently some 60,000 African asylum seekers in Israel. Most entered the country by foot through its southern border. While they are termed “infiltrators” by the government, some 85 percent are from Eritrea and Sudan, to which Israel has agreed until now not to return them in light of the situations in those countries. They fall under a form of group protection from deportation, but their individual refugee claims are not processed.

A few recent crimes against Israelis that were linked to the African community have recently received considerable attention in the local media. They led to a wave of protest and declarations by politicians against the refugees and asylum seekers. MK Ofir Akunis, a member of Likud and a Netanyahu proxy, is set to promote a Knesset bill which will criminalize Israelis who employ, drive or give shelter to refugees.

In addition to a deeply-rooted racism that exists within segments of Israeli society and the continued dehumanizing of minorities, last night’s race riot also occurred because of corrupt economic policies and the rising gap between the rich and poor in Israel – a situation which has left many teetering on an economic precipice. Without minimizing the racist motivations behind what occurred last night, a root cause is partially the same root social justice activists targeted last summer when they crippled Tel Aviv, chanting, “The people demand social justice.”

Last night, poverty-stricken Israelis focused their rage (and prejudice) on a community of dark-skinned scapegoats. And several Israeli leaders were only too happy to help an angry mob push them off the cliff.

Follow the author – David Harris-Gershon – on Twitter @David_EHG

———§———

To read more pieces like this, sign up for Tikkun Daily’s free newsletter, sign up for Tikkun Magazine emails or visit us online. You can also like Tikkun on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

by Miki Kashtan

Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.

For most of my years in school, I was ostracized, teased, and tormented by others. More often than not I wasn’t invited to participate in anything social, be it play or, later, parties. This went on for years, with two periods that stand out in particular. Before I was eleven, I was blackmailed by a classmate for three months, and subsequently banned for some weeks by everyone in my class, at which time only one brave girl would sneak to my home to play with me. Then, when I was thirteen and lived with my family in Mexico, I was continually tormented and taunted by others and saw swastikas on the blackboard that were hastily erased when a teacher would come. At one time I was locked out by a group of girls who didn’t want me to be part of their cabin, and I was all alone all night, leaning against a tree and shivering.

Miki at thirteen (front row, second from left) amidst her tormentors and other classmates.

The word “bully” hadn’t existed in my world at the time. I had no context for making sense of the trauma I endured. Like so many people who suffer at the hands of others, I didn’t talk to anyone about it at the time and had no hope of being understood. Today, the phenomenon is widely recognized as a major stressor in children’s lives. The Bully Project-estimates that thirteen million children are going to be bullied this year. One study indicates that 88% of children have observed bullying, and in one poll 42% of those who attended health ed centers admitted to having participated in bullying others. These numbers are staggering. READ FULL POST

Written by Chloë Cooney for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

The recent arrival of Chinese human rights advocate Chen Guangcheng has focused the world’s attention on the scourge of coercive reproductive policies in some countries. Now more than ever, U.S. foreign assistance should be directed toward those working to advance human rights. Yet, once again, the House Appropriations Committee voted to let politics interfere with lifesaving health care for women.

Last week, the House Appropriations Committee proposed to cut funding for international family planning programs and impose harmful restrictions on women’s access to essential health care — including the global gag rule and prohibiting U.S. contributions to UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.

While this trifecta of funding cuts and restrictions now seems par for the course in the House, it comes in striking contrast to new evidence released the day prior by leading health organizations. A report from the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), UNFPA, and the World Bank, once again confirms that birth control and reproductive health services are essential to saving women’s lives around the world. Thanks to these interventions, the report finds, maternal deaths declined by nearly 50 percent over the last 20 years.

As the report’s authors state, “[W]hen governments take a strategic approach to the safe motherhood challenge — by deploying trained midwives, ensuring adequate essential supplies, making family planning accessible and providing timely obstetric care to women with complications, we are getting results.”

In other words, evidence shows that family planning prevents the needless deaths of women worldwide.  One would think this would be cause to sustain or even increase U.S. investments in these programs.

Unfortunately, the House bill contains $149 million in funding cuts and would roll funding levels back to 2008 levels.

Continue reading….

Written by Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

This article was updated at 12:41 pm, Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012.

Yesterday I attended a meeting of pro-choice colleagues working to ensure women throughout this country get safe, compassionate abortion care. Today, I received an email from one of those colleagues, detailing the ordeal through which she was put by American Airlines on her flights home. They actually forced her to miss her connecting flight and demanded she change her top. The reason? Her politically salient pro-choice t-shirt was offensive to the flight crew.

That sign said: “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d fuck a senator.”The t-shirt is the now-popularized version of a sign held by Oklahoma state senator Judy McIntyre (D) at a pro-choice rally in early March to protest Oklahoma’s so-called personhood law, which in conferring the rights of a living, breathing person on a fertilized egg denies all rights of personhood of women, full stop.
At the time of the rally, and asked about the sign, State Senator McIntyre “acknowledged that some in Oklahoma, which is overwhelmingly Christian, may find her sign’s language offensive, but she wasn’t much concerned about them.”

“I would hope they would have that same passion about how offensive it is for the Republican Party of Oklahoma to ramrod, because they have the votes to do so, bills that are offensive to women and take away the rights of women,” she reportedly said.

My colleague, O., of the same mind of many of us in believing that sign says it all, wore a t-shirt with the same message under her shawl and boarded an American Airlines flight home from our meeting.

So what happened? O. writes:

[O]n the plane of the first leg of my flight home, I spent the majority of [time] sleeping, using my shawl as a blanket. Right before we were set to land the flight attendant from first class approaches me and asks if I had a connecting flight? We were running a bit behind schedule, so I figured I was being asked this to be sure I would make my connecting flight.  She then proceeded to tell me that I needed to speak with the captain before disembarking the plane and that the shirt I was wearing was offensive.

The shirt was gray with the wording, “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d fuck a senator.” I must also mention that when I boarded the plane, I was one of the first groups to board (did not pass by many folks).  I was wearing my shawl just loosely around my neck and upon sitting down in my seat the lady next to me, who was already seated, praised me for wearing the shirt.

When I was leaving the plane the captain stepped off with me and told me I should not have been allowed to board the plane in DC and needed to change before boarding my next flight. This conversation led to me missing my connecting flight.  I assumed that because I was held up by the captain, they would have called ahead to let the connecting flight know I was in route.  Well, upon my hastened arrival at the gate of the connecting flight, it was discovered that they did indeed call ahead but not to hold the flight, only to tell them I needed to change my shirt. I was given a seat on the next flight and told to change shirts.

Due to the fact that my luggage was checked, changing shirts without spending money wasn’t an option. I consulted a friend with a law background who told me covering with my shawl would suffice. Upon boarding the now rescheduled flight with shawl covering my shirt, my ticket dinged invalid. I was pulled to the side while the gentleman entered some codes into the computer and then told, “it was all good.”  I did finally arrive home to pick up my daughter an hour and a half later than scheduled.

So let’s review some facts. O. went through security and was stopped for additional screening, but not deemed a “security risk,” and no one at TSA made the slightest mention of her t-shirt. She boarded her first flight, and none of the airline personnel at the gate mentioned her t-shirt. She quietly took her seat, wrapped her shawl around herself, and went to sleep.

When her plane landed the flight attendant confronted her and said she had to speak to the captain. At no point did anyone say quietly, hey… could you keep that covered with your shawl? Could you turn it inside out? We have a policy….

Instead, after the plane landed the flight attendant brought her up front where the captain berated her publicly and made her miss her connecting flight. It turns out when she asked if anyone had complained the answer was: NO, Only the flight attendant!

Continue reading….

After serving her country as a major in the U.S. Army for 22 years, tending to injured soldiers as a case manager in other parts of the country, registered nurse Marilyn Mullens is now leading a group of her fellow Appalachian women to the West Virginia state capitol on Memorial Day to protest the growing humanitarian crisis of mountaintop removal mining.

In a dramatic action to symbolize that “our mountains that have been stripped of everything living on them, and in solidarity with our people, who are sick and dying and dead because of this practice,” Mullens and a group of coalfield mothers, daughters and activists will shave their heads to call out the bald face complicity of Big Coal-bankrolled state politicians and the denial of the devastating health and human rights violations in coal mining communities.

“We’ve gone through all the official channels of every level of our state government, we’ve been to DC, nothing is being done,” Mullens said in a press release. “Silence is louder than words. We’ve talked and talked and talked, but it hasn’t gotten us where we need to be with this issue. You have air pollution, water pollution, the destruction of so many living things — it’s a bigger deal than people think. I mean they are actually destroying a culture of people. It’s not what my grandparents would have wanted. And I know, the old coal miners, they don’t like it — they think it is horrible. We are the majority but our voices are drowned out by big coal money. It’s like they shove their money down our throats. The politicians completely ignore us.”

While state politicians, including Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, often cry that President Obama has carried out a war on coal in central Appalachian states, the truth is that coal mining jobs have actually increased to ranks not seen since 1993, and mountaintop removal operations have not slowed to a trickle, as Big Coal sycophants claim.

The real casualties in coal mining communities, as Mullens and other mothers point out, are children, women, the elderly, and other residents living on the toxic frontlines of strip mining fallout.

The Appalachian Community Health Emergency campaign, launched earlier this spring to lobby for an immediate moratorium on mountaintop removal operations, noted:

Babies born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy HAVE AN 18 PERCENT HIGHER RISK OF BIRTH DEFECTS; however, babies born to mothers who live in areas with mountain top removal mining HAVE A 26 PERCENT HIGHER RATE OF BIRTH DEFECTS. Additionally, it was found that this risk is 42 PERCENT HIGHER OVER THE COURSE OF THE STUDY PERIOD FROM YEARS 2000‐2003 and 181 PERCENT HIGHER DURING MORE RECENT YEARS, SPECIFICALLY FOR A HEART OR LUNG DEFECT. (Ahern, MM, et al, Environ. Res., (2011), DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2011.05.19)

In advance of Monday’s silent protest, Mullens agreed to answer a few questions on her coal mining community and background, mountaintop removal and the role of women in Appalachia today:

Jeff Biggers: Can you describe your Boone County community, the level of strip mining and the general impact of Mountaintop Removal (MTR) on your daily lives?

Marilyn Mullens: The community I grew up in is your typical coal mining hollow in Appalachia. The hollow was four miles long and many people lived in row houses that were almost by its side. Being a child there was wonderful. The mountains were our playgrounds. We built cabins, played in creeks and did a lot of exploring. I moved back to this hollow in 1993 with my two young children. In the latter part of the ’90s the coal companies began doing MTR on both mountains that surrounded the hollow. There were extremely loud blasts that would shake pictures right off your walls. Large trucks traveled the once quiet road carrying heavy equipment. There was a fine gray dust that covered everything. It was even hard to have any flowers on your porch in the summer because the dust would just cover the leaves. You literally had to pressure wash your house about every two weeks to get the dust off of your windows, etc. People’s homes were damaged, and even though the coal companies said they would “make good” on any damage when it came down to it they would usually find a way to say they were not responsible. In 2001 we had a heavy rain. The hollow flooded and many of my friends and family lost their homes. Most people know it was due to the MTR. Not many people there have education past high school, but we are not stupid. We know that when you clear cut all the trees and vegetation, then get rid of the top soil and bury the natural course of the streams there is nothing there to hold or guide the water. Plus they build big “ponds” back on the mountain that are held back by earth and these broke free. Once again, the coal company said the floods were “an act of god.” Honestly, sometimes you feel as though you are in a war zone when you live in the middle of MTR.

JB: What’s the symbolism of shaving your head? A reference to cancer corridors in the coalfields — as you know, a door to door survey of 769 adults found that the cancer rate was twice as high in a community exposed to mountaintop removal mining compared to a non-mining control community — or a broader view of the denuding and stripping of the Appalachian mountains, or something else?

MM: For me, shaving my head will show the pain I feel when I see what is being done to not only our mountains but our people. These mountains have so much life in them and when they do MTR ALL of that life is stripped away. Studies show that MTR is making our people sick. They are sick and dying and it seems that for most, our lives are not worth their electricity and the money that “big coal” puts into people’s pockets. I guess I am hoping that by shaving my hair I will show that I will do something very drastic to get someone’s attention that might be able to help us stop this horrible practice.

JB: How do you see this action as part of a long-term movement to raise awareness of the egregious impacts of MTR and the need to abolish the practice?

MM: There have been Appalachians fighting this for many years before I got involved. People like Larry Gibson, Maria Gunnoe, udy Bonds, Bo Webb and Lorelei Scarbro. These are the people that have been in the trenches paving the way for the rest of us. Giving us the courage to have a voice. I only see the movement growing. I had a co-worker approach me early this week that had never seen MTR up close. She and her friends happened upon a site and when they questioned the guard that was blocking the road due to blasting why they could not travel a road that they always travel to a friend’s house he responded, “I guess you’re some of the activist people.” Her response was, “no actually, not until now.” So there are still Appalachian people that have no idea the extent of the devastation. I think the more eyes we get open the more the movement will grow. Sooner or later the shear volume of us will have to make someone listen.

JB: Considering that MTR effectively began in 1970 in Raleigh County — of course, strip mining has been going on for over a century — do you consider yourself a daughter and a mother of the “mountaintop removal generation” and its fallout in your communities, and how do you discuss it with your children and family?

MM: Yes, I consider myself a daughter and a mother. My parents still live in the coal fields where this is happening. Their lives are in danger every time they go to Whitesville to grocery shop. At any time I expect to hear that the Brushy Fork impoundment (coal slurry earthen dam holding over eight billion gallons of toxic coal slurry) has broken free and people are dead. My children lived right in the middle of the MTR breathing the dust for several years. I wonder what long term effects it will have on their respiratory system. I have always taught my children to live a healthy lifestyle. I never let them be exposed to cigarette smoke, encouraged a healthy, low-fat diet and exercise but I had no control over the dust they breathed for many years. The underground miners are provided with respirators but the people living in the valleys where the dust settles are not afforded that luxury. My immediate family is against MTR and they support my being active in stopping it, but they are afraid for me. There have been threats and acts of violence towards many people in this fight. I worry sometimes about repercussions towards my parents, who are getting along in years and still living in the middle of it all, but I explain to them that I feel compelled to fight this not only for them but for all the people in West Virginia. Especially the children. I want our children to be able to live here and know the mountains I knew growing up.

JB: Speak a little about the role of Judy Bonds and other women in taking a leading role to stop strip mining and MTR, and confront corruption in West Virginia?

MM: Very hard to speak of Judy without tears in my eyes. I did not know her personally but as heroes go she is a TRUE HERO. She was brave enough to stand up when standing up was out of the question. She, Maria Gunnoe and Lorelei Scarbro are all from my community and I have more admiration for them than I can put into words and I thank them for their bravery.

Appalachian women have always held a strength beyond measure. My grandmother was born and raised in West Virginia and she never backed down from a fight and I know she would be mad as hell about what is going on here. So part of what I do I do in her memory and I hear her saying, “you stand up for what is right no matter what because at night time you have to be able to lay your head down and sleep.” I feel like there is so much corruption in this state in all aspects of our government and law enforcement and the root of all of it is the money that the coal industry keeps putting in their pockets. It will come out sooner or later though. We will see to it.

JB: During the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton told West Virginians she was concerned, but that perhaps we could find ways to reclaim the land after MTR operations. How would you respond to her now?

MM: “Wreck” lamation is a joke. There is no reclamation. I am convinced that if a value were put on the diverse vegetation that grows in our mountains it would far outweigh the coal that lies within them. We have a biodiversity only second to the Rain Forests and it’s being destroyed. My grandmother told me once when we were in the mountains digging ramps that these mountains are magical. She said, “they have everything you need to survive in them” and I don’t think she was talking about coal. When you strip them of their topsoil and use “spray on” grass to cover the mess you might fool some people, but if you take a closer look it just looks like death all over the place. Nothing grows for very long on an MTR site.

JB: Other comments?

MM: I would hope that any person reading this educates themselves as to what is going on. If nothing else, know that everything goes downstream and these mountains filter a lot of water for a lot of people and they’re being destroyed. So even if you think that the people in Appalachia are “dumb hillbillies,” take a minute to think about what is being sacrificed so you can turn on a light. Take a minute to see what your role is in not only destroying ancient mountains, but a culture of people. Take a minute to care.

Alveda King

When the NAACP passed a resolution support marriage equality, I knew that THEY were coming.

By “THEY,” I am talking about a group of wannabe black leaders who I like to refer to colloquially as “The Vultures.”

These folks claim to lead “big time” organizations with important sounding names. Something like “The High Impact Leadership Coalition” or “Brotherhood for a New Destiny” or “Center for Urban Renewal and Education.”

I should tell you right now that these organizations are astroturfed. They don’t speak for the black community because a vast majority of us have never heard of them. And why should we? Whenever there needs to be a true voice in the black community addressing issues such as poverty or socio-economic equality, these groups are never around.

They exist only as convenient black faces to be trotted out by conservatives or the religious right when it comes to issues of race. These so-called black leaders don’t care about the black community because they are too busy telling some whites what they want to hear about the black community.

That’s all they do. That’s the only reason why they exist.

And in the case of the NAACP accepting marriage equality, these folks are in rare form. Religious Right Watch covers what several of them had to say:

Stephen Broden, a Republican politician who has said that the violent overthrow of the government should be “on the table,” dubbed the NAACP “irrelevant”:

Stephen Broden, pastor of Fair Park Bible Fellowship in Dallas, notes that the black community is suffering from soaring unemployment, an extraordinarily high rate of abortions, a high school drop out rate among black teenagers that is breathtaking, an exploding rate of single parent households and the decimation of black families.

Yet, Broden says, the NAACP is making statements about same-sex marriage. “The NAACP has proven again to be an irrelevant organization as it relates to issues of survival for the black community,” says Broden who co-authored Life at All Costs with King and Gardner. The book addresses issues such as abortion and homosexuality.

Domestic violence perpetrator turned “pro-family” activist Timothy Johnson called on African Americans to ditch the NAACP and join his own group, the Frederick Douglass Foundation:

“When you recognize that the black community is strongly a Christian-based group of people, conservative in most of the things they believe, the NAACP has gone diabolically the opposite direction of tradition of the black community,” he states. “[The NAACP] really is doing this in order to stay relevant and in order to build up their revenues as it relates to what they can get from the gay community.”

“… I think those individuals who call themselves Christian or call themselves Jewish who are members of the NAACP should denounce the organization, should cancel their membership, and really look for something else or another organization such as the Frederick Douglas Foundation to be affiliated with,” he states.

Religious Right Watch also mentions comments by the “Queen Mother” of the group, Alveda King, Martin Luther King, Jr’s niece:

Alveda King, as always, tied the topic to the question of abortion rights and claimed to speak for her uncle and other relatives in claiming that the King family has always opposed the “homosexual agenda”:

“Neither my great-grandfather an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. an NAACP leader, my father Rev. A. D. Williams King, nor my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced the homosexual agenda that the current NAACP is attempting to label as a civil rights agenda,” says King, founder of King for America and Pastoral Associate for Priests for Life.

“In the 21st Century, the anti-traditional marriage community is in league with the anti-life community, and together with the NAACP and other sympathizers, they are seeking a world where homosexual marriage and abortion will supposedly set the captives free.”

Alveda King is a sad fraud. Practically her entire career has been reaping off of her famous uncle, a man who lived and died when she was a child. I doubt she knew anything about King. I doubt very much that she is aware that one of King’s advisers, Bayard Rustin, was an openly gay man. It was Rustin who not only coordinated the March on Washington, but also introduced King to the idea of non-violent resistance.

I also seriously doubt she knew what was in King’s heart when it came to the gay community. However, we do know what she thought of Coretta Scott King, MLK’s wife and the person who did know his heart and was also a very vocal ally of the gay community.

Two years ago, when she was asked about Coretta Scott King’s support of the gay community, she made a highly inappropriate comment:

“She (Coretta) was married to him (Martin Luther King, Jr.). I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t. She didn’t. She’s passed away.”

That comment alone gives a great indication of Alveda King’s mindset and lack of integrity.

But generally speaking, anyone using Alveda King or any of these other spokespeople or groups as proof that the black community has turned on the NAACP for the organization’s support of marriage equality is lying to their readers.

Neither these groups nor their spokespeople never really cared for the NAACP in the first place.

Because to them, it’s all about the spotlight.