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Tucker Carlson Goes Mental Over Stormy Daniels Performing in Richmond

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Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, the scourge of liberals everywhere, got into a heated exchange with Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, on Thursday, disparaging Richmond’s strip club, The Papermoon; and thus disparaging all of Richmond in the process. The conservative blowhard, in the exchange with Daniels’ lawyer, said, “Stormy Daniels was to perform in Richmond, in a depressing strip club, this hero that you say you are protecting…why  you are on television wearing expensive suits…why is she doing that?”

Damn, things just got real.

Regardless of Carlson’s whataboutism, Avenatti spoke truth to power and simply replied with, “Because she wants too, Tucker. This is America, and guess what, if a woman wants to perform in a strip club she does so, even though people like you demean her.”

Damn, things just got real, real.

The exchange only gained velocity from there with Carlson throwing everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at Avenatti including calling him a “moralizer” – which is hilarious when  your job is to defend President Trump on a daily basis – he also claimed that the lawyer cheated on his taxes – before eventually returning to shame Daniels’ once more by saying, “Your client is not thriving. For you to look me in the eye and say she wants to perform in strip clubs with people throwing stuff at her is insulting.” He went on to say the only women who strip are people who lack choice, or, ever the arbiter of a women’s moral character, because, “she likes it.” But the really outrageous bit in this whole tempestuous tete-a-tete is when Carlson doubles back to the River City to make that point, saying, “…I know she’s working in a strip club in Richmond.”

Avenatti, never one to miss a good rhetorical gut punch then asks Carlson, “Do you have that big of a problem with porn? When’s the last time you’ve [seen] porn?” Uncomfortable giggles abound before Avenatti, dead to rights, looks Carlson in the eye and asks, “Do you believe people who view porn should watch your show? Do you?”

Damn, things just got real, real, real.

At this point, the conversation has taken such a glorious turn for the salacious that Carlson finally admits, “I don’t even know how to answer that,” right before telling him that he is a fake feminist hero who should be ashamed for exploiting Daniels. Never to miss a chance to self-aggrandize, Carlson also makes it clear that the other channels might let Avenatti get away with this fake feminism, but Fox News never will.

This is #Murica2018. Live in it, love it, and just go with it.

Forget Florence; Stormy Daniels Is the Real Hurricane Hitting Richmond

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Stormy Daniels is heading to Richmond, her next stop as she takes the nation’s clubs by storm with her “Make America Horny Again” tour, featuring a special performance of “Making Papermoon Great Again” at the Papermoon gentlemen’s club at their Southside location. Since the tour began in February, Daniels has been solidly booked with gigs running through mid-November and looks to give suburbanites a run for their fitbits. RVA Magazine caught up with Stormy to get a gist of the thunder clouds gathering over the city.

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, said she was excited to return to Papermoon and Richmond. “Papermoon has always treated me well in the past,” she said. “I’ve performed at Papermoon a few times and always had a great time, so when they contacted my agent and asked to book me again, I, of course, said yes.”

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For anyone not in the know, or glued to Fox & Friends, Daniels has been killing it in the news. At the center of President Trump’s unending list of scandals, Daniels is the zeitgeist of Trump’s “fake news” America. After rumors of an extramarital affair with Trump in 2006, Daniels has taken her involvement from the golf course to the courthouse, and is now suing to void a nondisclosure agreement she signed with Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, in early 2016. According to a report by NPR, Trump never signed the NDA agreement and with the recent ruling in the Cohen case, when the lawyer plead guilty to eight federal charges resulting from what he claimed were “direct orders from Trump,” Daniels 15 minutes have been given a weighty extension past the lens of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

For her part, Daniels claims she’s making the most of it. “Obviously my workload has increased quite a bit, with added attention has come a lot more activity in general. And I’ve started up some new ventures in areas I never thought I would, like Truth, the line of perfume I launched this year, she said. “That said, with all the traveling and added pressures I’ve found it a lot more difficult to write scripts and focus on creative projects like the mainstream horror movie I’m working to direct and produce.”

And while most of well-minded America seemed to garner support for the performance artist, Daniels has been on her own to fend off internet trolls and right-wing armchair patriots. She says the key to this is simply not giving a fuck. “It helps that I’m a thousand times smarter than my trolls. Keyboard warriors aren’t that hard to outsmart if you just remember not to take anything personally,” Daniels said.

Many local journalists and activists are excited to attend the event. Papermoon spokesperson Mike Dickinson, known for his Twitter antics and former House of Delegates run as an independent, said all politicians are invited to attend, extending a special invitation to Rep. Dave Brat, R-7th, and Corey Stewart, the Republican challenger for Sen. Tim Kaine’s seat. And while Daniels is sure to be the main staple of the evening and the rest of the tour, her next step to success is to be in directing. “Success to me means being proud of your accomplishments in your chosen field and having the respect of your peers, comfortably being able to pay the rent and feed your family doesn’t hurt. Although performing is fun, I get much more satisfaction out of the creative process of directing,” Daniels said.

Prices range from $25-$500, depending on sections in General Admission, VIP Tables, and front row seating, if still available. Showtime begins Thurs., Sept. 13 at 8 pm and runs until 2 am. For more information and specifics on ticket availability, follow the link to Stormy’s event page.

*This event has been postponed due to Hurricane Florence and re-scheduled for December. 

Teaching Kaepernick

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Anthropology is the study of humans, and what it means to be human. Given its interweaving lenses, you cannot study humanity without inevitably diving into the interplay of biology and culture. Because being human is both: We are biological organisms and products of evolution, just like any other species on the planet, yet we are the only species left who can create art, think symbolically, and create definitions of ourselves that are both identities and boundaries between groups.

As a professor, I never thought that I was being political when I taught anthropology courses. I always considered current anthropology to be mostly above politics.

Occasionally there would be a conflict when fundamentalist religion bumped into evolution. In states like Alabama, biology textbooks still came with an “evolution disclaimer” sticker affixed to the cover. This conflict rarely made it into my classroom though, because in some ways anthropologists teach it all: the biology, the culture, and the vast array of the human experience.   

But the conversation and the classroom in 2018 feel different. And because of this, I now discuss Colin Kaepernick in my anthropology courses. Before we talk about Kaepernick, though, we have to put him in the middle of a conversation that many Americans may not be fully aware of.

I have always taught that biologically, the categories of race that we define in the US aren’t real. But the cultural constructs we call races are very real, and very much influence the day to day lived experiences of the people in them. I never thought of this as political. The fact that racism in the U.S. means unequal access to resources, unequal health outcomes, unequal pay, among a myriad of other ongoing systemic issues was always just reality.

We all know the current political climate in the U.S. has changed things. Everything I teach is political now, because everything is political. Anthropologists, especially those doing applied work in the community, strive to be a voice of the marginalized and disenfranchised. Speaking about the lack of access to resources for members of our communities in the U.S., using data, facts, and long-term studies, suddenly place us at the end of a political spectrum that is somehow in opposition to what some of our country’s elected officials are trying to maintain.

I don’t teach about any of these things because they are political. I teach them because they are anthropology. I teach that black women in the US are 3 to 4 times more likely to die in childbirth; that fear of deportation for immigrants leads to chronic stress and lowered health outcomes; that lack of food choices for rural Native Americans influences nutrition-related disparities; that black Americans die at the hands of law enforcement at rates sometimes twice as high as other groups.

These are examples of how culture and biology uniquely intersect in the U.S. and how our legacy of racism shapes who we are today.

Back to Kaepernick: I don’t teach about Kaepernick because he has become a political figure, I teach about him because he is an anthropological one.  

When Kaepernick first started his peaceful protests during the national anthem in 2016, he became a cultural change agent in one of the most American spaces possible – football. In 1976, cultural anthropologists first described the popularity of American football in the framework of capitalism.

Football is popular because it requires what a successful capitalist way of life also requires, competition. Players and coaches who work the hardest and are the most spirited win. Football, therefore, intersects deeply with certain American economic and traditional values. Importantly for the conversation surrounding Kaepernick, the American ideal of a good football player is one who is diligent, dedicated, and denies his own self-interest for the good of the team.

This is not the first time sports and social justice have collided. Ten years before football was described this way, Muhammed Ali refused to be drafted into military service in protest against the Vietnam War. While his critics were never short of material, one statement was rarely, if ever, made: That Ali should fall in line because that’s what boxers should do. There is no cultural expectation that boxers play by some great set of American rules. People forget that Ali was stripped of his titles and his case was eventually decided on by the Supreme Court.

Kaepernick draws attention to a very real American inequity while simultaneously bucking a sacred American ideal. This is anthropology at its core. And this is why taking a knee hits such a deep vein of discomfort with some Americans, and inspires others.

While we follow growing support and dissent for his voice, what we are also seeing is a wave of cultural change as American values shift and evolve to reflect the complexities of the 21st Century. This is what cultures have always done and will continue to do: develop and morph as the landscape of opportunities, and access to these opportunities, changes with them.

Photo from Benjamin Crump, Esq

One of these complexities is that people of color die at the hands of law enforcement at a disproportionate rate compared to the rest of the population. Kaepernick chose to #TakeAKnee to highlight this disparity by using football as his platform. People objecting to anything that is outside the norms of group dynamics, the NFL included, is as old as culture itself.

I teach about these things not just because they are anthropology, but because they are unavoidable in the current political climate. And while the real concern is for the protection of communities who do not feel safe, there is another message that I want my anthropology students to take away when we talk about Kaepernick: that the power to change an entire culture can be found in just one person, and that they also have that power regardless of who they are or where they come from.     

#AnthropologyAF

RVA Global: Taking on Trump’s Tweet about “White” South Africa

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Last summer, my VCU study-abroad students and I stood in the dim but pretty interior of a little house made of corrugated tin in the Soweto township of Johannesburg, South Africa. With us was Thulani Madondo, a 2012 CNN hero, a vibrant, fast-talking South African who was recognized for founding the Kliptown Youth Program and supporting hundreds of Kliptown students in their efforts to “lift themselves out of poverty through education.” ‘

Kliptown is one of the oldest sections of Soweto, home to more than 40,000 people who live without running water, plumbing, or electricity. Overcoming this type of poverty is nearly impossible in South Africa, yet Madondo could tell story after story about the successful students he has guided through his programs, including the 17 Kliptown Youth Program students who have graduated from university. 

And yet, as we stood there in June of 2017, in the largest township in South Africa where more than 1 million people live in similar conditions, Madondo only wanted to talk about one thing: How we could have voted for [President] Trump when the world watches?  It was the same at every place we visited, and my students were no longer surprised. As soon as our American accents were noticed, South Africans would engage with us in a state of near-constant bewilderment. “This is who you picked to replace Obama? Don’t you know that what you do affects us too?”

This is what makes Trump’s tweet about protecting “white” farms in South Africa so troubling and obviously nefarious for both Americans and South Africans. For those of you who missed it, yesterday the president tweeted, “I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers. ‘South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.'”

Hearing the deep unrest from South Africans about the US election was a curious juxtaposition: Their concern with the US presidency felt like a warning from a people who knew and deeply understood the dangers of a corrupt president, and usually, our conversations ended with that same sense of bewilderment. At the same time, I was having these conversations in South Africa with my students, their highways were lined with political signs pleading with South Africans to rid the government, the country, of their own power-hungry and corrupt president, Jacob Zuma.

Like all townships in South Africa, Soweto is populated almost exclusively by black Africans. This history of townships in the country is intimately tied with South Africa’s apartheid past. As the government codified discrimination and racism into law – apartheid means “separateness” in Afrikaans – people in power enacted laws to move black and other non-white Africans from their homes and restrict their populations to townships like Soweto outside of Johannesburg and The Flats outside of Cape Town. It was a feat of brute force in response to a deep and basal fear: The European explorers who first touched the coast of South Africa in 1498, and colonized Cape Town by 1652, would become the white Afrikaners of today. However, this original Dutch colony and its modern descendants have always been just a small fraction of the overall population.

Photo by Zahra Natalie Govender

The fear that apartheid-era Afrikaners felt about their place in of South Africa and the domination they used to control it became part of their national identity, and shaped the apartheid regime into one that attempted to reduce access to resources and restrict the rights of Africans without white skin. 

The language of apartheid stoked that fear while hammering at what could be lost if whiteness were swamped. D.F. Malan enacted apartheid in 1948, telling other Afrikaners, “Let us stand together, let us preserve our nationality and with our nationality our national character.” In 1964, the Minister for Coloured Affairs, P.W. Botha, told parliament that “I am one of those who believe that there is no permanent home for even a section of the Bantu [black Africans] in the white area of South Africa and the destiny of South Africa depends on this essential point. If the principle of permanent residence for the black man in the area of the white is accepted then it is the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it in this country.”

This is language equating whiteness with being civilized, underlined by the fear of being attacked and overwhelmed by blackness. This kind of racist language has been adopted by white nationalists and supremacists globally – including here in the US.

When neighboring Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, a majority of the white people who had lived there, including Afrikaners, fled. Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe until a coup in 2017, eventually resorted to tactics including violent seizure of lands from white farmers in an attempt to redistribute farms to black Africans. These policies failed for a variety of reasons and plunged the country into economic chaos. Yet the discord in Zimbabwe illustrated for decades everything the apartheid-loving Afrikaners had feared: blackness coming for what white Africans had worked for. As they watched, it was easy for some Afrikaners and other white Africans to fall back on the original sin of apartheid: the idea of baasskap – white supremacy, or white domination, specifically in the face of an unstoppable black population.

So the words of Donald Trump wrote on Twitter stoke old and deep fears used to perpetuate the mythos of white supremacy and are racist at their very core. 

A classic dog-whistle to remind white South Africans – but more importantly, white folks in his fan base in the US, they are vulnerable to uncontrolled people of color. And that people of color must be controlled. As with everything the 45th President of the United States says, it is irrelevant that it is not true: deaths of white farmers in South Africa have dropped each year for decades, and they are but a tiny fraction of the overall murder rate in the country.

Additionally, the government of South Africa has been very clear in their response that no one, in fact, is seizing any land from white farmers. In fact, the South African government has already voiced their concern to the US Embassy. The South African Times has reported, “Dirco also urged the Charge d’Affaires to indicate to Washington that the people of South Africa‚ of all races‚ are working together through Parliament and other legal platforms to find a solution to this historic challenge and that President Trump’s tweet serves only to polarise debate on this sensitive and crucial matter.”

There are some profound similarities between South Africa’s apartheid history and US Jim Crow laws, segregation, and the Indian Removal Act. Trump’s Tweet is yet another call-and-response based on the vein that unites all of these policies: invoke the fears that cocoon the white supremacy of South Africa, and hear it reflected back from his racist fan base in the US. As my students learned, who we elect in the US does matter on the world stage. For both the US and South Africa, we have decades of reckoning left to achieve any type of racial reconciliation after the end of these policies. In the meantime, there are far more pressing concerns for each country than a false narrative about farms being taken. For both countries, the overwhelming concern is a black population in need. In need of clean drinking water, equal access to resources, and, as Madondo in Kliptown might say, opportunities for young people of color to rise out of the cycle of poverty. 

At a time when hate crimes in America are at a five-year high and white supremacists feel free to walk the streets and openly run for political office on essentially baasskap platforms, this Tweet from our President directed at white South Africa isn’t just about South Africa.  It’s about our lingering demons at home and is another aim at stoking the fires of white supremacy that are burning in the US and Europe to spread beyond the local to a global scale. 

The Red Hen: A Making America Great Again Story

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It’s only been five days since the Red Hen’s owner Stephanie Wilkinson refused service to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family in quiet Lexington, Virginia. What followed next was five days of raucous outroar of epic, nay, biblical proportions.

Not wanting to miss the action, RVA Magazine arrived in Lexington on Wednesday morning to dig the vibe. Tempers were running hot and expectations were looking grim–a certain sting was in the air. The protests the day before saw one arrest and a hot mess of chicken shit (yes, actual chicken feces) splashed across the restaurant doors. Outside the Red Hen early Wednesday afternoon, there was already a group standing outside its doors.

Protestor Outside the Red Hen

When asked if they knew anything about the protests, they turned heads in silence. Their neck-bearded honcho stepped up aggressively, saying, “We’re out for a walk, and our business is our own.”

One teen sporting a puke red MAGA hat, unable to hold in his excitement, chimed in. Calling the actions of the restaurant a disgrace, he was hopeful for a reckoning to come. He alluded to “tonight’s festivities.”

Wilkinson was very open about her reasons for denying service to Huckabee-Sanders, including criticisms of Trump administration’s “inhumane and unethical” actions over the transgender military ban and separating children from their families at the border. She was not alone in her decision making, however; many of her employees and surrounding business owners shared her sentiment. Yet standing up in a sea of red can incentivize the most radical among them, and although her intentions were well-meaning, her actions brought a financial plague to a town that can’t afford it.

Chief of Police Samuel Roman

We focus on credible threats,” said Lexington Chief of Police Samuel Roman. “We are keeping in contact with the restaurant on when they plan on opening up again so we may coordinate a proper strategy.

The Red Hen has not reopened since the fiasco started last Friday. The small town of maybe 7,000, known primarily for the Virginia Military Institute, was eerily quiet. Everyone was preparing for the protest, which would start at 5 p.m. in front of the restaurant.

“I will not commend the actions taken by the protestors nor do I agree with what they stood by, but it was their First Amendment right to be there,” Roman said when asked if the town had tried to block the protests. “All we can really only try to keep a pulse on what is going on, as to keep citizens informed.” Roman said that many of the calls received were not threats, but concerns. “Most just want to know what’s going on.”

Roman said the police department is keeping in contact with the restaurant, but indicated that the establishment would be closed “indefinitely”, at least until the issue died down.

While Wilkinson had refused the service in a respectful manner, Sanders took to social media as a personal offense, inciting Trump and far-right proponents to call for the indefinite boycott of the Red Hen restaurant and resignation of Wilkinson.

As of yesterday, the president’s supporters got their wish. According to NBC 10 in Lexington, Wilkinson resigned from the ownership of the Red Hen, as well as her position as director of Main Street Lexington, a community-based civic organization.  

National news loves a good story, especially when Trump’s Twitter account is involved. But what being in Lexington proved was that for the most part, the community supported her actions.

When asked by RVA Mag for comment, a passerby at Main Street Lexington declined to comment, saying they had received hate mail and threats. Yet Diana Scofield, owner of local business Rockbridge Music, was certain Wilkinson was pressured to resign. “The people next door said as long as she was the director of downtown, they were going to boycott downtown Lexington, but do you think they really would?” said Scofield.

Many supporters of Huckabee-Sanders and Trump have credited this incident to be an egregious display of hatred and discrimination but also hypocritical of the opposition, with citations to the recent Supreme Court ruling favoring the Colorado baker who refused service to a gay couple.

This outrage was on display outside the Red Hen when a gaggle of MAGA hat-wearing teens informed me about “tonight’s festivities.”

Lexington is a blue city in a red county, situated in the center of Virginia’s conservative heartland. Some residents were quick to discredit the protests of the Red Hen, yet there was a pervasive and underlying concern when discussing the very real issues of hate mail and threats to other business owners in the area – no doubt exacerbated by Trump’s very public condemnation.

Regardless of their respective politics, businesses owners have all felt an unnerving anticipation of what might happen next. Scofield, from Rockbridge Music, has been met with mixed responses since the start of this, her quotes blasted on national headlines by the Washington Post less than a day ago. “I expected a lot of hate mail, but there was surprisingly a lot of people supporting me and what I said,” she said.

Diana Scofield

Scofield played an encouraging voicemail she received shortly after her statements appeared in the Washington Post. The message, intended for Wilkinson, was not what they expected.

A chef based out of Oxford, Mississippi, inspired by Wilkinson’s stance, said he would help cover her operating costs since the restaurant’s closure, and offered to send staff and produce to make up for any losses. The message said, “I could put together a group of folks to maybe pitch in and help offset the costs of payroll for the employees that are affected, we’re more than happy to help.”

Many business owners and clerks that were approached in Lexington refused to be interviewed. They continue to receive calls and emails from people across the country–a consistent theme with most business owners.

Siobhan Bezza, a store clerk who works adjacent to Red Hen, witnessed the protestors narrative quickly digress into nonsense, far removed from the original issue.

“What happened there is its own separate issue, but its become this magnet for hate,” said Bezza. “[They are saying] I love Trump, I hate gays, abortions are bad. They’re just going on this extended rant of hate. Because of that one incident, they get to use [it] as a catalyst for hate.”

When asked if she knew the employees at the Red Hen, she was quick to respond. “I love them, I run into them in the back all the time, and they are the kindest–pretty much my coworkers,” she said. “I think [Wilkinson] had every right to take a stand like that.”

With a long history of run-ins with confederate revivalists like the Virginia Flaggers, Lexington has seen a lot of public outrage in recent years. Scofield believes these protests are trivial, but thinks the real issues are getting lost in the melee.

“It is pretty cruel to separate children from their families, but I have talked to people who defend that, say that it’s a deterrent,” she said. “It’s a deterrent at the hands of people who are too little to defend themselves and that is not the kind of country we want to be.”

Despite the city’s unusual political juxtaposition, Scofield believes civil disagreement is an inevitable part of life.

“I’m really good friends with the guys next door. They’re Trump supporters, they’re country boys,” she said. When asked if they planned on going to the protest, she quickly said no.

“They race trucks and cars, they’re nice guys but also the kind that gets taken advantage of by Trump and his administration.” said Scofield. She said the same of the few other Trump supporters in the town, carrying an opinion for them–they’re into race cars, not race wars.

According to Roman, the protests have been an outsourced problem, as those protesting are not locals. “The guy who threw the vat of chicken manure onto the restaurant wasn’t even from here, he was from West Virginia.”

The number of protesters yesterday were fewer than the day before, yet the honcho protesting the Red Hen, spitting nonsensical bible verses, was from West Virginia as well. No matter what level he took his damnations, the community just laughed and endured–the genteel Virginia character on full display.

Ultimately, the community made their decision, and while many avoided the drama of the national spotlight, there was a consensus that hate speech, threats, and intimidation do not demonstrate their personal values. Small towns are not like cities, disagreements and opposition do not go unnoticed. Many do not take to the internet to spill their woes, they settle differences in person. Maybe as a nation we could learn from Lexington’s stint of fame, where even under the national spotlight, residents separate civil disagreement from bigotry and see it as a necessary means to achieve harmony.

Protests Against Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” Immigration Policy Being Planned All Over Virginia

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As outrage continues to mount over President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies, protests are planned for all over Virginia. For those who have been living under a proverbial rock and have not been following the news, Trump’s newly implemented policy removes children from their parents when they are caught crossing the border illegally. Since the policy has been implemented, it has been reported by the executive that 2,342 children have been separated from their parents at the border between May 5 and June 9 – amounting to about 65 children a day.

Once taken from their parents, these children are put in detention centers in places like McAllen, Texas, where they have been photographed sleeping on the floor with mylar blankets and imprisoned in chain-link cages. Children as young as four-months-old have been reportedly separated from their parents and ProPublica has recently released audio from inside a detention center where one ICE agent can be heard saying “we have an orchestra here” in reference to all the screaming children. Sexual assaults against mothers of separated children have also now been reported by guards and staff at one of the detention centers in Texas in a recent complaint filed against Department of Homeland Security.

NBC reported on this yesterday saying, “Women at the 500-plus bed center, which opened in August, told attorneys that staff have been removing mothers from their cells at night to engage in sexual acts, promising immigration help in exchange for sexual favors, and groping women in front of children, according to the complaint.”

Due to the inhumanity of this policy and the way in which it is being implemented, there will be a series of protests taking place in the next week all throughout the Commonwealth. Dates, times, and locations can be found below:

Virginia Beach:

June 21 at Congressman Scott Taylor’s office in Virginia Beach Town Center, sponsored by Indivisible 757.

Richmond:

June 22 at Congressman Dave Brat’s Office, meeting at the CVS on 10901 W Broad St, Glen Allen, sponsored by Together We Will – Henrico.

Washington DC: 

June 30, in front of the White House, sponsored by the Women’s March, along with seven other activist organizations and networks.

Norfolk:

June 30, Disrupt Baby Snatching at the US Customs and Border Patrol Offices in Norfolk at 101 E. Main Street, hosted by Disrupt the Elite.

Farmville:

July 1, Weekend of Action at the ICE Detention Center, meeting up at the Farmville Train Station, 510 West Third Street, sponsored by a coalition of grassroots organizers.