Connect with us

Thomas Roberts And Trevor Project Talk Anti-Gay Bullying, Teen Suicide

Published

on

David McFarland, acting Executive Director and CEO of The Trevor Project joins MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts to discuss the spike in anti-gay bullying, teen suicides, “no promo homo” policies, and Michele Bachmann.

READ: Michele Bachmann’s Top Ten Anti-Gay Quotes

McFarland says that yes, he absolutely believes that the anti-gay policies — known as “no promo homo” –  at the Anoka-​Hennepin school district, which is Michele Bachmann’s alma mater, and in others around the nation are to blame for the spike in teen suicides, and thinks Michele Bachmann “has not made change in that district.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Transcript via MSNBC:

>>> blaming the school’s policies.
>>> and the tragedy in oslo. is the man a terrorist?
>>> welcome back. it is a mental health crisis. it is now under federal investigation in minnesota. nine teens openly gay or perceived as take in as we talk about the one district. the district is denying any role in the bullying or the suicides. when we look at it from the aspect of parents and the people that are living through this, i want you to take a listen to what one mom whose son committed suicide said this week.
>> teachers don’t speak one way or the other. often times bullying gets overlooked. staff know about it. they don’t intervene. when things are reported, there is no follow through on it. i found out after justin died that according to one of his friends, he, according to a counselor in the school, he was at the top of her worry list. i never got a phone call.
>> david, do you believe the school district’s policies and the one that is referred to as “no homo promo” and that is the cause for the spike in the suicides there?
>> absolutely, thomas. it is an unfortunate situation we are seeing in the country and certainly needs to be addressed.
>> david, it is important to point out there are eight other states limited to instruction on homosexuality. this is a map that limits instruction on homosexuality. alabama and arizona and also in louisiana and mississippi, south carolina, utah. when we think about this and see what is going on in these states, what are you hearing from your colleagues about similar rises in bullying and suicides in those areas?
>> it is an issue that needs to be addressed in the country. there are individuals addressing this topic. it needs to change. youth in our schools should be able to be provided with a safe place. if they are feeling isolated or alone or in crisis, they should be able to have the resources in those schools to reach out and to be able to have those conversations whether it is with a counselor or teacher or administration.
>> david, critics say minnesota school policy on homosexuality has been pushed by conservative religious groups. one letter was, ” open your eyes, people, parents, do you really want your children attending a gsa where homosexual behavior is affirmed?” david, i can only imagine what it is like for an lgbt youth to hear that. what can a trevor project do for students and parents in the district?
>> thomas, it is a great question. this is a harmful message for the youth to be hearing. particularly in our schools. you know, we at the trevor project are there around the clock with a number of programs. the trevor lifeline is a 24/7 lifeline that youth can reach out. if they are feeling alone or isolated, they can speak to someone on the other end that is a trained counselor. we, at the trevor project, have workshops like our lifeguard workshop that addresses suicide prevention which is being presented and discussed across the country in many school districts. in fact, in the school district area in the county that you are talking about, we made numerous attempts to make ourselves available to the superintendent to the district to put those workshops into the schools. we have been denied that conversation. we have been in that area with other schools whether it be public or private instituting the workshops to help the teachers and help educate the school systems that are really in need to provide services for your youth and families.
>> this is congresswoman michele bachmann’s district. she hasn’t commented on these cases that have been happening at her alma mater high school. do you think politics is playing too much a risk here when it comes to saving at-risk youth?
>> politics plays a role, but at the end of the day, we are all human beings. michele bachmann has a voice. she can use that voice with a powerful message. how she chooses to use that voice to this point has not made change in the school district. there are many great voices to help create that change. michele is one individual that can make that happen. you know, we talk on a consistent basis with many politicians across the country and walk the halls of the congress and senate. we talked to both sides of the aisle. democrat and republican. everyone wants our youth to feel safe and have the educational programs to help school systems across this country. why this school system doesn’t want that is a big question. that needs to change.
>> david mcfarland from the trevor project. thanks for your time. i want to pass along to everyone out there, if you or someone is feeling bullied or at risk of suicide for anyone across the board. it doesn’t matter if you are part of the lgbt community. you can call the trevor project lifeline at 866-488-7386. this lifeline is free and confidential.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

Published

2 hours ago

on

April 26, 2024

By

President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

Continue Reading

News

CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

Published

5 hours ago

on

April 26, 2024

By

Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

Continue Reading

News

‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Published

21 hours ago

on

April 25, 2024

By

Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is responding to Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was a U.S. president, and she delivered a strong warning in response.

Trump’s attorney argued before the nation’s highest court that the ex-president could have ordered the assassination of a political rival and not face criminal prosecution unless he was first impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate.

But even then, Trump attorney John Sauer argued, if assassinating his political rival were done as an “official act,” he would be automatically immune from all prosecution.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, presenting the hypothetical, expressed, “there are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against.”

RELATED: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military, or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” she asked.

“It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act,” Trump attorney Sauer quickly replied.

Sauer later claimed that if a president ordered the U.S. military to wage a coup, he could also be immune from prosecution, again, if it were an “official act.”

The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, was quick to poke a large hole in that hypothetical.

“If the president suspends the Senate, you can’t prosecute him because it’s not an official act until the Senate impeaches …. Uh oh,” he declared.

RELATED: Justices Slam Trump Lawyer: ‘Why Is It the President Would Not Be Required to Follow the Law?’

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the Trump team.

“The assassination of political rivals as an official act,” the New York Democrat wrote.

“Understand what the Trump team is arguing for here. Take it seriously and at face value,” she said, issuing a warning: “This is not a game.”

Marc Elias, who has been an attorney to top Democrats and the Democratic National Committee, remarked, “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’ I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”

CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, a former U.S. Ambassador and White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform under President Barack Obama, boiled it down: “Trump is seeking dictatorial powers.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘They Will Have Thugs?’: Lara Trump’s Claim RNC Will ‘Physically Handle the Ballots’ Stuns

 

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.