Year: 2017

Since President Donald Trump’s election, artists and curators have been showing up and putting in work to prove that the line between art and activism is tenuous at best. An upcoming exhibition called “No Borders” is the most recent example.

The one-day pop-up show features over 100 works by donated artists including Claes Oldenburg, Robert Longo and Victoria Burge, all of which are priced at $200 or less. All proceeds from the day’s sales will go toward the ACLU and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP). 

Curator Kirsten Flaherty began organizing the event following the announcement of Trump’s executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations in February. Along with Trump’s ban, Flaherty also sought to resist the racist rhetoric vocalized by the presidential administration’s supporters around the country, as well as the surge of hate crimes and xenophobic threats sweeping the nation. 

Two months prior, Flaherty coordinated an art fundraiser to benefit the Standing Rock Medic + Healer Council as well as the Civil Liberties Defense Center, in support of those protesting at Standing Rock. In a single day, the show raised over $5,000. 

The “No Borders” exhibition provides a space for the creative community to come together, supporting one another as well as those most targeted by the current administration. “I believe,” Flaherty expressed in a statement, “as do many of the artists involved, that it is the responsibility of artists to use their visual talents in resistance to injustice and these exhibitions strive to raise vital funding while at the same time foster a sense of support among creative individuals in a difficult time.”

“No Borders” takes place Sunday, April 2, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Brooklyn’s Ground Floor Gallery. Art lovers will be hard-pressed to find an easier way to show some love to the organizations fighting to protect the rights of immigrants and refugees in this uncertain time. Also ― paying $200 for a Claes Oldenburg lithograph is just bananas, so you might want to get there early.   

Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tom Hanks, Tracy Morgan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Moore, Padma Lakshmi and a whole host of other stars are teaming up for Stand for Rights: A Benefit for the ACLU. Donate now and join us at 7 p.m. ET on Friday, March 31, on Facebook Live. #standforrights2017 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

On Monday, posters featuring a new prom dress code appeared in the halls of Stanton College Prep, a public high school in Jacksonville, Florida. 

As with many dress code fiascos, the Stanton College Prep dress code flyers are both odd and sexist. Each poster features a woman in a different type of gown with the first one, featuring a sleeveless gown, reading: “Going to Stanton Prom?” At the bottom the post reads: “YES you are. Good girl.” The other three posters feature a dress with a high slit up the leg, a backless dress and a dress with a plunging neckline. Alongside each dress, school administrators wrote: “Going to Stanton Prom? No you’re not.”

Many students were not happy.

Lily Willingham, a student at Stanton College Prep, told The Huffington Post that the students’ assumed school administrators put up the posters. “There was immediate outrage due to not only to the fact that the dress code was introduced five days before prom, but also because of the sexist connotations,” Willingham said.

Willingham tweeted a photo of the posters Monday afternoon.

Beyond the fact that the flyers are blatantly sexist, the sudden announcement of a new dress code so close to prom night worried students.

Willingham noted that many girls were upset because they had already bought their prom dresses and didn’t have the time or money to buy a new one before Saturday.  

Many Stanton College Prep students and other Twitter users tweeted their outrage and concern using the hashtag #SCPGoodGirl that student body president Anthony Paul created. 

By Tuesday morning, Stanton College Prep issued an apology for the dress code and reported that the school had taken the flyers down.

“The display of prom dress photos at Stanton College Prep is not appropriate or an approved policy,” the school tweeted. “Images were removed on [Monday].” 

According to local news station Action News Jax, Stanton Prep principal told students: “Please do accept my apology for this poor delivery of information. Our intent is to make sure prom is enjoyable and memorable.”

On Monday night, student body president Anthony Paul had told students to wear purple and white colors and duct tape the female gender sign on their shirts in protest of the posters.

Since the school’s apology wasn’t made until 10 a.m. on Tuesday (during school hours), many students still wore purple and white in an awesome display of resistance against the sexist dress code. 

Below Willingham and other female Stanton College Prep students pose for a picture on Tuesday wearing purple and white in protest of the flyers.

Willingham told HuffPost she was excited to see students come together to protest the dress code. 

“It was incredibly inspiring to me to see that students voices were heard [on Tuesday] and we were able to unite as a student body to make a difference,” she said. “It also brought to light an issue affecting women all over the nation when it comes to dress code in schools as well as societies constant hyper-sexualization of females bodies so I hope bringing attention to this will cause change in not only schools but society as well.”

Scroll below to see more students who wear white and purple in solidarity. 

As Willingham told HuffPost, this event reflects a larger trend of policing women’s bodies through dress codes. 

“Unfortunately what happened here is a symptom of what is still happening to girls in this country – – this over sexualization of our bodies and emphasis on it,” she said. “Girls are made to feel responsible for what a boy ‘might do or feel’ in response to how we dress. Dress codes are grossly outdated for 2017.”

We could not agree more. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

This piece was originally published on AwesomelyLuvvie.com

My resistance coping tactic is to surround myself with Black women. One thing that was re-affirmed to me after November 8 is that if I can’t count on anyone else, I can ALWAYS count on Black women. So since then, I’ve enveloped myself in a blanket woven by the love of sisters. Sisters. From blood to bond.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Black Enterprise Women of Power Conference, and I got to do one of those things that I imagine Oprah does every Tuesday in her amazing backyard, after she picks her own vegetables and pow wows with Gayle. I hosted a dinner under the stars, where 20 powerful Black women broke bread, cried a little and laughed a lot.

I partnered with the good folks of AT&T for “A Seat at Luvvie’s Table,” an intimate dinner where I invited women who I’d just love to share time with.

Honestly, it blew my mind. It’s one of those things where in the moment, you know that you are living in divine favor. The entire 2 hours was one big “wow, this is my life.” A few weeks before it happened, the team at AT&T called me and asked me what I would want to happen at a dinner party I would throw for my girls at my house. What would I want to serve? What conversation would I want to see happen? What feeling I’d want people to walk away with? My answers to those questions were more than duly noted, because everything I said, they made happen.

So on Friday evening at the BE WOP Conference, I walked to the private patio restaurant in the Arizona Grand Resort and my jaw dropped. There was a table in the middle, where roses covered the center, and there were gold place settings in front of 20 chairs that surrounded it. Every chair had a gift bag on it. In each gift bag was a copy of my book I’m Judging You, a t-shirt with that phrase on it, a JudgeyPin, and a Blerd t-shirt. There was a custom menu, where each course was named after something related to me or my book. On that menu? Seafood paella and jollof rice. Dessert? Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

All of this was surrounded by walls of greenery, and the sun was just setting as the temperature “cooled” to 78 degrees. It. Was. Perfect. I legit wanted to cry. IT WAS SO ROMANTIC.

I was wearing a black and red kaftan that I got made in Nigeria, and red glitter TOMS. I took a picture at the end of the table, and uploaded it to social media and people showed it so much love. They called it my Oprah moment. Then I realized that kaftan was what I was wearing when I met Oprah last year. BRUH. I’m telling you. Perfect.

My guests arrived between 7 and 7:15pm. Everyone had a name card, which were placed in gold frames around the table and as they sat down, my heart was bursting in glee. Everyone I invited showed up. Every one of these incredible women I wanted to be there was there.

I was sitting in between Bozoma Saint John (Head of Global Marketing for Apple Music) and Elaine Welteroth (Editor in Chief of Teen Vogue). Next to Boz was Debra Martin Chase. If her name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because she’s a real G who moves in silence. Real G as in SHE gave Shonda Rhimes her first internship in TV. And she was the producer of that “Cinderella” with Whitney and Brandy. Across the table was Nina Shaw, the attorney who represents THE BEST talent in Hollywood, including Ava DuVernay and Lupita Nyong’o. Across from me, on the other end of the table was Cynt Marshall, who heads AT&T’s global diversity initiatives. Then there was Richelle Parham, formerly Chief Marketing Officer at eBay. Morgan Debaun (CEO of Blavity), Sandra Sims-Williams (Chief Diversity Officer at Publicis Groupe), Necole Kane, Dee C. Marshall. I MEAN this table was heavy! But most importantly, it was filled with openness and love, which was kicked off with prayer.

We talked about our superpowers, our struggles and our triumphs. We talked about how difficult the climb to the top can be and how lonely it can be to be there. Many of us at the table are often the “only” in the room. We talked about how we are committed to making sure that changed. Although the food was good, I was mostly fed by the strength of these women and their companionship. I was inspired by their journeys and I was enchanted by their goodness. These women owed me nothing, but they gave me plenty. Their time, their stories, their truth. I am so thankful to them.

“A Seat at Luvvie’s Table” was an opportunity for me to be acutely aware that I’m living my dreams in villages populated by #BlackGirlMagic. It was awesome, in that way where it truly means FULL OF WONDER. And for once, I didn’t question why I was there. I just thanked the heavens for the opportunity.

And I thank(ed) AT&T profusely. What they did, in curating that dinner, was to bring together melanin pixie dust. But what they also did was LISTEN to me, and make something that was GOALS happen. They went above and beyond what I expected, and showed what a true partnership could look like. Shoutout to their team behind this, led by L. Michelle Smith, for supporting Black Girl Joy. We go together, yo.

More to come. But I’m hoping to bring more people I love and respect to my dinner table.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Last week, 17-year-old art student Lalonie proudly showed off her natural body hair in two photos on Twitter. The backlash from Twitter users to her now-viral post serves as a reminder that women are still held to a double standard when it comes to their appearances. 

Lalonie posted the photos after she was featured in a friend’s YouTube vlog, and saw that her armpit hair had inspired many angry comments. She said she wasn’t offended by the comments, but was “more shocked that in the year 2017 there were still people who were getting offended over body hair.”

“I thought about how such negative backlash could affect a girl’s self esteem and personal choices to the point where they completely let the misogyny and double standards of our society dictate their choices,” she said.

In response, she posted two photos, one of her unshaven armpits and one of her stomach, with the caption, “Body hair positivity post bc I’d never let misogynistic opinions dictate what I do with my bod.” 

“I posted that picture to let everyone know that I do what I want with my body and it’s okay for anyone else to do that too,” she told HuffPost.

Her post has since garnered more than 7,000 retweets and 19,000 favorites, as well thousands of comments ― many of which were not so supportive of Lalonie choice to celebrate her body hair. 

Lalonie called these kind of responses out for exactly what they are: misogyny.

“The fact that it went so big just shows what a big stigma there is surrounding body hair on women,” she said.

Lalonie was also quick to point out that both men and women can be participants in this misogyny.

“Misogyny is so deeply rooted in our society that is sometimes very hard to recognize,” she said. “There are so many microaggressions and double standards that are very prevalent in our society…men can post plenty of pictures of them shirtless with chest hair and armpit hair, but a girl posting a positive picture about her armpit hair and a happy trail? Absolutely unheard of!” 

Of course, her photos prompted a lot of positive feedback as well. “Men and women alike were messaging me saying that my confidence in my body hair made them feel more comfortable with their own body hair and less ashamed of having it,” she said. 

At the end of the day, Lalonie believes women should do whatever the hell they want with their own bodies and own body hair. And her reason for letting her natural body hair grow is pretty simple.

“I just do not like shaving,” she said. “That’s all there is to it.”

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

It’s a day for standing up to fear.

Police officers, local Muslim leaders and thousands of others gathered Wednesday to form a human chain on London’s Westminster Bridge, mourning the terror attack that left five people dead and dozens more wounded last week.

The bridge in central London was closed to traffic as people bowed their heads in silence. Just seven days ago, it was a scene of chaos as an attacker drove a car through a crowd of pedestrians, killing three and injuring 50 before fatally stabbing a police officer inside the gates of Parliament. Police fatally shot the suspect, Khalid Masood.

The attack bred tension and fear, reinvigorating discussions about race, religion, identity and immigration, according to reports. 

But Wednesday wasn’t a day for division.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

What makes up a song?

There are the basic elements: notes, a rhythm, melody, perhaps vocals or instrumentation of some kind. Yet the heart of a song, the inscrutable way it reaches out to listeners, unites strangers, marks a personal or collective era, is a bit harder to get at. 

With his podcast “Song Exploder,” musician Hrishikesh Hirway — who also has a podcast devoted to “The West Wing” — helps to fill out the answer. Each episode since the show’s inception in 2014 takes one track from a musician or group’s catalog and allows an artist to break down the song in his or her own words. Who’s been on it? Some bigger names include Solange, Carly Rae Jepsen, U2, Metallica, DJ Shadow, Wilco and Iggy Pop, and the show’s indie-but-well-known roster could rival a Brooklyn resident’s most-played on Spotify: Grimes, Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, Phantogram and tUnE-yArDs.

“I wanted the show to demonstrate this idea that there’s so much going on within any song,” Hirway told The Huffington Post last month. “Normally, we hear music and it’s just the finished product. It’s just a little bit opaque; you don’t really know what’s going on or how it got there. But there are so many decisions that come from so many different places, whether it’s inspiration, or accident, or experimentation, and trial and error.”

Hirway starts each episode with a brief introduction before stepping back. You can detect the host’s hand in the well-crafted sound production — often, isolated musical elements from a given song will chime in as the artist is verbally deconstructing them. The effect is a bit like the director’s commentary on a DVD, in which you hear about the making of a project from the pros themselves. It’s accessible to both the casual listener and the ultrafan.

The idea behind this, Hirway said, was inspired in part by Benjamin Britten’s orchestral pieces designed for children. (If his name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, perhaps the score for “Moonrise Kingdom” will.)

“Benjamin Britten had those pieces for children where there were these records where they would explain what the orchestra did, what all the different sounds were, and what they were capable of,” he explained. “And there was something really nice about that. And it’s not condescending at all, it’s just like — OK, here’s what the trombone does.” By having a musician describe the decisions that led to the use of a certain instrument or lyrics, the finer points of a song take on more meaning.

The experience Hirway had while listening to Marc Maron’s podcast was another influence: “Those [comedians] he has on his show, I felt like I was immediately stepping in to like, an AP level course on something … It was intermediate or advanced stories. You were expected to kind of catch up a little bit.”

“It felt more real, because they speak to each other like they have this shared vernacular,” he continued. Listening to an artist talk about their work expands our view of their song: it transforms from a whole into a puzzle of finely arranged parts. Instead of the finished product, you consider its influences, the choices made on the way to the finished product.

Hirway’s examination of the music allows for a kind of granular, studied appreciation that feels absent in a world where, thanks to digitization, hordes of albums are always available on demand.

“There’s something very disposable about music now, and maybe music always, but especially now, where you get five seconds of an mp3 of a track, and if it doesn’t catch your ear, you move onto the next one,” he said. “It’s the flipside of the blessing of having all the music on earth at your fingertips: How do you get through all of that?”

The answer, or an answer, seems to be allowing artists to talk about the thing they love. Though Hirway said most interviews are recorded remotely, he was able to sit down in-person with Solange for her episode, where she breaks down “Cranes in the Sky,” off of 2016’s “A Seat at the Table.”

“It was especially cool for me because she made my favorite record of last year,” he said. “But really, the best thing about that was how fantastic she was as an interviewee. She really had a really clear sense of her motivation and she had a very clear memory of how the song was made.”

He recalled his favorite moment from Solange’s episode, where he asked about a certain part in the song when she sings, “I tried to cry it away,” and the backing vocals — also performed by her — respond, “Don’t you cry, baby.”

“She told this story [explaining] how that’s her mom and her two aunties singing to her,” he said. “She had this story about how her mom always gave her and Beyoncé three days. Whatever it was that they were going through, they would get two days to be miserable, and then on the third day, they had to like, wipe the tears away and get back into it. So this little moment, this one line in the song, represented to her this sense of community and family and the idea of picking yourself back up.”

“That was so beautiful, and perfectly encapsulated the kind of story and the kind of feeling that I always want from music and that I especially want from artists on the podcast.”

Download “Song Exploder” from iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcasting platform.

Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tom Hanks, Tracy Morgan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Moore, Padma Lakshmi and a whole host of other stars are teaming up for Stand for Rights: A Benefit for the ACLU. Donate now and join us at 7 p.m. ET on Friday, March 31, on Facebook Live. #standforrights2017

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer responded to accusations of sexism and racism after he repeatedly told senior journalist April Ryan to stop shaking her head during Tuesday’s press briefing.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized Spicer’s actions Tuesday, labeling the incident an example of the kind of sexism that women encounter every day. But Spicer said that Ryan was a tough reporter and he was “astonished” at the accusation. He insisted that he treats the White House correspondent no different than male colleagues in the briefing room.

“I think if you ask April, both on and off camera during the briefings, she comes up here often, we have very spirited back and forth,” Spicer said in an interview on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show. “I think that’s what makes her a tough reporter. Frankly I’m kind of astonished; I think if you look at the exchanges I have with [ABC’s] Jonathan Karl, or [NBC’s] Peter Alexander or a number of the other individuals in the press briefing room, Jim Acosta from CNN, we go back and forth all the time, rather heatedly in fact.” 

Ryan had been trying to ask how the Trump administration would revamp its image when Spicer disagreed with the premise of her question and attacked her head shaking.

“I don’t think it takes much of a search to see that we go back and forth on a lot of the things that are thrown around and April is a tough reporter that knows how to throw it out and take it back,” Spicer said. “It’s frankly demeaning  for some folks to say that she can’t take it. We went back and forth, I disagreed with her angle and the way she was coming at the question, but that’s what we do, we go back and forth. And I don’t treat one person different than the next.”

Clinton said during an appearance in San Francisco that Spicer was patronizing to Ryan, the Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks.

“Just look at all that’s happened in the last few days to women who were simply doing their job,” she said. “April Ryan, a respected journalist with unrivaled integrity, was doing her job just this afternoon in the White House press room when she was patronized and cut off trying to ask a question,” she said.

Spicer disputed that he was being patronizing.

“I have an obligation frankly, Hugh, that when someone comes in and attacks the narrative or makes accusations against the administration, to push back, and push back tough,” he said. “And I don’t look and say ‘well I’m gonna push back lighter on this person because of their gender.’ I think it’s the exact opposite of what Secretary Clinton went after and tried to say somehow it’s patronizing. No, in fact, it’s not patronizing. What it is is treating April Ryan with the same pushback that I would any other reporter in that room.”

Ryan said on MSNBC after the incident that Spicer was doing his job.

“Sean is being the White House press secretary, talking about and trying to make this administration look better than what it does right now, and unfortunately I was road kill today,” she said.

On Wednesday, Spicer gave the first question to Ryan during the briefing, and asked her how she was doing. 

“I’m fine, how are you?” Ryan replied.

“Fantastic,” Spicer said, as the press corps laughed.

This article has been updated to include the exchange at Wednesday’s briefing.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

When it comes to whether Alicia Keys wears makeup or not, we think the incomparable Salt-N-Pepa said it best:

“It’s none of your business,” Adam Levine!

Levine stopped by Howard Stern’s Sirius XM radio show on March 15 in part to talk about “The Voice” and his famous co-hosts. Stern being Stern, he asked what Levine makes of Keys “making a big deal about not wearing makeup” ― and the story Levine shared above is as flawless as Keys’ minimally made-up face. 

Levine told Stern he spotted Keys putting on a little bit of makeup backstage one day, and promptly made a comment about thinking she didn’t wear any. Keys’ response? “I do what the fuck I want.”

YES. YES, all of the yes, Alicia Keys. 

Keys has played a significant role in the makeup-free movement since 2016, going without on red carpets and on album covers. She also wore makeup for an Allure cover shoot in January, saying “No one should be ashamed by the way you choose to express yourself.”

She, just like any other person, can do whatever she wants when it comes to wearing makeup or otherwise, without having to give an explanation to Adam Levine, Howard Stern or anybody else. So there. 

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

John Legend stunned fans by holding an impromptu gig at a London train station on Wednesday morning.

The singer-songwriter commandeered one of the public pianos at St. Pancras International station shortly after stepping off the Eurostar train from Paris, France.

Crowds of passersby stopped to snap photographs and hear the soul star perform a bunch of his hits, including the 2004 smash “Ordinary People.”

Watch the video here:

For some, however, his appearance wasn’t entirely unexpected.

Legend tipped off fans about a possible performance via Twitter just minutes before:

The musician played for around 15 minutes before stepping away and walking to a waiting car with who appeared to be a security guard.

Twitter users have since been sharing photographs and video of his appearance online:

Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tom Hanks, Tracy Morgan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Moore, Padma Lakshmi and a whole host of other stars are teaming up for Stand for Rights: A Benefit for the ACLU. Donate now and join us at 7 p.m. Eastern on Friday, March 31 on Facebook Live. #standforrights2017

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: HuffPost Black Voices

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. ― Six days after the Trump administration proposed eliminating hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for legal aid organizations, a domestic violence victim sat in Legal Aid of West Virginia’s office and imagined what her life would look like without its help.

“Legal Aid helped me keep my family together,” said Colleen, a mother of four who asked to be identified only by her first name. She was severely injured in a 2014 incident involving the father of her youngest child, which has left her with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. She is unable to work. Her daughter’s father tried to get custody of the child, claiming that Colleen was incompetent.

“I had a lot going on, and I was still trying to process the trauma and cope with it,” Colleen said. “They treated me like a human being. They didn’t treat me like I was less-than or some crazy person. They understood that the trauma was severe. I was really treated with dignity.”

Colleen’s case was labor-intensive and complex, said Erin Clark, the Legal Aid attorney who worked on her case. The two spoke to The Huffington Post last week at the Legal Aid of West Virginia’s office in a Martinsburg strip mall, which it shares with a Family Dollar, a laundromat, and Chinese and Latino restaurants. Clark typically juggles 25 to 50 clients at a time, many of them domestic violence victims referred by the nearby Shenandoah Women’s Center. She spent more than 100 hours on Colleen’s case, she said, which could have cost Colleen tens of thousands of dollars if she’d had to pay a private attorney. For Colleen, Legal Aid was what allowed her to maintain custody of her daughter.

“It could’ve gone a different way,” Colleen said.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration proposed cutting all funding for the Legal Services Corp., a nonprofit that Congress established in 1974, which funds more than 130 legal service organizations across the country, including Legal Aid of West Virginia. The corporation was created to “provide equal access to the system of justice in our Nation” and “provide high quality legal assistance to those who would be otherwise unable to afford adequate legal counsel.” Today, legal service groups that the corporation funds help an estimated 1.8 million people per year with issues including domestic violence, housing and child custody.

The effect of Trump’s proposed defunding of the Legal Services Corp. would be felt around the United States but would hit especially hard at legal service nonprofits located in the regions Trump won in November. A Huffington Post analysis found that legal aid organizations in states that went for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton received an average of 27.5 percent of their budget through this program, compared to 45.9 percent for organizations based in states that voted for Trump. Of the 28 states where organizations received more than 40 percent of their budgets from this program, 22 went for Trump.

Trump won every county in West Virginia. And during a trip to the state last week, Vice President Mike Pence pledged that the administration “will never forget” the “overwhelming” support it received there.

Martinsburg, a city of around 17,000 where 29 percent of residents live below the poverty line, is in the middle of the eastern panhandle of the state. Trump’s former butler at Mar-a-Lago, Anthony Senecal ― who served Trump steaks so well done they would “rock on the plate” and who was investigated by the Secret Service over a Facebook post calling for Barack Obama’s death ― was the mayor of Martinsburg in the early 1990s. (As mayor, Senecal proposed jailing the homeless and fining them $500 if they panhandled without a license ― a plan he said Trump called “great.”)

Kelly Beck heads a team of three attorneys at Legal Aid of West Virginia’s Martinsburg office. Beck joined in 2008, after working in private practice in the area for years and taking time off to raise her kids. She said she wanted to do something community-oriented, a job she could feel good about.

“There’s not a day that I come in here where I don’t enjoy what I do,” Beck said. “Sometimes people refer to us as the attorneys of last resort. We’re dealing with folks who can’t afford attorneys, who just don’t even know where to turn.”

The work can be challenging, Beck said, but rewarding. One recent example: legally uniting a family that had been broken up by drug addiction. “Grandma had the children for years, and one day she said, ‘They want me to adopt them, and I’m willing to do it,’” Beck said. Drug addiction plays into an increasing number of cases Legal Aid handles, Beck said, as heroin and prescription drug abuse has swept West Virginia in recent years.

Legal Aid of West Virginia would fare better than organizations in most red states if Trump’s budget plan is enacted: The organization receives about a fourth of its budget from the federally funded Legal Services Corp. The rest of its funding comes from outside grants and from West Virginia, but there could be even more of a squeeze coming as the state government anticipates a half-billion-dollar budget shortfall for 2017-2018.

Adrienne Worthy, who leads Legal Aid of West Virginia’s operations statewide, said a budget cut would directly affect programs for veterans, families with special education needs and residents facing eviction. Work like helping victims of the devastating floods that hit the state last year would also suffer.

“We’re a lean organization, and cutbacks mean that we have fewer staff attorneys talking to the people in need,” Worthy said. “In times of cutbacks, we won’t be able to help that domestic violence victim who is really facing life and death, and where involvement of a lawyer can help her get out of a bad situation, and then working with an advocate to put her life back together.”

She said her organization was committed to keeping lawyers “on the front lines” delivering services in the communities where they’re needed.

Matthew Jividen, one of the attorneys in the Martinsburg office, said he enjoys working in a job where you usually “get to feel like you’re on the right side of things.”

Jividen said he thinks there’s a misconception about the typical legal aid client. With a few exceptions, legal aid offices accept clients making 125 percent of the federal poverty rate, which nationally works out to about $30,000 for a family of four. The Legal Services Corp. estimates that 63 million Americans ― a fifth of the country ― are eligible for LSC-funded legal aid.

“We’re dealing a lot with people who are working, people who are making an effort to get by. I think a lot of times the perception is we’re dealing with people who are just looking for a free ride or things like that,” Jividen said. “The face that people often put on a legal aid client is a lot different than the one who comes through the door.”

The Trump administration reportedly relied upon The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has long called for the abolishment of the LSC, in its proposal to end its funding. The organization’s budget is a relatively small part of the massive federal budget: LSC received $385 million in the 2016 fiscal year, which works out to just over $1.20 per American on an annual basis. There are already major restrictions on how federal legal aid money can be used: Legal aid organizations receiving money are barred from helping undocumented immigrants or getting involved in class-action lawsuits, for example.

Civil rights advocates have roundly criticized the proposed cut. The American Bar Association was “outraged,” and a group of 166 law school deans signed a letter to leaders in Congress last week urging them to protect LSC funding. The letter quoted the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who said LSC “pursues the most fundamental of American ideals.”

Colleen, the domestic violence victim in the Martinsburg office last week, said the idea of cutting Legal Aid’s budget “breaks my heart.”

“There are a lot of people who work hard that aren’t able to defend themselves legally even with working one or two jobs, because they’re supporting their families. There’s people who have had experiences like mine who aren’t able to work and defend themselves.”

Additional reporting by Alissa Scheller.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices