In Black America; No Fear, with Dr. Marsha Coleman Adebayo; Part 3

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. And so we did all the things that everyone does, writing letters, facts, things, you know, I jumped and elevated one a couple of times talking about the deal, trying, and it was just, it was just, we just couldn't move him. Going in one ear and out the other. It was terrible. And then one day I'm at an end-of-way CP meeting, and who walks in the door, the Revan L. Sharpen. And Lieberman at that point was thinking about running for president. And I knew that the last person he wanted to be seen with was the Revan L. Sharpen. So I asked Revan Sharpen, did I say would you please come to Washington D.C. and lead a demonstration to Joe Lieberman's office to help us pass the first civil rights law?

And immediately he said, here's my card, give me a call, come to New York and let's talk. Dr. Marsha Coleman Audubaya, author of No Fear, whistle blow is triumph over corruption and retaliation at the EPA, published by Lawrence Hill Books. Coleman Audubaya was a senior policy analyst at the EPA, when she discovered that a US mining company was responsible for poisoning residents in a town in South Africa, when she brought this case to the attention of our supervisors at the EPA. She was told to shut up and then deny their promotion. In 2000 she won an historic lawsuit against the EPA based on race, sex, color discrimination and a hostile work environment. She testified before Congress twice, leading to the passage of a No Fear Act of 2002 to protect whistle blowers, the notification of federal employees' anti-discrimination and retaliation act passed unanimously by the US Senate and was signed into law by President George W. Bush.

It was the first civil rights and whistle blowers law of the 21st century. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. From this week's program, No Fear with Dr. Marsha Coleman Audubaya, part 3, in Black America. So I think we've made a contribution in terms of changing the culture of the federal government, making it more honest and making it fairer for people who are fighting for justice. And I think we also showed people the importance of struggle, how even though you may not have much and we had nothing, we had no money, we had no friends and high places, but what we had with our faith in God. And we had our faith that we were prepared to do whatever it took to fight for justice inside the federal government. And we experienced a measure of victory that no one can take away from us. So would I rather have done that as opposed to sitting at my desk for 30 years? Yeah. No, I would much prefer to have fought for justice. As a young African American, MIT, PhD, social scientists, Dr. Marsha Coleman Audubaya

landed her dream job at the EPA, working with former vice president Al Gore, assisting post apartheid South Africa. But when she tried to give the government to investigate allegations at a U.S. multinational corporation were responsible for the death of hundreds of South African mining and vital mineral, she found that the EPA was the first line of defense for the corporation. When the agency Stonewall, she blew the whistle. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, she earned a doctorate degree from MIT and worked with the United Nations before joining the Environmental Protection Agency in 1990. During her time at the UN, she also developed an expertise in African developmental issues. During her tenure at the EPA, she requested that the agency devote attention to environmental problems in South Africa that were allegedly caused by an American company. In a book, she says the EPA would need on promises to investigate the matter. The harder she pushed for change, the more she faced a backlash from her superiors.

On today's program, we conclude our conversation with Dr. Marsha Coleman Audubaya. That's right. She was a secretary for an assistant secretary. She had risen through the ranks of high as she was going to get. She was very good at what she did. Very good at what she did. And yet, her boss left for another position and she had a new boss, which is one of the things that we tell people. We'll meet a lot of people and they'll go, oh, you know, I have a great supervisor. I don't have anything to worry about. And what I always like to remind them is about Lillian Pesent. You are only one supervisor away from a life of hell because that's what happened to Lillian. She was fine as long as this guy was there, but soon as he left, she was thrown back into the secretarial pool that she had worked so hard to get out of. And she had hypertension. And the day before she passed away, we tried very hard to get a supervisor to sign off on her sick leave.

And they kept telling her, you're not leaving until you finish your work. And so she stayed until she finished her work. And the next day, as she was getting ready to come to work, she died from a massive heart attack. When you had a conversation with your husband regarding your next step that you were going through the agency, what type of conversation that you all have? And what actually drew you to that point that something needed to take place not only for yourself, but also for your colleagues? You know, it was a combination. I must tell you, it wasn't so much for me, in all honesty, because I knew I could leave. I mean, I knew I could get another job. But it was the injustice that I saw, just infuriated me. And not only was it just the injustice that I saw, but the retaliation that they just started heaping on me, because I refused to stop talking about the native poisoning. Was that the Detroit in you?

That's the Detroit in me. It's got to be the Detroit in me. I just could not let this, I couldn't let, I couldn't take my teeth out. I was so angry. And I remember talking to my husband about it, and you know, we prayed about it, and we thought the face of God. And I just said, God, if you want someone to fight this battle, I'm your girl. I'm your girl. And I just decided that, you know, this situation could not go on the way it was going on. So many people were getting sick, so many people were dying quite frankly. And then, of course, they never say you're dying from workplace stress. It's always you have hypertension or you have a heart attack or you have cancer. But the reality is that people are just stressed beyond their body's capacity to cope. And the body starts breaking down. And I saw, I had never attended so many funos until I started working at EPA. And I just kept thinking, this is crazy what's going on here.

And these are colleagues in the office. These are colleagues throughout the agency. Not just my office. Oh, the agency. Yeah. Do them a two out. So the breaking point for me was Lillian's death, no doubt about it. And then the second breaking point for me, and I think it's probably one of the most moving parts of my book, was the EPA had promised to give this one woman in South Africa, $30,000 grant. She had lost her son during the revolution in South Africa. And as a way of handling her grief, she had taken in children. She had started an orphanage for children who had lost their parents during the revolution. So here are two kindred souls coming together to support each other. And we promised her we were going to give her $30,000 to strengthen her orphanage and to turn it into like a green job kind of orphanage where they would actually teach environmental skills to the orphans.

So that when they left, they'd have some skills that they could work with. And because I kept talking about the Native, they decided that they were going to take out their anger on her. And so before we gave it a $30,000, I told her that she had to sort of fix up the place a little bit. It couldn't leak. She needed some chairs and tables and just basic things that would make the place safe. So that if we gave her money, we wouldn't find out that children had been hurt in her building. And so she said to me, if I don't have much money. So if I use this money to fix up the orphanage, if you don't give me the money, I'm going to have to close the orphanage and the children are going to be let out in the street. And I promised her this is not going to happen. I've already put the paperwork in. It's only $30,000. She'll get your money. Where it turns out when they decided to retaliate against me, they decided to go through her. And they risked you the $30,000 grant from her. And I can still hear her screaming when I called her and told her that we were not going

to give her a $30,000. And so she had to close her orphanage. And she had to, the kids went on the street, basically, to become prostitute or whatever, hustlers, whatever they could, you know, eag out. And it was that day that I picked up the phone and I called the Washington Post. And I told them what was going on and stuff, and I told them what was going on at EPA. How did you happen to select Attorney Shapiro to represent you? Yeah, I had another attorney who had sort of a family crisis and couldn't represent me. And she said to me, you know, I really want, I know it's a lawyer. I want to get the money that I've put into your case. So I'm going to hand you over to the only attorney who has never lost the case against me. And this guy is the baddest guy on the block. And if I know, if he handles your case, I'll get my money back, but you'll also win. And that's how I met David.

And he turned out to be a real character, but an absolutely brilliant trial lawyer, absolutely brilliant trial lawyer. What was it like 12 years ago, and ironically, I don't know if it was on your birthday, but the verdict came in that through all that you've gone through and all the suffering that you've seen with your colleagues in the agency, that the jury came down in your favor. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. And one of the things that we didn't talk about was the fact that, you know, I was targeted death threats. Right. And so my life was, yeah, it was pretty rough, you know, it was pretty rough, and it was only my faith that got me through, because I truly believe that no one could touch me as long as God was on my side. I believe that with every fiber of myself, every fiber of my being. And so I was able to go to work and pick up the phone and how people say to me, don't be surprised when you go home, go to the garage and you put your foot on your accelerator,

you get a big bang. Or when they told me what color clothing my children had on as they were playing in front of my house, I mean, it was pretty horrific, pretty horrific. And then it just all came to a conclusion at the trial. You know, we put on a fairly aggressive defense of what happened to me at the EPA. And then a trial came back saying that, yes, EPA was guilty of racism, sexism, color discrimination and a half-the-work environment. So basically, the public, my peers, through the book at EPA, and it was in all the newspapers and TV stations, and EPA employees took to the streets and we had demonstrations and Congress condemned the EPA administrator, Carol Browner. And so it was an interesting period, but interestingly enough, when I came back to my office

after the trial, they had rammed back to my office. Yeah. And so it didn't stop, but nevertheless, we had won a major victory. It was interesting that Ms. Browner, from what you wrote at the end, really didn't get it. I mean, she was somewhat contrite with the statistical data that she had presented, that everything was fine. Yeah, yeah. And what's particularly sad, of course, is that one of the first decisions of Barack Obama. And I was, you know, I was a major supporter. You know, I do fundraisers. I marched all over Richmond, Virginia to get them reelected. And one of the major, one of the first decisions that he made when he became president was to invite Carol Browner back to the White House. And she became the energy czar for his administration. And so that was really a hard day for me, to be honest with you, because it was sending a signal to federal employees throughout the country that, you know, it doesn't matter

what managers do to you. We will resuscitate them. We will protect them. And we will bring them back into the administration. Because I was going to ask you are the individuals that were your supervisor and have the agency, are they still working there? Oh, absolutely. They were all promoted. There was a slight moment right after the trial because there was so much publicity that they sent them out of EPA for a while just to let things cool down. So one was sent to the White House, which is, you know, really a hard duty station, right? Right. To punish him. One was sent to AID to sort of travel around the world, another really hard, you know, punishments. And then after things come down, they brought them back and elevated them again. Looking back on this journey, had it been worth it? Yes. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think we've done some, the law itself, even though we didn't get everything we wanted. It's an amazing piece of legislation.

Every two years, every federal employee must take no fear training. And if you, if you enter the federal government within 90 days, you must be trained in no fear. You know, in the federal government now, when, when you, through the federal government, the money is no longer, and you win. The money no longer comes out of a little flush fund that they have set up for men and women who violate people's civil and human rights. Now when you win, when you prevail in court, the money comes out of the budget of the agency that discriminated against you. And that agency has to go to Congress and explain why their budget has been reduced by whatever amount the award is for. I mean, and the law goes on and on and on. I mean, every single federal government agency, if you, White House, CIA, State Department, EPA, you go to the front page of the no fear icon. You click on that icon and all their EEO data pops up. I had no idea when I was fighting, whether I was the only person at EPA who was having trouble, or whether there were a hundred of us, where no one ever has to wonder about that again.

It's just a click away now. You click and all the data appears. If the data is correct, some of it is, some of it isn't, we still have to fight to make sure that it's more accurate, but at least now we have something in place. So I think we've made a contribution in terms of changing the culture of the federal government, making it more honest and making it fairer for people who are fighting for justice. And I think we also showed people the importance of struggle, how even though you may not have much, and we had nothing, we had no money, we had no friends and high places, but what we had with our faith in God. And we had our faith that we were prepared to do whatever it took to fight for justice inside the federal government. And we experienced a measure of victory that no one can take away from us. So what I've rather have done that as opposed to sitting at my desk for 30 years, yeah, no, I would much prefer to have fought for justice.

Dr. Alder, they buy up with the limited time that we have. Give us a thumbnail of how you got the legislation first, convincing the House, and then convincing the Senate to look at these atrocities happening within the EPA. Okay, and then there are two women that I wanted to raise. I would like us to let your audience know about that we're working with at this point. But the struggle for no fear was very difficult. There's no question about it. You don't get a law passed to the United States government through the legislature without a real battle. And it was the first law passed in the 21st century has a civil rights law. It was the first civil rights and whistleblower law of the 21st century. So essentially the House was a bit easier. You know, right after I won, Congress contacted me and said, you know, F. James Simpson, Brenner, are you conservative from Wisconsin? You know, let's see if we can make sure after I testify before Congress. Let's see if we can make sure that what happened to you never happened to anyone else again.

Sheila Jackson lead to her credit joined Simpson Brenner. So you had the right and the left in Congress on the House side fighting for this bill. Even though it wasn't easy, we were able to pass the House. That was really the easy part to be honest with you. It was the Senate. And it's the Senate where bills die. It's the Senate that's called a graveyard of legislation. And we came up against Joe Lieberman from Connecticut. And Joe Lieberman was determined that this bill was never going to see the light of day. And so we did all the things that everyone does, writing letters, faxing, you know, I jumped and elevated one a couple of times talking about the bill and it was just, we just couldn't move him. And one he announced the other. It was terrible. And then one day I'm at an end of the way CP meeting and who walks in the door. Revenue. The Revenue L Shopping. And Lieberman at that point was thinking about running for president.

And I knew that the last person he wanted to be seen with was the Revenue L Shopping. So I asked Revenue Shopping. Did I say would you please come to Washington DC and lead a demonstration to Joe Lieberman's office to help us pass the first civil rights law? And immediately he said, here's my card. Give me a call. Come to New York and let's talk. And so we, so we organized a demonstration with Revenue L Shopping. And it was the first time that Lieberman's office started calling my house saying when can we get together? When can we talk? Just after the demonstration we can talk. And so the so Lieberman's office called Revenue L's office and said, with a senator would like to meet with you after you lead the demonstration. And so we led the demonstration to Lieberman's office, hundreds of federal employees marched on his office and then we went into his office.

And it was like a Christmas tree it didn't live. There was so much press in his office because everybody knew Lieberman was thinking about running for president. And so during the meeting Lieberman looks at me and looks at Revenue L and says, now you know there's an opening in my committee next week. If you like, I could bring up the No Fear Act. And we could get this, we could get this done next week. And we're sitting around the table going, what? It's been almost a year since I've seen it. Oh yeah. And it was, so Revenue L played such an amazing, very powerful role. You know, I dare say that if he had not stepped in when he stepped in, we would have lost the No Fear Act. Currently you have a song that's been made for you and no Kool-Aid and you're working on a No Fear play in movie? Yes, that's right. With Danny Glover? Right. And how's that process coming along? It's slow. It's slow.

I mean, getting a movie made is a really tough position and you know, let me just give a shout out right now to Reverend T.D. Jakes. I would love to work with him on this film as well. We're looking for producers and we're looking for people to tell this story because this is really a 21st century story. This isn't to help. This is a 21st century story that we would like to sort of change the conversation on some level and really talk about what's happening to women in the workplace today. And if I can just segue, the play is being put on by Temple University in cooperation with New York University. So we've got a lot of work that we're doing right now on this issue. But I'm also championing two very brave women. One woman is a firefighter in California. She's Native American and her name is Alicia Dabney. And if you go to my website, www.Marsha Coleman-Adebio-a-d-e-b-s-n-boy-a-y-o.com. You can actually hear her supervisor ordering her to come to his hotel room in the most

graphic, despicable language ever. And Alicia is a proud Native American woman who decided that she was not going to be intimidated and pushed around by her supervisor. He did the most horrific things to her like they were on a fire assignment. And she kept asking him to please allow her to go to a hotel nearby, to go to the bathroom. He refused. And then he actually had 30 men form a circle around Alicia and made her urinate in the middle of 30 men. I mean, this is horrific story. But the question that your audience has got to ask is who was fired? Her supervisor or Alicia? And the answer to that question is Alicia was fired a couple weeks ago. And that cannot stand. That is outrageous. And also we're working with another woman who's also an EPA employee who three weeks ago was incarcerated because of just a small little misunderstanding.

And her supervisor decided, I don't like her. It was such a minor, minor, minor issue. And one day she comes to work and police her in her office and they handcuffed this woman. And they literally letter out of EPA and change. What was the charge? The fraud in the United States government. The fraud in the United States government. And the issue was a really small one and she was trying to better herself by going to the University of Maryland. And EPA had agreed to pay for a course. And she had a small balance from the last semester. The EPA money reached the university before her payment to finish paying for the last semester. And so the university used the portion of the EPA funds to pay for her outstanding balance. Such a small little thing. I mean, this happens all the time. As soon as your boss went to South Africa before Thanksgiving break.

With his family. What children were being set on the street as orphans, right? And so instead of just saying, look, you know, finish paying the rest of your tuition so that, you know, so that the money will go for the course, they arrested this young lady. They arrested her, letter out in chains, put her in prison, charged her with defrauding the United States government. This is a young black woman. So now she's facing criminal charges of defrauding the United States government going to prison as well as being fired. And so we're saying that there is a war on women at this point that too many women are facing these kinds of situations that are just, you know, this is crazy what's going on. So we're trying to bring these issues to the attention of the public. And I really thank you for giving me a few minutes to discuss these two women. No, we thank you because as you know, I get the opportunity to talk to a lot of authors and have an opportunity to read a lot of books and particularly this was the easy read.

Thank you. And it was a fascinating read because what transpired, when you're trying to do good and you have particularly the United States government fighting you at every turn makes one wonder what is the underlying thought processes that are going on. Dr. Alder, they buy out what do you want people to come away with once they've read the book? Well, I want them to come away with number one that we are more powerful than we can ever imagine. The no fear coalition was such a small little group of maybe 10, 12 people that literally changed the culture and the federal government. I mean, one was to have thought that, you know, we were Halliburton, no, we were Halliburton. We were just 12 determined people that we were not going to allow the government to stay the same after we left it as before we got there. And then I also would just like for them to understand something about the power of faith. It's one of the lexicon courts that I think meanders throughout my book is the power of

faith and what believing in God can allow you to do. You become so powerful, you become so empowered that I'm not sure that I don't believe I could have carried on had I not had been sort of hooked into charged by the faith that I had. And then I think the third thing is to really not drink the Kool-Aid as Song says, it's important for us to take the scales away from our eyes and to begin to really look at the political scene, not to any kind of emotionalism, but just exactly what's going on and how do we begin to protect our family and our friends and ourselves from a political system that's fairly ruthless and we are going to be the communities and the people who are going to change this system from one that's fairly brutal to one that's humane. But first we have to understand how powerful we are in order to take on that kind of struggle.

Dr. Marshall Coleman, Audubio, author of No Fear, a whistleblower's triumph over corruption and retaliation at the EPA. If you have questions, comments or suggestions asked if future in Black America programs, email us at jhanson at kut.org. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. Reviews and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org until we have the opportunity again for Technical Producer Dave at Alvarez. I'm John L. Hansen, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs, kut radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America CDs, kut radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712.

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