Afro-Latinx Activist Charges NCUA Cancelled Speech Based on Trump Executive Order
Rosa Clemente says the NCUA’s Office of Minority Women and Inclusion ordered that the training session be cancelled.
A Latinx activist charged on Tuesday that her speaking engagement at the NCUA was cancelled at the last minute, as the agency enforced a new Executive Order restricting the type of diversity training sessions that agencies may hold.
Rosa Clemente was scheduled to hold a session Tuesday entitled, “Unapologetically Black: Afro-Latinx Culture and Identity” as part of a Hispanic Heritage Month event.
Clemente describes herself as a “community organizer, independent journalist and hip-hop activist.” She was the vice-presidential nominee of the Green Party in 2008.
Clemente told CU Times that on Monday, shortly before leaving her New York home, she received a phone call from the NCUA informing her that the agency’s Office of Minority Women and Inclusion had ordered that the session be cancelled.
She said when she asked if the reason for the cancellation was President Trump’s Sept. 22 Executive Order, she was told that it was.
An agency spokesperson declined to comment on the cancellation of the event.
On Sept. 22, Trump issued an Executive Order that restricted agencies from funding any activity that advances the “pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans.”
The NCUA, as an independent agency, is not subject to Executive Orders. However, the agency traditionally has said it tries to follow the spirit of such orders.
And NCUA Chairman Rodney Hood has been very open about his support for Trump, at one point saying that the president “has done more for African Americans than any other president in his lifetime.”
In her Twitter feed, Clemente has been particularly harsh on Trump and the GOP.
“The Republicans only understand one thing, power and a United States without us,” she wrote. “Republicans are monsters and will do anything to take us out. Appealing to their sense [of] morality, ethics is not possible because they are not moral and have no ethics. Trump is the ringleader.”
She also said that “Trump is the deadly virus.”
Discussing the cancellation, Clemente told CU Times, “This is fascism. It’s Hispanic Heritage Month. This is crazy.”
Clemente said that she is a “gig worker” who depends on speaking engagements and other appearances to earn money. The NCUA had signed a contract agreeing to pay her $4,500 for her presentation. She said an agency employee told her to calculate her expenses and submit a bill to the agency, which will consider whether to pay it.
“I was pissed off,” she said. “I’m a gig economy worker.”
She added, “Our freedom of speech has gone completely out the window for people like me. It’s a scary state that we’re in.”