FORT COLLINS, Colo. – This Saturday, concerned Coloradans will join others around the world for EMR Action Day – to highlight their concerns about the safety of electromagnetic radiation found in wireless Internet, cordless phones, microwaves TV and radio and other sources.

Virginia Farver of Fort Collins has been fighting for protection from EMR for six years, after her son died from brain cancer that the doctor said was caused from cell phone radiation.

"I don't own one anymore and I do not have Wi-Fi in my home and I try to avoid this stuff as much as possible, which has led me into this smart-meter fight," she states.

Farver, like others around the country, is protesting the forcible installation of smart meters by utility companies that monitor energy usage.

In March, after months of her protests against a wireless meter, Fort Collins Power and Light came to her home with police to install a meter.

A representative from the utility says the meter it installed was in fact manually read, and has no broadcast capabilities.

Susan Clarke, a member of the EMR Action Day, did research at Harvard University on the biological effects of radio frequency radiation.

She chooses to live her life free of cell phones and Wi-Fi, and says it is possible.

"People find that they sleep better, they feel so much better, they can think better, remember better, and their behavior is actually better too,” she maintains. “We all act, let's say, in a more kind and loving way toward each other when we're not bombarded by unnatural electromagnetic radiation."

Farver plans on buying a shield for the smart meter box that will offer her greater protection, but she can't do anything to protect her from neighboring meters.

Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, smart meters are to be installed upon customer request, but Farver says that stipulation is being ignored.

"This is what's happening across the nation,” she stresses. “They are not telling anybody about these, they are just coming through the night and basically within a few days get all these meters installed before anybody really realizes what's going on," she says.

Farver's son Rich was one of at least eight people to die of brain cancer on the San Diego State University campus from 2008 to 2010. They all worked in close proximity to the same cell tower.





get more stories like this via email

As states ban abortion with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, women's advocates in New York and beyond are raising awareness of the outsized impact these policies will have on Black women -- and they're outlining a framework for economic and health justice moving forward.

The Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls has created a legislative agenda for putting Black women at the center of these policy discussions, to address their long-standing economic barriers.

Azza Altiraifi, senior policy manager for the group Liberation in a Generation, co-chaired the working group that put together the report and said dismantling every structure of oppression is necessary to create collective economic prosperity, and to strengthen democracy.

"It is futile to singularly focus on just closing racial gaps, whether it's wealth or health or housing or education," Altiraifi said, "unless they are also willing to uproot and dismantle the primary causes of those inequities in the first place."

The report relied on the intersectional "Black Women Best" framework coined by Janelle Jones, the first Black woman to serve as chief economist in the Department of Labor. Altiraifi said it builds on a rich history of Black women's feminist scholarship, and includes ties to disability, reproductive and economic justice.

Along with centering Black women, Altiraifi said it's important to follow their leadership on these issues that have affected them disproportionately, adding that in the post-Roe landscape, advocates will be looking to the networks of abortion care that have been built by Black women over time.

"Black women have, in the face of such organized abandonment - both historically and presently - created their own systems, networks of care and community support to meet each other's needs," Altiraifi said, "at a time and in places where the state was failing to do so."

The report pointed to such policies as guaranteed income that have proved to help reduce economic disparities. Members of the congressional caucus, including U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., also have introduced a resolution encouraging their colleagues to follow the blueprint from the Black Women Best report.

Pride Month during June highlights the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities, which have long faced discrimination. People in these communities say they continue to face prejudice in Montana, including in finding a place to live.

Pam Bean, executive director of the nonprofit Montana Fair Housing, said LGBTQ people only recently received a major victory in housing at the federal level.

"Given the fact that it's only been a year-and-a-half that under the Fair Housing Act, it's illegal to discriminate against this population based on gender identity and sexual orientation," she said, "there's a lot of education that still needs to take place with housing providers."

A 2020 report from UCLA found LGBTQ people face significant barriers to finding housing. Young adults in this population experience homelessness at a rate more than twice that of the general public. The number is even higher for people younger than 18.

Bean has noticed that people moving from out of state may not understand some of the landlord-tenant laws in Montana or local city ordinances, and this has led to conflict at times. For instance, she spoke to one renter who hung LGBTQ Pride flags outside his residence.

"He and the housing provider ended up with a very adversarial relationship," she said, "because he didn't realize he had to get permission to be hanging things up on the exterior of the unit."

Bean said it's important to understand the laws governing housing. But she also notes that organizations such as hers can provide dispute resolution between landlords and tenants.

"We can share information with both parties and educate them in regards to the issues at hand," she said, "and hopefully reach a resolution where, particularly in this housing market, the household is able to maintain their housing."

Bean said Montana Fair Housing also can help people file administrative complaints with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. However, she noted this isn't a speedy process, typically taking months or years to resolve.

There are $1 trillion in the philanthropy sector, but only a small amount of the money goes toward closing racial disparities across the nation.

Edgar Villanueva, author of the book "Decolonizing Wealth," said the sector should rethink how it gives. He pointed out less than a tenth of philanthropic giving goes to nonprofit organizations led by Black, Indigenous or people of color working specifically on issues of racial or social equity.

"We are still kind of thinking of philanthropy and giving in an old-fashioned way that is really about charity, and putting a band-aid on issues," Villanueva contended. "Versus funding organizations who are on the front lines of pushing for more transformative change in our communities, and especially around issues of racial justice."

Villanueva is the keynote speaker at a Montana Nonprofit Association summit this Thursday in Helena.

Villanueva acknowledged his ideas about redistributing money come from Indigenous wisdom about restorative justice. His book introduces seven steps to healing: grieving, apologizing, listening, relating, representing, investing and repairing. He noted the money philanthropic foundations have now, was built in large part on the slave trade and Indigenous land.

"To not return some of that wealth back to the descendants of folks who helped to build this wealth is an injustice, in my point of view," Villanueva asserted. "That's what healing looks like. It is about righting a wrong that would help to close a race/wealth gap that exists in our communities as a result of history."

Villanueva's book includes the story of a North Carolina woman who discovered her wealth came from land taken from Native Americans, and her family owned slaves. He recounted she wrote apology letters to their descendants, and decided to focus her philanthropy on supporting the communities her family had harmed.

"And not only has that been great for the folks who have received that support, but she has been transformed into this person who has just been liberated from sort of the guilt and shame of history that's connected to her family," Villanueva explained.

He added the woman now is one of 500 members of a donor community within the Decolonizing Wealth Project known as Liberated Capital. Four Montana nonprofits have received funding from Liberated Capital.

Villanueva emphasized anyone can make more meaningful choices about the causes they donate to.

"There are small decisions that we can make every day that would really help to address the hundreds of years of marginalization that a lot of our communities have faced," Villanueva concluded.