Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is best known for his famous last name, his anti-vaccine activism, and his unexpected candidacy for president by a third party. He is not especially known for his fondness for criminal justice reform. And yet, next month, he is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the Detroit conference as part of the New Dawn for Justice Criminal Reform field trip. The six-city tour’s online page promises that it “amplifies the collective voice calling for just and humane reform” and encourages “individuals from all walks of life to contribute to the overhaul of our justice system. “
The lead organizer of the field trip is Angela Stanton King, a member of Kennedy’s campaign team, who brings her own experience to this fight for change. As her biography explains: “With a private narrative about overcoming incarceration and advocating for penal reform, she is a central figure in advocating for justice. “
Here’s what her biography doesn’t say: Stanton King, 47, was a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, until she was hired through RFK Jr. ‘s crusade as director of outreach for blacks, where she now works. On culture war issues, she has little to do with Kennedy: Stanton King has continually gained media attention for his anti-gay and anti-trans activism, issues Kennedy does not address. A staunch opponent of abortion, she is the founder of Auntie Angie’s House, a pregnancy center. on the occasion of an anti-abortion crisis and a home for pregnant women and new mothers, while Kennedy is pro-choice. But despite all this, Stanton King would possibly be promising Kennedy everything he desperately needs: a breakthrough among black conservatives. who increasingly support Donald Trump — about 17 percent, according to a January poll.
The idea that a member of America’s best-known Democratic circle could simply draw Trump’s electorate into this tight race might seem counterintuitive: Until recently, it was a foregone conclusion that Kennedy’s candidacy could only help Trump. The vaccine crusade has curryed favor with some on the right, and among black conservatives, Kennedy would likely see it as an opportunity.
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And if he can appeal to those voters, Kennedy could potentially weed out black conservatives from either party, Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University, told me. Gillespie, who studies politics in the black community, noted that unlike white conservatives, black conservatives still vote Democratic. Stanton King, Gillespie said, “could probably try to argue that his conservative prestige would probably eliminate Republicans, and he would probably eliminate some Democratic voters,” some of whom might have soured on opposing Biden because of his aid to Israel. Whether Stanton King will be able to deliver on his promises, however, is another question. “I think she’s absolutely complete on that,” Gillespie said, “and [Kennedy] deserves to be able to see through that. “
After a few formative years oscillating between Buffalo, New York, and the South, as a young woman, Angela Stanton moved to Atlanta, where she became embroiled in a car theft racketeering scheme. She was convicted in 2004 and served two years in state prison. A decade later, Stanton self-published a memoir titled Lies of a Real Housewife: Telling the Truth and Putting the Devil to Shame, and alleged that Phaedra Parks, star of the TV series Real Housewives of Atlanta, had been part of the same criminal. a scheme for which Stanton had been convicted. (Parks later sued Stanton for defamation, though he eventually agreed to drop the lawsuit with prejudice. )
During this tumultuous time in his life, Stanton met Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , a staunch Trump supporter and a prominent figure in Atlanta’s black conservative community. “She saw me as a child, a child who needed to be born again,” Stanton wrote in her 2018 memoir, The Life of a Real Housewife: The Angela Stanton Story. King, she wrote, led her to help at the crisis pregnancy center and at the new mom home she ran at the time. This work, which concerned formerly incarcerated women, was particularly meaningful to Stanton because she had been chained to a bed in a prison while giving birth to one of her daughters. King became her mentor and godmother, and Angela Stanton later replaced her name with Angela Stanton. King.
In 2020, President Trump officially pardoned Stanton King, saying in a statement that she “works tirelessly to improve the reintegration outcomes of others returning to their communities after leaving prison, focusing on the critical role of families in the process. “it is supported by Alveda King.
Later that year, Stanton King used the momentum generated by Trump’s pardon to boost the race for the Georgia congressional seat once held by legendary civil rights leader John Lewis, who recently died of pancreatic cancer. The director of Stanton King’s crusade, Trevian Kutti, who had once been Kanye West’s publicist and would later be impeached through Donald Trump for his role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. In an interview about his crusade with The Guardian, Stanton King denied accusations that he adheres to the QAnon conspiracy theory. When reporter confronted La with a tweet she had made referencing QAnon’s debunked rumor that furniture company Wayfair traffics children, she responded, “You know that’s the case. You’ve noticed. You’ve been watching the news like I have. “
Stanton King lost in a landslide victory to his Democratic opponent, Nikema Williams. But just a month later, when Covid vaccines were about to be rolled out, Stanton King discovered a new cause. In December 2020, he appeared at a convention in Atlanta organized through America’s Frontline Doctors, the right-wing medical organization promoting conspiracy theories about the pandemic. The presenters, including the organization’s founder, Jan. 6 insurrectionist Simone Gold, warned the crowd that the U. S. government was black as Guinea pigs were for the vaccine. This was a particularly harsh accusation given the long and troubled relationship between the black network and the mainstream medical establishment.
Stanton King saw an opportunity and in 2022, along with his organization, the American King Foundation, announced a new initiative called Stop Medical Apartheid to oppose “the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans. “In a press release, Stanton King wrote, “Medical apartheid is a population set. Population comes in other forms; vaccines, abortions, mass incarceration, and perverse sexual systems targeting children. From womb to grave, it’s time for all of you! »
That same year, Stanton King spoke at the Defeat the Mandates rally in Los Angeles, an anti-vaccine event sponsored through an activist organization that also organized the anti-vaccine truckers’ conference. The presentation also included representatives from Robert F. . Kennedy Jr. , Children’s Health Defense. In a lengthy speech, Stanton King strongly opposed vaccine mandates, but also addressed abortion (“lynching of little black youth in the womb”) and the rights of transgender people. “I’m only forty-five years old, and I’ve only given birth and raised five boys naturally, and I say ‘naturally’ because I raised my sons to be boys and my daughters to be girls,” she told the crowd. Thunderous applause.
Stanton King elaborated on this during a 2022 appearance on the TV show Dr. Phil, telling the audience in the studio that he would never settle for his trans daughter’s gender identity. “I think it would possibly be a form of intellectual illness,” he said. he said. ” It’s not just that he was born a man, he’s a man. ” Dr. Phil responded and then posted a video on Instagram of her ranting about the exhibit and trans people. “If you were meant to be a woman, you wouldn’t want to have surgery to put breasts on your breasts, you would have done it already. “”I was born with them,” he cried. If you were a woman, you wouldn’t be born with a penis, you wouldn’t want to have your penis cut off. “(Kennedy’s crusade did not respond to any emailed questions about its reaction to those comments and its stance on transgender rights, or any of the other questions I submitted. Stanton King didn’t answer my questions either. )
Throughout his anti-vaxxer and anti-trans crusade, Stanton King continued to help Trump during his media appearances. “Trump can’t be president and I know it,” he tweeted in 2021. “But he’s the only one ambitious enough to fight those evil demonic satanic forces from the depths of hell and I’m with him. “
But by the end of 2023, their alliances had shifted. At an event on Twitter Spaces in late April, she said she was bitter about the Trump campaign after the former president’s team refused to stop at Aunt Angie’s house. He then approached Kennedy, whom he had met at the Defeat the Mandates rally. in 2022, through her “very smart friend,” Capitol insurrectionary Simone Gold. “He came and sat down and talked to us for about an hour and a half,” she recalled. “And through the time that he left that day, his view of abortion had changed. “
A few months later, when Kennedy asked her to work for his campaign, she became conflicted. “I didn’t want my relationship with Trump to be ruined,” he said at the Twitter Spaces event. Still, I continually reached out to the Trump campaign for “People were telling me where I came from and it was nothing until Trump threw me a party and made me feel like I had been given a Trump pardon, you know, I wasn’t skilled enough to get a paid job. . . ” He then accepted Kennedy’s offer. In January of that year, Stanton King was knocking on Kennedy’s doors in Atlanta’s historic Black West End.
Kennedy, for his part, showed that Stanton King’s thinking on abortion influenced his own. Although she has consistently stated that she believes women deserve to be able to decide whether to have an abortion at any point in their pregnancy, a recent appearance on the conservative show The Daily Wire, she told the story of her stopover at Aunt Angie’s house. “I’ve talked to moms over the past few weeks in Atlanta, Georgia, at this facility I’ve been to many times: Angie’s House, run by Angela Stanton. King, who is kind of a relative of Martin Luther King’s family,” he said. “She takes care of women who are stressed about having an abortion because they don’t have the money to take care of the birth, and I don’t think that is what they want. “
Stanton King is still at odds with the former president. At the Twitter Spaces event, he said he blamed his frustrations on “his gatekeepers,” not Trump himself. “In fact, I’m still President Trump,” he said. Just don’t paint for him. “In April, in a since-deleted tweet, he attacked Diante Johnson, a Trump supporter and leader of the Black Conservative Federation, calling him a “fiery, open-minded gay woman. “In another recent tweet, he shouted, “Republicans think I’m helping RFK help Trump. I have no regrets, but there is no chance in God’s green land that I would want a party that turned its back on black women and young children while facing a crisis of black maternal fitness. His head is so stuck in Trump’s ass because it’s NOT me.
This weekend, Stanton King’s New Dawn for Justice tour will take place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. In an email to Mother Jones, a spokeswoman for the King Center, the King family’s nonprofit that runs the museum, clarified that it is “not affiliated with this event” — it will be located entirely outdoors, in the realm that is a public space.
Will Stanton King’s approval of Kennedy’s crusade be enough to appeal to black voters?Emory’s Gillespie doesn’t think so. He pointed to Stanton King’s failure in Congress in 2020, when his Democratic opponent, Nikema Williams, won with 85% of the vote. “I think the question would possibly be about the intensity of their networks; for example, what influence does it have on some of those communities?This, she says, led her to question Kennedy’s discernment. “What does that say about your resolve to establish the administration?”
Stanton King says he has big plans for the Kennedy administration. At his Twitter Spaces event in April, he spoke of “a vision that God gave me” in which there is “an Aunt Angie space in each and every black network that has planned parenthood. “”He said he’s running with Kennedy on a policy called More Choice, More Life, to make that vision a reality. “I’m so grateful that Bobby and his team are shining with finesse in what we do. “
This article was first published on Mother Jones and has been republished with permission from the publication.
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