Sen. Kevin Avard teams up with anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller in attack on first lady
State Sen. Kevin Avard (R-Nashua) had some harsh words for the first lady’s campaign to remove educational barriers for young women around the world: “Exploitation & Fantasy ..Twisted!”
First lady Michelle Obama was in London last week to promote her Let Girls Learn initiative, an international campaign to tear down the barriers that keep millions of girls around the world from attending school. In east London, she delivered an emotional speech to the students of the Mulberry School for Girls, which is located in one of England’s poorest communities.
“Almost all of the pupils at Mulberry are Muslim and of Bangladeshi origin, with English as an additional language, three quarters are on free school meals and many face a climate of Islamophobia, yet their results outstrip national averages and 83% go to university,” reported the Guardian.
The first lady described her childhood growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and told the audience, “When I look out at all of these young women, I see myself… In so many ways, your story is my story.“
Pamela Geller, the virulent anti-Muslim activist who leads two organizations the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as hate groups, attacked the first lady for those comments, calling her a “[v]icious hypocrite.”
“Tell us, Mrs. Obama, about your oppression and disadvantage from the highest and most powerful office in the free-est country in the world,” Geller wrote. “Tell us how wronged you were in between your multiple daily wardrobe changes of the most expensive designer clothes in the world.”
Avard agreed with Geller. “How could she [see] herself? Do they all have their own Jumbo Jet [to] contribute [to] Global warming? Exploitation & Fantasy ..Twisted! … What is Michelle’s agenda here?” he tweeted.
The first lady spelled out her agenda in her speech to the girls of the Mulberry School – and addressed the bigotry they face from Geller and her followers.
“Maybe you read the news and hear what folks are saying about your religion and you wonder if people will ever sees beyond your headscarf to who you really are, instead of being blinded by the fears and misperceptions in their own minds,” she told them.
“And I know how painful and how frustrating all of that can be. I know how angry and exhausted it can make you feel,” she continued. “But here’s the thing, with an education from this amazing school, you all have everything, everything you need to rise above all of the noise and fulfill every last one of your dreams.”