Administrator’s note: Leon has concluded his Charleston trip and spent the day in nearby Charlotte, North Carolina where President Barack Obama was engaged in a question-answer session with women’s rights activists. Here is Leon’s report:

I came to Charlotte this afternoon to exploit another gathering of national media at the ImaginOn Center on East 7th Street. The president was here to answer questions on the subject of women’s issues including equal pay and child care. He arrived at 2:30 and was gone a little more than an hour later.

President Obama’s trip was highly controlled and scripted. Barricades were set to keep the general public as far away as possible from the building with police cars and large utility trucks blocking off street access two blocks away. If there were any protesters, he would not have noticed them.

This media event was nothing like the ones in Charleston that evolved by the minute. The session itself was not open to the public, and it was not clear that anything was accomplished by such a costly trip. A visit to nearby Charleston could have been added to this itinerary given the growing crises developing over a black father shot to death by a traffic cop to enforce a child support warrant.

For what it’s worth I was there to make a stand for abused, discriminated and killed fathers by sharing my report “We Are Fathers” with national media. Had our efforts been financed a fraction of the amounts given to the hosts of this  “town hall meeting” as it was called, a similar event could have been staged to gain meaningful reforms in our nation’s family courts.

For this very reason, financing remains the principal theme of my report. While the people inside were lamenting the figure of 83 cents earned by women for every dollar earned by men, no one anywhere was lamenting Census Bureau reports that continue to show that 83% of people paying child support are men.

Interestingly the sponsors of this town hall meeting were a digital media corporation and women’s blogger network. According to its website BlogHer Inc. doled out $36 million to women bloggers for the purpose of influencing social media. Is this what it takes to get the president’s attention? If so, we need to do the same. That’s why I released my report and  I’m asking all our followers to help us out.

Dr. Leon R. Koziol

Civil Rights Advocate

(315) 796-4000

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