(ADVERTORIAL)
10+ questions with Aspen’s Mulcahy family
1. Why does the charity that the Mulcahy family founded, Africa Water Wells, focus on water efforts in Africa?
One in 10 people worldwide do not have access to clean water. In communities without water, children are often designated to haul water from sites miles away. Water weighs 8 pounds/gallon, so a child providing for a family of four in Sub-Saharan Africa must carry 128 pounds of water daily. That leaves little time for education. The great disaster is that the water they carry may be polluted. Water is life and that is the main focus of Africa Water Wells.
2. How did the Mulcahy family become involved in clean water?
In 2010, my late husband and I went on a safari in Kenya where we learned of the water crisis. Edward Lee “Bud” Mulcahy was raised on a farm without electricity or indoor plumbing outside of Seguin, Texas during the Great Depression. Not many people understand what we all take for granted today in America. Bud understood it because he lived it. On the plane between Nairobi and London Heathrow, my husband Bud said, “We are going back to do a water well,” and we did our first well in 2012. One of Bud’s areas of expertise was in water, specifically irrigation.
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3. What’s been accomplished so far?
In the last six years: (1) multiple wells have been drilled, (2) alcohol/addiction counselling has been offered, (3) women’s conferences have been held teaching money making skills, (4) refurbished laptops from Aspen, Basalt, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs and Texas have been donated to the local primary schools, (5) a Dallas medical team held clinics where needed medications were distributed, and finally (6) a village built a Christian school – naming it after Bud, who founded Africa Water Wells. We just recently provided the funds for a four toilet latrine at a school outside Sotik that previously had only one outhouse.
4. What’s next?
In March 2019, another well will be drilled with a storage tower – the first clean water for a village outside of Sotik with a population the same as Aspen. More wells to come as funds are provided. We will be carrying over used laptops again. There will be a focus on sanitation and hygiene, training in further latrine fabrication for men and soap-making classes for women.
5. How can someone help?
Donations of used laptops for Kenyan primary schools are always welcome. If any volunteers in the medical field want to travel with us in March 2019 or in 2020 to help distribute medications, we have built a Sotik clinic next to the Catholic center where we all stay. Of course, funds for the drilling of wells can be given online at Grace Covenant Church http://www.gracecovenantchurch.org or by sending a check to Grace ℅ AWW 3402 West Interstate 20, Arlington TX 76017. All of us volunteers pay our own way over and expenses.
6. Both of you are artists?
Yes, both of us as well as sibling Cynthia Mulcahy, who is a famous Dallas-based conceptual artist not unlike Ai Weiwei, recently honored at Hotel Jerome by Anderson Ranch Arts Center where multiple Mulcahys have studied. Cynthia’s recent solo exhibition “War Garden” was at Talley Dunn in Dallas this summer. Cynthia’s “Seventeen Hundred Seeds” was a nature-based public art project that created a sunflower garden; and “Engines of War” was a group show she curated about American militarism at the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York. See https://www.dallasnews.com/arts/visual-arts/2018/07/19/dallas-artist-using-watercolor-fauna-flora-sculpture-examine-century-war MAMA Sandy will claim she’s not an artist but into crafts but she’s more talented than any of us kids. However, the boundaries of art and craft have long been contested.
7. Why do you think Aspen should count art as work?
It’s in Aspen’s history and our DNA as a cultural mecca. Aspen has become more corporate but it does not need to start throwing out artists that don’t make enough money, according to APCHA. Lee’s work has been shown worldwide at galleries in America, China and Europe, as well as Berlin’s KW Institute of Contemporary Art and the National Museum of Kenya’s Nairobi Gallery.
8. Your family gave $20,000 to the homeless shelters in Aspen and Arlington, Texas — Why?
We must love on our neighbors, especially those that life has disenfranchised. Aspen spends millions on the Mayor’s ridiculous ego projects but devotes little to our most vulnerable. Bud Mulcahy came from nothing and through hard work became the epitome of the American dream. He believed that the American dream has disappeared due to the capture of our political system by big money and greed.
9. What’s going on with the City’s efforts to railroad your family out of the house you built?
We’ve put the case on hold while settlement negotiations occur. Aspen housing’s unelected board will be voting on a settlement offer in secret behind closed doors in 2019. The whole thing is a farce. The reality of a case not of national significance just being heard by the Supreme Court is one percent. Washington DC is out of touch with the West and our ingrained values of liberty and freedom. We will stand tall.
10. Can the government force your family to sell your self-built home despite never being late on taxes? If you guys refuse to sell, will we have political prisoners in Aspen?
What is legal and what is just are not the same thing. My late Father had a stroke on property during construction. The house is built around Mama Sandy in order to accomodate an elderly disabled person. I plan to raise kids there. The maximum jail sentence in Colorado for contempt of court for not selling is six months. I will follow the law and serve my sentence.
City Hall’s corruption is widely known. The current Mayor works for Skico, literally. The City Manager and City Attorney have been in power for decades. All routinely lie without blinking. The City Attorney bulldozed another artist’s house when the artist defied him. My late Dad got into it with the Aspen’s lead Attorney who would come on inspections and make ridiculous demands. Many people aren’t aware of the extent of the City’s power to do evil. At times, the inspectors would refuse to put their demands in writing. Even after items were approved, they would make us rip them out costing lots in both time and money. At one point, housing told us that they did not want to approve our construction because if they gave us approval, they “would never be able to get (us) out.”
People need to remember Aspen’s housing department (“APCHA”) asked me for artistic records on October 14, 2015 and agreed to a meeting a week later – in writing. When we took the records in, APCHA refused to look at them saying they had decided to sue.
In 2014, the Washington Post reported there are up to 80,000 SWAT team raids in America annually. Multiple Aspen Police have told us that they will send in a SWAT team to remove us regardless of the Sheriff. Let’s be honest: The Police in Aspen are the political sturmabteilung (Stormtroopers) for City Hall.
We just want peace and to be left alone.
11. Do you have any thoughts on the journalism in Aspen?
Aspen has the same problem as Washington DC with a unique caveat. “Don’t bite the hand” of someone that may feed you” comes to mind….
Great journalism should give voice to the voiceless. In Aspen, like the swamp in DC, the bias towards power is real. If the City wants the media to convey a bunch of untrue allegations, say for example, immediately before our big settlement vote, the City puts out a press release banning Lee from City Hall and the newspapers put it on the front page.
Hilariously, one of the City’s lead public relations directors has her own show on Aspen public radio. Even funnier, the liberal public radio station has refused to let us advertise.
Friends, bias and fake news is real in a town where the Democrats control both City Council and the Board of County Commissioners. Everyone knows the Mulcahys are conservative tea party Republicans who believe our government at all levels is out of control. Sadly, our story is the same as the rampant tribalism confounding our nation.
Compromise is the way forward. We can show compliance per APCHA’s rules. It’s why we have offered to pay all of APCHA’s legal expenses and pay a fine for missing a deadline -simply to be afforded a public hearing.
12. How do ya’ll handle the stress?
With prayer and by counting all our blessings. We’re very grateful in some many ways, but especially for the community’s support. Also we maintain our wicked sense of humor when dealing with Aspen’s out of control government.
13. What are your thoughts on Lester Crown, the out of state billionaire owner of Aspen Skiing and bomb-maker General Dynamics, Wall Street’s JP Morgan Chase, etc.?
Bullies rarely learn. President Eisenhower warned us about America’s creeping military industrial complex over 50 years ago. It’s only gotten worse. Lester has bribed politicians, lied, got called out, lied about it to Congress and got caught time and time again. Congressman Dingall wrote the Secretary of Defense: ”The election to, and the retention on, the board of directors of an individual who admittedly was actively involved in the commission of a major crime is a statement of the integrity of the management of our nation’s largest defense contractor.”
The New York Times reported that during Congressional hearings, “Crown, who was not present at the hearings, was labeled ”an embezzler,” ”an admitted felon,” ”a crook.”” It got so bad that a Texas Congressman John Bryant, a Democrat, told the CEO of General Dynamics: ”If you can sit here,” said Representative John Bryant, a Texas Democrat, ”and tell a Congressional committee that you are going to let him (Lester) stay there and continue to see these classified documents, the stink in the corporation and the problem we have got with General Dynamics is sitting at this table right here.” See https://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/07/magazine/the-ordeal-of-lester-crown.html
14. Thoughts on local judge Chris Seldin?
The Bible says there’s not much new under the sun. Corruption and injustice are as old as time. Look at history. Two scholars of American labor violence concluded, “There is no episode in American labor history in which violence was as systematically used by employers as in the Colorado labor war of 1903 and 1904.”] Colorado schools rarely teach that our law enforcement murdered and imprisoned Americans that were simply attempting to exercise their rights to unionize and strike for higher pay and humane work conditions. With very few exceptions, Colorado’s governor and the courts supported the police’s illegal violence.
We might not be talking about Mayor Steve Skadron’s attempts at evicting his last opponent (me) if state law required cases that involved a city or county entity to be tried in the next county over. Nevertheless, neither the Mayor nor Judge Seldin has to date refused to even give us a public hearing.
Judge Seldin admitted in court to being a member of the Aspen Institute’s Lester Crown Society of Fellows for over a decade. Annual membership begins at $2500.00. For anyone, let alone an assistant county attorney at the time, $2500.00 is a significant yearly investment.
Despite admitting to this fact, the judge refused to recuse himself twice. Mercy and compassion are wonderful things.
15a. Regrets?
Yes, we all make mistakes but oligarchy is not in the Western concept of liberty: “When political and financial elites are shielded from any consequences for their actions, they are no longer subject to the law. Instead, they become the law’s masters, using the legal system for their own purposes: to safeguard and expand their perquisites; to ensure that their cheating and corruption are not punished but rather rewarded; and to keep any outsiders from challenging their superior status. The law, which was meant to keep the powerful in check, is now used instead to sustain and perpetuate their power.” — Academy and Pulitizer prize winning journalist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald.
I have apologized for offending the Crowns’ sensibilities with my artistic endeavors. I am so grateful for the 15 years I worked for them — teaching skiing was the best job in the world. Let’s move on.
15b. If you guys had three wishes for the New Year?
1. The City and the Mulcahys could make peace. Aspen can lead the nation forward.
2. That we all can love our enemies more and help the disenfranchised, including the migrants on our Southern border.
3. Revival in our community. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of Jesus most profound and revolutionary teachings. He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” In this season of celebrating his birth amidst all of the corruption, injustice and oppression, we cannot lose hope. We must remember that Jesus submitted to death on a cross as an atonement for all our sins so that we, too, may have new life and love others as He taught us.