The STORY about the Native American activist on Page 2 of The News (Jan. 25) is fiction. May I suggest you go online and watch THE WHOLE LONG video? It will show you that everything he said about the kids from Kentucky is false.

Initially, we see and hear the Black Israelite group (listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center) using vulgar and profane language toward these kids and others, including the Native Americans. They were standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial because that is the assigned pickup point for their bus to get them.

The activist, Nathan Phillips, incidentally, is NOT a decorated Vietnam War hero, was a member of the Marine Corps Reserves, went AWOL numerous times and NEVER left the U.S. at any time. Stolen Valor? His group’s interruption of a church service at the Basilica during that rally has gone unnoticed by the media. Unconscionable! If you were sitting in a church, in the middle of the service, and I came in beating on my drum and singing, would you be upset?

Looking at the long video, we see the boy (and if the 18-year-old young man in Ferguson, Mo. is a CHILD, what are these 14- to16-year-old males? KIDS!) not sneering. He was scared by this man shoving his drum in his face. Psych 101 – zones of personal space … in the U.S., we consider three feet to be ours. Wd allow people to get closer to us on the sides and in the rear, but NOT in your face.

His involvement here in Michigan at a different rally bears the same pattern. He is a “victim of white racist hate.” He is not.

KATHLEEN MELVILLE-HALL,

Alpena