In January, Refuge In Troubled Times Community Development Corporation held its fourth candlelight vigil in Birmingham to memorialize the murdered victims of violence.

AL.com reported:

Brenda Paige Ward, founder of Refuge In Troubled Times, said her goal is to bring the community together and set a path for change.

“We need to come together in unity and do something about all of the deaths, and the murders, and the homicides and all of the things that are going on around our city. This is our city and we have to do something for our children,” Ward said.

Ward created the nonprofit in 2011, after the fatal shooting of her eldest grandson RaSheed Ali Ward, 19, on June 17, 2010. Keith Hilson, 24, was also killed in the shooting. No one has been arrested for their deaths.

But Ward (pictured above) is more than a heart-broken grandmother.

She’s also an alleged stooge for the Southern Company Criminal Enterprise.

In 2020, self-anointed Apostle Brenda Paige Ward, rented a large van from Budget Rentals at the Birmingham Airport, showed up in CDLU’s Chief Executive Officer K.B. Forbes’ neighborhood.

Ward, along with a dozen or so African American actors, held a two-minute “shoot and scoot” fake protest adjacent to Forbes’ home, terrorizing neighbors and Forbes’ then-eight-year-old daughter who cried thinking they were killing an innocent African American like George Floyd.

Ward and others were part of Southern Company’s campaign of terror and intimidation against Forbes and Burt Newsome, the attorney who took on Balch & Bingham, the sister-wife of Alabama Power, a wholly owned and most profitable subsidiary of Southern Company.

Ward, showed up, without apparently knowing who she was protesting or for what reason.

The buffoons couldn’t even spell Forbes’ last name correctly, calling him Forger, Forges, or Forgis. Even the Apostle Brenda Paige Ward couldn’t spell Forbes’ name.

The Southern Company Criminal Enterprise utilized Matrix, the obscure political consulting firm founded by the diminutive “Sloppy Joe” Perkins.

An investigation by Spotlight, recently published in The Guardian, revealed that Matrix funneled resources to influence Civil Rights groups and leaders.

Entities controlled by Matrix paid $115,000 to Charles Steele Jr, the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and about $170,000 to the Rev Deves Toon, national field director for the National Action Network (Nan), according to verified internal Matrix documents and tax records.

The SCLC was a desegregation pioneer in the south and active in the first protests against environmental racism. Nan, founded by the Rev Al Sharpton, spotlights violence faced by people of color. In 2023, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the leader of the Environmental Protection Agency spoke at Nan events.

In an interview last year, Steele confirmed one payment from Matrix but categorized it as a contribution for civil rights work. Neither he nor his organization responded to additional questions. Toon did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Even Southern Company Chairman Tom Fanning acknowledged greasing the wheels.

Tom Fanning… confirmed in a May interview with Floodlight that the company at the time was still working with Matrix and with civil rights groups including the SCLC. The company did not respond to later requests for comment.

“There’s a real business reason why we do this,” he said, claiming a mutual benefit for the company and the civil rights groups.

The Southern Company Criminal Enterprise has bought and paid for Civil Rights advocates and African American activists to attack other minority activists like Forbes.

Fanning, Perkins, Ward and others demonstrated total ignorance about Forbes, who lived in Chile as a child, is the son of a Hispanic immigrant, and is fully bilingual.

Forbes and the CDLU were working with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020 as informants about the misconduct in Alabama, and the criminal enterprise did not like the fact.

And now, today Forbes and the CDLU are working to hold Fanning and the Southern Company Criminal Enterprise accountable for wasting millions of shareholder resources on campaigns of fear and intimidation that had no corporate purpose whatsoever and violated the civil rights of innocent victims, including children.

A year ago, the embattled CEO of Alabama Power Mark A. Crosswhite was ousted in disgrace. The surveillance efforts and scandalous acts of the Southern Company criminal enterprise were exposed in the public arena.

A few days after the announcement, we, the CDLU, received anonymously spreadsheets and documents outlining how Southern Company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the summer of 2020 attacking us, the family of our CEO, K.B. Forbes, and Burt Newsome and his family.

Both Forbes’ and Newsome’s young children were targeted and at times cried in fear by the foolish acts paid for Southern Company.

Southern Company’s campaign of fear and intimidation worked: the Forbes family fled their home, and Newsome had to hire and install new security and safety measures.

In recent days, speaking to insiders and seasoned law enforcement officials, Crosswhite’s resignation was not an aftermath but a prelude of what is coming down the pike.

Southern Company is facing the music.

Last month, the whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2018 over Southern Company’s boondoggle Kemper Plant in Mississippi was unsealed.

It took 5 years for the big reveal, but the chickens have come home to roost.

Insiders and officials say that more federal probes are in the works, confirming what we wrote last month: “The Southern Company Criminal Enterprise is being held accountable, and the investigations currently underway are deep, massive in nature, and slowly coming together.“

Matrix, Balch & Bingham, Alabama Power, and their goons appear to be in the middle of this firestorm.

The long-ago Newsome Conspiracy Case, from a decade ago, ended with a $242,000 judgment against Burt Newsome, but cost Balch & Bingham between $40 and $100 million in clients and fees in the aggregate.

Now Balch’s sister-wife, Southern Company maybe on the hook for billions in fines, liabilities, and regulatory settlements for, in part, partaking in the foolish criminal acts against Newsome and his family that had no corporate purpose whatsoever.

We now ask Southern Company the same question we asked Balch: Have you lost your minds?

The $318,000 spent by Southern Company in the summer of 2020 was to pay multiple stooges to allegedly attack and impede the individual and Civil Rights of the Hispanic Family of K.B. Forbes, our Chief Executive Officer, who is the son of a Latino immigrant, in an orchestrated campaign of fear and intimidation.

The start of that Southern Company campaign was to hire rabble-rouser Carlos M. Chaverst, Jr., to attack Forbes and allegedly create a race war between African Americans and Hispanics.

Chaverst, a well-known activist who is allegedly racist and anti-cop, shot the first salvo in the Southern Company campaign that utterly backfired.

On July 2, 2020, Chaverst posted a Facebook Live video where he called Forbes a “racist white man” and WYPIPO, while using other, more graphic vulgarities in a now deleted profile.

That summer, Chaverst was arrested by three different law enforcement agencies for numerous outstanding warrants and alleged criminal acts, including inciting a riot.

Shortly thereafter, in the winter of 2021, Chaverst allegedly relocated to Colorado, where toking marijuana is legal, and launched a media production platform.

Now, this week, Chaverst reappeared in Birmingham, as “a public relations representative for Rep. John Rogers” who has been indicted for obstruction and bribery.

Alabama Media Group (AL.com) reports:

A federal grand jury in September charged Rogers, D-Birmingham, with obstruction of justice and obstruction of justice by bribery, alleging that he offered public money to the founder of a nonprofit in exchange for the founder lying to the FBI about a kickback scheme involving public tax dollars.

AL.com also published the photo (above, on top of this post) with this caption:

Carlos Chaverst (left), a public relations representative for Rep. John Rogers, and Varrie Johnson Kindall (right), who has also been indicted in the same case as Rogers, leaving the federal courthouse after Rogers’ hearing on Oct. 30. (Hannah Denham / hdenham@al.com)AL.com

Southern Company has paid millions to Joe Perkins and his affiliated entities including Matrix, LLC.

Matrix, LLC, in turn paid obscure entities, envelope journalists, and individuals to allegedly conduct surveillance operations, viciously harass minorities, and smear perceived enemies, like K.B. Forbes, Burt Newsome and their families.

The Forbes family, which was targeted and harassed by Southern Company, was forced to flee their home in Birmingham, and arrived abruptly that summer of 2020 to Mexico.

Even the FBI, usually tight lipped, wrote they were “glad” Forbes and his family were safe in Mexico, after Burt Newsome was nearly killed in a head-on collision.

With the shooting of a .22 caliber projectile into the rear bedroom window of Forbes’ home this past September, law enforcement is well aware of Chaverst and his past involvement in Southern Company’s campaign of fear and intimidation against the Forbes family.

Chaverst has repeatedly attacked and allegedly smeared law enforcement agencies since 2018. He also is affiliated with Frank Matthews, a Southern Company stooge and antisemite booster, who was paid thousands of dollars to allegedly attack the CDLU and publicize a smear website against Newsome and Forbes paid for by Southern Company.

Chaverst appears to be no friend of law and order, and allegedly sold his “public relations” efforts for 30 pieces of silver to Southern Company goons in the summer of 2020.

Ironically, Alabama Power, a Southern Company subsidiary, donated $6,000 directly to indicted politician John Rogers and thousands more through affiliated political action committees.

And here comes Carlos as his mouthpiece, direct from Colorado, where marijuana, the burning weed with its roots in hell, is legal.

Southern Company should be coughing and choking from the smell and smoke of that thick doobie!

A headline story in Law.com rocked the legal community in 2021. A respected law firm came under fire for conducting illegal surveillance and video recording of a woman and her family. Law.com reported:

The long-lived, knotty personal injury case that … ultimately settled for $11 million has spun off yet more litigation, with a new complaint accusing Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, American Family Insurance and a local private investigation company of illegally surveilling and video-recording the plaintiff and her family.

Fittingly, the new complaint seeks big money: more than $13.1 billion and change in punitive damages. Plus attorney fees.  

The allegations in the Baker lawsuit are minimal compared to the illegal surveillance, alleged criminal acts, and campaign of fear and intimidation orchestrated by Southern Company and their paid stooges against us, the CDLU, the Newsome Family, and the Forbes Family.

In June, Southern Company admitted that they paid for and conducted a surveillance effort against their Chairman Tom Fanning and his then-girlfriend in 2017.

The company foolishly told The Wall Street Journal that they did not know who authorized the surveillance effort or for what purpose.

Like AmFam, Southern Company apparently targeted young children.

Southern Company paid a vendor to target and harass the Newsome Family, including Newsome’s four young children.

Jeff Peoples, Chief Executive Officer at Alabama Power, signed off on an “extra work authorization” in 2018 paying obscure political consultant “Sloppy” Joe Perkins an additional $39,300 on top of the secret multi-million-dollar annual contracts his firms received.

And what was the $39,300 allegedly for? For “transportation organization management” according to the document, but a blatant lie, Southern Company insiders confirmed.

Besides sending a threatening package of travel bags and outfits, Southern Company stooges conducted a surveillance effort against Newsome, his wife, and children.

The Newsomes were followed, spied on, and trailed throughout Birmingham, including to a point where Newsome’s wife saw her car broken into and windows smashed, in a targeted smash-and-run.

A Southern Company goon verbally abused Newsome’s wife at one point.

A stolen credit card obtained from the break in of Newsome’s wife car was used in the purchase of the travel bags and outfits.

Zeke Smith, Alabama Power Executive Vice President for External Affairs, authorized over $318,000 in expenditures during a seven-week period in the summer of 2020 in a campaign of fear and intimidation against the Newsome and the Forbes families, according to anonymously received documents.

K.B. Forbes, CDLU’s Chief Executive Officer, and his wife and two young daughters were targeted.

The campaign included surveillance and harassment efforts of the Forbes Family.

The terror and harassment included multiple phone calls to Forbes’ wife, one demanding to know her location, another asking if she was at home, and a third offering to “drop off a package.”

Foolishly, brain amputee Josh Moon, a disgraced former journalist and failed realtor, showed up at CDLU’s then-headquarters demanding information, and providing a false name and cell phone number one digit off from his real cell number (what an idiot!).

Moon and his colleagues at Alabama Political Reporter were paid $120,000 by Southern Company, that was authorized by Zeke Smith, to viciously attack and harass us, the CDLU, the Newsome family, and the Forbes family.

Moon apparently was surveilling our headquarters and allegedly drove in front of the Forbes household, where a pick-up truck matching his truck’s description was captured on security cameras.

A judge refused to dismiss the case against Baker Donelson in April of 2022 and it was resolved and settled in May of this year.

In the pleadings against Baker Donelson and AmFam, the complaint states:

[The] Baker Donelson Defendants and the AmFam Defendants hired, retained, paid, directed, instructed, and supervised the Martinelli Investigations Defendants in an unlawful investigation and unlawful surveillance of Plaintiff and subsequently ratified the criminal and tortious conduct….

One thing Southern Company unequivocally knows is that their executives (Crosswhite, Peoples, Smith, etc.) hired, retained, paid, directed, instructed, and supervised Matrix, Balch & Bingham, Joe Perkins, Mark White, and others to allegedly investigate, harass, intimidate, and engage in surveillance of Newsome, Forbes, and the CDLU.

Sources claim Newsome’s legal team is putting the final touches on a somewhat similar pleading, preparing to move ahead with a massive lawsuit against Southern Company, Matrix, LLC, and their other stooges, asking for similar damages.

Two years ago, after opening a new office in Austin, Balch predicted they would grow to 25 to 30 attorneys in the Lone Star State.

Balch crowed that they had seven lawyers in Houston in a news report published that June of 2021.

Now, today, Balch has been decimated and only three lawyers remain in Houston, with one of them actually based in Birmingham.

From seven to three.

Balch’s total number of attorneys in the Lone Star State is in the single digits, nowhere near 25 or 30.

What a humiliating debacle!

Cherry-picking the best of the best, Balch’s competitors appear to have ravaged the once prestigious law firm.

As we reported last week, Bradley picked up three of them: Balch’s Houston Office Managing Partner and two top minority attorneys who fled Balch’s Houston office earlier this summer.

Now we’ve learned that the fourth attorney to dump Balch in Houston was partner J. Eric Holland, who escaped to Duane Morris.

Duane Morris stated in a news release, “Our practice group continues to advance and prosper,” said Brian P. Kerwin, chair of Duane Morris’ Corporate Practice Group. “Eric’s background continues to bolster our fund formation capabilities, which is a powerhouse offering to our clients.”

Competitors appear to be advancing and prospering in Texas, while Balch is not.

Who else at Balch & Bingham is dusting off their resume? What carrots are being offered to other lawyers at Balch’s satellite offices?

The undisputed fact is that the North Birmingham Bribery Trial, the Newsome Conspiracy Case, the Elderly Exploitation Scandal, the Matrix Meltdown, and Southern Company’s “fear and intimidation” campaigns appear to have taken their toll and permanently damaged Balch & Bingham’s reputation.

They say everything is bigger in Texas, and indeed, Balch appears to be the biggest losers.