From the overnight news digest, here
Barely three weeks since America elected its first black president, noose hangings, racist graffiti and death threats have struck dozens of towns across the country.
More than 200 such incidents -- including cross burnings, assassination betting pools and effigies of President-elect Barack Obama -- have been reported, according to law enforcement authorities and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.
Racist websites have been boasting that their servers have been crashing because of an exponential increase in traffic.
And America's most potent symbol of racial hatred, the Ku Klux Klan, is reasserting itself in a spate of recent violence, after decades of disorganization and obscurity.
For years I have been interested in, and willing to financially contribute to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The work they do in invaluable in reigning in the hate-filled groups that seem to permeate our society. Below I share some background on this group and what they do.
From the SPLC website
The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in 1971 as a small civil rights law firm. Today, SPLC is internationally known for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups.
Located in Montgomery, Alabama – the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement – the Southern Poverty Law Center was founded by Morris Dees and Joe Levin, two local lawyers who shared a commitment to racial equality. Its first president was civil rights activist Julian Bond.
Also from their website:
Throughout its history, SPLC has worked to make the nation's Constitutional ideals a reality. The SPLC legal department fights all forms of discrimination and works to protect society's most vulnerable members, handling innovative cases that few lawyers are willing to take. Over three decades, it has achieved significant legal victories, including landmark Supreme Court decisions and crushing jury verdicts against hate groups.
In 1981, the Southern Poverty Law Center began investigating hate activity in response to a resurgence of groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Today the SPLC Intelligence Project monitors hate groups and tracks extremist activity throughout the U.S. It provides comprehensive updates to law enforcement, the media and the public through its quarterly magazine, Intelligence Report. Staff members regularly conduct training sessions for police, schools, and civil rights and community groups, and they often serve as experts at hearings and conferences.
As the overnight news digest pointed out in their clip from the Chicago Tribune hate incidents are increasing since the election of Barack Obama. The Southern Poverty Law Center is on the scene, thankfully. They put out a newsletter called Hatewatch
and the following is noted:
With the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate clinched, large sections of the white supremacist movement are adopting a surprising attitude: Electing America’s first black president would be a very good thing.
It’s not that the assortment of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites and others who make up this country’s radical right have suddenly discovered that a man should be judged based on the content of his character, not his skin. On the contrary. A growing number of white supremacists, and even some of those who pass for intellectual leaders of their movement, think that a black man in the Oval Office would shock white America, possibly drive millions to their cause, and perhaps even set off a race war that, they hope, would ultimately end in Aryan victory.
"He will make things so bad for white people that hopefully they will finally realize how stupid they were for admiring these jigaboos all these years," "Darthvader" wrote on the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network web forum. "I believe in the motto ‘Worse is Better’ and Obama certainly fits that description." Just last week, another poster on the same thread chimed in with this: "I hope Obama wins because in four years, white people just might be pissed off enough to actually do something. ... White people aren’t going to do a thing until their toys are taken away from them. So things have to be worse for things to be better."
In a later edition of the same newsletter I read the following:
"My fellow patriots, constitutionalists and citizens of the failing Republic, HELL is staring you in the eyeballs," said Greg Evensen, a militia sympathizer and former Kansas state trooper whose essays and radio broadcasts are widely disseminated on apocalyptic Christian and militia websites, as well as the nominally mainstream right-wing Web forum NewsWithViews.
"We will no longer argue amicably about politics," Evensen said. "Those of you who have anointed this socialist, Muslim sympathizing, gun rights hating, Mexican illegals embracing, abortion loving charmer POTUS [President of the United States] ... I see you as my enemy. Am I picking a fight? Pretty much. Might as well, one’s coming down the street anyway. You have been warned."
It is my profound belief that the hatefilled Christianist Right and other hate groups cannot be tolerated. I further believe that the SPLC is correct in their assessment of the situation as it is now. Please do whatever you can to help. If you can give a few bucks to them, please do. Here's something we can all do whether we can donate to them or not.
We can stand strong against hate here. Once you sign up to stand strong against hate, you will be advised of the number of people in your area who have signed up.
I urge The Daily Kos Community to follow the link and sign up. It's easy, it's free and if you click the box to receive emails from the SPLC they will keep you informed about what is happening on the dark side of hate now.
For those of you who have the time (and the stomach) to watch this video please do so. On a happier note, the day after this video was made a 2.5 million dollar judgement was placed against this group.
For those of you able to contribute you can do it through their website here.