Southern Poverty Law Center building trust in a time of hate and extremism

SALISBURY, Conn. — Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Ala., told a Salisbury Forum audience that extremist and hate groups are alive and well in the United States. He spoke at The Hotchkiss School on Friday evening, April 19.Cohen began by noting that April 19 is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and asked if circumstances today might make another event likely.He then noted the Boston Marathon bombing four days earlier, but did not draw any conclusions.Cohen went through some of the accomplishments of the SPLC, which was “trying to make the civil rights acts of the 1960s a reality” when founded in 1971 by attorneys Morris Dees and Joseph Levin.Images of the era were displayed on the big screen in Walker Auditorium as Cohen spoke. The images included Alabama Gov. George Wallace standing in the door of a school to prevent integration and of people being beaten by police during the famous Selma to Montgomery march in March 1965.Keeping the momentum going was important to the founders of SPLC. “The problem was the day after the march, people went home,” said Cohen. “The civil rights acts weren’t self-executing. It took determined advocates to make the promise a reality.”Cohen said the work of the SPLC includes advocating on behalf of injured workers; for veterans denied benefits because of their sexual orientation; for children “pushed out of the school system and into the criminal justice system for minor offenses.”The SPLC has successfully sued extremist organizations, effectively putting them out of business. In 1987, the organization won a $7 million judgment against the United Klans of America (UKA) for the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald, a young black man, in Mobile, Ala., by two Klan members.“We knew there would always be another foot soldier,” said Cohen. So instead of going after the rank and file, the tactic was to pursue the leadership as a way of breaking the UKA.“We won a $7 million verdict from an all-white jury in Mobile,” said Cohen. “The Klan didn’t have $7 million, but they did have a facility with a printing press.”And in those pre-Internet days, seizing the printing press effectively ended the UKA’s ability to spread its message.Today, of course, the Internet makes it easy to publicize extreme views, he added.The SPLC has successfully sued other Klan outfits and other extremist groups, such as the Aryan Nations.“I’d like to tell you these victories ended it,” Cohen said.But extremism is alive and well — and not just in the South and West.“This area has its fair share,” he said, meaning the Northeast.Cohen said the number of hate groups has grown steadily in the last 12 years, with 600 in 2000 and more than 1,000 in 2012. He said the groups’ appeal comes in part from “globalization of the economy, the dislocation of the labor market here.”He said population changes have also contributed. “Our analysis suggests the most important factor is the changing demographic,” with white people projected to be in the minority by 2050.Cohen said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation identifies between 6,000 and 10,000 hate crimes per year in recent years, but added that he believed the actual number to be far greater, as much as 250,000 per year.He said inconsistent reporting makes the statistics unreliable. “In 2011 there were 140 hate crimes in Connecticut, and in Mississippi only one. How can this be?“Hate crime reporting is voluntary,” he continued. “Many jurisdictions don’t participate, or report zero.”Sexual orientation is also emerging as a focus of extremist activity, Cohen said. “LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] people are eight times more likely to be victims than their numbers would suggest.”He said that in the post-9/11 era, Muslims have been targeted, and cited the 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee, Wisc., (six dead, four wounded) by a gunman who thought Sikhs were Muslims.Alluding to the Boston Marathon bombings, Cohen said the culprits “appear to be Muslim.”“I hope that we make the distinction that President Bush made and not claim we are at war with an entire religion.”Cohen said President Obama “is for many people a symbol of what’s gone wrong.”He said the amount of anti-black hate groups and rhetoric rose sharply after Obama’s election in 2008.With the economy souring, “the only people out there happy about misery are white supremacists.”Cohen said there “are not hundreds and thousands joining the National Socialists.”But “some have joined the ranks of the tea party.”Cohen said he was not suggesting that tea party groups are extremists. “There are a lot of reasons to be mad at the government. But there are deeply racist and conspiratorial elements in the tea party.”He said that “racist conspiracy theories are not just on the lunatic fringe,” and cited Glenn Beck as an example of a mainstream media figure promoting such theories.He also singled out prominent Republicans — Newt Gingrich and John Sununu — for remarks made during the 2012 presidential election.Of particular concern is the “sovereign citizens” movement — people who recognize no lawful authority. Cohen said their ideology is anti-Semitic, and such people believe they are in a fight with “ZOG” (Zionist-occuped government).The re-emergence of such rhetoric echoes the 1990s and the climate around the Oklahoma City bombing, he said.Cohen said that increasing diversity in neighborhoods and communities brings its own problems. He said studies show that as racial or ethnic diversity increases, mutual trust decreases.Cohen said his message is to emphasize “the importance of organizations [such as the SPLC] that bring people together to work in our communities to restore trust.”