Church Program Honors Southern Poverty Law Center (tags)
Though the guest of honor, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) director Morris Dees, didn't show up — his mother-in-law was terminally ill and he canceled with less than a day’s notice — the September 22 program honoring the Center went on anyway, with the group’s president, Richard Cohen, the main attraction. Cohen and other SPLC staff members discussed the group’s history, its spectacular lawsuits holding the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist organizations responsible for the deaths of people of color, and the links between the ultra-radical Right and the supposedly “respectable” Tea Party.
Since the September 11th attacks, racist groups have gained increasing size and political power.