tagged w/ SPLC
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In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting and the ensuing media circus, a new beast has reared its ugly head – this time in the form of media disinformation and race-baiting reports threatening to propel America in the direction of a new race war.
On Saturday April 7th, journalist Michael Miller’s Miami New Times blog clumsily ran with a report entitled,“Armed Neo-Nazis Now Patrolling Sanford, Say They Are “Prepared” for Post-Trayvon Martin”.
The Miami New Times report claims that National Socialist Movement’s mascot, Jeff Schoep, dubbed “The Hollywood Nazi” because of his adherence to TV stereotypes, is leading armed Neo-Nazi patrols of Sanford, Florida to protect white residents from black violence. But there’s only one problem – it isn’t actually happening
Infowars.com contacted the Sanford Police Department on Sunday, looking for confirmation on the Miami News Times story, but according to the department’s office of public information, “We can confirm there have been no reports of any Neo-Nazi, or armed Neo-Nazi patrols in Sanford.”
The Miami New Times have since updated their article to retract their earlier reports of armed Neo-Nazi patrols in Sanford.
Where there are racial extremists, expect to find the Southern Poverty Law Center(SLPC) nearby. In this instance, the SPLC seemed to be perfectly synchronized with the release of the Miami New Times claims, running their own story touting this latest news, warning Florida residents that:
“The neo-Nazi, National Socialist Movement (NSM) has announced that it will be conducting patrols in Seminole County, Fla., to protect “local citizens from the area who are concerned for the safety of their families.” The group says it is prepared for “racial violence” in the Sanford area, where the Martin shooting occurred, and that is has been “contacted by dozens of local citizens” supposedly seeking protection…In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting and the ensuing media circus, a new beast... more
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aeiou
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added this
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11 months ago
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A new study by the Southern Poverty Law Center describes a big rise in hate groups across the country.
By its count, there are now more than 1,000 active extremist groups in the U.S. Experts say the largest increase comes from militias that consider the federal government their enemy.
Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the law center, has been studying hate groups for a long time. But Potok says even he was surprised when he started counting extremists for his annual report.
"We have absolutely explosive growth of these groups in 2009," Potok says. "And what we have now found is that that growth continued through 2010. We have a higher hate group count than we've ever had."
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization that tracks extremist movements, says there are three major reasons for the increase: the bad economy, the wide reach of the Internet and changing racial patterns in the country.
Experts say the most negative energy seems to be coming from people who think the federal government is conspiring to take away their freedom.
"It is not ... harmless in the sense that the patriot movement has produced a great deal of criminal violence," Potok says. "There were an enormous number of plots that came out of the patriot movement, particularly in the late 1990s, and we're beginning to see that again."
Jim Cavanaugh, a retired federal investigator at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, has built cases against a lot of extremists.
"You know, it's the challenge of American law enforcement to see through the smoke and try to get to the people who are really going to try to hurt somebody," Cavanaugh says.
In many cases, that means people at the fringes of organized groups who carry out plots on their own.
Take the police blotter in January, for instance.
That month, authorities arrested a neo-Nazi headed for the Southwest border. He was carrying a dozen homemade grenades. Police hauled in another man in Dearborn, Mich. They said he had a history of fighting with the federal government, long before he parked near a crowded mosque with explosives in his car.
The FBI and local authorities are still trying to find out who put a bomb on the parade route in Spokane, Wash., just in time for Martin Luther King Jr. day.
Cavanaugh says he thinks more people need to start talking about hate groups, because, he says, a movement gets stronger when it hides in the shadows.
The new SPLC report might help jump-start that discussion.A new study by the Southern Poverty Law Center describes a big rise in hate groups... more
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by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Arizona lawmakers are expected to introduce an “anchor baby” bill today that would deny birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Modeled after birthright citizenship legislation unveiled by the nativist coalition State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI) earlier this month, the measure is, unabashedly, part of a larger effort on the part of SLLI to challenge existing citizenship law in the United States.
Lawmakers from Georgia, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina have likewise committed to introducing citizenship bills at the state level, while legislators from Nebraska, Indiana, Colorado, Texas and others are determined to implement similarly controversial Arizona-style enforcement measures in their states.
In recent years, communities that implemented harsh anti-immigrant laws have experienced a number of economic and social repercussions which lawmakers continue to overlook in their determination to tighten enforcement. But as nativist policies bleed public coffers and anti-immigrant political speech incites new strains of ethnic violence, the stark consequences of such extremism are becoming harder and harder to ignore.
Devastating local economies
The legal costs of defending constitutionally questionable laws like SB 1070 ought to be obvious. Arizona, which has the rare luxury of drawing from a $3.6 million donor-endowed legal defense fund, spent upwards of $500,000 defending 1070 from legal challenges last year, and could, in the long-term, spend as much $10 million, according to New America Media’s Valeria Fernández.
Yet the think-tank Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)—a major supporter of anti-immigrant laws like SB 1070 and birthright citizenship bills—obstinately underplays the financial fall-out of such measures. Ira Mehlman, a national spokesperson for FAIR, reportedly told New America Media that “the costs of litigations pale in comparison to the cost of communities providing healthcare, education and welfare for undocumented immigrants and their citizen children.”
Considerable evidence suggests otherwise. The Brookings Institution, the Udall Center for Public Policy and former President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors have all concluded that immigrants contribute much more to their local economies (through taxes and spending) than they take out through social services (about $800,000 more).
Now, a new report by Southern Poverty Law Center (which, incidentally, has listed FAIR as a hate group since 2007) argues that anti-immigrant laws—not immigrants—have a greater track record of depressing local economies. Gebe Martinez at Campus Progress sums up what happened to five communities “that threw anti-immigration statutes onto their books without fully considering their impact.” He writes:
* Hazleton, Pennsylvania, the leader of the court fights for local immigration enforcement, is in the tank for at least $2.8 million with some estimates totaling $5 million as it defends its ordinance all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
* Riverside, New Jersey suffered a local economic downturn before the city rescinded its anti-immigrant ordinance and welcomed the return of immigrants.
* Farmers Branch, Texas, has spent nearly $4 million in legal fees and is expected to spend at least $5 million to defend its anti-immigration statute with no end in sight.
* Prince William County, Virginia dramatically scaled back a tough immigration statute after realizing the original version would cost millions to enforce and defend in court.
* Fremont, Nebraska, increased the city’s property tax to help pay the legal fees for its anti-immigration ordinance which it intends to defend.A
A spate of state-level birthright citizenship bills stands to be similarly costly, as the admitted goal of their sponsors is to force numerous court cases that challenge the conventional applications of the 14th amendment—legislation through litigation. But there are other expenses as well. If such legislation were to pass, government agencies would bear the incredibly costly burden of making citizenship determinations for every child born in the United States—a logistical nightmare that neither federal nor state governments are prepared to undertake.
Fueling ethnic violence
As economically devastating as these divisive measures can be, their social impact on communities is often even greater. Politicians bent on enacting anti-immigrant legislation frequently rely on hateful speech and pejorative language to foment public discontent and, in so doing, build citizen support for their measures—with tragic consequences.
Colorlines.com has repeatedly reported on the correlation between bigoted political speech, anti-immigrant legislation, and ethnic violence. Now, Mónica Novoa reports that a new study from the University of Maryland corroborates the connection. Charting the use of anti-immigrant slurs in newspapers and wire services over the last three decades, the study revealed that “a spike in usage of the dehumanizing slurs usually coincided with contentious immigration policy proposals.”
The correlation persists despite the fact that more than 15 years ago, four professional journalism associations—National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Asian American Journalists Association, Native American Journalists Association and National Association of Black Journalists—advised their members to stop using the phrase “illegal alien” on the grounds that is is “pejorative,” “grammatically incorrect and crosses the line by criminalizing the person, not the action they are purported to have committed.”
While incendiary rhetoric may be an effective way of garnering political support for controversial measures, it all too often fuels violence. Going back to New America Media, Fernández notes that this destructive cycle frequently makes for tragic consequences, as in the case of a 9-year-old girl who was allegedly murdered by members the Minuteman Project, an armed, volunteer border patrol organization. The Latino advocacy organization Cuentame, in partnership with Brave New Films, similarly emphasizes the link between hate speech and increasing incidents of hate crimes against Latinos:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cFuYJwW1s[/youtube]
Anti-birthright citizenship bills would effectively create an underclass of mostly Hispanic non-citizens. It’s an almost certain catalyst for rampant and systemic anti-immigrant discrimination and ethnic violence. As the anti-immigrant lawmakers from Arizona and elsewhere make good on their promises to push a new, more fervent, onslaught of anti-immigrant legislation in 2011, expect the financial and social costs of such extremism to rise further still.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulseby Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Arizona lawmakers are expected... more
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While I find alot of what the FRC says repugnant and at times ignorant, I support their right to say whatever they want, but I do draw the line when they advocate the government implement their social conservative policies. As for the SPLC, as I have said many times, the SPLC is a hate group masquerading as a civil rights group. I support free speech and freedom of association, the SPLC is firmly against both. They should be renamed the Statism Protection Law Center since they constantly demonize individuals and groups that legitimately oppose the status quo and legitimately undermine confidence in government. We must and can call out the racists and collectivist groups like the KKK but we must allow them to spew their hatred because that is what a free society is all about. Support freedom of speech, not silencing dissent as the SPLC has attempted to do.While I find alot of what the FRC says repugnant and at times ignorant, I support... more
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when white citizens of Selma founded a private segregated academy three months after the celebrated voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., they meant to send a message of militant defiance by christening it the John Tyler Morgan Academy.
First housed in Morgan's former residence in Selma's historic Old Town district, the private academy relocated in 1968 to its present location on a well-appointed, 29-acre campus in West Selma. Every year since 1965, its student body population has included not a single black student from a community of 20,000 that is 70% black.
Every year, that is, until this year.
Last May, the Morgan Academy admitted a 5-year-old black girl into its kindergarten class, marking another milestone in the slow and unsteady progress of the city that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once called the most segregated in America. To this day Selma remains a hotbed of neo-Confederate activity and racial tensions.
Two weeks after word spread that Morgan had effectively been desegregated, the school's board of directors held a regularly scheduled open meeting. "You could feel the anger in the room," said the father of the kindergartener, Sean Black, who attended with his wife Tylia. "No one said the word 'segregation' or mentioned my daughter by name. Instead they were all talking about 'this thing that happened two weeks ago.' They were asking questions like, 'What about our traditions? What about our heritage?'"
Black and his wife are newcomers to Selma. Challenging their new home's worst traditions is what led them to move there last year. They did not come alone. In all, 44 adult members of the Freedom Foundation, a faith-based, non-profit charity that was based in Colorado, have relocated to Selma in the last year-and-a-half, along with 16 of their children.
Like the civil rights activists of the 1960s, the members of the Freedom Foundation claim to be answering what Martin Luther King Jr. termed "a call of conscience" to promote racial harmony and social justice in the Deep South. Also like those activists, their presence is generating hostility and resentment among old-school racists who don't appreciate their meddling.
White supremacist organizations are paying increasing attention to the Freedom Foundation's controversial efforts. History is repeating itself in Selma. Even the epithets are the same: Troublemakers. Outside agitators. Nigger lovers.when white citizens of Selma founded a private segregated academy three months after... more
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