[Vision2020] Harper's Magazine Exposes SPLC as a Fraud
John Harrell
johnbharrell@yahoo.com
Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:17:10 -0800 (PST)
Is this the Harper's Magazine article that exposes the SPLC as a
fraud and a money-grubbing machine?
Just that simple!
By Ken Silverstein -- Harper's Magazine, November 2000
How the Southern Poverty Law Center profits from intolerance
Ah, tolerance. Who could be against something so virtuous? And who could object to the
Southern Poverty
Law Center, the Montgomery, Alabama-based group that recently sent out this heartwarming
yet mildly
terrifying appeal to raise money for its "Teaching Tolerance" program, which prepares
educational kits for
schoolteachers? Cofounded in 1971 by civil rights lawyer cum direct-marketing millionaire
Morris Dees, a
leading critic of "hate groups" and a man so beatific that he was the subject of a
made-for-TV movie, the
SPLC spent much of its early years defending prisoners who faced the death penalty and
suing to
desegregate all-white institutions like Alabama's highway patrol. That was then.
Today, the SPLC spends most of its time--and money--on a relentless fund-raising
campaign, peddling
memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the
collection plate. "He's
the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the civil rights movement," renowned anti- death-penalty
lawyer Millard
Farmer says of Dees, his former associate, "though I don!t mean to malign Jim and Tammy
Faye." The
Center earned $44 million last year alone--$27 million from fund-raising and $17 million
from stocks and
other investments--but spent only $13 million on civil rights program , making it one of
the most profitable
charities in the country.
The Ku Klux Klan, the SPLC's most lucrative nemesis, has shrunk from 4 million members in
the 1920s to
an estimated 2,000 today, as many as 10 percent of whom are thought to be FBI informants
<http://www.servtech.com/~grugyn/kkk-5.htm> . But news of a declining Klan does not make
for inclining
donations to Morris Dees and Co., which is why the SPLC honors nearly every nationally
covered "hate
crime" with direct-mail alarums full of nightmarish invocations of "armed Klan
paramilitary forces" and "violent
neo-Nazi extremists," and why Dees does legal battle almost exclusively with mediagenic
villains-like
Idaho's arch-Aryan Richard Butler-eager to show off their swastikas for the news cameras.
In 1987, Dees won a $7 million judgment against the United Klans of America on behalf of
Beulah Mae
Donald, whose son was lynched by two Klansmen. The UKA's total assets amounted to a
warehouse whose
sale netted Mrs. Donald $51,875. According to a groundbreaking series of newspaper
stories in the
Montgomery Advertiser, the SPLC, meanwhile, made $9 million from fund-raising
solicitations featuring the
case, including one containing a photo of Michael Donald's corpse.
Horrifying as such incidents are, hate groups commit almost no violence. More than 95
percent of all "hate
crimes," including most of the incidents SPLC letters cite (bombings, church burnings,
school shootings),
are perpetrated by "lone wolves." Even Timothy McVeigh, subject of one of the most
extensive investigations
in the FBI's history-and one of the most extensive direct-mail campaigns in the
SPLC's-was never credibly
linked to any militia organization.
No faith healing or infomercial would be complete without a moving testimonial. The
student from whose
tears this white schoolteacher learned her lesson is identified only as a child of color.
"Which race," we are
assured, "does not matter." Nor apparently does the specific nature of "the racist acts
directed at him," nor
the race of his schoolyard tormentors. All that matters, in fact, is the race of the
teacher and those expiating
tears. "I wept with him, feeling for once, the depth of his hurt," she confides. "His
tears washed away the film
that had distorted my white perspective of the world." Scales fallen from her eyes, what
action does this
schoolteacher propose? What Gandhi-like disobedience will she undertake in order to
"reach real peace in
the world"? She doesn't say but instead speaks vaguely of acting out against "the pain."
In the age of Oprah
and Clinton, empathy--or the confession thereof--is an end in itself.
Any good salesman knows that a products "value" is a highly mutable quality with little
relation to actual
worth, and Morris Dees-who made millions hawking, by direct mail, such humble commodities
as birthday
cakes, cookbooks (including Favorite Recipes of American Home Economics Teachers),
tractor seat
cushions, rat poison, and, in exchange for a mailing list containing 700,000 names,
presidential candidate
George McGovern-is nothing if not a good salesman. So good in fact that in 1998 the
Direct Marketing
Association inducted him into its Hall of Fame. "I learned everything I know about
hustling from the Baptist
Church," Dees has said. "Spending Sundays on those hard benches listening to the preacher
pitch
salvation-why, it was like getting a Ph.D. in selling." Here, Dr. Dees (the letter's
nominal author) masterfully
transforms, with a mere flourish of hyperbole, an education kit available "at cost" for
$30 on the SPLC
website into "a $325 value."
This is one of the only places in this letter where specific races are mentioned.
Elsewhere, Dees and his
copywriters, deploying an arsenal of passive verbs and vague abstractions, have sanitized
the usually
divisive issue of race of its more disturbing elements-such as angry black people-and for
good reason: most
SPLC donors are white. Thus, instead of concrete civil rights issues like housing
discrimination and racial
profiling, we get "communities seething with racial violence." Instead of racially biased
federal sentencing
laws, or the disparity between poor predominantly black schools and affluent white ones,
or the violence
against illegals along the Mexican border, the SPLC gives us "intolerance against those
who are different,"
turning bigotry into a color-blind, equal-opportunity sin. It's reassuring to know that
"Caucasians" are no
more and no less guilty of this sin than African Americans, Asian Americans, Native
Americans, and
Hispanics. In the eyes of Morris ! Dees, we're all sinners, all victims, and all
potential contributors.
Morris Dees doesn't need your financial support. The SPLC is already the wealthiest civil
rights group in
America, though this letter quite naturally omits that fact. Other solicitations have
been more flagrantly
misleading. One pitch, sent out in 1995-when the Center had more than $60 million in
reserves-informed
would-be donors that the "strain on our current operating budget is the greatest in our
25-year history." Back
in 1978, when the Center had less than $10 million, Dees promised that his organization
would quit
fund-raising and live off interest as soon as its endowment hit $55 million. But as it
approached that figure,
the SPLC upped the bar to $100 million, a sum that, one 1989 newsletter promised, would
allow the Center
"to cease the costly and often unreliable task of fund raising. " Today, the SPLC's
treasury bulges with $120
million, and it spends twice as much on fund-raising-$5.76 million last year-as it does
on legal services for
victims of civil rights ! abuses. The American Institute of Philanthropy gives the Center
one of the worst
ratings of any group it monitors, estimating that the SPLC could operate for 4.6 years
without making
another tax-exempt nickel from its investments or raising another tax-deductible cent
from well-meaning
"people like you."
The SPLC's "other important work justice" consists mainly in spying on private citizens
who belong to "hate
groups," sharing its files with law-enforcement agencies, and suing the most prominent of
these groups for
crimes committed independently by their members-a practice that, however seemingly
justified, should give
civil libertarians pause. The legal strategy employed by Dees could have put the Black
Panther Party out of
business or bankrupted the New England Emigrant Aid Company in retaliation for crimes
committed by John
Brown. What the Center's other work for justice does not include is anything that might
be considered
controversial by donors. According to Millard Farmer, the Center largely stopped taking
death-penalty cases
for fear that too visible an opposition to capital punishment would scare off potential
contributors. In 1986,
the Center's entire legal staff quit in protest of Dees's refusal to address issues-such
as homelessness,
voter registration, and af! firmative action-that they considered far more pertinent to
poor minorities, if far less
marketable to affluent benefactors, than fighting the KKK. Another lawyer, Gloria Browne,
who resigned a
few years later, told reporters that the Center's programs were calculated to cash in on
"black pain and white
guilt." Asked in 1994 if the SPLC itself, whose leadership consists almost entirely of
white men, was in need
of an affirmative action policy, Dees replied that "probably the most discriminated
people in America today
are white men when it comes to jobs."
Contributors to Teaching Tolerance might be surprised to learn how little of the SPLC's
reported educational
spending actually goes to education. In response to lobbying by charities, the American
Institute of Certified
Public Accountants in 1987 began allowing nonprofits to count part of their fundraising
costs as
"educational" so long as their solicitations contained an informational component. On
average, the SPLC
classifies an estimated 47 percent of the fund-raising letters that it sends out every
year as educational,
including many that do little more than instruct potential donors on the many evils of
"militant right-wing
extremists" and the many splendid virtues of Morris Dees. According to tax documents, of
the $10. 8 million
in educational spending the SPLC reported in 1999, $4 million went to solicitations.
Another $2.4 million
paid for stamps.
In the early 1960s, Morris Dees sat on the sidelines honing his direct-marketing skills
and practicing law
while the civil rights movement engulfed the South.
"Morris and I...shared the overriding purpose of making a pile of money," recalls Dees's
business
partner, a lawyer named Millard Fuller (not to be confused with Millard Farmer). "We were
not
particular about how we did it; we just wanted to be independently rich."
They were so unparticular, in fact, that in 1961 they defended a man, guilty of beating
up a journalist
covering the Freedom Riders, whose legal fees were paid by the Klan. ("I felt the anger
of a black person for
the first time," Dees later wrote of the case. "I vowed then and there that nobody would
ever again doubt
where I stood.") In 1965, Fuller sold out to Dees, donated the money to charity, and
later started Habitat for
Humanity. Dees bought a 200-acre estate appointed with tennis courts, a pool, and
stables, and, in 1971,
founded the SPLC, where his compensation has risen in proportion to fund-raising
revenues, from nothing in
the early seventies to $273,000 last year. A National Journal survey of salaries paid to
the top officers of
advocacy groups shows that Dees earned more in 1998 than nearly all of the seventy-eight
listed, tens of
thousands more than the heads of such groups as the ACLU, the NAACP Legal Defense and
Education! al
Fund, and the Children's Defense Fund. The more money the SPLC receives, the less that
goes to other civil
rights organizations, many of which, including the NAACP, have struggled to stay out of
bankruptcy. Dees's
compensation alone amounts to one quarter the annual budget of the Atlanta-based Southern
Center for
Human Rights, which handles several dozen death-penalty cases a year. "You are a fraud
and a conman,"
the Southern Center's director, Stephen Bright, wrote in a 1996 letter to Dees, and
proceeded to list his
many reasons for thinking so, which included "your failure to respond to the most
desperate needs of the
poor and powerless despite your millions upon millions, your fund-raising techniques, the
fact that you
spend so much, accomplish so little, and promote yourself so shamelessly." Soon the SPLC
will move into
a new six-story headquarters in downtown Montgomery, just across the street from its
current headquarters,
a building known locally as the Poverty Palace
--- amy smoucha <asmoucha@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hmm. Anyone who relies on the link below about Dees should take another
> step and examine the website where it is posted www.patriotist.com . Be
> sure to scroll down to the column titled "The Outraged Negro Gambit," and
> peruse some of the other enlightening links. The article on "cultural
> genocide" (That's where southern, white, confederate peoples are being
> violated when the confederate flag is not allowed as a symbol in public
> places, for those of you who wonder.)
>
> Thanks, Deacon, for demonstrating to us exactly who discredits Morris Dees,
> with a little insight into why.
>
> Amy Smoucha
>
>
> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: "Deacon James" <ddjames@moscow.com>
> To: <vision2020@moscow.com>
> Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Journalistic integrity
> Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 11:07:08 -0800
>
> Tom,
>
> You seem to know a good bit about the situation. Here is my question. How
> does the Southern Poverty Law Center make their money and earn recognition
> as one of the most profitable non-profit organizations in the U.S.? (Here's
> a hint: http://www.patriotist.com/dees.htm)
>
> Deacon
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vision2020-admin@moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-admin@moscow.com]On
> Behalf Of Thomas Hansen
> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 10:38 AM
> To: vision2020@moscow.com
> Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Journalistic integrity
>
>
> Simple: Follow the links. Wilson to Wilkins to the League of the South.
> The Southern Poverty Law Center has exposed the League of the South to be
> white supremacist in nature. Or are they lying, too?
>
> It is truly that simple.
>
> Tom Hansen
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bill london [mailto:london@moscow.com]
> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 10:25 AM
> To: Douglas
> Cc: vision2020@moscow.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Journalistic integrity
>
>
> I am not representing the Daily News, but I think it is clear that
> Doug Wilson and his various buddies are trying to kill the messenger
> since they really do not enjoy the message.
> The message is that Doug has been exposed as clearly and directly
> supporting the abhorrent practice of human slavery. Wilson has lately
> been stepping carefully away from what he co-wrote in that booklet
> ("Southern Slavery: As It Was"). He now says he really meant that
> slavery should have been ended without the Civil War, but the book is
> quite obvious. Wilson said that human slavery was justified in the
> Bible and justified historically by the wonderfully humane system of
> slavery developed in the South. Wilson has been exposed writing
> blatantly untrue assessments about the nature of Southern slavery (ask
> any historian).
> Since Wilson is worried about this message getting out, he is
> sending out the troops to attack the Daily News as the messenger.
> The topic of Wilson's February conference is "Revolution and
> Modernity." However, it is accurate for the Daily News to indicate
> that a discussion of Southern slavery will be incorporated into the
> conference. Wilson and his co-author (Steve Wilkins) from the slavery
> book are both featured speakers. In previous years, these annual
> conferences sponsored by Wilson's church have included discussions of
> slavery whatever the stated focus of that year's conference. Wilson
> acknowledged that he expected the topic of slavery to arise at the
> February conference as well.
> I thought the Daily News article was more than fair to Wilson,
> giving him plenty of space to define his views.
> Looking back at the published article, I was amused to read again
> the subtitle: "Debate, emotions already stirred as preface to February
> conference at UI." Yup, that about sums it up.
> BL
>
> Douglas wrote:
>
> > Visionaries,
> >
> > Ambrose Bierce once defined ink as a "villainous compound of
> > tanno-gallate of iron, gum-arabic and water, chiefly used to
> > facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime."
> >
> > On Friday, The Idaho Statesman picked up the article which had
> > previously run in the Daily News. They ran it with this by-line: "Pair
> > to give their "biblical" defense of practice at U of I conference."
> >
> > 1. The conference is not on slavery. Never has been. The Daily News
> > really needs to quit relying on anonymous flyers as part of their
> > crackerjack reporting team. The savings in payroll are not really
> > worth the embarrassment.
> > 2. No, we are not going to give a defense of slavery at the conference.
> > 3. It is not a U of I conference.
> > 4. Having shouted their error on the front page, the Daily News had
> > whispered a teeny correction later on. The Statesman must have missed
> > it somehow.
> >
> > I would like to ask Nathan Alford to respond, or someone at the Daily
> > News. Who is responsible for misrepresenting our history conference in
> > this egregious way? What are you going to do about it?
> >
> > Cordially,
> >
> > Douglas Wilson
> >
> > _____________________________________________________
> > List services made available by First Step Internet, serving the
> > communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> > http://www.fsr.net
> > mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com
> > ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ
> >
> > .
> >
>
> _____________________________________________________
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
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>
> _____________________________________________________
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
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> mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com
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>
> _____________________________________________________
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> http://www.fsr.net
> mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com
> ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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> _____________________________________________________
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> http://www.fsr.net
> mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com
> ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ
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