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Less than two weeks
after the Buffalo News broke the story that the Aryan Nations had
moved a few hours south of Buffalo, civil rights attorney Morris Dees
spoke to a packed house at Canisius College’s Montante Cultural Center.
Introduced by Canisius alumna Sandy White as a “Champion of Justice”,
Dees was a featured speaker for the Canisius College Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. Celebration.
Morris Dees,
co-founder and chief counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center, is
perhaps best known for his groundbreaking multimillion dollar lawsuits
against White supremacist groups—including the Aryan Nations. In fact, it
was a civil lawsuit brought by Dees and the Center that stripped the Aryan
Nations of their assets including the Idaho compound where they once were
headquartered and sent them in search of a new home.
The evening was a
study of the contrast between two versions of America. One, a nation of
bigotry and hate is propounded by groups such as the Aryan Nations, and
the other, a nation made great by the contribution of all kinds of people
is envisioned by civil rights activists such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther
King Jr., and Dees himself. At the beginning of his talk, he asked, “Whose
America is this? Whose version will prevail?”
As an example of this
contrast, Dees used the closing arguments in the $12.5 civil suit against
Tom Metzger and the White Aryan Resistance. The SPLC sued the group for
inciting the violence that killed an Ethiopian immigrant in Portland,
Oregon. The group’s literature stated that America would fall unless it
gets the “mud people” out of their midst. To this end, the group worked
to create racial turmoil in order to start a race war.
In his closing
argument, Tom Metzger, representing himself, stated that America is a
great nation because of White people. Dees countered by offering a
picture of what the America of Metger’s vision would be like. There would
be, for example no Jonas Salk, or no Colin Powell. (If he were arguing
this case today, he said, he would have mentioned the contributions of
Arab-Americans such as Marlo and Danny Thomas and Ralph Nader.) He
concluded, “Our nation is great because of its diversity, not in spite of
it.”
Flying back home
after the trial, Dees said he was thinking about the meaning of the case
and why, so many years after the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, we can’t
get along. There has actually been an increase in hate crimes (even given
the fact that they tend to be underreported), an increase in hate groups,
and a proliferation of websites promoting hate. But, he said, surveying
the country as a whole there is good news: “These people do not represent
us.”
The Southern Poverty
Law Center was founded in 1971 in response to the backlash against the
great strides made by civil rights movement of the 1960’s. There was a
need to make sure hate groups did not undermine these gains. The center
continues to monitor hate groups and publishes Intelligence Report
to report on their activities.
Although the
non-profit group may best be known for its lawsuits involving civil rights
violations and racially motivated crime, equally important to its mission
is the work the center does to promote tolerance, or in the words of Dees,
“to build bridges across the divide.” Building these bridges, he says,
“takes love, mercy, and forgiveness. Not the love we have for family,
associates, and friends, but appreciating people who are different from
us.
This tolerance is
what is necessary in order to build the America envisioned by King in his
“I Have A Dream” speech. The America where “the poor and the powerful sit
around the table of personhood” and, in the words of the prophet Amos,
“justice rolls down like a mighty flood.” This is the America in which
hate groups cannot flourish, but will whither and die.
As for our new
neighbors to the south, Dees reminded us that they have been stripped of
their assets, there is a peace park in the place where their compound once
was, and they are virtually without followers. Rather than working to
counter them directly, we must work together to build the kind of
community where the seeds of hate are planted on inhospitable soil.
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