The Reckoning of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center

March 25, 2019 11:14 AM

“Well, honey, welcome to the Poverty Palace,” she said. “I can guaran-damn-tee that you will never step foot in a more contradictory place as long as you live.” SLNY
posted by TheShadowKnows (34 comments total)

Thanks for this; I did not know much of the history, and certainly none of the internal conditions that obtained at SPLC under Dees. Ugh.
posted by salt grass at 11:44 AM on March 25, 2019 [5 favorites]

that article did not inform my hankering to know what went wrong at splc, nor did it present any "reckoning," as far as i could tell.

neither did washington post's report friday that, in addition to dee's departure, splc president richard cohen stepped down, as did legal director rhonda brownstein.
posted by 20 year lurk at 12:21 PM on March 25, 2019 [9 favorites]

Somebody I know has been doing poverty law across the USA for the past forty or so years, and she always rolled her eyes at Morris Dees. She didn't go into too much detail but said that he seemed more interested in self-promotion than the work. I didn't get it, but damn if this doesn't paint a pretty complete picture.
posted by entropone at 12:24 PM on March 25, 2019 [9 favorites]

For a hit piece, it's remarkably thin on specifics.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:30 PM on March 25, 2019 [5 favorites]

I recall the Ken Silverstein piece from Harper's mentioned in TFA . Here it is [PDF of a paywalled article].
posted by notyou at 12:57 PM on March 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

Well, I'm certainly in no position to comment on Dees or the culture within the SPLC. But it does seem that at the very least the "oppressive security regime" is kind of justifiable in a place that routinely draws the attention of violent extremists and has already been fire bombed once.
posted by Naberius at 1:06 PM on March 25, 2019 [17 favorites]

For a hit piece, it's remarkably thin on specifics.

It seems like the journalist's history with the SPLC added little to the article. We get to hear it was too white/straight 15 years ago (but they're investigating the situation now), and there were rumours of harassment (that nobody he asked would expand upon).

But then, considering whether to explain what an unsettling experience it could be, I’ll add, “It’s complicated, though,” and try to change the subject.

This could also describe the article itself.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 1:13 PM on March 25, 2019 [6 favorites]

I’m glad to see the chickens coming home to roost around internal abuses.

I do question his recurring referral to the whole thing as a scam though. There’s no question that their administrative overhead is high (although not that high) for a non-profit, but it’s also unquestionable that they have many people in the trenches doing very visible work.

As for timing, as a non-profit the last time you want to stop fund-raising is when people are inclined to give you a lot of money. Next year everyone will be donating to some other cause and you’ll be out in the cold.

So we have a money hungry organization with dodgy management that nevertheless manages to get some good works done. Catholics, basically. You can do worse.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:18 PM on March 25, 2019 [18 favorites]

I wish I could actually read the direct mail piece in the Silverstein link. Oh well.
posted by all about eevee at 1:21 PM on March 25, 2019

I wish I could actually read the direct mail piece in the Silverstein link

It's been re-posted in various places over the years, at least the greater part of it. Google "Church of Morris Dees". (Silverstein mentions the piece in his 2010 Harper's blog entry here.)

The Atlantic did a write up on their run-in with Maajid Nawaz.
posted by BWA at 2:17 PM on March 25, 2019

Are there better orgs operating in the same space, or is this just one more story for the "literally every non-profit is fatally, fundamentally flawed" pile?
posted by tobascodagama at 2:39 PM on March 25, 2019 [21 favorites]

Are there better orgs operating in the same space, or is this just one more story for the "literally every non-profit is fatally, fundamentally flawed" pile?

I believe these are sometimes easier to identify on a smaller or local sphere. Anecdotal, but I know the folks at this low-income law center dedicated to dismantling structural racism , for example, and I can vouch that they're 100% on the level. And that's just here in this part of North Carolina.
posted by thivaia at 4:11 PM on March 25, 2019 [8 favorites]

Seconding that this is a hit piece, and it's thin. The SPLC does good work--which even this article doesn't deny. I'm pretty over criticism of SPLC that boils down to the fact that they are effective fundraisers. And this article's handwavy dismissal of the SPLC's effective and groundbreaking litigation against the KKK is offensive.

I'm biased by my direct experience with the SPLC. And by my disinclination to find that poverty is a virtue that all left organizations must embody.
posted by prefpara at 5:02 PM on March 25, 2019 [19 favorites]

She didn't go into too much detail but said that he seemed more interested in self-promotion than the work.

As part of a recent class on extremism in America, I chose to read Dees's Gathering Storm. I was underwhelmed; there was an awful lot of ink spent on how much American militias hate Morris Dees himself, and disappointingly little in the way of insight into what militias are doing, why, and how.
posted by jackbishop at 5:03 PM on March 25, 2019

Strange that the writer attacked the building's design as a metaphor for some kind of institutional hypocrisy when its qualities are a result of the fact that the previous SPLC building was blown up by the KKK. Apparently those silly "Darth Vaderites" don't want their staff to get blown up! I literally spent 2 minutes on google to find the architect's statement, which leads with that fact as the main purpose of the design. I can't imagine anyone working there doesn't know about the bombing. Reading a building this way makes for a nice peg for a story, (Kunstler says so!) but it doesn't really have any meaning beyond a kind of glib "gotcha" that undermines the story right from the the first paragraph.
posted by hilberseimer at 5:40 PM on March 25, 2019 [17 favorites]

So this piece dismisses the anti-KKK work of the SPLC in the 80s, calling the Klan a "mostly spent force" and then brings up that the previous headquarters was firebombed in 1983 in the very the next paragraph. Maybe I'm being hasty but that's where I stopped reading. (On preview I see others already pointed this out.)

I can't really comment on the SPLC's legal work but as a teacher I have used their robust and free Teaching Tolerance curriculum and I really appreciate the thought that went into it. In fact one of the free posters is still on my classroom wall.
posted by Wretch729 at 5:51 PM on March 25, 2019 [6 favorites]

What an odd article. If, as the author asserts, the SLPC decided to focus its energies on destroying the KKK because it was a relatively easy, yet very high-profile, then I commend its leaders for their strategic cleverness. Am I supposed to be disappointed that the SLPC tried to raise its profile in order to attract money, when an organization like that can't do its work without money, and did it at the expense of the KKK?
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 8:25 PM on March 25, 2019 [10 favorites]

Streetview of the building.

Ok, maybe you don't like the design, but let's not get carried away re. "despotic social justice."
posted by ryanrs at 8:34 PM on March 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

NYT: Roiled by Staff Uproar, Civil Rights Group Looks at Intolerance Within
posted by Chrysostom at 8:45 PM on March 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

tobascodagama: "Are there better orgs operating in the same space, or is this just one more story for the "literally every non-profit is fatally, fundamentally flawed" pile?"

I hear good things about the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (mentioned in that NYT story), but I don't have any statistics to back that up.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:48 PM on March 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Yes, this piece was a bit short on details. The New York Times piece goes a bit further into details.

What seems clear to me is that when an organization fires it's founder and then a slew of top executives also leave there was a serious issue that needed to be addressed. I hope the significant senior staff changes are a sign they are indeed addressing the issues they need to.

I feel like a ton of folks (on the left and the right) think that racism is the KKK and violent hate groups (which are, of course, fundamentally racist), but I imagine most PoC face a quiet racism that is practiced by folks that consider themselves liberal and not racist at all.

As far as this being a hit piece, it was written by someone who used to work there and professes deeply caring about their work. It certainly doesn't read like a hit piece to me.

Look, with a 450 million dollar endowment, they should be able to never raise another dime and still be the most effective impactful anti hate-group in the world.
posted by el io at 9:15 PM on March 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yes, the NYT report fleshes the story out. I can't say I'm surprised by the things it describes, but I am surprised that the SPLC was apparently so resistant to dealing with them. Maybe Dees should have left a long time ago.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:26 PM on March 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Well it sure read like a hit piece to me - and to be sure, there appears to have been real problems with the leadership, and they clearly have been aggressively addressed - but the story doesn't seem to give much in the way of facts about this. Instead they seem to be interviewing some slightly out of touch person who disagreed with certain strategies when they worked there a long time ago. For example, belittling a mission of fighting hate groups, acting like they were ginning up some sort of fake threat when people with those ideologies are live streaming mass murder, complaining that they weren't focusing on "poverty law" and then admitting that the had hired several lawyers recently to do just that. Is this a change in direction? Do they plan to do more?

The impression I got was kind of an airy-out of touch gripiness and I have really not learned anything about the details of what caused them to fire their founder and board members, or the path they are trying to take with that move, or where things stand with the leadership in the present.

If I'm being charitable, the New Yorker story is a lightweight piece that pats itself on the back for journalistic investigation without actually revealing much of anything substantial resulting from the investigation.

Given that it's tone is mostly negative and everything that could be spun either way - like the fundraising success - the author and editors chose to spin in a negative light, I don't think it's unreasonable to call it a hit piece.
posted by Zalzidrax at 9:52 PM on March 25, 2019 [5 favorites]

From the Harpers Mag piece linked by several

In 1986, the center's entire legal staff quit in protest of Dees's refusal to address issues - such as homelessness, voter registration, and affirmative 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.

Based on this, Dees should have been booted decades ago.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:46 PM on March 25, 2019 [13 favorites]

tabascodagama: Another excellent org is Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative.
posted by stillmoving at 10:51 PM on March 25, 2019 [4 favorites]

The impression I got was kind of an airy-out of touch gripiness

I got this too. It was not so much a hit piece as a chance for the author express his years old disillusionment somewhere. Hopefully it was cathartic for him, but it didn’t come off as really authoritative.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:02 AM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Morris Dees has big stinky feet of clay. Yes. With or without him, may the other flawed humans at SPLC long continue to shine light on hatred.

Another excellent org is Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative. (Link added.)

Oh absolutely this. Please please go to Montgomery Alabama and see the Legacy Museum:
From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. Read about it; look at the images; but don't think you've *seen* it.

Go.

Previously.
posted by conscious matter at 3:17 AM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

On the Media had a good and, if I remember, uncomfortable interview in 2017 with Richard Cohen on the subject of how the SPLC spends its money: The Southern Poverty Law Center: Anti-Hate Activists, Slick Marketers or Both?
posted by msbrauer at 5:30 AM on March 26, 2019

I consider the source--the NYT has been soft peddling Trumpism and white supremism for years, with its coverage. This just seems like just the next step-first normalize racism, then attack activists.

I would not be surprised to find out that this is either the first step in a media campaign against the SPLC, or paving the ground for a federal investigating with the goal of shutting it down.
posted by happyroach at 7:15 AM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

Or, and I say this having worked in non-profits for a decade until mid-2017, many are run by ego-maniacs at the top and by a board that only cares about how they look in the community while the lower rung workers are mercilessly ground into dust and not paid well because "they're helping people, don't you want to help people and not get a raise?"

Or it's a media conspiracy, happyroach.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 7:22 AM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

Both can be true? The right has been attacking the SPLC in general and the HateWatch list in particular for quite some time.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:57 AM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

I've heard legal people working on various social justice agendas express skepticism about how much of the money raised by the SPLC really goes toward furthering their stated mission. It's not really a new thing or coming solely from the Right.

Note that the people who put together the HateWatch stuff are probably those lower-rung workers, so by all means it is fair to recognize that they are doing good work.
posted by atoxyl at 7:57 PM on March 26, 2019

CharityWatch gives them an automatic F for having more than three years of reserve cash but would otherwise give them a B- as far as efficiency and overhead is concerned. There are definitely more efficient charities to give your money too, but SLPC is not scandalously bad.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:07 AM on March 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

Jim Tharpe of the Montgomery Advertiser did a series on the SPLC back in 1990s. He discusses some of the work and the push-back encountered at this Nieman Center panel discussion (scroll down to Attacking a Home Town Icon).
posted by BWA at 6:51 AM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]