Ken Berwitz

Some years ago I was a dues-paying member of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 

I joined the SPLC as part of my commitment to fight race hatred - a commitment I feel every bit as deeply today as then. 

But, years ago, I left the SPLC, because I felt it had become less an anti-racism organization and more a general-purpose left wing activist group, fighting one side of the problem while ignoring - and therefore tacitly supporting - the other side.

With that in mind, please read the following excerpts from Charles C. W. Cooke's latest blog at nationalreview.com.  It will give you a pretty clear idea of what caused me to leave:

In light of the May Day arrests of the Cuyahoga 5, the Occupy Wall Street–affiliated group of men who planned to blow up a bridge in Cleveland, Ohio, I called the Southern Poverty Law Center to find out of they had any plans to start tracking the Occupy movement. The first person I spoke to was so shocked by the question that she paused for a good 15 seconds before promising to put me in touch with a representative. This she eventually did, however, and after a game of cat-and-mouse — the person she’d found for me was busy “hosting an international conference on right-wing extremism,” natch — we managed to touch base and I to pose the question: “Do you have any plans to start tracking Occupy Wall Street after a hate group tried to blow up a bridge?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “We blogged it right away when it happened.” I asked him why he thought this deserved only a blog post, and he explained that the SPLC only deals with “hatred of people based on class characteristics,” which a little more pushing revealed meant “immutable characteristics such as a person’s eye or skin color.”

“We did go after the eco-terrorists,” he told me. “But that was because they’d adopted the same tactics as the abortion activists: vilification, the use of ‘Wanted’ posters, highlighting the names and whereabouts of people’s children and spouses.” And then he went on a long speech about “anti-abortion extremists” that had very little to do with what I was asking, but no doubt made him feel good. I met this with silence, so he said that, really, the SPLC only tracks those who commit violence or who seek to destroy whole systems in the name of an ideology.

“Isn’t that exactly what happened in Cleveland?” I asked. “These five men, all linked with Occupy Wall Street, attempted to blow up a bridge as an overture to the wholesale destruction of Cleveland, Ohio, and in the name of anarchism. They also looked to blow up the Republican convention.”

“They were anarchists,” he repeated.

“Yes?”

He paused. “We’re not really set up to cover the extreme Left.”

Well, at least you can't say the answer tried to hide what SPLC is all about these days.

Still wondering why I no longer belong to this organization?  I didn't think so.