Friend,
2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the Southern Poverty Law Center. After a half century of working to ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement becomes a reality for all, we may be facing the most critical year yet in the march for justice.
Long before the siege of the U.S. Capitol, the Trump administration had already greatly damaged our country and its promise of justice and equity for all by promoting policies that attacked civil rights and devastated communities. It would be a mistake to think that with the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, we could easily repair the damage of the last four years.
The pandemic that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in this country also exposed dramatic - and longstanding - racial disparities that must be addressed, such as inequities in health care, housing, the workplace, education and finance. What's more, the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other people of color have energized a decades-long movement for a fundamental reimagining of policing and incarceration - reform long overdue in the United States.
We must take immediate action to not only repair the harm of the last four years, but also move our nation closer to realizing its highest ideals. During 2021, the SPLC and our lobbying arm, the SPLC Action Fund, will work toward that goal by pursuing a bold, transformative agenda, which we've outlined in Vision for a Just Future, our blueprint for this undertaking. This presidential transition memo and its accompanying policy briefs offer progressive measures to bring deep, meaningful change.
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I'd like to take this opportunity to share some of these recommendations. We will not only pursue the reforms outlined below but also urge the Biden administration to use every tool at its disposal to achieve these changes.
Confronting hate and threats to democracy
Since Charlottesville, we have reported a growing white nationalist movement. In 2017, Donald Trump's rise to the presidency had energized the radical right. That was also the most lethal year for violent domestic extremism since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. White supremacists were responsible for the majority of those deaths in 2019, according to recent U.S. Department of Justice findings.
In other words, white nationalists were emboldened by Trump long before the Jan. 6 insurrection and the anxious days before Biden's inauguration, which saw tens of thousands of National Guard troops providing security for the inauguration.
There are, however, concrete steps the federal government can take to counter the threat, dismantle white supremacist ideology in our nation's institutions and, yes, rebuild trust in democracy. Our recommendations include the establishment of a national truth, racial healing and transformation commission to examine the history of white supremacy and structural racism in the United States. Our nation's long history of injustice committed in the cause of white supremacy demands no less.
Fighting institutional racism means closing loopholes that allow discriminatory policing. What's more, police should not be an occupying force in our communities. This means ending programs that militarize the police - most notably those that allow law enforcement agencies to obtain excess military equipment.
Removing institutional racism also means removing Confederate monuments and other public displays of such symbols of white supremacy. It's encouraging that more than 100 such symbols have been removed in communities across the country since Floyd's death last May, but much more can be done. Federal funding should be provided to remove such symbols at the state and municipal levels. The SPLC will also continue to campaign for the removal of these monuments and symbols from public spaces across the Deep South.
These are only a few of the recommendations for confronting hate and threats to democracy in 2021. An additional series of policy recommendations to fight hate and extremism will be released early this year when we issue our annual "Year in Hate and Extremism" report.
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Institutional racism, inclusion and educational equity
Since our nation's founding, denying access to a quality education has been a powerful tool to perpetuate white supremacy. In the South, politicians in recent decades have failed to provide sufficient funding for public education, leaving the region's children - particularly children of color and others in historically disadvantaged communities - without the resources they need and deserve.
Additionally, over the past four years, the Trump administration has stripped critical anti-harassment and anti-discrimination protections from Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous students, students with disabilities and LGBTQ students. These students also have been disproportionately affected by policies and practices that perpetuate pipelines from school to prison, deportation or mental institutions. These are some of the reasons we're pursuing reforms to promote nondiscriminatory school discipline and reinstate broad federal anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people. And among other recommendations, we're urging federal incentives for states to revise school funding formulas to ensure equitable education for students.
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At the state level, the SPLC will promote police-free schools in Louisiana and investment in counselors, nurses and other professionals to help build and nurture positive learning environments. In Alabama, we'll promote legislation requiring schools to notify a parent or guardian before a student is suspended or expelled - and to conduct a fair hearing before doing so. Alabama is the only state in the Southeast without such a requirement.
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In solidarity,
Margaret Huang
SPLC President and CEO
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