Pushing Back Against Hate: SPLC's The Year in Hate &
Extremism 2021 report examines how communities are organizing and
working together for justice
[link removed]
Dwayne Fatherree, SPLC Investigative Reporter | Read the full piece
here
[link removed]
Friend,
Sunflower County, deep in the Mississippi Delta, is typical of
Southern agricultural regions that have weathered generations of
oppression. Almost 35% of the population lives in poverty. The average
per capita income is below $16,000. Three-quarters of the population
is Black.
But as a public school teacher in semi-rural Leflore County, which is
adjacent to Sunflower, Ki Harris saw potential in his students every
day. What he couldn't see, though, was a way to lift up their
gifts to make their prospects better than those of their parents.
"I found myself very disappointed with public school
education," Harris said. "I was always impressed with the
brilliance of my students, but also just as jarred by all of the
structures, policies and curricula designed to stalemate that sort of
brilliance."
Two years later, in 2016, Harris joined up with the Sunflower County
Freedom Project
[link removed]
, an initiative designed to enhance educational opportunities and
exposure for those students.
"It's based on the Freedom Schools, the Freedom Summer of
1964," Harris said, explaining the program. "It uses
education as a tool for the liberation of communities."
And, as it was during the early 1960s, not only is the battle for
educational equity active, the rights that communities of color gained
over the passing decades in every facet of life are under assault from
forces on the right. Cloaked in the same racist ideology of the past
and bolstered by four years of the Trump administration's cozy
game of footsie with white supremacists and hate groups, efforts to
deny voting rights, economic equality and equal justice for Black
citizens are on the move.
It's against that backdrop that the Southern Poverty Law Center
released its flagship annual report, The Year in Hate & Extremism
2021, online this week. Although the report shows a decrease in the
number of active hate and antigovernment extremist groups, it also
warns that the decrease isn't a sign of far-right extremists
being vanquished or diminished. Instead, they are emboldened to the
point that what used to be said in a hushed whisper or through a dog
whistle is now emblazoned on T-shirts and blared through loudspeakers.
"The big change is the political leaders embracing it at the
very top," said Nate Schenkkan, deputy director of research for
the SPLC's Intelligence Project.
[link removed]
"Yes, you did have senators and governors at that time in the
'50s and '60s backing up those policies of resistance to
desegregation, backing up attacks on the civil rights movement. Now,
it's been the president labeling Black Lives Matter protesters
'terrorists' and trying to deploy the forces of federal
law enforcement - thankfully without success - trying to
use them at times to investigate and to even shut those protests
down."
READ MORE
[link removed]
In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,
working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
all people.
Friend, will you make a
$5.00 gift to help the SPLC
fight for justice and equity in courts and combat white supremacy?
DONATE
[link removed]
--
Unsubscribe [link removed] | Privacy Policy [link removed] | Contact Us [link removed]
Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Avenue
Montgomery, AL 36104
334.956.8200 // splcenter.org
[link removed]
Copyright 2022
