Southern Poverty Law Center

 

 The Southern Poverty Law Center is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1971 by Morris Dees and Joseph J Levin Jr. Its activities include filing suits on behalf of victims of hate, monitoring and reporting on alleged hate groups and key individuals, and handling various anti-discrimination cases, promoting civil rights education, and combating systemic social injustices. They are notable for their success in suing perpetrators, in some cases actually bankrupting some hate groups where members were tied to crimes or deemed responsible in the crime committed. Successful suits include suits against The KKK, Aryan Nations, The Imperial Klan of America, and The White Aryan Resistance to name a few in which the groups were bankrupted by lawsuits.

In addition to handling cases, the SPLC also runs several websites, including SPLC.org and tolerance.org. The sites includes lists of hate incidents, a case docket, which lists cases the SPLC is currently engaged in as well as info on past cases, intelligence files on various individuals and groups, for the purpose of awareness and education, and multiple "hate maps" which number or outline the groups being watched by the SPLC (shown below)

This and other material on the site, really serve to counteract the way WN and other groups have influence others and mainstreamed their ideology through the internet using some of the same tactics as WN. Their sites are filled with educational material that help to increase awareness and  they have supplemental materials for parents and teachers to help them educate as well. I found the hate incident list (linked here http://splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-incidents) especially informative because it definitely challenges the dominant discourse of hate and racism being a thing of the past, as new incidents are posted daily and are from all parts of the U.S. I think that this is important because the info given, helps to give factual data to those who doubt or are uninformed on race issues. Additionally the SPLC has a quarterly publication called The Intelligence Report that puts this info and other articles in print form, to the same effect as the sites and periodically releases documentaries to further spread their message. 

Overall the SPLC and its various endeavors into different media serve to exponentially increase awareness and education on the subject of social justice and inequality much in the same way as many WN have used it to do the opposite. Some drawbacks include claims of bias and the lack of communication (one way due to the brochure format of sites) but overall the SPLC is an organization that has done a great job of spreading awareness and actively combating social injustice and is one of the major powers combating WN in all its forms and intolerance in general.

Links to sites - SPLC.org, tolerance.org,