Annamaria on Monday
I am lucky. I am a
lover, not a hater. I don’t think I can
help it. Sitting here, feeling my own
insides, there doesn’t seem anywhere within me where hate could find a
place to hide. I take no credit for this condition.
From birth, I was primed to oppose any group that wants to damage
or subjugate people who are not like them.
When I was barely a toddler, my father and my uncles were enlisting and
leaving home to fight fascism. My Uncle
John, my godfather, died on the push to Berlin, after having fought in Patton’s
army in Sicily and at Anzio—in the country my grandparents had left to find a
better life in America, the land of freedom and opportunity.
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| My Uncle Johnny (l.), with Patton's Army in Italy. This Johnny never came marching home. |
For the past week, stunned like most people I know, I have
been unable to think coherently about the blow the election dealt to my
ideals. And I have been arguing with
myself about what to say here on MIE today.
Then it occurred to me that I have been a member of the resistance for
years and that I could ask you to join too.
This is not a group with rifles in the mountains or safe
houses in the cities—like the French Resistance
or the Italian Partigiani in
WWII.
God, I hope it doesn’t come to that. I ask you to join me in backing an anti-hate
group with a proven track record: the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In 1980, when I first learned about the work of the Southern
Poverty Law Center, I was a leftwing activist and the mother of an interracial eleven-year-old
daughter. Their first fund-raising
appeal, which defined the organization’s goal, was one that resonated with
me. They were combatting the Ku Klux
Klan by suing them in civil court for damages, on behalf of the families of
people lynched by the Klan. What a novel
idea. SPLC was out to weaken the KKK by
taking away its funds and assets. Sounded
like a splendid tactic to me. So I sent
money. Twenty years later, I
received a certificate from them thanking me for having donated every year
since 1980. How nice, I thought, with a
touch of pride. That day, I left for the
airport to go and visit my 83-year-old father who was living in Florida.
When I arrived at my dad’s house and went in through the
side entrance, he was sitting at the counter in his kitchen, reading his
mail. And there in front of him was an
identical certificate to the one I had left on my own desk at home. We had never spoken of our involvement, and I
was surprised, not at his espousal of leftist causes, but of that particular
one. Then he told me of an early
childhood memory that I had never heard.
It took place in 1917, in the Western Pennsylvania
coalfields. He then lived with his
family in one of eight houses along either side of a dirt road, adjacent to a
coalmine. He was three, barely tall
enough to see over the windowsill. In
the night, in the bedroom, with his father just outside the closed door,
sitting on a chair with his loaded shotgun and rifle across his lap. Outside
the window, men in white sheets rode on horses.
Crosses were burning on the mountain.
“We were immigrants. And
Catholics,” my father told me, eighty-five years later, with tears in eyes.
Those men burning crosses would not have cared that all but
the oldest child in that family had been born in the United States. Or that, in a few years, the father of that
family would die of black lung disease, because he took coal from the earth for
the profit of some tycoon. Or that all
three of the little boys hiding in the bedroom with their pregnant mother would
one day fight for the USA. In the minds
of the men in sheets, my family were sub-human trash.
So I learned that my father and I had both donated to the
same organization for twenty years for the same reason: to combat
hatred. I urge you—in the face of this
week’s reality—to do the same.
 |
| Morris Dees |
Founded by Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin, Jr. in 1971 in
Montgomery, Alabama, the Southern Poverty Law Center began as a civil rights law
firm. In 1979, they started their first big suit against the Klan, and they went on weakening that hate group with such
success (until now) that they branched out into combatting all sorts of
discrimination. SPLC defines hate groups
as ones that “attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their
immutable characteristics.”
The SPLC itself and its founder Morris Dees have been
targets of violence. Their headquarters
were bombed, their building and records destroyed in 1983. More attempts and threats have been made and
indictments of anti-SPLC conspirators handed down.
The Center’s main efforts, in addition to litigation, are two:
To track hate groups and their activities and to share the information with
scholars and law enforcement. And their
“Teaching Tolerance” effort—which prepares and distributes materials for
schools and parents to help children grow up without hate in their hearts. They also offer training to law
enforcement—both local and federal on how to track extremist groups.
Here, taken from the SPLC website is some of their information.
Hate Groups
 |
| Each circle designates a hate group |
Go to https://www.splcenter.org to see more data and to see the map for each state.
As a donor, in the past week I have been getting emails from
SPLC, which have given me chance to appeal to the Mr. Trump, asking that he cool
his hate rhetoric and take stands against discrimination. They have also informed me about the
postelection hate activities.
I give $10 a month, hardly noticeable on my credit card bill. I invite you to join me in this support. One thing I can tell you for sure: Taking action—whatever action
you take—will help you get over your shock and dismay.
