Dees Calls For Vigilance Against Hate Crimes Against Minorities, Gays Do Not Reflect American Values, Says Civil Rights Lawyer

A battle is being waged over whose vision for America will prevail, civil rights attorney Morris Dees told a sold-out Spokane audience on Friday.

The battle is between racists promoting division and others who believe the strength of the United States is its diversity, Dees said.

“An ill-wind is blowing in this country,” said Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.

Despite a robust economy and the foreseeable elimination of the national debt, people continue to kill one another because of skin color, religious beliefs or sexual orientation, Dees said.

The dragging death of an African American man in Texas and the fatal beating of a gay student in Wyoming are two recent examples, he said.

Another example Dees cited was last summer’s shootings at a Jewish Community Center and the gunshot murder of a Filipino American letter carrier.

Buford O. Furrow, a former security guard at the Aryan Nations in North Idaho, is charged with those shootings in Los Angeles, and faces the death penalty.

“I could go on,” the civil rights lawyer said.

There are conservatively 9,000 hate crimes committed each year in the United States, he said. There also are 250 Internet hate sites “that are just a click away from our smallest children.”

Promoting hate “affects our lives and our businesses and the economics of this nation,” he said.

“I know that these organizations and groups do not in any way represent the good people of this area,” Dees said in his opening remarks. His words were greeted with applause by the capacity crowd at a “Viewpoint” community luncheon at the Spokane Ag Trade Center, sponsored by Avista Corp.

As the battle rages, Dees said, those who want to counter hate haven’t given up and are fighting back. “The good news is America is saying in unison, `We’re better than that.”’ Community groups are forming and bridging racial and religious gaps, and civil rights activists are reaching out to victims of hate crimes, Dees said.

“Love and appreciation of people who are different than we are” should become the goal of our society, he said.

The battle is “over whose version of America is going to prevail,” he said.

Hate mongers promote division along lines of gender, sexual orientation, age, skin color and race, Dees said.

A new form of divisiveness centers on class, money, wealth and power, he said.

“We’re seeing new conflicts arising over how we divide up the economic goods and benefits of this nation.”

Others, like convicted terrorist Timothy McVeigh, are willing to ignite a truck bomb and kill 168 people in a federal building to support their view for America.

“He thought of himself as a hero, a patriot, a good American,” Dees said of McVeigh’s act in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Racists like Tom Metzger are willing to recruit neo-Nazi skinheads like those who murdered Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw in Portland in 1990, he said.

Dees’ Southern Poverty Law Center brought a successful civil rights suit against Metzger and his hate group, White Aryan Resistance (WAR).

Seraw’s family in Ethiopia still gets a monthly check from Metzger’s bankrupt organization as a result of the suit.

Dees is now bringing a similar civil suit against the Aryan Nations on behalf of a North Idaho woman who was shot at and chased by Aryan guards in 1998.

The suit, seeking unspecified monetary damages, is now scheduled for trial in Coeur d’Alene in August.

“I’d like to think that it won’t be long before that family will own the national headquarters of the Aryan Nations,” Dees said to the applause of the audience.