This week, staff members at the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote several first-person stories about the recent killings of Black people by racist police and vigilantes, investigated white supremacists, provided analysis on the attacks on peaceful protests and demanded that systems of oppression be dismantled. We’re sharing some of their work below:
Louis “Lou” Sheldon, founder and former head of the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), a once formidable anti-LGBTQ hate group and lobbying organization, died May 29 in Southern California. He was 85.
At the protests that have broken out across the country after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, so-called boogaloo bois have been a conspicuous presence. Members of the overwhelmingly white online subculture have shown up to protests heavily armed and clad in Hawaiian shirts – a reference to the “big luau,” an adaptation of the word “boogaloo.”
Amid ongoing protests against police brutality spurred by the recent in Minneapolis, cities from Richmond to Tampa are removing divisive symbols of the Confederacy. On Monday, one angry caller told police in Birmingham, Alabama, he planned to kill police, protestors and the city mayor if they proceeded with plans to remove a monument in the city.
The white nationalist non-profit VDARE hosted a livestream Tuesday in Washington, D.C., in which the group lied to antiracist demonstrators, saying they were reporters with “VICE Canada,” before urging them to say and spell out their names.
We tracked 1,430 hate and extremist groups in 2023. Hate has no place in our country.