A call to replace intolerance with respect
\nBy JOHN KOZIOL jkoziol@citizen.com citizen.com<\/p>\nLACONIA \u2014 Hate and incivility are alive and well in America as well as in New Hampshire, according to representatives of a prominent civil rights group, speaking to scores of people gathering on Wednesday to work on how to prevent and dispel intolerance from the Lakes Region.<\/p>\n
Fed by fear of the nation\u2019s changing demographics, there is a lot of hate and negativity in the air, said Lecia Brooks and Michel Marsh Garcia, but there are ways to improve the situation. <\/p>\n
Saying those fears have escalated since the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president, further fueled by a poor economy and a general rise in anti-government sentiment, Brooks and Garcia, employees of the Southern Poverty Law Center spent Tuesday and Wednesday working with students, teachers and parents in Laconia public schools to promote \u201cRespectful Schools.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Southern Poverty Law Center is dedicated to \u201cfighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.\u201d To that end, the duo\u2019s day ended Lakes Region Community College where they delivered a presentation entitled, \u201cThe State of Hate and Intolerance in America; a call to community building\u201d to more than 100 people.<\/p>\n
Among the attendees were members of the Laconia School Board; Laconia Police Chief Chris Adams; state representatives Bob Luther, Harry Accornero and Jim Pilliod; members of local non-profit groups; and LRCC staff members and students.<\/p>\n
Brooks began with a history of the civil rights movement in America, observing, \u201cWe used to see an injustice and we used to be moved to action and I say we can be again.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said hate is learned and that it is not confined to white people, pointing out that hatred knows no racial, political or economic barriers.<\/p>\n
Pointing to her organization\u2019s \u201cHate Map,\u201d which keeps track of the many hate groups across the country, Brooks said there has been a 50 percent increase in their number since 2000 and a 500 percent increase in the number of so-called \u201cmilitia\u201d groups since Obama became the nation\u2019s first black president.<\/p>\n
There are five such hate groups in the Granite State, said Brooks, including white nationalists in Ashland and ultra-conservative Catholic groups downstate.<\/p>\n
The \u201cmain driver\u201d of the hate, said Brooks, is the simple fact that, by 2040, America will be \u201cmajority minority\u201d with people of color outnumbering whites, according to projections.<\/p>\n
Brooks said she has worked with white youths who have to come to terms with the fact that the \u201clegacy of dominance\u201d passed down from their ancestors is no longer applicable.<\/p>\n
Some people do not like change, Brooks continued, and their hate continues to spawn violence today, well after the battle for civil rights appeared to have been won.<\/p>\n
Brooks pointed to a spike in the number of racially based crimes against Latinos, saying that words matter and should be well-chosen.<\/p>\n
Former CNN host Lou Dobbs, she said, did not do that when, in speaking about America\u2019s \u201cbroken borders\u201d \u2014 which her organization believes should be fixed \u2014 he offered up the opinion that illegal immigration from Mexico was the direct cause of a jump in the number of reported cases of leprosy.<\/p>\n
Confronted with data that entirely discounted the connection, both Dobbs and his employer nonetheless refused to issue a correction, Brooks said. Satirist Stephen Colbert took up the challenge and, in his own, backhanded way, blasted Dobbs out of the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpecious conclusions,\u201d Colbert told his viewers in a video clip played by Brooks, \u201care still conclusions; Checkmate.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Southern Poverty Law Center is helping to correct some of the erroneous, harmful thought about race, gender and sexual orientation through its \u201cTeaching Tolerance\u201d program which Brooks noted has 450,000 subscribers nationwide \u2014 but only 47 in New Hampshire.<\/p>\n
Garcia said the state recently got an \u201cF\u201d from the organization for its lack of a statewide civil rights curriculum.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou all have to lobby your legislature,\u201d she told her audience.<\/em><\/p>\n
Call your Reps in Laconia and complain. Tell them you do not want a civil rights curriculum. (How about teaching the Constitution, which is not being done, instead?) Call your school board and demand this practice STOP. At least, force them to give you a chance to opt your children out of this kind of school brainwashing if you cannot keep spurious groups like the SPLC out of your child’s school altogether.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nAbout Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As far as we know NH has not had any problems whatsoever with ‘hate’.. that is unless you talk to the SPLC, long thought of as one of the most dangerous hate groups itself. Basing their claims on the idea that any and all opposition to President Obama’s failed policies is based on ‘racism’, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","category-news","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nhteapartycoalition.org\/tea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nhteapartycoalition.org\/tea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nhteapartycoalition.org\/tea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nhteapartycoalition.org\/tea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nhteapartycoalition.org\/tea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8081"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.nhteapartycoalition.org\/tea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8083,"href":"http:\/\/www.nhteapartycoalition.org\/tea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8081\/revisions\/8083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nhteapartycoalition.org\/tea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nhteapartycoalition.org\/tea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nhteapartycoalition.org\/tea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}