Civil rights lawyer delivers message of tolerance

EAST MANATEE — From Richard Cohen’s office in Montgomery, Ala., he can see the church from which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. launched the Civil Rights movement.

Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the simplicity of the church gives no indication of the power of King’s nonviolent movement, and the way that it worked a revolution in American society.

Despite the leap forward in equality for all Americans, intolerance and hate crimes have not disappeared, Cohen told members of the Southeast Manatee Democratic Club, meeting Friday at Peridia Country Club.

The United States continues to be dotted with hate groups, 51 of which have operations in Florida, Cohen said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights organization founded by Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr. in 1971, fights hate and bigotry, and seeks justice for the most vulnerable members of society, according to its Web site.

Among those groups that the center monitors are neo-Nazi, skinhead, Ku Klux Klan and other extremist hate groups, he said.

And among those that are on the center’s radar is a Florida-based white supremacist group that has 141,000 registered users on its Web site, he said.

Hate groups have grown tremendously in the past decade, and much of it stems from the reaction and furor over immigration issues and the country’s shifting demographics, Cohen said.

Frequently, immigrants who are in the United States without proper documents fail to report crimes against them, he said.

Manatee immigration reform advocates have said immigrants without the proper paperwork live very much in the shadows and are vulnerable to criminal predators.

Marvin Mills of Sarasota-Manatee Farmworker Supporters called Cohen’s presentation “excellent,” and said he appreciated his remarks on immigration.

The Southern Poverty Law Center fights bigotry and hate crime through a combination of litigation and education.

It makes films available to schools under its “Teaching Tolerance” program. In Florida, 15,000 teachers receive the films, Cohen said.

Paul Dain, president of the local Democratic Club, said Cohen’s speech is sure to spur members to encourage use of the “Teaching Tolerance” in Manatee schools.