>Cohen, now the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, worked in private law for seven years before starting at the SPLC as its legal director. He’s worked at the organization for more than half of his life. I spoke to Cohen recently about his career trajectory and how watching the 1968 Democratic National Convention as a 13-year-old changed him. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
>In 1970, the beginning of my sophomore year in high school, massive crosstown busing came to Richmond. They had been operating basically under a freedom-of-choice or a districting plan, but it was proving inadequate to desegregate the schools, and a very famous judge ordered crosstown busing. Now, there were a lot of people in the white community who abandoned the public schools.
>My parents were really pushing me to go to a private school, and I just basically said no, and made a couple of speeches in that day to Jewish groups about the importance of staying with the public schools.
>In 1986, I found the job of my dreams as the legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center. We were a very small organization at the time. I think we had 25 people in a single location. Today we have 300 in 10, and I never expected to be here for all this time. I’ve been here for 32 years now. In fact, I’ve been here more than half my life; I’m 63.
>In the first summer that I was here in 1986, Morris [Dees] and I were appointed as special U.S. attorneys to prosecute two Klansmen for contempt of court. What had happened was we had secured a consent decree with them basically saying they could not operate a private army.
>Over the years we’ve sued a number of neo-Nazi and other hate groups for the violence of their members. And for us, when we see now the kind of hate in the mainstream, when we see things like Charlottesville, it just tells us that our work is not done.
POWERFUL
Jose Mitchell
>Over the years we’ve sued a number of neo-Nazi and other hate groups for the violence of their members. And for us, when we see now the kind of hate in the mainstream, when we see things like Charlottesville, it just tells us that our work is not done.
POWERFUL
Jonathan Torres
>Over the years we’ve sued a number of neo-Nazi and other hate groups for the violence of their members. And for us, when we see now the kind of hate in the mainstream, when we see things like Charlottesville, it just tells us that our work is not done.
They keep telling us that Jews are smart, but their strategy is not that sensible. >Do relentless propaganda to completely demoralize and destroy european people >A bunch of whites invent the Internet >Now the goyem know, in America, in Europe, in Australia
They need to start thinking about how fast they can run and where they can hide, because the wind is starting to shift.
