Letters

LETTERS

Have a response to an article we published AGENDA wants to know what you think! Send letters by the 20th day of the month preceding publication of our next issue to: Editor, AGENDA, 220 S. Main SL. Ann Arbor, Ml 48104.Please include your address and phone number (not for publication). AGENDA reserves the right to editor reject any letter. We give preference to letters under 400 words.

Borders Follow-Up

In regard to your article on the Southern Poverty Law Center campaign to boycott Borders and other booksellers who carry The Turner Diaries, I agree that neither Borders nor anyone else ought to be able to make money from the sale of hate literature. I think such boycotts are in order. However, these writings ought not to be suppressed by government or public bodies so that libraries should be able to carry at least one copy of each such diatribe.

   Ironically, on the same day I read your article, I received the latest issue of "Counter Punch," a newsletter by Ken Silverstein and Alexander Cockbum, which regularly exposes sham operators whether they hold office in the White House, the Congress, in environmental groups or regional poverty law centers. This issue devoted itself mostly to Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Dees has long been rumored to collect huge amounts of money from people in small contributions while spending only minute portions of it on lawsuits, while building up a huge endowment fund and eschewing cases or campaigns which did not seem like rewarding monetary enterprises.

   Cockbum has interviewed tonner employees of the Center and other journalists who have done investigative reporting on the Center for his information. There was a mass resignation of the Center's entire legal staff in the late 1980s according to this article, partly because Dees was reluctant to deal with the legal issues of most concern to poor people.

   His major focus has been the Klanwatch Project, which is described as a cash cow which brought in millions. I agree with Cockbum that the Klan is a despicable group hut that today it hardly represents a major threat to the country, and that for poor blacks (as well as whites) the Contract With America is a far more immediate worry. I can hardly repeat all the information and or allegations in the story in this letter, but I want to alert readers to a less benign view (from the left) of the SPLC and Monis Dees and urge folks to pick up a copy of the "CounterPunch," Vol. 3, No. 10, dated May 15-31, 1996.

   Maybe AGENDA could also do a major investigation into the SPLC in the near future. In the meantime, I will make my contributions to the National Lawyers Guild and other groups that put their efforts and energies where they are needed, not just into revenue-producing appeals.

Rose Hochman

Ann Arbor