More Like Satan's Flag

For those of you who wonder why I persist in calling the Teabaggers the Tea Klux Klan, check out this link from TeaParty.org with the 'God's Flag' caption.

More like it's Satan's flag.

It's the flag of traitors who wanted to overthrow the United States so they could continue to enslave my ancestors. It's the flag of pointed hood wearing terrorists who couldn't accept the fact they lost the 'War To Perpetuate Slavery' they started.

It's the flag of violent terroristic resistance to my people's attempts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps in the wake of emancipation and Reconstruction.

It's the flag of people who opposed the Civil Rights movement and of nullification.

It's the flag of white folks who hate and resent the fact that we have an African-American president who won a landslide election and his family living in the White House my people built with their unpaid labor.

Heritage not hate, my azz. It's a flag that represents a heritage of hate.

It's also the flag of those who wallow in a toxic stew of prejudice, ignorance, anger and fear that their version of America is going the way of the dinosaur.

God's flag? Please. The Civil War is over and you Southern-fried conservafools thankfully lost. Get over it.

Phred Phelps Does Dallas -Resource Center Dallas Profits

Phred Phelps brings his reprehensible Phamily of Phools to Dallas starting July 9 for a series of protests. The primary targets are The Resource Center Dallas, and Beth El Binah, a mainstream Reform Jewish congregation with a longtime LGBT outreach that meets at the Center.

They also are planning protests at several other North Texas sites such as the Dallas Holocaust Museum in the West End, the Texas Jewish Post and Cathedral Guadalupe.

As is the case with many GLBT communities or organizations faced with dealing with his Westboro Baptist 'Church' christofools, local organizations use his visits as an opportunity to fundraise for causes within the community.

The standard operating procedure is to have people offer to donate a certain dollar amount for every minute Fred's Fools protest in their city, with that money going to help GLBT community causes.

It has the dual effect of not only turning the Phelps Phamily sojourns into money raising opportunities for the targeted community, once the Phelpses find out, they cut their protests short.

Resource Center Dallas has started a 'Hell Freezes Over' campaign in advance of the Westboro Wackos visit. As of 11 AM CDT they have already raised just over $1000 for their counterprotest, and Phred hasn't even arrived in the Dallas area yet.

Resource Center Dallas in addition to serving as the host location for a GLBT friendly Reform Jewish congregation, has provided a hot meals program for more than 100 HIV-positive clients. They have served those nutritious lunches on Monday through Friday since the early 1990’s.

The Center recently had their ice machine break down. They are temporarily receiving ice from their partners Caven Enterprises and Cathedral of Hope, but need $3000 to purchase a new energy-efficient unit to replace the old one.

The money raised in this campaign will go towards replacing the ice machine first, and any funds raised above and beyond that will go to the Center's general operating fund.

So here's hoping Phred's Phools spend lots of time in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and raise lots of cash for Resource Center Dallas in the process.

The SPLC Wins Another Legal Battle Against Hate Groups

If you're looking for an organization to donate money to, send a check the Southern Poverty Law Center's way.

They not only have been documenting hate groups in this country, under the leadership of SPLC founding attorney Morris Dees they have taken an active role toward breaking them financially.

The SPLC strategy has been so successful that trial testimony in the Gruver case revealed a 1999 Klan plot to kill Morris Dees was broken up by the FBI.

There are millions of reasons why hate groups want to see the Alabama-born Dees expeditiously depart this Earth.

After the 1981 Mobile, AL lynching death of Michael Donald, in 1987 the SPLC on behalf of his mother Beulah Mae Donald filed a civil lawsuit against the United Klans of America. It resulted in a $7 million verdict that put the notorious United Klans of America out of business. The UKA was the group responsible for the 1961 beatdown of the Freedom Riders in the Birmingham bus station, the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church and the killing of Viola Liuzzo.

In the wake of the 1988 killing of Ethiopian college student Mulugeta Seraw in Portland, OR by three racist skinheads affiliated with the White Aryan Resistance, the SPLC sued on behalf of his father and won a $12.5 million verdict that forced WAR leader Tom Metzger to sell his California home to satisfy the judgment and put WAR out of the hatemongering business.

In 2000 the SPLC won a $6.3 million jury verdict in the Keenan v. Aryan Nations case that forced Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler to give up the group's 20 acre Idaho compound.

The latest Southern Poverty Law Center legal victory against an odious Klan group has been raging not too far from me in Brandenburg, KY.

After three days of testimony, yesterday a jury awarded $2.5 million in damages to 19 year old Jordan Gruver. In July 2006 the then 16 year old teen who is of Panamanian and Native American descent was severely beaten by members of the Imperial Klans of America who were recruiting new members at the Meade County Fair.

They taunted him with inaccurate ethnic slurs, spat on him and doused him with alcohol. Two men identified as Edwards and Hensley knocked Gruver to the ground and repeatedly struck and kicked him in an attack that left the teen with a broken jaw, a broken left forearm, two cracked ribs and multiple cuts and bruises.

According to the SPLC, The IKA members mistakenly thought he was an illegal Latino immigrant and not an American citizen.

The all-white jury found that the Imperial Klans of America and its founder wrongfully targeted Gruver, who is an American citizen of Panamanian and Native-American descent.

Gruver filed the personal injury lawsuit last year seeking up to $6 million in damages from the Imperial Klans of America and two of its leaders, Imperial Wizard Ron Edwards and Grand Titan Jarred R. Hensley. The jury of seven men and seven women deliberated for five hours before rendering their verdict.

"The people of Meade County, Kentucky, have spoken loudly and clearly. And what they've said is that ethnic violence has no place in our society, that those who promote hate and violence will be held accountable and made to pay a steep price," Dees said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says the Imperial Klans of America is the second largest KKK group after the Brotherhood of Klans Knights, based in Marion, Ohio. SPLC spokesman Booth Gunter said there are 34 named Klan organizations across the country with 155 separate chapters.

The Anti-Defamation League, who also tracks hate group activity, estimates there are more than 40 different Klan groups, with as many as 5,000 members in more than 100 chapters, or 'klaverns' across the country.

So congratulations to the SPLC for taking out another hate group and sending them the message that if you engage in inciting hate violence to the point where someone is harmed or killed, you will pay for it not just with jail time, but financially as well.