Southern Poverty Law Center Releases ‘Learning for Justice’ Magazine

The disgraced far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has reinvented its social justice Teaching for Tolerance education program and rebranded it Learning for Justice (LFJ), with an online magazine touting one goal that aims “to dismantle white supremacy.”

“Learning for Justice seeks to uphold the mission of the Southern Poverty Law Center: to be a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,” the magazine states at its website.

To explain its name change, SPLC’s Learning For Justice says, “The fact is tolerance is not justice. It isn’t a sufficient description of the work we do or of the world we want.”

In 2019, SPLC, which has been notorious in its often false labeling of other organizations as “hate groups,” found itself the “accused” when several of its former senior leaders exposed alleged racism, corruption, and sexual harassment within the group.

Bob Moser, a former SPLC staffer, revealed, “The work could be meaningful and gratifying. But it was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam.”

Richard Cohen, former president of SPLC, resigned, as did the group’s deputy legal director and a member of the SPLC’s board of directors.

Breitbart News reported:

For years, the SPLC — once a widely-respected civil rights organization — has smeared conservative organizations that it falsely designated as “hate groups” merely for holding mainstream views that differ with those of the radical left. In 2012, a crazed leftist used the SPLC’s “hate map” in an attempted mass shooting at the Family Research Council (FRC) in Washington, DC; the FRC was on the list merely because it supports traditional marriage.

Following the accusations by the senior leaders, pro-faith and family organizations labeled “hate groups” by SPLC, purchased an ad at the Wall Street Journal, calling upon media and tech industry giants to stop aligning themselves with SPLC’s smears of conservative and Christian groups.

The new SPLC Learning for Justice campaign promises to provide “free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school.”

“Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create inclusive school communities where children and youth are respected, valued and welcome participants,” the website adds.

The Learning for Justice “community” boasts “more than 500,000 educators who read our magazine, screen our films, visit our website, listen to our podcasts, attend our trainings and webinars, use our frameworks or participate in our social media community.”

The magazine’s inaugural issue for Fall 2021 is headlined “The Curb-cut Effect and Championing Equity,” and features a piece on the needs of “underserved people” in schools and communities.

The article focuses, in part, on how racial injustice grew worse during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. “Curb-cuts,” however, rooted in “disability law,” are now being applied widely to other areas of social justice activism, including racial and LGBTQ inequities, the piece notes.

“Providing examples of how equity-centered policies or actions have improved or could improve the lives of many students and the community broadly can help school and community leaders see the measurable and intangible benefits of equity,” Learning for Justice states, adding:

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s clear that a focus on equity could move schools toward repairing historic harms and transforming the system to better serve students and families historically harmed by school spaces.

Other stories in the Fall 2021 issue of Learning for Justice include “Envisioning School Safety Without Police,” “We Can Create Change Together,” and “Teaching Honest History: A New LFJ Resource for Teaching the Civil Rights Movement.”

Partners of LFJ include Upfront, a news magazine published by the New York Times, Welcoming Schools, a project of the LGBTQ activist organization Human Rights Campaign Foundation, and NBC Learn.

Some sample LFJ lesson plans include “Diversity in the classroom,” for grades K-2; “Chicanas and Chicanos: Viva la Raza!” for grades K-2; “Social Justice and Activism for Students,” for grades 6-8, 9-12; “Integration of Identity and Social Inclusion,” for grades 6-8; “Exploring Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Through Artwork,” for grades 9-12; and “Systemic Biases & You,” for grades 9-12.

“In 2021, we changed our name to better reflect our mission,” LFJ explains. “Our new name speaks to the collaborative work of learning and growing together to reach our goal of justice for all.”