The left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is cutting staff numbers in what the nonprofit calls an effort to streamline operations. Sixty jobs are believed to have been axed in the move.
Fox News reports several of the reported layoffs hit top officials in the organization’s union, which was reportedly formed in 2019 to fight “inequitable” practices amongst the workforce.
“Today, SPLC — my employer — laid off over 60 of our union members, essentially shuttering multiple departments,” Hannah Gais wrote on X.
A statement Wednesday said the Montgomery-based SPLC, an organization that frequently lists mainstream conservatives alongside hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), is taking actions to “streamline our activities and operations to strengthen our ability to advance a multiracial, inclusive democracy and ground our work in the perspectives and priorities of communities most affected by human rights violations.”
The press team reportedly wrote:
We announced internally the consolidation of certain programs and activities as well as the elimination of others, resulting in staff reductions.
This was a difficult but necessary decision to focus and align our work with our programmatic priorities and goals. We deeply value the contributions of all our staff and their commitment to ensuring the promise of equal justice is a reality for all.
The SPLC did not release the number of people who were going to be laid off due to the changes. The Alabama Reflector sought the SPLC ‘s comment to confirm an earlier statement from the nonprofit’s union that at least 60 people would lose their jobs.
The leftist organization said in a statement the changes would allow them to better serve marginalized communities around the country, and particularly in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida.
As Breitbart News reported, Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich slammed the decision made by the SPLC last year to label her group “extremist” and “antigovernment”, calling out an organization noted for listing mainstream conservatives next to hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaking to Breitbart News, Descovich described the label placed on her nonprofit organization as “a coordinated attack against the parents’ rights movement.”
Descovich suggested the SPLC is actually achieving the aims of the Joe Biden administration.
The SPLC placed Moms for Liberty and 11 other parental rights groups on its “hate map” for being “antigovernment extremist groups.”
The inclusion of these 12 parental rights groups brought the SPLC’s total number of hate and antigovernment extremist groups to 1,225, according to the organization’s annual 2022 Year in Hate and Extremism report.
Earlier in 2023 an attorney with the SPLC was charged with domestic terrorism after allegedly rioting with Antifa in Atlanta, as Breitbart News reported.
File/Alabama, Montgomery, Southern Poverty Law Center At Dusk. (Photo by: Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The SPLC’s listing of conservatives alongside legitimate hate groups almost had deadly consequences in 2013 when domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II attempted a mass shooting at the Family Research Council (FRC) after the SPLC listed it as a hate group.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote in the Washington Post that the center’s use of “hate” labels destroys public discourse.
“The wickedness of the SPLC’s blacklist lies in the fact that it conflates groups that really do preach hatred, such as the Ku Klux Klan and Nation of Islam, with ones that simply do not share the SPLC’s political preferences,” he wrote.
“The obvious goal is to marginalize the organizations in this second category by bullying reporters into avoiding them, scaring away writers and researchers from working for them, and limiting invitations for them to discuss their work.”
The SPLC notably had to apologize after labeling neurosurgeon and former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson as an “extremist.”