When Good Organizations Go Badhttps://pjmedia.com/amy-denton/2026/08/14/when-good-organizations-go-bad-n4956130The ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) were based on the same idea: to provide legal help for those being harassed by the federal government. The ACLU has been in existence far longer, founded in 1920, but like the SPLC, while it did some good in the beginning of its existence, that has faded from memory. Instead of being known for supporting unpopular free speech, it is now known as a progressive advocacy organization; the more progressive, the better. There is one big difference between the two organizations: The ACLU hasn’t been indicted on fraud charges; the SPLC has.
The SPLC is facing an eleven-count indictment of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Its former Chief Financial Officer, Heidi Beirich, was arrested separately and charged with the same things. Beirich is listed as Employee-2. She is also alleged to have had a romantic relationship with one of the infiltrators of a neo-Nazi group. They shared a house and bank accounts. She funneled over 1.2 million dollars to her lover.
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What happened? How did an organization founded on fighting for civil rights switch to supporting those groups that denied people their civil rights?
Founded in August 1971, the Southern Poverty Law Center was created by two civil rights lawyers, Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levine, Jr., as a legal clinic focused on fighting poverty, racial discrimination, and the use of the death penalty in the U.S. In 1979, Dees and the SPLC started filing civil lawsuits against hate groups, such as the KKK, seeking monetary damages on behalf of their victims. The civil lawsuits proved to be successful and bankrupted the KKK. Some civil libertarians complained and stated that the lawsuits set legal precedents that could be used against activist groups that aren’t hate groups.
The libertarians were correct. However, the SPLC was also the first legal organization to win multiple lawsuits against the KKK. Without money, the KKK could not be as terrifying as it had been in the past. Keep the KKK being bankrupted in mind. I’ll come back to it in a bit.
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In 1986, the entire legal staff resigned, except for Dees, as the SPLC shifted from traditional civil rights work to fighting against so-called right-wing extremism. That is where this writer believes that the organization started to go in a direction never thought of by its founders.
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In 2016, due to President Trump's election, the SPLC hired more than 200 employees, and its endowment surged. In 2019, the SPLC fired Dees. It gave no reason, but two dozen SPLC employees signed and sent a letter to the management documenting allegations of misconduct, sexual harassment, and racism. A quote from a former employee starts to bring events into perspective. The former employee stated, “unchecked power of lavishly compensated white men at the top of the SPLC contributed to a culture which made black and female employees the targets of harassment.” This was March 2019.
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This astonishing turn of events is 180 degrees from what the SPLC started out as in 1971. The organization's pivot from protecting civil rights to targeting right-wing extremism was the catalyst that started the downward decline.
I think the ACLU had
some leftism-radicalism at its core from Day 1, but leftist turning good NGOs to their socio-political purposes is not new. Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders had good purposes originally, but the former went anti-US in GWB's years, publicly at least, and the latter is an antisemitic Hamas poll parrot. F-em both.
