Morris Dees at Grand Rapids Community College on Wed Dec. 9

Famed civil rights activist Morris Dees speaks at Grand Rapids Community College on Dec. 9 part of the Diversity Lecture Series 2009. Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center which was responsible for integrating the all-white Montgomery Alabama YMCA in 1969, speaks in Fountain Street Church at 7:00 pm. As an attorney Dees was one of the principal architects of an innovative strategy of using civil lawsuits to secure a court judgment for money damages against an organization for a wrongful act and then use the courts to seize its assets (money, land, buildings, other property) to pay the judgment. Dees' legal actions against racial nationalist groups have made him a target of criticism (to say the very least) from many of these organizations. He has received numerous death threats from these groups, and a number of their web sites make strong accusations against him and the Southern Poverty Law Center. More recently Dees obtained a judgment of $12 million against Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance. He was also instrumental in securing a $6.5 million judgment against Aryan Nations in 2001. Dees' most famous cases have involved landmark damage awards that have driven several prominent neo-Nazi groups into bankruptcy, effectively causing them to disband and re-organize under different names and different leaders. He is expected to talk about the resurgence of hate groups across the US since the Obama administration took office. Dees was most recently at Grand Valley State University in early 2000.
www.splcenter.org