From the New York Times: Paul Craig Cobb, 61, has been buying up property in this town of 24 people in an effort to transform it into a colony for white supremacists. Credit: Jenn Ackerman.
A white supremacist is buying up land in Leith, North Dakota, vowing to create a home base for racists, according to an AP report. Paul Craig Cobb recently moved to the town of 24 residents and purchased nearly a dozen plots of land and has invited others of his kind to join him. But people in Leith are resisting.
hate groups
Not In Our Town Executive Producer Patrice O'Neill joined Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potok, Welcoming America's David Lubbell and Christian Picciolini, former hate group member, to discuss how to respond to the rise in domestic extremism on a HUFFPOST LIVE discussion earlier today.
Check out the conversation in this Huffington Post video:
According to a recent SPLC report, "The Year in Hate and Extremism," there are now nearly 1,400 'Patriot' groups, which generally believe that the government is conspiring to take away guns and destroy liberties.
The report points to several recent acts of hate perpetrated by the extremists, including the murder of six worshippers at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin by a neo-Nazi. In January, an Alabama high school student was arrested for allegedly plotting to attack his black and gay classmates and bomb his school.
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From SacBee.com. See original article.
After the trauma of last week's tornado—the deadliest on record—Joplin, Mo. will now be descended upon by a hate group. The Westboro Baptist Church will protest President Barack Obama's visit to the town on Sunday.
News of the hate group's visit traveled quickly, sparking people to action. Amid the rubble, people are standing up in support of this town of 50,000, including the 125 dead and the more than 900 injured.
"Who is this group that's coming? And I realized ... it's Fred Phelps and my heart just dropped. I can't believe they're coming. Why us? Out of all the schools, why us?" —Daisy Renazco, Gunn High School teacher02/2011—Above is one of NIOT.org's most popular videos, "Gunn High School Sings Away Hate Group," which has garnered more than 225,000 views on our YouTube channel. Ellen DeGeneres, in a Tweet, said she was "so unbelievably proud of Gunn High School in Palo Alto, CA for demonstrating love & acceptance in a peaceful way."What's significant about this video is that it showcases how a community can stand up to hate in a peaceful and constructive way. The video was shot in 2010, when the Kansas hate group known as the Westboro Baptist Church (Fred Phelps' family) announced they would picket Bay Area schools and Jewish institutions. The students of Gunn High School, located in Palo Alto, Calif., decided they could not sit quietly.
Gunn High School students sang, Lowell High School students danced, Olympia, Wash. citizens mobilized every facet of the community, and in Newark, Calif., as in Tucson, Ariz., there were angels.
Here at Not In Our Town, we highlight communities standing together to fight hate. In our 15 years of making films, we have documented a number of proactive, creative and peaceful responses to hate groups, including the Kansas hate group known as the Westboro Baptist Church (Fred Phelps' family) and white supremacist groups such as Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement.
In January, we noticed a surge of interest in these anti-hate events and rally videos, particularly after the Westboro Baptist Church threatened to protest the funerals of the Arizona shooting victims, and the Tucson community responded en masse. And not surprisingly, one of our most popular videos on NIOT.org is "Gunn High School Sings Away Hate" which has garnered more than 225,000 views on our YouTube channel. The video was shot in 2010, when the Westboro Baptist Church announced they would picket Bay Area schools and Jewish institutions. The students of Gunn High School, located in Palo Alto, Calif., decided they wanted to affirm their own values.
What role does local media play in addressing intolerance and hate crime prevention? In the past few weeks, we’ve seen three stories where media coverage took very different positions on addressing controversy and sparking conversation about these issues.