PATRICK CLEBURNE: Why VDARE called Southern Poverty Law Center the "$PLC"

Is a BLM-style looting spree starting there?

Blacks, POCs, now majority of $PLC Board

[PETER BRIMELOW writes: Patrick Cleburne was one of VDARE.com’s most valued contributors (his archive here). I particularly liked his analyses of the SPLC’s finances—he was the first to discover that it had an offshore bank account—but he refused to update them because he got bored by its apparent invincibility. Now he has been inspired to return. Sign up for his free substack, where he is Free At Last from my inhibiting editorial hand, here].

PATRICK CLEBURNE: Why VDARE called Southern Poverty Law Center the “$PLC”

We at VDARE always followed the lead of our old friend Paul Craig Roberts in believing that the bank fraud legislation that Congress cooked up 1989-90 supposedly because of the War On Drugs, subsequently enhanced during the War On Terror, is a major infringement of liberty and a big step towards an American Police State.

So it was actually with (somewhat) mixed feelings I heard the news that our tormentors at the Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] being indicted for

• 6 counts of wire fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343)

• 4 counts of false statements to a federally insured bank (18 U.S.C. § 1014)

• 1 count of conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering (18 U.S.C. § 1956(h))

(Not primarly for paying monies to questionable groups, as often misrepresented, including, alarmingly, by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche at the DOJ Press Conference.)

These charges will be extremely difficult to defeat, as chillingly laid out in the early part of Notes on a non-profit indicted for bank fraud (Bits about Money May 1^st, 2026.)

There is also the intriguing question of discovery. As Lydia Brimelow says in It’s All Happening For The SPLC!

Discovery will be a bear for them (I know!). And it could find evidence of tortious interference.

Tortious interference is when A and B have a contractual relationship and C comes along and blows it up, causing damage. Like, to choose an example at random, if VDARE had a conference scheduled at the Cheyenne Mountain Lodge in Colorado Springs, CO, with deposits fully paid up and tickets sold, and the SPLC or their minions intentionally disrupted that conference, causing the Lodge to pay out liquidated damages and VDARE to lose its conference. If that happened, the SPLC could be prosecuted for tortious interference.

Despite these exciting developments, I think it important to remember the first evidence that persuaded some alert members of the general public (its victims and, apparently, some of its employees already knew) that the SPLC was morally depraved. This was the organization’s extremely peculiar handling of its finances, specifically the obsessive squirreling away of a remarkable money mountain.

For three years, in 2009, 2010, and 2011, I posted on VDARE exhaustive analyses of the Financial Reports and Form 990s of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which for obvious reasons I lovingly nicknamed the $PLC. (Form 990 is an extremely intrusive questionnaire which tax-exempt charities (“501(c)(3)s”) have to submit to the Federal Government.)

These articles were:

[A] The Good News: SPLC loses $50 Million. Bad news: $PLC can afford it 04/08/2009

[B] Will The Southern Poverty Law (And Investing) Center Return Its Madoff Money? 05/20/2010

[C] Is The Southern Poverty Law Center ($PLC) The Next Financial Bubble? 06/01/2011

I followed up in 2017 with a summary and partial update -

[D] Southern Poverty Law Center ($PLC) Handling Its Loot Even More Strangely 08/31/2017

In this article, for convenience’s sake, I will refer to each below by letter.

The salient fact which emerged from these inspections: the Southern Poverty Law Center was extremely wealthy. Even in the year ending 10-31-2008 dealt with in [A], some $32.4 million was raised from the public and combined assets totaled $191.8 Mm.

A peculiar feature was a $156.2 Mm “Endowment Fund”. As I discussed in [A], almost all of this was (and is) not an Endowment Fund in the legal sense usually meant in the charity world, with only limited and specific disbursements allowed. Instead the pool was entirely at the discretion of the $PLC management, who had chosen to separate it from the operating business for unpersuasive reasons.

The intervening years have been kind to the $PLC. The latest reports, for the year ending 10-31-2024, show “Contributions” of $129.1 Mm, and “Total Assets” of $829.2 Mm including “Endowment Assets” of $738.4 Mm.

I noted in [A] that, even in the financially stressful year of 2008, the $PLC had managed to squirrel away another $4Mm from operating revenue into its “Endowment Fund”—12.3 cents of every dollar contributed. Also, it had committed to pay $8.3Mm to “limited partnerships and LLCs”—apparently held in the “Endowment Fund”—i.e. more than the $8 million it spent on “Legal Services” in 2008!

This by a ”Law Center” mainly famous at the time for politically-motivated lawfare.

No donations were made to help any other Leftist 501(c)(3), although many were hard hit that year.

The “Poverty Palace”—the SPLC’s purpose-built HQ in Montgomery AL

Of course, several writers whom I cite in [A] had already been repelled by the $PLC’s money-grubbing. My favorite is Joan Wypijewski’s scathing advice to her liberal readers in The Nation: (You Can’t Get There From Here, February 26, 2001):

What is the Poverty Law Center doing…? Mainly making money…the center doesn’t devote all of its resources to any kind of fight….A few years ago the American Institute of Philanthropy gave the SPLC an F for ‘excessive’ reserves. [VDARE.com note: as it still does in its December 2008 Rating Guide] So readers, rip up those pledges to the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

(Per Grok, the SPLC still got an F in 2025)

An extraordinary aspect of the $PLC’s squirreling away of assets: the extreme aggressiveness with which the portfolio is managed.

When I looked at their accounts for the year ended 10-31-2009 discussed in [B], I fully expected to find they had sustained losses in the Madoff Ponzi fraud, which collapsed in December 2008. Many charities and endowments did, because the Madoff marketing pitch, extremely stable but adequate returns with a long track record, had great attractions for conservative fiduciaries.

But there were no losses. For the $PLC, what was jokingly called the “Jewish T-Bill” was apparently not what they were looking for.

This was vividly illustrated in the accounts for that year. For the first time, the $PLC disclosed in in its 990 that it had an offshore bank account, in the tax-haven of the Cayman Islands.

Why a tax-exempt entity like the $PLC needs a bank relationship in a tax haven is a mystery. The $PLC is, after all, tax-exempt. And even quite small Hedge Funds groups have mirror on- and off-shore funds which offer the same strategy. Any suggestion that it was necessary to go offshore for a particular management style is implausible.

In [D], I noted a quote reported an excellent article by Joe Schoffstall in the Washington Free Beacon (Southern Poverty Law Center Transfers Millions in Cash to Offshore Entities August 31, 2017)

“I’ve never known a US-based nonprofit dealing in human rights or social services to have any foreign bank accounts,” said Amy Sterling Casil, CEO of Pacific Human Capital, a California-based nonprofit consulting firm… I am stunned to learn of transfers of millions to offshore bank accounts. It is a huge red flag and would have been completely unacceptable to any wealthy, responsible, experienced board member who was committed to a charitable mission who I ever worked with.”

“It is unethical for any US-based charity to invest large sums of money overseas,” said Casil. “I know of no legitimate reason for any US-based nonprofit to put money in overseas, unregulated bank accounts.”

Fast-forward to the present: in the 990 dealing with the year ending 10-31-2024, the $PLC again admits to having a foreign bank account but curiously fails to answer the follow-up question about location. However, in the section disclosing “Activities Outside The United States” it does report having “Investments” of $30.7 Mm in the “Central America and the Caribbean” region. Maybe not answering the account location question was a clerical error.

By the time I wrote [C] in 2011, I was able to report what the SPLC was doing with these enormous liquid resources.

It was making them illiquid and non-transparent—by moving them into “alternative investments,” investment partnerships of various types. In 2009 75.4% of the investment portfolio was so deployed, up from 49% in 2008—by 2010 the proportion was up to 87% —i.e. substantially all of it.

This policy has been maintained. The latest $PLC Financial Statement, for the year ending 10-31-2024, indicates the proportion described as ‘long-term investments’ was 94.5%.

Why the $PLC has chosen to tie its capital up in this illiquid way is a puzzle to me. In fact, why it has chosen to amass so much money at all is also a mystery. Personal enrichment seems, I think, to be ruled out by the extremely rigorous nature of the 990 (assuming there is not outright misrepresentation). And it has to be said that the salaries paid to senior executives, while high perhaps for inexpensive Montgomery AL, are not huge by non-profit standards. Margaret Huang, President and CEO during the latest reporting period, was paid a total of just $522,740. And the directors have never been paid fees. Far more egregious cases exist in the world of charities.

Perhaps Morris Dees, the founder of the $PLC, and J Richard Cohen, the long-time President, the architects of this strange organization, enjoyed being money managers and effectively Fund-of Fund executives? It is certainly a pleasant life.

A little more than 20 years ago, the $PLC began an important shift in targeting. Their key fundraising base, which Peter Brimelow has described as “the elderly Holocaust-haunted rich” were dying off. And more or less every White man in the South was aware that anyone purporting to be a recruiter for any Ku Klux Klan outfit was probably an FBI agent provocateur. The low hanging fruit had been harvested.

So the $PLC took up immigration, targeting even the most timid and professionally ineffectual immigration patriot outfits. Thus after it had existed for 29 years, the $PLC finally named the biggest, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) a “Hate Group” (VDARE.com was proud to accept this accolade after only 4 years!). I discussed this event and FAIR’s characteristically inept reply in FAIR On The SPLC: Nice Guys Get Smeared Some More 09-14-2009.

Immigrants themselves, of course, were useless as a fundraising field. But the Democrat Nomenklatura had woken up to the point made in Peter Brimelow’s 1995 book Alien Nation—that American immigration policy was “Electing a New People” with them the primary beneficiaries. By the middle of the next decade, Democrat Party policy had reached the current ‘No Borders’ stance. Many of the Democratic plutocrats, driven anyway as they usually are by anti-Historic American animus, were happy to pay the $PLC to protect this trend.

The $PLC was a particularly valuable hire in this respect because of the role it fallaciously claimed to have played in the sacred “Civil Rights” movement. The Main Stream Media effectively accorded its pronouncements something like Papal Infallibility. Being declared a Hate Group in the ensuing reign of terror/ Cancel Culture years meant journalists were afraid to quote such a source. Increasingly, a whole range of normal commercial services would be denied. Even supposedly conservative outfits like Human Events shamefully drank the Kool-Aid.

In 2011 in [C] I said

the $PLC is in effect a modest public interest law firm and fundraising operation, linked to a very large, wildly aggressive investment pool. It’s really the Southern Poverty Law and Investing Center!

But the ensuing years made clear I should have said Southern Poverty Law, Investing & Political Police Center.

Recently, however, the tide has turned against the $PLC. From about 2010 with the American Family Council (AFA) and the Family Research Council (FRC) it started naming various Christian organizations “Hate Groups” for their views on sexuality and abortion—transparently in a quest for homosexual money. This puzzled and offended many Normies. Then in In June 2018, the $PLC issued an apology and paid $3.375 Mm to UK citizen Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation for accusing him of being an anti- Muslim extremist.

Finally, in 2019, disaster really struck. To quote the current Wikipedia page on the Southern Poverty Law Center:

In March 2019, the SPLC fired founder Morris Dees for undisclosed reasons and removed his profile from the SPLC website… Following the dismissal, a letter signed by two dozen SPLC employees was sent to management, expressing concern that “allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity along with it.”

A week later, President Richard Cohen and legal director Rhonda Brownstein announced their resignations…The associate legal director Meredith Horton quit, alleging concerns regarding workplace culture.

Since Dees had been canonized by the Left as a secular Saint, with some idiots actually making a movie about him, this was a massive blow. The $PLC staffers were certainly right to say it threatened “the moral authority of this organization and our integrity”

$PLC co-founder Morris Dees

In his resignation statement, Cohen spoke reverentially of an upcoming “audit of the organization’s practices” by Tina Tchen, former Chief of Staff to Michelle Obama. But if completed, this report has never been made public.

SPLC President J. Richard Cohen

Such was the revulsion on the Left that The New Yorker was emboldened to publish The Reckoning of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center by Bob Moser (March 21 2019). This is a macabre account of the pervasive atmosphere of financial and sexual exploitation at the $PLC’s “Poverty Palace” headquarters in Montgomery AL.

Needless to say, it would have been better for America if Moser and a publication like The New Yorker had possessed the moral fiber to publish this expose back when Moser left the outfit in 2004. But that would have destroyed Moser’s career and been politically inconvenient.

Human failings are one thing, political embarrassments are quite another. Margaret Huang, imported in April 2020 as President and CEO, supplied these in plenty.

Before Huang arrived, the organization had, somewhat awkwardly, indicated that it was determined to prevent its staff unionizing. But discontent was such that management’s effort failed. Then, after the October 7 2023 Gaza offensive, there was apparently a huge surge of pro-Palestinian sentiment among the (naturally highly politicized) staff. Huang responded in June 2024 by firing a quarter of them and shutting down some flagship programs. With money so plentiful, cost was not plausibly the reason. More likely these programs had particularly anti-Zionist staff.

I dealt with these important events in

The $PLC Massacre—Purging Pro-Palestinians? 06-14-2024

and

NOW I See Why $PLC Dumped Classroom Propaganda Program. Left’s Palestinian Purge Problem Just Beginning. 06-18-2024

and

SPLC Union Strikes Another Shattering Blow At $PLC. But Is This A Labor Or A Political Dispute? 06-20-2024

From X account of SPLC union— challenging management’s account

In fact this was an early sign of the epochal split between the senior Democratic Pols and their Zionist Donors on the one hand, and the Hard Left and younger zealots on the other. We are going to hear a great deal more about this.

In July 2025, Huang abruptly resigned. Bryan Fair, a Black University of Alabama Law professor, was appointed Interim CEO. He has explicitly said he is acting as a figurehead. As of May 2026 no permanent CEO has been appointed.

Bryan Fair, Interim President and CEO, Southern Poverty Law Center

So where does this leave the $PLC, with its financial and corporate governance under serious question, its liberal credentials badly damaged, its Federal indictment for bank and wire fraud (and, probably as an automatic consequence of the indictments, Donor-Advised Funds refusing to allow donations)?

Basically it leaves it in the hands of Blacks—at least ostensibly.

What might be called a Black Curtain of secrecy has come down over the SPLC website. It has been simplified, with all information on and pictures of directors and senior officers removed and financial information now buried in a sidebar. In the “Annual Report” and “Impact Statement,” (both of which have always been just sales brochures), almost all pictures are of Blacks alone, with only one showing Whites (in a street scene). This is a big departure from the traditionally carefully diverse illustrations of the past. Judging from a screenshot from March 29 2024, posted above, only four of the 13 Board Members are White (at least three apparently Jewish) and Blacks are in a majority.

In contrast, as recently as 2018, there only three Black members out of 13 and at least eight members appeared to be Jewish

Interestingly, the $PLC logo has been changed. The new one, appropriately, is Black and White.

Probably this tells us the ultimate fate of the $PLC. Footnote 13 of the 2024 Consolidated Financial Statements reports

During the year ended October 31, 2020, the Board of Directors approved $30 million from the Endowment Fund for the Vote Your Voice initiative…the Board of Directors approved a $100 million investment from the Endowment Fund over the next decade to support voter outreach…The commitment…marks a more-than-threefold increase…pledged in 2020.

The total Vote Your Voice expense for the year ended October 31, 2024 was $14,068,100 (total $41,964,614 for four years).

This does not directly state when the increase was voted.

I do not believe that any distributions from the “Endowment Fund” were ever allowed when Morris Dees was in control (ended 2019).

Vote Your Voice is a $PLC initiative to boost the Black & Brown vote in the South.

Of course it is axiomatic, and has been underlined by the recent Somali and BLM funding scandals (see here and here and here), that showering money on Black-controlled outfits just enables fraud.

So maybe the obsessive money-grubbing of Morris Dees will finally improve the fortunes of at least some in the Black community!