FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Right after the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots in Minneapolis, Verizon promoted education materials from the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center that advocated for teaching Black Lives Matter in school.
The company now denies any relationship with the SPLC.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian law firm that urges companies to respect viewpoint diversity through its Viewpoint Diversity Score program, highlighted a Verizon announcement from June 2020, in which the telecom company promoted the SPLC’s education arm, then called Teaching Tolerance.
Verizon promoted a “panel discussion on race, equality, and justice,” and listed a variety of online resources as a “toolkit.” The “toolkit” included “tools for families to start a conversation” including “Teaching Tolerance” and The National Museum of African American History and Culture.
What Is the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance?
The Southern Poverty Law Center promotes a bevy of leftist causes, from transgender orthodoxy to critical race theory to drag queen story hour to a path to citizenship for illegal aliens.
Critical race theory refers to a lens by which educators tell white students they are inherently oppressors and black students they are inherently oppressed, and present America as institutionally racist. CRT often presents various aspects of Western culture—including the nuclear family, science, capitalism, and even a work ethic—as an oppressive “whiteness” that must be rejected. The “Talking About Race” page on the National Museum of African American History and Culture website (another Verizon “tool for families”), previously included an infographic explicitly making those connections. The museum later removed the infographic and apologized.
CRT advocates call for overhauling American society, and some have justified looting, rioting, and burning down police stations in the name of racial justice.
The SPLC also raises money by scaring donors, releasing a “hate map” that plots mainstream conservative and Christian groups (which oppose the SPLC’s agenda) alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC recently attacked the parental rights movement, placing organizations such as Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education on the “hate map.”
A former employee called those “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam,” and a defamation lawsuit challenging those claims cleared a major legal hurdle last year.
The SPLC promotes its education-related causes through its education arm, long known as Teaching Tolerance. In 2021, the SPLC rebranded the program Learning for Justice.
The program has long supported acceptance of racial diversity in schools, but it also supports divisive messages such as CRT, transgender orthodoxy, and political causes such as Black Lives Matter.
The archived version of the Teaching Tolerance website from June 2, 2020, the date Verizon linked to it, showed the program urging educators to teach about the Black Lives Matter movement in school.
At that time, while many Americans expressed outrage over the death of George Floyd in police custody, Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis had already descended into arson and looting. Many defended the arson and looting in the name of racial justice, using critical race theory to justify it.
Last year, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr filed domestic terrorism charges against an SPLC lawyer who had been present at a riot in Atlanta involving Molotov cocktails. The SPLC claimed the lawyer had been a legal observer.
Criticism for Verizon
Alliance Defending Freedom, which flagged the Verizon materials for The Daily Signal, condemned the company for relying on the SPLC.
“No one should be relying on the highly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center,” Michael Ross, a legal counsel at ADF, told The Daily Signal. “Verizon owes its customers, shareholders, and workforce an explanation for why they decided to partner with the SPLC. It also needs to assure them that it won’t partner with fringe political operatives like the SPLC going forward.”
“The SPLC has spent decades shaming everyday Americans in its cynical fundraising scam that’s been denounced on both sides of the political aisle,” Ross added.
The SPLC has branded ADF an “anti-LGBTQ Hate Group” since 2016, but even ADF’s ideological opponents—notably Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder and President Mikey Weinstein and former American Civil Liberties Union President Nadine Strossen—have repeatedly condemned SPLC’s attack on ADF.
“The SPLC keeps itself busy by maligning people like Dr. Ben Carson and Franklin Graham, and moms and dads who speak up at school board meetings; and by participating in anti-police violence,” Ross said. “The SPLC’s bigoted agitprop doesn’t belong anywhere near the very school-aged children whose parents it publicly targets.”
Verizon’s Response
Verizon distanced itself from the SPLC, and denied suggestions that it might load Learning for Justice materials onto devices for educators or students.
“Verizon has no affiliation [with], nor does it work with, the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Verizon spokeswoman Tessa Giammona told The Daily Signal in an email Wednesday. “In addition, the Company does not load Learning for Justice materials onto educator or student devices.”
Giammona did not respond to questions about why the company promoted Learning for Justice in 2020.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
