Where Do We Go From Here?
Joe Levin, President
Southern Poverty Law Center
Richard Viguerie, President
American Target Advertising
JOE LEVIN
PRESIDENT, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
MR. LEVIN: Joe Levin, President of the
Southern Poverty Law Center. This is going to be a brief
wrap-up session. I want you to stay in your seats.
I would like to introduce Richard
Viguerie, who is seated to my left. He is a member of the
Executive Committee of the Free Speech Coalition. He is also
Chairman of American Target Advertising, and former
candidate for political office. Richard.
RICHARD VIGUERIE
PRESIDENT, AMERICAN TARGET ADVERTISING
MR. VIGUERIE: Thank you, Joe. I had the
pleasure of not only being to Joe's left a month ago, but to
his right, and in back of him; never in front of him as we
played golf at his country club, but that was all over the
golf course, but never in front of Joe.
This will be brief. What I want to do
here is just ask you to focus for a few minutes on what you
have heard today and how this affects your business, your
organization, causes, projects that you are interested in.
We heard many speakers talk about things that they are doing
with their organization to reach out to the
grassroots.
We heard Ralph Reed give a very
interesting, articulate discussion of the high tech
grassroots lobbying that he is engaged in. It is kind of
mind-boggling some of the things that are going on. I feel
like I need to get into the Twentieth Century when I hear
people like Ralph talk. Politicians though are beginning to
experience what Ralph Reed and the people in this room are
doing. They are not happy with it.
Whatever Ralph is doing now, in two years
he is going to be doing two, three, four, 500 percent more
and all of the people in this room are going to be doing the
same. This is not going to go unnoticed or un-dealt with by
the people across this river.
On Capitol Hill, the bureaucracies in
this town, they are going to figure out how to try and
silence us. And that is their bottom line goal; to silence
us and put us out of business.
A few months ago I was at breakfast at a
Free Speech Coalition Executive Committee Meeting talking to
Roger Craver. Roger said, Richard, what's working these
days? What are you mailing for on behalf of your clients? I
said, gosh, Roger. I don't know; term limitation, I guess,
reform of Congress, abuse of power by politicians, you know,
just common generally bashing Congress.
He kind of laughed and said, funny. Me
too. So, the point is they are catching it from the left and
the right. They have figured this out and they are coming at
us. We can take an attitude that we are all going to
struggle with this as best we can. We can hire more
employees or hire attorneys full-time as we have on our
staff to deal with this.
Some non-profits have two, three, or more
attorneys just to jump through the regulatory hoops.
Whatever you are spending now to deal with the regulators is
going to *pail to what you are going to be spending in two
or three years.
This organization accomplishes more with
less than any organization I know. $150,000 was our budget
last year. This year we have increased it to the grand total
of $170,000. The people working there are grossly underpaid.
Lots of people are volunteering their time here.
I don't care who you are, including our
organization, we are not doing enough. All of us need to do
more. We have spent our entire life on one side of the fence
asking people to give money for good, worthwhile causes. We
are good at it. We are successful. Our organizations thrive
and we thrive.
All of us here are making a good living
working for good causes. It is time for us to turn and do
the thing that we have been asking people to do all of these
years and reciprocate. It is time for us to put something
back into the pot. If we don't, these good causes, these
good organizations are going to suffer. The people on the
other side of this river are going to prevail.
It is just astounding that this
organization in probably 16, 17 months since Bill Olson,
Larry Pratt and myself sat down for a casual lunch at the
Tower Club last spring. It is just mind- boggling what we
have accomplished with a handful of dollars.
All we are doing is basically -- we are
not maybe even holding our own. We are stopping a lot of
good things. This organization played a major role in the
defeat of the Lobbying Registration Act that we were talking
about earlier today. This organization was front and center
with that project. We didn't carry most of the water, but we
were out there early. We were out there often. The people in
this room were a big help there.
We need money to successfully deal with
this issue. If we are only going to be able to deal with the
issue with $170,000, $200,000, we are just going to continue
to be beat about the head and shoulders by these
regulators.
Now, beyond the $170,000 that we need
just to stay alive this year, we are also trying to put
together a litigation fund. We have to have money to go on
the attack. Right now we are basically just holding our own;
fending off these regulators as they come at us.
The attorneys are prepared to move
forward with litigation to the Supreme Court if necessary,
and it probably will take that. It is going to take $120,000
just to get started. That's not going to get us to the
Supreme Court. It is probably going to take $500,000 to get
us to the Supreme Court. We can't even begin to file a
lawsuit that will, it won't be the Silver Bullet, but
hopefully it will be an important bullet that will achieve a
lot of what we want to accomplish. But we can't even do that
until we raise $120,000. Some of us have pledged to
contribute to the litigation fund, $10,000, either ourselves
or to pledge to raise $10,000. That's not a lot of money
when you think in terms of what you are spending to deal
with the regulators.
There is not a month that goes by that we
don't spend $10,000 dealing with the hoops that we have to
jump through. I think we are just talking about a small
amount of money in terms of the magnitude of the problem
here. Really think seriously about what it is. What's it
worth to you to be able to operate freely without undue
regulations and burdensome regulators watching your every
move and preventing you from doing the work that needs to be
done?
$10,000 pledged to raise or to contribute
yourself is really not a lot of money in terms of the
problems that we are dealing with here. To paraphrase one of
my heros. If not now, when? If not us, who? No one else is
going to do this. It is up to us. There is no other
organization that is going to take this fight to the
regulators like we are. No one was doing it before. We have
good allies. We have good organizations that are doing good
work out there. This organization is going to be the one
that's going to solve this problem, if anybody is going to
do it. Thank you.
(Applause)
PARTICIPANT: I'm not an attorney. As I
said at lunch, after a year or so of law school, the
professors and I got together and we agreed that I was cut
out for something else besides the study of law. We didn't
know what it was. We do have an attorney here and a very
fine attorney, Joe Levin, who is President of the Southern
Poverty Law Center. He is the Chairman of the Board, but I'm
not sure of which.
Anyway, Joe is very much up to speed on
litigation; particularly the litigation that the Free Speech
Coalition is thinking about and focused on. Joe, can you
bring us up to speed briefly?
MR. LEVIN: I suppose if people were that
forthcoming, that there is litigation; several targets. We
have heard about the kind of litigation that goes on here
today. I wouldn't have anything to add to the general
category of cases that can be brought. It has got to be
targeted. The right jurisdictions have to be selected for
litigation. We have got to make sure that we have got a good
solid case and we have got to have money because litigation
is expensive. It does not come cheaply and I doubt that
there is anyone in this room who is not fully aware of
that.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a
(C)3. We are not out -- we don't do any lobbying. We do
testify before Congress from time-to-time when asked. We are
a successful 501(C)3. I suppose that under some scenario if
the burdens become too oppressive we can simply get out of
the way entirely. It is not something we want to do because
we think that we serve a valuable educational purpose, even
when we are soliciting funds through the mail, but we could
do that.
I am more concerned about the marginal
groups who can't afford the $10,000-plus that it may cost
each year for a single group simply to register and deal
with the registration in each of the states. I know that we
are registered in more than 35 states. I am concerned, even
more than that, about the hundreds or thousands of good
ideas out there that may never be tested before an
interested citizenry because they can't afford it.
If I were this group, as much as for the
present, I would be concerned about the future and would
think long and hard about joining in an effort such as the
one that Richard has been talking about and many others have
been talking about today. Get behind it because it is true.
If you don't it, if we don't do it, it ain't going to get
done. That is just axiomatic. It won't happen. Thank
you.
PARTICIPANT: I think it has been time
well-spent today. I don't know about you all, but I am kind
of bitter sweet. I enjoy coming and communicating with my
colleagues and friends here. I'm sorry all of you all are in
the same boat that all of the rest of us are in, but misery
loves company, I guess.
It does help to be reinforced to know
that you are not the only one Dave says who people think is
a felon and should be in jail. Thank you for your help. As I
said earlier, I don't mean to rally overstate the case. I
really feel this way. Whatever any of us, myself included,
whatever we are doing, it ain't enough. We all need to do
more. This is very, very important work. We have been on the
receiving end for so many years, I'd like to see us switch
sides and contribute to something that has been very good to
all of us.
Thank you.
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