Dupage Policy Journal

DARIEN – In spite of being placed on an FBI terror watch list, being attacked on social media as homophobic and racist, being attacked at work by anonymous outsiders for allegedly creating an unsafe office environment even though he works almost exclusively from home, Downers Grove South High School parent Terry Newsome said he would continue to stand against the placement of pornographic materials in the school’s library.

“We are in a war for our country and childrens' futures,” Newsome said. “Our kids are suffering because parents weren’t aware of what’s going on in their children’s school. Or, they didn’t have the courage to speak up for their kids. If you don’t have the courage to stand up for your children, you won’t take a stance for anything.”

The hits to Newsome's personal and professional reputation are largely due to news articles from the far left Southern Poverty Law Center that portrayed him as a far right lunatic, originating from his school board activism.

The SPLC has published at least two articles on Newsome: “Illinois Radical Parent Activist Has Hate Group Ties, History of Racist Posts,” and “Exclusive Reporting: Illinois GOP Official Affiliates With Extremist Groups & Shares Racist Posts.” He also was targeted last month by Patch.com which picked up SPLC reporting with the headline “Darien Man Spreads Hate Online: Group.”

“They have gone after me to try to scare me and harass me into silence, but it hasn’t worked,” Newsome said. He explained that he was raised in a pro labor union household, but switched party affiliation after waking up to the far-left radicalization of the Democrat Party. 

Newsome is married and has sophomore twins – a son and daughter. Today, he serves as a DuPage County Republican committeeman and is Illinois chapter president of Parents Involved in Education. He's also a member of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, which is fighting Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's push to replace the Christopher Columbus statue in Little Italy’s Arrigo Park. 

The first District 99 Board of Education meeting that launched Newsome into the media spotlight took place in November 2021, over his objections to the book “Gender Queer.”

“I brought big posters of the nasty oral sex images,” he said. “The District 99 Board of Education was so pissed that I exposed them on camera they no longer allowed parents to bring posters. Previously they were OK to bring. This was punishment for exposing them.”

Newsome has a different worldview than that of the SPLC on cultural matters, such as public education. But while they obviously disagree on what is appropriate reading materials for minors, Newsome said SPLC's portrayal of him on its “Hate Watch” as anti-LGBTQ and racist is a false representation of his character and it distorts his purpose in speaking out against inappropriate sexual reading materials made available to minors. 

SPLC today shows fantastic wealth

A review of its most recent annual report, the Southern Poverty Law Center - which decades ago fought bravely for the civil rights of the impoverished - shows the opposite of poverty today.

The report it sent to the Internal Revenue Service for 2020 showed that revenues exceeded expenses by $35,509,546 in 2019 and $26,132,799 in 2020.

The report showed SPLC achieved $155,791,153 in unrealized gains on investments for 2020 and built its endowment fund to $731,949,581.

The SPLC held $382,535,204 in publicly traded equities, 61% of it in foreign funds and 39% in U.S. funds.

It held $285,188,730 in private equity funds which it defined as buyouts, venture capital, and distressed companies.

It held $116,837,158 in hedge funds that “employ strategies including long-short equity, absolute return, risk arbitrage, event driven and distressed securities.”

It has 398 employees.

It paid chief executive Margaret Huang $364,719; paid $250,000 to $300,000 each to two legal directors, a communications officer, a chief of staff, a strategy officer, and a financial officer; paid $200,000 to $250,000 each to a human resource officer, a strategic litigation director, a marketing director, and a legal director; and paid $150,000 to $200,000 each to a senior attorney, a deputy legal director, and a treasurer.

The SPLC occupies a prominent building in Montgomery, Ala. that some local citizens call "Poverty Palace."

The focus on wealth honors the legacy of founder Morris Dees, who succeeded in several business ventures before he succeeded in law.

It chooses not to honor other aspects of his legacy. The board of directors reduced his role 20 years ago for his failure to behave better in this century than he did while reforming the South in the previous century.

He departed in 2019, at age 83.

“I basically quit,” he said in an interview on Jan. 20. “I guess a new crowd took over. The stuff I did was hard hitting and dangerous.

“I don’t know what they’re doing now.”

The annual report showed the SPLC produced more activism than litigation, spending $44,981,069 on public education and $33,798,598 on legal services.

A purpose statement in the report called the law center “a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people.”

“Intersectional” operates as a buzzword for equal and overlapping grievances. 

The purpose statement referred to “groups most affected by bias and discrimination in our society: minorities, immigrants, guest workers, children, the poor, and the LGBT community.”

It indicated that SPLC combats hate and bias and that it exposes extremism; it said it provides materials to more than 400,000 teachers.

Post-Dees commentary on SPLC

After Dees departed from SPLC, Current Affairs published an article by Nathan Robinson calling the annual Hate Watch report an outright fraud.

“The whole thing is a willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks to the Southern Poverty Law Center,” he wrote.

Robinson noted that Maajid Nawaz, a critic of Islam, sued the law center and received a $3 million settlement plus an apology.

He wrote that mainstream organizations like Family Research Council landed on the list.

He wrote that the SPLC declined to identify the number of members in hate groups.

“Many of these groups barely seem to exist at all,” he wrote.

He wrote that a Holocaust denial group appeared to be a woman in Texas, a male supremacy group was three men with a blog on indefinite hiatus, a black nationalist group in Atlanta was a fashion boutique, and cult leader Tony Alamo died in prison in 2017.

Dees’s departure also moved former SPLC employee Bob Moser to write a critical article for New Yorker magazine.

“I felt self-righteous about the work before I’d even begun it,” he wrote.

He wrote that an uncomfortable racial dynamic quickly became apparent with an almost exclusively white professional staff and an almost all black support staff.

He wrote that a friend laughed at his bewilderment and guaranteed he would never step foot in a more contradictory place.

He wrote that he worked with dedicated and talented people, fighting all kinds of good fights, and making life miserable for bad guys.

“And yet, all the time, dark shadows hung over everything,” he wrote.

He wrote about “guilt you couldn’t help feeling about the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used faithfully and well to do the Lord’s work in the heart of Dixie.

“We were part of the con and we knew it.”

Newsome and his Congressional allies

Newsome said he is hopeful he will be able to restore his personal and professional reputation. 

He said he has become aware that a congressional investigation may have begun into the origins of his placement on an FBI terrorist watchlist.

Newsome said the FBI told him that it could neither confirm nor deny whether a particular person is on any terrorist watch list, in response to his query into whether his name was listed.

He learned that in fact he was listed along with "some very bad people" while traveling by air last year.

Newsome said he’s been in contact with “several” congressional members who are looking into “the weaponization of the FBI against myself and U.S. citizens and especially school board parents and/or J6 attendees.”

“I signed a congressional release form to allow me to be included in the investigation,” he said.