Dupage Policy Journal

DOWNERS GROVE – Southern Poverty Law Center, which calls peaceful protesters like Terry Newsome of Downers Grove terrorists, declared its staff attorney Thomas Jurgens innocent after police arrested him on a terrorism charge at a flaming protest in Atlanta.

“Tom was performing a public service, documenting potential violations of protesters’ rights,” said SPLC director Margaret Huang in a statement.

“We are outraged that police officers present at the protest refused to acknowledge Tom’s role as an observer and instead chose to arrest him.”

Newsome said he appreciated the irony of Huang's complaint of unfair accusation because the SPLC and Antifa label him as a terrorist, stemming from his opposition to pornographic materials in his childrens' high school library. 

Since his activism began, he's been placed on an FBI terror watch list, attacked on social media as homophobic and racist and attacked at work by anonymous outsiders for allegedly creating an unsafe office environment. The attacks continue.

He first became aware of his placement on a terror watch list last year while going through airport TSA and was required to go through a secondary security screening. He later asked TSA to restore his pre-check security status, but was advised in writing that it would not, though he would granted standard screening.

However, in early March he was stopped again in front of his family when airport security workers took him aside as “Quad S” - the secondary security screening selection.

His credentials as a "terrorist" amount to his role as president of the Illinois chapter of Parents Involved in Education and being in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, though not at the Capitol that night.

“I was back in my room,” he said. “There’s no way I would have gone if I had known what was going on.”

In the meantime, SPLC attorney Jurgens, a resident of Atlanta, may have had a fair notion of what would happen when he went to a future training center for police, firefighters, and ambulance crews on March 5.

The site is labeled "Cop City" by opponents, many of whom have been camped in a nearby forest for months vowing to stop construction of the $90 million training facility. It was attacked on Sunday by people throwing "large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers," police said 

Although Huang defended Jurgens she protected herself by stating he went as a volunteer legal observer on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild.

Police arrested 23 persons, all from outside Georgia except Jurgens and one other suspect.

Newsome said he believes the SPLC and Antifa work together and the FBI tracks individuals they accuse.

He also accused the SPLC and Antifa of weaponizing Twitter to harass and scare parents.

He said they brag about the people they shut down.

He said Jeff Tischauser, who wrote about him for the SPLC, put him on a Sedition Hunters site that carries information about Jan. 6, 2021.

“They said I tried to overthrow the government,” Newsome said.

“They are purposely collaborating with Democrats to silence parents from speaking up for their children.”

He provided a statement from Twitter's Trust and Safety leader, Ella Irwin, who rejected his request to stop allowing an Antifa member to lie about him.

Irwin wrote, “I do see that they posted publicly available images of you and tagged you in a number of posts stating their opinion of you, but we do allow that as we do allow people to criticize the beliefs of others and to comment publicly on their actions.

“In many cases that creates conversation and debate and awareness among our users that we consider to be part of the global conversation.”

Newsome wrote back, “I have never spread hate or fear nor was I an insurrectionist. I’m not on Twitter to debate him nor should I have to.”