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0000017a-3b40-d913-abfe-bf44a4f90000Howard Wilkinson joined the WVXU news team as the politics reporter and columnist in April 2012 , after 30 years of covering local, state and national politics for The Cincinnati Enquirer. On this page, you will find his weekly column, Politically Speaking; the Monday morning political chats with News Director Maryanne Zeleznik and other news coverage by Wilkinson. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Wilkinson has covered every Ohio gubernatorial race since 1974, as well as 16 presidential nominating conventions. Along with politics, Wilkinson also covered the 2001 Cincinnati race riots, the Lucasville prison riot in 1993, the Air Canada plane crash at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in 1983, and the 1997 Ohio River flooding. And, given his passion for baseball, you might even find some stories about the Cincinnati Reds here from time to time.

The History And Current Mission Of The Southern Poverty Law Center

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Civil rights lawyers Morris Dees and Joseph Levin, Jr. founded the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 1971. Since then the civil rights organization has battled white supremacist groups though the courts, winning multimillion-dollar jury verdicts on behalf of their victims.

Today the SPLC continues its work through the legal system, focusing on children’s rights, economic and immigrant justice, LGBT rights and criminal justice reform. The SPLC also monitors and tracks  a wide variety of hate and extremist organizations throughout the United States. While the SPLC has identified many extremist hate groups, it has been criticized for some of the organizations and individualist has included on its hate group list.

Southern Poverty Law Center Co-founder Joseph Levin, Jr. was recently in Cincinnati to meet with area leaders. He and Jackie Congedo, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council with the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, came into our studios to talk with WVXU politics reporter Howard Wilkinson