SPLC Working to Assist the LGBT Community Healing Process

In the wake of the attacks in Orlando, organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center are working to assist the LGBT community in their healing process.

“LGBT people are by far the most targeted minority in terms of violent hate crimes in this country,” says Mike Potok, Senior Fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Potok says LGBT people are more than twice as likely to be attacked in a violent hate crime as African Americans, more than four times as likely as Muslims and almost fourteen times as likely as Latinos.

“The reality is that they are the victims of attacks, very very often. Every poll shows that, every analysis of hate crime numbers shows that,” he notes.

Potok shares that the numbers of attacks don’t differ much in areas across the United States.

“You tend to find anti-gay hate crimes,” he says “and similar kinds of attacks occurring really just as much in places like San Francisco and New York as you do in the deep south”

He hopes the Orlando shooting will spark a nationwide conversation about many things including hatred towards LGBT people, guns in society, mental illness and Islamist ideas.

A vigil for the victims in the Orlando shooting will be held tonight in Montgomery at 6:30 at the Civil Rights Memorial Center on Washington Avenue.