George And Amal Clooney Donate $1 Million To Fight Hate Groups
George and Amal Clooney are donating $1 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center to fund an initiative that will fight hate groups.
George, an Oscar-winning actor and producer, and Amal, a prominent international lawyer and human rights activist, said in a statement that they were inspired to donate after witnessing events earlier this month in Charlottesville, Va., where a white nationalist protest ended in a riot with one death and many injuries.
“We are proud to support the Southern Poverty Law Center in its efforts to prevent violent extremism in the United States. What happened in Charlottesville, and what is happening in communities across our country, demands our collective engagement to stand up to hate,” the pair said in a statement.
George Clooney added in a separate statement to CNN that “Amal and I wanted to add our voice (and financial assistance) to the ongoing fight for equality. There are no two sides to bigotry and hate.”
Clooney appeared to be referring to President Trump’s statement after the events in Charlottesville that there was “blame on both sides.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center monitors extremist groups in the United States.
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO