Panamanian-American victim may bankrupt KKK faction

Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center

$2.5 million judgment for racially motivated assault

Can a Panamanian-American kid who got stomped by the KKK seize their trailer park?

by Eric Jackson, from other media

An all-white civil jury in Meade County, Kentucky has awarded Jordan Gruver, a teenage US-born American citizen of mixed Panamanian and Native American ancestry, $2.5 million for a stomping he received at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan in July of 2006. Racist militants of the Imperial Klans of America --- said to be the second-largest of the various KKK factions --- beat and kicked Gruver at the county fair in Brandenberg, Kentucky, taunting him (ignorantly) for being an illegal alien. Gruver, who was kicked by two Klansmen wearing steel-toed boots with red shoelaces symbolizing a willingness to shed blood for the cause of white supremacy, suffered a broken jaw, broken arm, two broken ribs and lasting nerve damage.

This was the latest in a number of court victories against white racist groups by the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. The center's lead attorney, Morris Dees, said that it will vigorously pursue collection efforts to satisfy the judgment, which was against the Imperial Klans of America, its imperial wizard Ron Edwards (who stepped down from that post after the trial) and Jarred "Grant Titan" Hensley. The jury held that Hensley physically inflicted Gruver's injuries, having been incited to do so by Edwards and his Klan faction.

The Imperial Klans of America maintains a 15-acre compound in Dawson Springs, Kentucky, where Edwards and other Klansmen live in trailers, the group maintains its headquarters and an annual "Nordic Fest" white power rally and music festival. Dees is hoping to use the judgment to seize that asset from the Klan, as his group did in a similar case against the Idaho compound of another white racist group, the Aryan Nations, in 2000.

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