Describe a typical kind of case. You
said, "The kind of thing I was getting involved in." What was that thing?
Answer:
Let me answer you with this. In 1981, it was virtually all mediation, fishing rights issues
and
other Indian relation issues. But one day in November of 1981, I received a phone call from the
NAACP president in Spokane, and she said, "There's a picture in today's newspaper of a big
cross being burned with a bunch of men in uniforms and hoods all around the cross. It says it's
the Old Hinge Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. It says, Aryan Nations. What's that?" I said, "Aryan
what?"
And I didn't know. So I go over and meet with her, and then I realize that I'm going to Coeur
d'Alene
to meet the undersheriff for the first time. He's looking for somebody like me, and I was looking
for somebody like him. We worked very closely together.
After a number of contacts, I realized that there needed to be an entity to countervail the
influence of the Aryan Nations. They weren't interested in sitting down with a Jewish person, or
a black person, or anything like that. But I began the process of identification, and I realized
that the Spokane area had a minority community that was concerned about these activities. And
the Jewish community was concerned about these activities. But there was no minority
community, to speak of, in Coeur d'Alene, or in Northern Idaho. And so whatever was worked
out
would need to be worked out on the joint basis for both geographies. So I pulled together
NAACP representatives from Spokane, and the one Jewish Rabbi serving that whole area, as
well as the representative from the school superintendent's office, the prosecuting attorney, the
US attorney, the police chief, and the sheriff of Spokane County. Also, we had the Methodist
district superintendent and businessmen and the secretary of the bar association. And on the
other side, that undersheriff in Northern Idaho, and the representatives from the police
departments over there. There was one Jewish resident, but I couldn't find a black person at that
point who lived in Coeur d'Alene. I found out later that there were several, but I couldn't find
them.
Oh, and the state's Human Rights Commission had an office there, so that director joined us and
a United Church of Christ minister over in Coeur d'Alene. And we pulled them together, after a
lot
of discussion, I was the common link between all of them. They didn't know each other, even in
Spokane. I was the convener. It was important that we stay together long enough to formulate a
program and for me to get out of that role as quickly as possible. Because if anything's going to
evolve here, the last thing that should be done is that this group was formed by the US
Department of Justice on one hand, and secondly, somebody from Seattle. Those are the bad
people. I mean, Seattle is in competition with Spokane. Seattleites don't understand people east
of the mountains. But, in essence, what we did was form an ad-hoc organization, sponsor the
first conference on hate groups and hate activity in the Northwest.
TAPE CHANGE; QUESTION UNKNOWN
Answer:
Not directly. I had contact with Reverend Butler, the head of it. But he really wasn't
interested in dealing with me in anyway over that. And that was it. And I don't think that there
would be anybody in these organizations that would have any interest in meeting with him
either. There was a two day seminar, it was statewide, Northern Idaho with the state of
Washington. And at the end of my plan, we had already drawn up a constitution, by-laws for the
Interstate Task Force on Human Rights. And that conference gave it legitimacy and we went
from there to do a number of things in supporting each other in both areas.
Question:
So I gather you did a lot more of this sort of
thing afterwards.
Answer:
Yeah, out of that model came the Interstate Task Force on Human rights that we eventually
formed. Hate group activity began to manifest itself, cross-burning incidents, harassment, and
organized activity, and this was before skinheads surfaced. We had Klan activity and Aryan
activity and your Christian patriots and various assorted organizations that had not been present
before, or known to be present. We became aware of the territorial imperative of these groups,
they were organizing to form a state within a state. The Northwest Aryan Empire.
Question:
So what did these groups do to try to counter that?
Answer:
Well, every year, the World Aryan Congress met at Coeur d'Alene, out at Aryan
Headquarters,
seven miles North of Coeur d'Alene. You had up to three or four hundred people coming there.
The
Kootenai County Task Force on Human Rights, broke off from the Interstate Task Force, so you
had two different groups, after a couple of years. They formed Human Rights Observances in
the City Park downtown, with several thousand people in attendance, and greetings from the
governors of Oregon and Washington. That was my job, to generate these. It was to say, the
media was coming to cover the Aryans, that was news. So this was to say, in effect, that there
are other people besides them, and we stand for human rights, fairness, and say yes to equity,
and so on. But they took on a lot of different projects and programs.
Then there were incidents in Coeur d'Alene, Pocatello, Boise, Portland, Seattle, and it was just
cropping up all over the place. I pulled together about fourteen people from over in Spokane to
sit down and consult together, these would be the NAACP regional president, Human Rights
Commission Representative, and LULAC, and so on. But after we had this initial meeting, we
then decided there was a need for more input. So we held a series of consultations over a year.
First in Spokane, and then in Seattle, then in Portland, then in Coeur d'Alene, and then at the end
of a
year, formed the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. And that has now
expanded to include Colorado. Surely you know this, or do you?
Question:
I don't.
Answer:
Oh. Well it's ten years old now, the Northwest Coalition. But it has representatives from the
Governors' offices from each of the five original states that we had involved, Montana,
Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. It's a mix of officials and community leadership.
The NAACP regional offices, and somebody from an Urban League, Latino organizations, one
representative from a police organization in each state, a representative of the Governor's office
in each state, a Human Rights Commission representative from each state, general local coalition
organizational representatives from each state. This is on the Board of Directors. And we've
held a full-time staff of five people. A foundation support of 265 organizations of different
kinds, ranging from the police department to state departments of education, and Diocese. The
local Methodist Church on Mercer Island, was the first church. That's where I lived. The annual
Methodist conference, and even the Northwest Kite-Flyers organization. You don't have to be a
civil rights organization to be concerned about these things. It is 265 organizations. But it's
educational programs, conferences, and there's a big annual conference held in each of the three
states annually. And then smaller conferences are supported.
When an incident occurs, a team will be formed to go there and respond to the problem. I was
the chair of the monitoring committee, which is the main role we had, and that was to document
incidents. If we could document incidents, and show by compilation of credible data, that this
number of incidents had occurred in this community. Or then over to the Northwest, so many
homicides, kidnapping, all of the different forms of violence. We could persuade officials and
public opinion that we have a problem. And that's what we did. We were doing bias-crime data
collection on a five-state basis, way before the FBI started.
Question:
We, being CRS?
Answer:
No. No. The Northwest Coalition was involved in urging National Data Collection for
some
time before it became mandated by Congress. In fact, I'd done that kind of work in Alabama in
the 1950's, state-wide.
Question:
Did you ever mediate a case between a known hate group and a minority group?
Answer:
I offered. If anyone wants to meet with the Aryans, or feel like it's useful for your purposes
to meet with them, to communicate, to discuss anything with them, let me know and I'll see if I
can arrange such. And nobody has ever requested a desire to do that.
Question:
I ask that question, because getting to the next question I wanted to ask you, when
you're dealing with hate groups, how are you able to maintain your impartiality and objectivity at
that particular point?
Answer:
Oh, with difficulty and with skepticism on the part of the hate groups.
Question:
And what did you do?
Answer:
Well, on Whitby Island, that is the site whereby the leader of the most violent terrorist group
ever to form in the U.S., an off-shoot of the Aryan Nations, formed in Northeast Washington.
There were about 22 people, primarily men, who assassinated Allenberg here in Denver, and
other individuals. Some of the victims were their own members, who were thought to be
informers. They tried to bomb the house of the head of the Northwest Coalition at one point, in
Coeur d'Alene.
The FBI, in 1984, was able to track that group down, and the leaders were tracked to Whitby
Island. But they had several safe houses up there, right on the edge of the water. They were
surrounded by several hundred law enforcement, and the leader of the group was killed.
Now the Aryans and neo-Nazis go to the State park, which is almost adjacent to this site of his
Martyrdom, as they put it. They hold services. Then, anti-neo-Nazi groups from Seattle and
other places come to the site to protest their presence. A confrontation then develops and law
enforcement's caught in the middle. From the beginning, I was involved in getting the State
Park's people to arrange to meet with law enforcement and the leaders of the protest groups to
meet and sort out ground rules. We discussed what could be expected from each, and that sort of
thing. That doesn't really involve the neo-Nazis. But the neo-Nazis have a campsite that they
usually camped in and people such as newspaper reporters, were filtering down into the
campsite. So I went down and they were chasing them out. I recommended, "What we're trying
to do is avoid violence in this case. This would play into their hands." But we urged them to
talk with the leadership of the group there, who is an old time neo-Nazi. We urged him, "Why
don't you go up there and set up a perimeter at this gate up here, at the top of the road, a hundred
yards from where the campsite is and have somebody up there to meet whatever medial
representatives come there and make a determination as to whether you want them down here in
your campsite. The interview could be done up there, or just to decide whether or not you want
to talk with them at all. " But, not to leave it wide open where conflicts were developing. A lot
of confrontations were developing along that road. They thought that was a good idea, and
followed that suggestion. In subsequent years, I would meet with the first arrivals at the
campsite, and just establish rapport, as tenuous as it was. I was there in the event that some
problems did arise, outside of demonstrations that were orderly and in the area, but not at their
campsite. Things generally worked out very
well.
Question:
That reminds me of something you talked about with the university
case which we veered away from and never got back to. You said the KKK was handing out
leaflets. Did you ever work with them?
Answer:
I did. I made contact with them, but not in that situation because they had come in to the
community from somewhere else and just passed out leaflets. They weren't in the community.
The only time we worked directly with them, and it usually was as a team, was when there was
going to be a KKK rally. We would help organize it so that it was peaceful. We would work
with the community and the KKK. We would make sure it was marshaled and make sure
everybody knew what to do and all that technical kind of stuff. Other then that, it was just a
monitoring factor. I would make contact with them though. If there was a situation in a
community in which they were involved, I would usually try to find out who was there and make
contact with them. I never had an occasion where they became a party, other than a
demonstration.
Question:
So they never sat at the table?
Answer:
No. I never had a situation where there were the direct perpetrators. I suspect they were
KKK members at the table, but they were probably members of other organizations.
Question:
My impression, this is just from the media, is that the KKK wants
to create violent situations at their rallies. Is that incorrect?
Answer:
The ones that I was at were very small, very few people, so we could keep the community
from reacting to them. Usually it was a non-issue, a non-event. They got publicity by creating
disruption. But if you could keep things safe and let them demonstrate, then it became a
non-issue. It was sad to me to see the inauguration of their own children because that's who
usually was there. Four of five adults and their kids. Perpetuation of hate and those kids don't
know any better.
Question:
Were they interested in having your assistance with preventing violence?
Answer:
Yeah, they were always cooperative with us in terms of creating safety. Safety in terms of
working with the city to make sure they get their permits. Sometimes the city would say, "We're
not going to give them a permit." "Well, you know, it might be better if you do, go ahead and
manage it, do it the right way. Don't have them off at the edge of town and you not having any
influence over it." So it was that kind of a negotiated deal.
