Fighting back against hate groups

HAYDEN, Idaho - When 59-year-old grandmother Skip Kuck takes you on a tour of her town, you get to visit the country-style restaurant where Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler likes to eat, you get to take a gander at the minimalist entrance to Butler's compound and, just for good measure, you get to peek at a suburban rambler where she asserts a devout racist lives.

Welcome to Hayden, Idaho.

This postcard-worthy land of tall evergreens, plush hills, sparkling lakes and scrumptious huckleberries is hounded by its ugly side.

The ogre is Butler, whose Aryan Nations helped transform North Idaho from a serene resort locale to a sinister racist refuge.

Or so you have been led to believe.

Many North Idahoans insist the area's reputation as a haven for hate is overblown and, in some ways, a creation of the media.

They also tend to resist any suggestion that their community hasn't done enough to expel hate groups from their midst.

"There is a misconception we are accepting of Butler because we're not hammering down his gate or whatever," says Kuck (pronounced Cook). "But we are law-abiding and patient people, waiting for our time."

Their time may have come.

Butler, 82, is the primary defendant in a civil trial under way in Coeur d'Alene that aims to bankrupt Aryan Nations.

Famed civil-rights lawyer Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama is representing a North Idaho mother and son who were assaulted outside the Aryan Nations compound in 1998 by at least three of Butler's followers.

The mother and son were driving past the compound when they stopped to fetch a wallet that dropped out of their car. When they drove away the car backfired.

The mother told police that their attackers ran out of the compound and chased them.

The lawsuit says at least five bullets hit their car, the car careened off the road and the men threatened to kill them.

Two of the assailants are in prison for aggravated assault and another is a fugitive.

Dees hopes to hold Butler liable in a civil case and win a large-enough damage award to result in the seizure of Butler's compound.

North Idahoans are annoyed at the media convoy that has rolled into their region to cover the trial. They figure the reports will once again paint North Idaho as the racist capital of the United States.

"The Aryan Nations are a problem because they are like a magnet," says Ron Rankin, a Kootenai County commissioner.

"It's to their advantage to get media coverage. And when they get media coverage, that attracts outside agitators. You can't say what is the greater problem," Rankin says. "It's like the interlocking rings of the Olympics - one begats the other which begats the other."

Bob Potter, president of Coeur d'Alene Area Economic Development, believes North Idaho's image problem has cost the region untold millions.

"When I am recruiting a company here, once we show them the area and they understand the truth, it's not a problem," he says. "The problem is in those companies who I don't get to talk to because they've heard about us and have already decided they aren't interested."

Kuck, who lives several miles from the Aryan Nations compound, and other North Idahoans say the untold story of North Idaho is the grassroots efforts of mainstream residents who have worked for 20 years to counter the hate that Butler and his supporters have brought to their community.

In January 1987, Coeur d'Alene was named the recipient of the prestigious Raoul Wallenberg Civic Award for standing up against religious hatred and racial prejudice.

Coeur d'Alene was the first community to ever receive the award, which is displayed at City Hall.

Task forces in the area exist to promote human rights and preach diversity to students by sponsoring conferences and workshops at area high schools.

But human-rights activists in the community are defamed and targeted by white supremacists who view them as threats. Kuck says a skinhead told her several years ago she would be perfect to use for target practice. She didn't take him seriously.

People tied to Aryan Nations also bombed the house of Bill Wassmuth, a former Catholic priest in Coeur d'Alene who opposed white supremacists, in 1986. Wassmuth, who remains active in human rights, says a verdict against Aryan Nations would be very significant to the locals.

"It would give the people of Coeur d'Alene and North Idaho a sense that they won one," he says.

Activists say the majority of North Idahoans have resigned themselves to putting up with Aryan Nations, even if they are repulsed by the group's message.

Kuck says some of her neighbors express to her, in subtle ways, that they wish the activist's rabble-rousing would cease.

Virgil Vigil, a Native American who has lived near Hayden for about 10 years, is married to a white woman and is the father of two young children.

Vigil says he decided to stop passively hating the haters and become a grassroots human-rights activist after he read some racist literature that targeted mixed-race couples and kids.

"That's when it starts affecting me," he says. "I think a lot of people try to overlook that these people are here. They figure if they stay away, these people will go away. But they won't. I think staying away just encourages them."

Kuck suspects Butler's movement also has brought some people to her town that relocated specifically to avoid minorities. She calls them "white flighters."

Aryan Nations, like its leader, is growing more feeble with age. But others have picked up the slack, such as leaders of the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger in Sandpoint, Idaho.

Vincent Bertollini and Carl Story, who made millions in high-tech ventures, have blanketed North Idaho with anti-Semitic literature. Their most sophisticated venture was a video interview with Butler that was mailed to some residents.

"One family said to me, `It's one thing to have him as a neighbor but when he starts spreading his garbage into our homes, that's stepping over the line,' " says Kuck, who has lived in the area 27 years.

The racism that occurs in North Idaho is nearly inescapable for anyone with a mailbox or a front porch. It is all part of a white-supremacist effort to persuade their neighbors to think like they do - that Jews and ethnic minorities are lesser beings in the eyes of God.

Kuck says North Idahoans are conditioned to toss the literature into the garbage once they get it, whether it is a videotape or a single sheet of paper.

Yet when mass mailings are received, activists try to spread the word to area Jews and minorities so that they know the literature was sent across the community and therefore is not a targeted threat to an individual family.

Activists do not keep a low profile.

The face of Marshall Mend is everywhere in the Coeur d'Alene-Hayden area. He's the best-known real-estate agent in town, his smiling face appearing on his black-and-white for-sale signs.

Mend, a leader in the Kootenai County Task Force for Human Rights, also is one of about 100 or so Jews who live in the area. He moved to North Idaho 20 years ago without a clue that Aryan Nations would be his neighbor.

"If I had heard about the Nazis, I probably wouldn't have considered moving here," Mend says now.

Like many, Mend believes the impact of white-supremacy groups in the area is exaggerated. But a vandal once defaced his for-sale signs by drawing horns on Mend's head.

Mend believes it was the act of a white supremacist.

Police originally discounted the vandalism as a prank of some kids, Mend says, but changed their minds after other signs were defaced with swastikas drawn on his forehead.

Mend also is one of 13 people listed as purveyors of "Marxist Communistic Jewry-Hate" in a mailing sent out by the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger.

Just a few days ago, the North Idaho Identity Christian Coalition in Hayden left literature at the door of Mend's business and several others in a strip mall.

The group's logo looked an awful lot like that of Aryan Nations.

Kuck surveyed the piece and muttered, "Oh no, more work."

She keeps on alert for new white-supremacist groups and anyone in town who has the look of a skinhead.

Kuck has box upon box of racist and extremist literature she's compiled over time.

The latest addition is a $1 bill her husband received at the grocery last Monday night that is stamped in red: "Death to the New World Order."