BY NAN BAILEY
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - A crowd of close to 1,000 people
lined the streets of this resort city July 18 to
countermobilize against a march of 90 racists who chanted
"White Power" as they marched through downtown Coeur D'Alene.
The march was organized by the ultrarightist group Aryan Nations. The marchers, most of them young skinheads, were joined by several robed members of the Ku Klux Klan who traveled from Texas to join the action.
Police from at least five city, county, state, and federal cop agencies were on hand in large numbers. They arrested about a dozen counterprotesters. "You're not welcome here," people yelled as the rightists marched. The shouting from protesters lining the streets was so loud that it was impossible to hear the speech of Richard Butler, national head of the Aryan Nations, who led the march riding in a jeep with a bullhorn.
Counterprotesters carried signs saying "No master race, We're all people," "Nazis out of Idaho," "Turn your back on bigotry," and "Say no to racism and yes to equality and human rights."
Pwint Htun, a young Burmese woman who works as an engineer for the Hewlett Packard company near Spokane, Washington, traveled to Coeur D'Alene to join the counterprotest with several of her co-workers. "I'm here because we need to be in their face telling them we don't like what they're doing in this area," she said.
Jeff Elliott, part of a group who traveled from Moscow, Idaho, to join the counterprotest, explained why he was there. "I'm upset and angry that this should happen in our state," he said. "We wanted to come here and show that people from Idaho don't support Nazis and racists."
The hundreds who showed up to protest the Aryan Nations march ignored the pleas of some civil rights groups and religious leaders in the area who urged people to stay away from Coeur D'Alene that day and show their opposition in other ways.
In addition to the counterprotest in Coeur D'Alene, protests against the ultrarightists also took place in Spokane, 30 miles west of here, and in Moscow, Idaho.
Nan Bailey is a member of the International Association of Machinists and the Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Senate in Washington state.