Do Something, But What? Panel Can’T Agree On How To Respond To Hate-Group Parade

Doing nothing to fight racism when the Aryan Nations parade through downtown Coeur d’Alene won’t solve anything.

That was the message from panelists at a forum on race Tuesday night in Coeur d’Alene.

But when it came to deciding what to do, they differed.

“Confrontation doesn’t work. It just creates more violence, more hate,” said panelist Judy Whatley, vice president of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations.

The task force is following Martin Luther King’s example, she said, pointing out that he never went to events sponsored by racists.

“The Nazis are throwing a party,” she said. “Why would you want to go?”

Whatley recommended instead going to a human rights rally at Gonzaga University planned for parade day on July 18.

But Rev. Bob Hasseries of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church said he would take a different approach.

He’ll be out of town during the parade, but if he was here, he said, he’d go with a group of Buddhists who plan to attend the parade. They plan to wear signs that urge people to turn their backs on hate just as they’ll turn their backs on the parade.

“That is nonviolent confrontation,” he said. “That is being intolerant of intolerance.”

Hasseries also stressed that the message of diversity be spread by individuals and the media, which should report on the human rights rally.

“What we’re doing at Gonzaga is terribly important,” he said.

The media shape the way communities are perceived and can give them a racist image that may not be totally deserved, said panelist Debbie Ferguson, a member of the Sandpoint Human Rights Coalition.

When Sandpoint had problems with racist graffiti, the media made the problem seem larger than it really was, she said.

One audience member scolded the media for giving hate groups such as the Aryan Nations credibility by focusing on their activities.

The media must not overemphasize one small “snapshot” of an event, said Chris Peck, editor of The Spokesman-Review. Instead, they must look at the whole picture. Positive community responses to racism give the media something else on which to focus, he said.

Blatant racism is only part of the problem, said Diane Shriner, an audience member. For some in North Idaho and Eastern Washington, the Aryan Nations acts as a “junkyard dog,” guarding the area from minorities that residents here don’t want to allow in anyway, she said.

As for the Aryans, Hasseries prays they will come to the same conclusion as St. Peter.

“God has no favorites,” he said.