Supremacists Can Expect Confrontation Two Anti-Racist Groups Intend To Show Up In Cda

Two anti-racist groups say they will confront marching neo-Nazis next Saturday during a parade down Sherman Avenue in Coeur d’Alene.

That development emerged Friday as Spokane Mayor John Talbott declared July 18 as “a special human rights day.”

Talbott said constitutional guarantees allowing the Aryan parade also must be used to tell the world that “expressions of hatred don’t fly in the Inland Northwest.”

“Freedom of speech is the freedom to recognize the dignity of each of us, to recognize the differences among us and applaud those differences,” the mayor said.

Talbott and Coeur d’Alene Mayor Steve Judy are urging those opposed to the Aryan Nations parade to attend a counter-rally at Gonzaga University in Spokane.

Jeremy Buck, of the Midwest Network to Stop the Klan, disagrees. “Leaving town is like giving them the keys to the city,” he said at City Hall after Talbott’s news conference.

“The way to win is to get in their faces with overwhelming numbers, to outnumber them, to shout them down, to tell them that they’re not welcome and to drive them out of the city,” Buck said.

The Midwest Network to Stop the Klan and the Jewish Defense League said it will spend next week recruiting people to join them in opposing the Aryan Nations parade.

JDL founder Irv Rubin said he will come to Spokane on Wednesday and spend the remainder of the week in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, using a bullhorn to attract recruits.

“We’re serious, we’ll be there, and we’re going to make a statement,” Rubin said Friday from his office in Los Angeles.

Rubin said he will be joined in Coeur d’Alene by at least 50 other JDL members and other sympathizers he hopes to recruit in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.

“We’re going to be there to show the Nazis that we’re not afraid of them,” Rubin said.

He criticized the plan by civil rights groups to turn “lemons into lemonade” and raise money for each minute the Aryans march. Talbott said he supports the fund-raising effort, and made a personal pledge.

“I think that’s raising money off an amoral organization,” Rubin said of “lemonade pledges.”

Buck, 25, of Seattle, said he couldn’t rule out the possibility that his followers might resort to civil disobedience to disrupt the parade.

An estimated 75 to 125 members of the anti-Klan group showed up at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Cicero, Ill., earlier this year, that was canceled at the last minute.

Asked if his group would attempt to block or disrupt the Coeur d’Alene parade, Buck said, “It’s not for me to say. I’m not ruling out anything.”

Buck said the Midwest Network is distributing fliers about the parade in Seattle this weekend.

His group already has contacted other “activist organizations,” including the International Socialist Workers Party and the Student Action Network at the University of Washington.

Most residents of Spokane and Coeur d’Alene are “overwhelmingly opposed” to the march, Buck said, and they should make the Nazis feel unwelcome and physically threatened. “We want their racist filth driven out of our towns,” he said.