Task Force Stands Up To Aryans White Supremacists Tape Hearing On Recent Rash Of Racist Materials

Standing almost nose to nose with Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler, Gretchen Albrecht-Hellar told residents Thursday night that supporting human rights means “standing without cowering.”

Albrecht-Hellar, who heads the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force, put her new motto to an acid test as Butler and others espousing white supremacy videotaped the meeting.

“No one should have to live in fear or shame,” Albrecht-Hellar told about 100 people in Sandpoint’s community hall.

Everyone - regardless of race, creed, gender or sexual orientation - should be able to live in a racism-free community, she said, looking Butler in the eye.

Butler didn’t speak and later said he showed up “only to see what the communists are doing.”

Plainclothes police officers were in attendance, and there were no incidents beyond mild shouting.

The meeting was called by the task force in response to last summer’s Aryan Nations parade in Coeur d’Alene and the more recent mailings of a racist poster and a videotaped interview of Butler.

Thousands of homes in Coeur d’Alene and Sandpoint have received the poster and video.

The mailings were funded by a Sandpoint-based organization called The 11th Hour Remnant Messenger. The group apparently is comprised of only two wealthy men from California, R. Vince Bertollini, who calls himself a minister for the Remnant Messenger, attended the meeting Thursday. He brought with him a two-camera video crew to tape Albrecht-Hellar and everyone else who spoke.

When a task force member asked Bertollini and his camera crew to leave, he pointed to a TV news crew.

Task force leaders huddled, then decided to allow Bertollini and the crew to stay.

Butler and two of his Aryan Nations lieutenants, Jerry Gruidl and Michael Teague, also had a video camera and a skinhead security guard.

“Sometimes with the First Amendment, you swallow hard, but have to support it,” Albrecht-Hellar told the audience.

Sandpoint Mayor David Sawyer said the recent mailings of the video and poster galvanized the community around human rights issues and resulted in the overflow turnout Thursday night.

Sawyer said the literature is prejudicial and is “making people scared.”

Bertollini drew the most response when he stood to explain the rationale behind his white race superiority poster.

He said 9,000 of them have been mailed out at a cost of $9.45 each, which he paid for. Several hundred were distributed by the Aryan Nations.

Wearing a black, double-breasted suit in a room full of blue jeans and Dockers, Bertollini said the poster is “simply a pure statement of the facts.”

The Bible, he said, proclaims that white people are the true children of God and have a mission to fulfill.

And he’s using part of his wealth to fulfill that mission, he said.

The audience wasn’t eager to hear his message, and heckled him to sit down when his allotted two minutes were up.

Some in the audience told Bertollini the “11th Hour Messenger” is unwelcome trash in their homes.

“This community has been bombarded lately with Christian Identity literature,” said Brenda Hammond, a task force member.

Buddhist minister Yontan Gonpo said it was “a mistake” for the task force to only be reactive. He said the group should publish its own anti-racism comic book and literature.

“Let’s don’t wait for somebody to punch our button before we do something,” he said.

The first in the audience to speak was Michael Hoffman II, of Coeur d’Alene, who circulates literature claiming that the Holocaust is a Jewish myth that didn’t happen.

Earlier this week, Hoffman, who calls himself a “radical historical revisionist,” distributed a self-published comic book denouncing the Holocaust to students outside Sandpoint High School.

“Freedom of speech is for everybody, including the people you’re demonizing,” said Hoffman, who has attended the Aryan Nations but now attempts to distance himself from the organization.

This sidebar appeared with the story: Documentary Tonight at 9 p.m., KSPS-7 airs “Extreme Tolerance,” a locally produced documentary that looks at the Inland Northwest’s reputation as a haven for white supremacists and anti-government extremists. The documentary, which includes interviews with Richard Butler, shows how the Aryan Nations has served as a catalyst for other extremist groups in the area.