Libby Demonstrations Turn Into Roadside Griping Without A Permit, About 50 Protesters Forced To Gather Outside Montana Town

A call for massive civil disobedience in Libby on tax day turned into a small gathering of disgruntled citizens at a weigh station about 15 miles west of town Saturday.

Despite the cancellation of the protest rally, about 50 protesters from North Idaho, Eastern Washington, Montana and Oregon milled about in the weigh station parking lot, chatting with reporters and one another.

“We do have the right to assemble peacefully,” explained Joseph Wade of Libby. He carried a staff that displayed the original protest flier, which read, “Mass rally of civil disobedience against the Clinton Environmental Regime’s War on the West. Show up or Shut up. Over 3,000 people expected.”

The flier was distributed widely, in part with the help of the Militia of Montana. At one point, Jack Gurganus and Tom Stetson of Coeur d’Alene’s Americans for Constitutional Government stood on a pickup tailgate to explain their motives and berate the media.

“We are not anti-government,” Stetson said. “We’re anti some of the actions our government is doing. And we will never stand by and watch a U.N. flag fly over any part of this country.”

Shortly after the speech, protesters burned a United Nations flag to cheers. A baby dressed in camouflage watched the activities from a stroller.

The organizers of the event, including Montana Rep. Scott Orr, R-Libby, and Libby car dealer Terry Andreessen, called off the original rally after city leaders and local police voiced concerns about the event attracting fringe radicals, including white supremacists and environmental activists.

The organizers found themselves pressured by city leaders to call off the event.

“The powers that be were wrong to make such a big deal about the skinheads,” said Wade, an older man in a cowboy hat.

Those who attended the rally blamed the cancellation on communist environmentalists and the media. A group called the Communist Committee for Environmental Preservation wrote city leaders and rally organizers, thanking them for calling off the event. They sent along a newsletter that made the rounds at the substitute rally.

“It’s scarier than hell,” said one protester, after reading about the Earth Charter going before the United Nations.

Until the morning of the event, die-hard protesters were still trying to find a location in town. Law enforcement told them they couldn’t assemble there without a permit.

Kicked out of town, they gathered at the weigh station between Libby and Troy. In case of trouble, 35 officers from the Kalispell, Libby, Troy and Missoula police departments, the Montana Highway Patrol, and Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department were on patrol. Two ambulances were stationed at the Kootenai Falls rest area, a short drive away.

Hart and Bob Heitmanek, two miners from Oregon, didn’t get word of the cancellation. They drove a black pickup with “Shovels for Jarbridge” stenciled on the back, in reference to grass-roots efforts to take back control of a Forest Service road near Elko, Nev.

“It’s a continuing battle for people who want to use resources the country has,” Heitmanek said.

Protesters emphasized that the rally was purely about federal intrusion and its economic impacts on the West, as well as gun control.

“If you disarm the citizen, you have a controlled citizen,” said Bob Bauman, a Libby millworker.

“They want our guns,’ said Leonard W. Stark, a Libertarian candidate for the Montana House of Representatives. “How do we defend ourselves against invasion? How would we defend ourselves against our government if it disobeys us?”

One man carried a Christian flag, and another carried a banner denouncing the United Nations as ungodly: “Jesus Saves. UN enslaves.”

Stark explained that President Bill Clinton’s roadless initiative for the national forests is really a ploy to accumulate equity for loans from the World Bank, to use “for exploits of the one-world government.”

“Someday, if someone misses a payment, we’re going to lose our forests,” he said. “What audacity does he have to close out the sovereign citizens of sovereign Montana from their forests.”

Staff writer Bill Morlin contributed to this report.