Exhibit focuses on battle with Aryans

After an extended period of construction around the gallery, the Human Rights Education Insitute announced it will hold a grand re-opening at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. Exhibits are scheduled through December that support the HREI message and vision to “Tell the Story of Human Rights.”

The first exhibit will tell the story of community members’ reponse to acts of violence by Aryan Nation members, efforts that paved the way for a 2002 civil lawsuit that resulted in the disbanding of the group’s Hayden headquarters.

Tony Stewart, a founding member of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, said the theme of the exhibit is triumph over hate.

“And it was the good people of this region and all the people of Idaho who said, ‘We are not going to be silent,’” Stewart said.

The exhibit, titled “Coming Face to Face with Hate: A Search for a World without Hate,” includes 138 items that will illustrate what happened in Kootenai County and how it can be a model for any community in the United States/ Coeur d’Alene Press . More here .