Racists march down CdA street
COEUR d’ALENE – Summertime business and tourist activities ground to a halt here Saturday when a band of 40 neo-Nazis and Aryan Nations members spent an hour marching down a main street, waving racist flags and banners and exchanging insults with anti-racist demonstrators.
“Are you going to reimburse the city for what this costs?” protester Emery Shaw, 54, shouted at Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler, who rode along the parade route in a lawn chair in the bed of an old Ford pickup.
The ailing 86-year-old racist, wearing a hearing aid, ignored the protesters’ repeated taunts and didn’t make any statements before or after the parade – his statement that the Aryan Nations hasn’t left North Idaho. The Aryans obtained a city-issued permit for the parade months ago, and made sure the eight-block march lasted its legal limit of 60 minutes with at least four stops on the route.
During the stops, hecklers jeered from the sidewalks, but there were no incidents or arrests like those that have marked a half-dozen previous Aryan parades.
There was a heavy law enforcement presence, with uniformed officers in police cars at every intersection and numerous plainclothes officers, including federal agents, scattered in the sidewalk crowd.
Saturday’s racist parade, which closed off Sherman Avenue from 6 a.m. until 12:30 p.m., was part of this weekend’s Aryan World Congress, an annual event Butler has hosted since the late 1970s when he moved to Hayden Lake from California. This year’s three-day Aryan Congress is being held at a private campground near Cataldo, Idaho, about 40 miles east of Coeur d’Alene.
A rival three-day white supremacy event, called “The Gathering” and sponsored by the Church of True Israel, attracted an estimated 40 racists – many of them former Aryan Nations followers – to a Forest Service campsite 14 miles north of St. Regis, Mont., about 50 miles from Wallace, Idaho. Law enforcement also was closely monitoring that gathering, expected to include a cross burning.
While that group met in relative secrecy, Butler seemed to enjoy the fact that his public spectacle once again brought business in downtown Coeur d’Alene to a standstill, with yards and yards of yellow police tape ringing the city’s central business area.
Under humid and hot skies, the Aryan Nations founder offered a few Nazi stiff-arm salutes from the back of the pickup that dragged the blue and white flag of Israel down Sherman Avenue – an anti-Semitic first for Aryan parades in Coeur d’Alene.
At the staging area, the Israeli flag was thrown to the ground and stomped upon by neo-Nazi skinheads, joined by a beaming Tom Metzger, one of the country’s foremost racists, who heads White Aryan Resistance (WAR). A nearby reader board sign said: “Idaho supports human rights.”
Metzger, who traveled from California to be in the parade, was a regular speaker at Aryan Nations World Congress events, gatherings that Butler hosted in the 1980s and 1990s at his former 20-acre white supremacy compound near Hayden Lake.
The WAR leader is a neo-Nazi who doesn’t share Butler’s religiously based Christian Identity views that white people are the true children of God. But they share a common admiration of Adolf Hitler and national socialism. Butler and Metzger both were targets of successful Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuits that resulted in crippling judgments.
“I’m parading out of support for Pastor Butler and to let him know he has support around the country from other groups, even people that aren’t into the (Christian Identity) religion,” said Metzger, 66, who wore walking shorts and a black cowboy hat.
“I’m the lone-wolf promoter and favor small cells, so I don’t do much of this,” Metzger said. “I encourage people to be underground.”
Others parading with Butler included his longtime friends Chuck Tate, who now lives in North Carolina; Rick Cooper, the director of the National Socialist Vanguard, a neo-Nazi group based in The Dalles, Ore.; Rick Spring, a current Aryan leader; and Paul Bartron, of Tacoma, the Washington state Aryan leader.
Billy Roper, leader of a newer supremacy group called White Revolution, said he decided to travel from Russellville, Ark., to march with Butler.
“Pastor Butler has devoted his life to the survival of our people and our race,” said Roper, viewed by many as an emerging younger leader among white supremacists.
Roper said he idolizes Butler because “he’s given up everything he’s had to make sure America doesn’t become a Third World country. All white American citizens owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude.”
“I’m just here trying to express my appreciation and respect for him,” Roper said.
The parade of hate generated many shouts of opposition from the sidelines and several dumbfounded stares from spectators who seemed jolted by what they were seeing.
“Where I’m from, any display of public racism like this is against the law and wouldn’t be tolerated,” said Jamie Reid, 32, who recently moved to Coeur d’Alene from Edinburgh, Scotland. Reid was particularly offended that the Aryans had taken the U.S. flag and replaced the 50 stars with the Aryan cross.
“The fact they get away with that is disgusting,” he said with a thick Scottish accent. “We’re all born equal. It’s a great country, and I love it very much. I just don’t understand this. They’re not representing America in a good way.”
Longtime civil rights activist Skip Kuch showed up on the sidelines with a sign that said, “Ask Butler why he killed his own.” It was a reference to an Aryan splinter group in the 1980s that killed at least one of their members suspected of being an informant.
Amy Wilkerson, who recently moved to the area, held a sign that said, “There’s no place for racists in Idaho.” Her husband, who’s black, held a sign proclaiming: “Hate is a bad lifestyle. Get out now!”
Another sign said, “Hate is a business. Your leaders are making their income off of you!”
But there also were a couple of dozen or more Aryan sympathizers along the sidelines, including a woman who waved a Confederate flag.
But there clearly were more anti-Aryan demonstrators on the sidewalks.
“They have the right to do it, but it sure degrades the town,” said Paul Bentz, 29, who watched the parade as he headed to breakfast with his girlfriend. “This puts a bad light on a great town with great people.”
His friend, Matt Rasmussen, 28, said that although he disagrees with the racist message “and what they’re doing, I love the fact they can express themselves like this. That’s what makes America great.”
Chris Bierman, 29, of Sandpoint, described the marchers as a bunch of losers. “Within a year, I believe 75 percent of them will be in the slammer somewhere.”
Dean Lowe, a Mormon bishop from Spokane, brought 15 teenagers to Coeur d’Alene for a morning swim in the lake and was surprised to run into the Aryan parade. “I didn’t have a clue this was going on. After that lawsuit a few years ago, I didn’t think they were even still here.”
One of the teens in Lowe’s group, Ryleigh Riggin, 14, looked with surprise at the marchers as they formed up. “It’s pathetic,” the Spokane teenager said.
Coeur d’Alene businessman Duane Hagadone, standing outside his business office and the fashionable resort hotel that he owns, appeared disgusted.”I’ve seen all I care to see,” Hagadone said as the marchers headed down Sherman, marching past his Coeur d’Alene Resort. “It makes me sick.”