Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 5 October 2000 — Page 27

The Muncie Times ' October 5, 2000, page 27

TO BE EQUAL

Idaho jury awards $6.3 million against white supremacists

One might almost have felt some sympathy for 82-year-old Richard Gimit Butler, looking frail and tired, as he stood outside the Idaho state courthouse in Coeur d’Alene recently. After all, it’s quite a blow at any age to be hit with a $6.3 million civil judgement handed up by a jury against an organization you’ve built up over several decades. Because of that verdict, Butler stands to lose his organization’s 20-acre property in nearby Hayden Lake and, vowed one of the attorneys who sued him, “every desk, typewriter and computer” in it. Yes, one might feel at least a twinge of sympathy—were it not for the fact that Richard Gimit Butler, whose followers call him “pastor” Butler, is the founder and guiding figure of the Aryan Nations, one of the most dangerous of the white racist extremist groups which continue to Dlague American society. Butler, whose group nas sheltered and nspired numerous acists who have committed violent bank obberies and murders, las long been called the eider statesman of Xmerican hate.” One of those who mows most about Sutler and the Aryan

Nation is Morris S. Dees Jr., a co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The nonprofit center, which is based in Birmingham, Ala., and has long been a stewart crusader against groups and individuals who preach bigotry and violence, brought the suit. The jury’s verdict against Butler, the Aryan Nations itself, and several associates, stemmed from a July 1998 incident in which several guards at the isolated compound shot at and beat a woman and her son after the men mistook their 22-year-old car’s backfire for gunfire. According to court testimony, the three Aryan Nations guards claimed they reacted so violently because they thought the compound was under armed attack by militant Jews. After shooting out a tire of Virginia Keenan’s car, forcing it into a ditch, and beating Virginia Keenan and her son, Jason, they told them they were letting them go only because they were white people. Keenan had wisely not told them that she was also part Native American. Last week after the verdict Butler, though expectedly defiant, also confessed to being befuddled at what has happened to “his” United States of

America. _ By that, he went oni to say, he meant he couldn’t understand how such a verdict could come from 12 white people, or as he put it, “people who have escaped [the] multiculturalsim” sweeping over America’s cities. “You go to Los Angeles, go to San Francisco, go tO| Chicago and *be marginalized there. [In Idaho] We’re still in business,” he said. Butler’s lawyer, Edgar Steele, also complained about the verdict—which is likely the largest punitive damage award in Idaho history. “I’ve considered this area to be one of the last bastions of free speech in America,” Steele told reporters. “Man, you can put an epitaph to that. Free speech was put to rest today in a rural courtroom in the back country of Idaho.” Others in Idaho had a diametrically different view—the right view—of the verdict. Among them was Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthome. He said that “this verdict, by a jury of peers, represents a clear victory of the values of Idaho. We are lawabiding citizens who do not condone violence and antics of hate mongers. . . .If they are looking for new placards to display at their compound, may suggest

Hugh B. Price

a sign that simply reads: For Sale.’ “ As Gov. Kempthome’s vigorous denunciation indicates, many in Idaho have sought for years to refute the notion that the state is a “haven” for white supremacist organizations and individuals. No one should have any doubt of that now. The verdict against the Aryan Nations showed that Richard Gimit Butler’s view of many of Idaho’s white citizens was just a perverse—and mistaken —as his view of America’s citizens who are not white. It is another welcome sign that the determination among Americans of all kinds to be intolerant of intolerance—and to take proper action when that intolerance is expressed in criminal acts—is growing more and more vigorous. No, of course, this one verdict doesn’t mean that we’ve broken

the organized armed forces of bigotry in America. Far from it; they are still numerous, and dangerous. But we can take heart that one jury of Americans “in a rural courtroom in the back country of Idaho” followed the law and refuted intolerance. Morris Dees had told the jurors at the end of the trial before they began deliberating: “You are the conscience of this community. Tell Richard Butler, “We don’t believe in your America, Mr. Butler.” We can be grateful for that, for America’s sake, that is what they did.

Hugh B. Price is president of the National Urban League based in New York City.