Recent racist mailings are not who we are, or who we want to be

Last week, some friends contacted me, distraught, over a racist package they had received in the mail from a group calling itself "The Northwest Front Volunteers." [See attached images.]

Some of the alarming racist contents in this package included:

• The statement: "White people need a country of our own, for white people ONLY!!"
• The statement: "A new nation, the Northwest American Republic, is coming to the land where you live... Let's make sure our final WHITE FIGHT for our freedom and for the legacy of our white children begins here. It's time for action now."
• The history of Edgar J. Steele, a disbarred North Idaho attorney who died in prison after being convicted in a murder-for-hire plot to have his wife and her mother murdered, painting him as a martyr and claiming that the Federal government murdered him
• Another flyer declaring that the January 6th attack on the US Capitol was "legal," that it was a "birth pang," and that "More will come. There will be blood."

I was disgusted and furious. So I contacted my friends and my fellow Bonner County Democrats. Within hours, more than $1,000 had been pledged as donations to the Idaho ACLU in response to this attack on the ideals that bind us all as Americans. As word got out, more donations have been made, because others are also not content to be quietly non-racist. Friends who are Democrat, Republican and Independent have all pledged donations because this is our town, and white supremacists are not welcome here.

I raised my children in Sandpoint. In my decades living here in our beautiful little town, I have never seen the kind of racist rhetoric I've seen in the last few years.

I want to be clear: I personally, and all the people who donated, loudly denounce racism in all forms, and we stand against letters of this kind being circulated in our community.

If you'd like to join us in denouncing these activities, consider donating to the Idaho ACLU or any other organization that works to counter racist propaganda and ideals.

LINDA LARSON

Sandpoint