Editorial 4.6, July/August 2002, by Deirdre Helfferich Litterbugs and Community Spirit Recently, numerous people in the Ester area, including the village, Ester Lump, Old Nenana Highway, and Old Wood Road, discovered that someone had been throwing paper trash in their driveways: rolled-up leaflets rubber-banded together. It’s bad enough that we get junk mail in our post office boxes and spam on our e-mail accounts, now we have to deal with twinks flinging unwanted advertisements at us and crudding up our yards! Had anyone caught them at it, you can be sure they would have been prosecuted for littering, assuming that the resident decided not to take matters into his own hands. But this wasn’t the worst of it—not only did some inconsiderate lout or louts decide that that we didn’t have enough garbage lying about, it was the nature of what they were leaving for us to find that was especially offensive and caused not a few of us to call the police. The leaflets were from the National Alliance, a white supremacist organization with national headquarters in Hillsboro, West Virginia. The leaflets decried the stranglehold of Jewish control over the media, the billions of dollars in foreign aid to "a swollen parasite" (Israel), the evils (encouraged by Jews, naturally) of multiculturalism and miscegenation (don’t forget the criminal and violent nature of blacks and immigrants), and similar paranoid and xenophobic connections. An interesting note: they also suggest abandoning the print media and television as sources of news, and turning to the internet, "the only form of mass-communication [sic] not under Jewish control." The word Jew seemed to have nothing to do with a religion or a culture; it was used as a synonym for Bush’s second-favorite word, evildoer. (Bush’s favorite seems to be strong, uttered with a weighty pause beforehand.) There were a few typos and grammatical mistakes that leapt to my eye (it’s an occupational hazard for an editor), but they couldn’t distract me from the seething tangle of fear, blame, illogic, and sinister intent in the content of the fliers. My husband, who is German, looked them over, and discovered to his disgust and outrage that one of them bore a Nazi cartoon from the ‘30s. I found myself reluctant to even touch the paper upon which those sorts of sentiments were expressed, and horrified that someone might think Ester a place where there might be, in the words of the National Alliance’s website, "receptive Whites." I did some research for this editorial, and discovered that the National Alliance was led until quite recently by a man named William Pierce, who died on July 23 or 25 (two dates showed up in my searches). He wrote a book called The Turner Diaries, which apparently was a source of inspiration for the terrorist Timothy McVeigh. A branch of this organization exists in Anchorage. It was in the news last year when an Anchorage neighborhood was plastered with fliers and when cars outside a panel discussion on racism were likewise leafleted. Their website claims that two new members signed on as a result, one in Sitka and one in Fairbanks. While the National Alliance claims that its motivations are love of family and of western civilization, and pride in the European culture and background of its members, their propaganda—and method of distribution—clearly shows otherwise. These are people who simply do not understand the basic principles of community-building: inclusion and responsibility. Skulking about in the night throwing trash in people’s driveways is not going to solve problems. One needn’t become "rootless" in the face of the supposed evil of diversity, as this organization claims the gullible masses have done (a nice touch--insult people like you, but imply that you know better than them--dividing and conquering with vanity). Diversity is not a new thing--and the idea of a pristine, homogenous European culture and race to hearken white, western roots back to is a fiction. Roots are grown by extending a hand to one’s neighbor, not by excluding or fearing them. The politics of exclusion results in violence and corruption. By exhorting one neighbor to cast blame upon or throw out another, this organization encourages distrust, suspicion, irresponsibility, and fear. That’s no way to build a home--but it’s a good way to encourage crime, from littering on down. These people should spend their energy and time on community-building rather than fear-mongering. It’s much more effective at making the world--and one’s home--a better place to live. An excellent example of community-building was seen here in Ester recently, with the two work parties and the grand opening of the new playground equipment at the park. Scads of people turned out for the June 13 & 14 work crews, coordinated by Mark Simpson, Don Cameron, Norm Davis, Scott Johnson, and others. Bribes were flung to the crowd during the Fourth of July parade from the official ECA bribemobile, candy bars wrapped with bright yellow or green or orange squares of paper reading: Official ECA The food was good--shrimp shishkebobs, salad, sloppy joes, chicken, fruit--the fun was wonderful, and the results were excellent. People of all ages, shapes, and skills, with and without children, came and sweated on a broiling weekend and got their pictures in the Fairbanks daily. Later, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony the next Tuesday (the concrete needed time to cure before the squids could start romping on the new jungle gym/slide/et cetera), Mr. Simpson read a longish thank-you speech and then gave the officially gilded axe-and-stump combo to Gary Wilken to whack the red ribbon in twain. Gary, who was instrumental in helping the ECA obtain the funds for the park improvements, was decked out for Golden Days, and grinned almost as much as Simpson. The kids, who swarmed over the new playground moments after the ceremony, proceeded to test it thoroughly, and judging by the squeals of pleasure, deemed it a success. That’s the way to make a village a good place to live. | ||
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