Scores of police monitor meeting, racist group’s foes

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The neo-Nazis came, and the skinheads, and the people who think whites should band together now before it’s too late and they become a minority.

There were the people from Maine and other places who said they don’t care about the color of someone’s skin; they just hate anyone who gets welfare benefits while Americans go without.

The Communists were there from Boston, and then the people who hate hate showed up to ridicule everyone else.

Of course, there were police: scores of police with guns and riot gear and stern faces, who stood like frozen sentries around a small building in a remote part of Lewiston, where 30 members of the World Church of the Creator held a two-hour meeting Saturday to promote their militant hatred of blacks, Jews, immigrants of all colors and anyone who disagrees with them.

“Black trash, white trash, it’s all the same,” said Matt, a Lewiston construction worker who had wanted to get into the World Church meeting, and who refused to give his last name. “Every race has its scum.”

The Illinois-based World Church group was inspired to visit Lewiston after the city’s mayor wrote a letter last October asking Somali immigrants thinking of moving there to find somewhere else to live until the city could

adjust to the 1,000 who already had settled in Maine’s second-largest city.

The letter created an uproar and attracted negative media attention around the country, tarnishing Lewiston’s image just when the city was enjoying new growth and vibrancy.

But Mayor Larry Raymond’s letter also triggered an outpouring of support in Maine and Lewiston-Auburn for the Somalis, many of whom first fled civil war in their homeland and then the crime and noise of Atlanta and other big cities to move to Maine.

Across the city at Bates College, an estimated 5,000 people attended a peace rally in support of the immigrants and diversity in what the 2000 U.S. Census found – with a population that is 97 percent white – to be the least diverse state in the union. People at both rally sites called for Mayor Raymond’s resignation and criticized him for leaving for a prescheduled Florida vacation before the World Church visit.

Later in the day, the Somali Justice Advocacy Center of Lewiston held a press conference also demanding Raymond’s resignation, saying his letter caused “fear and outrage” in the Somali community and an increase in violence and targeting by racist groups.

Raymond has not publicly apologized but has said that his message was misunderstood and that he does not condone mistreatment of newcomers.

Before the blowup over Raymond’s letter, Somali leaders in Lewiston said they planned to continue settling in the city until there was no longer housing available and then migrate to Augusta and to Bangor.

Because the Somalis are “second wave” immigrants, they no longer qualify for federal refugee relief and must depend on state and local assistance while they learn English and try to find work.

Many of the people who had hoped to get into to the World Church meeting in Lewiston retold “facts” they had heard about the Somalis, particularly that the government gives them coupons to buy cars and that Lewiston store owners, fearful of being labeled racist, allow Somalis to take merchandise without paying for it.

The World Church, hoping to find fertile ground in Maine, is among dozens of groups in America that idolize Hitler and preach white supremacy. The church’s leader, Matt Hale, was arrested last week on charges he tried to have a judge murdered.

Hale remained in jail awaiting a court appearance today in Chicago, but another leader of the group, Jon Fox, brought the group to Maine.

During the meeting, a subdued audience of 32 people, excluding police and reporters, listened as three animated members offered an introduction to their views. While most arrived under police escort, seven showed up on their own.

A majority of the attendees were young men, some wearing black satin jackets, white berets with the group’s logo, black pants and boots. Police officers lined the perimeter of the classroom, and the muffled voices of protesters could be heard in the room.

Police said the various hate groups hate each other, despite their similar beliefs, and one group tends to attract the other, especially when they know media attention will be given to a particular event – as was the case in Lewiston on Saturday.

Local police, fearful that such a mixture could prove explosive, even on a frigid January afternoon in Maine, positioned more than 60 officers around the meeting site. They also posted two snipers on a nearby rooftop, who lay on their bellies with guns pointed for hours at the estimated 400 protesters, while across the way the city’s fire department trained a water cannon on the crowd.

Just in case.

Another man, who offered his opinions but not his name, said he came to Lewiston to warn the city that “they’re in danger of just collapsing financially taking care of all these Somalis.”

“There will be an explosion in immigrants in Maine,” he predicted, “and they’re going to get money that they don’t deserve because they don’t work here. Money Americans don’t get.”

The man, who said he came to Maine to attend the World Church meeting, said that 20 years ago he lost a firefighting job in Massachusetts to a black man he said was less qualified. The influx of Somali refugees into the United States would only lead to more discrimination against white Americans, he said.

The man, wearing only a knock-off Army jacket against the winter cold, said blacks should be separated from whites. Completely.

“In another country,” he said.

His companion, who said he was 21 but wouldn’t give his name or address, was shopping around for a hate group to join, he said.

“I’m seeing what’s out there for [supremacist] groups,” he said. “There’s not much I don’t disagree with [supremacist groups] about.”

The two men, who later clashed with a self-identified skinhead from Portland who tried to block their entrance into the World Church meeting, caused the only real skirmish of the day. Police arrested Rob Hoyt, 30, of Portland for disorderly conduct and escorted the two other men into the meeting – initially by the backs of their jackets.

The small meeting room was located in a privately owned building 25 feet from a U.S. military recruitment office in a business park off the Maine Turnpike. The room could accommodate only a handful of people who wanted to get in, according to police, so those people who sympathized with Hale’s group were left outside in the barricaded area with all the other groups.The 30 members of the World Church were shuttled secretly into and out of the meeting site by police, who worried that just the sight of the white supremacists would incite the myriad groups that came to oppose them.

“It’s amazing after 9-11 they still think hate is the answer,” said Robyn Born of Auburn. She wore a sign on her back that read, “What will you teach your children, love or hate?”

One young protester beat gently but steadily on an African drum, while other protesters dressed in black jackets and bandanas demanded “Death to Nazis,” and members of the Jesus Party of Lewiston, sang “Amazing Grace” and prayed in a slushy snowbank nearby.

“The heart that God gave us should be breaking today,” the leader of the inner-city religious group said mournfully.

The Communist Progressive Labor Party of greater Boston was the loudest of all the groups outside the meeting site. About half of the 100 members who rode buses to the rally Saturday morning were black and brown and vocal. They joined another 100 supporters from Greater Portland and brought a microphone and loudspeaker and their own brand of hatred of capitalism and government to the day.

“Hitler fell, Nazi scum go to hell,” they chanted in perfect cadence while carrying signs that read, “Nazi punks f– off” and “Cops and the [Ku Klux] Klan go hand and hand,” and “The biggest fascists own the White House,” among other messages.

“We’re militant and we think the Nazis should be stopped and that they are scum,” said Robert, a black labor party leader who feared retribution from the Nazis and therefore withheld his surname.

He criticized the police for “protecting the Nazis” from their opponents and accused them of being hostile earlier in the day when the labor party picketed City Hall to call for Raymond’s ouster.

Except for the early arrest, police allowed the crowd to shout at, curse and confront each other verbally about their various beliefs. The emotions of the protesters heated the cold air, and the threat of violence seemed palpable.

But police never breached the concrete barrier to control the crowd beyond containing it, even when at one point someone in the crowd announced he had a baseball bat.

Nor did the police relax their imposing presence around the area outside the meeting room. Some of them closest to the penned-in crowd stood rock-hard for three hours, staring straight into the throng.

More than 200 police from across Maine helped the city secure both the World Church meeting site and the Bates rally in what Lewiston officials said was the single largest presence of police in the state’s history.

Some of the protesters, who had shouted slurs at police guarding the World Church meeting site, became hostile when a ranking officer, using a bullhorn, announced that the Illinois group “had left the area.”

Many in the crowd, disappointed and frustrated, turned on police, calling them “f–ing liars” and refusing to leave the site until police allowed someone from the crowd to look inside the meeting room and confirm the group was gone.

After both rallies dispersed, City Administrator James Bennett judged the day “an incredible success” for the city and expressed relief that no one had been hurt.

Police declared the protest outside the World Church meeting “a nonevent.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.