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Northern Poet
London    Punk poet from up’t north, can often be found ranting about most things in life. www.facebook.com/thenorthernpoet
Northern Michigan    Does life need to be full of people who have nothing nice to say about anyone? I think no!
50/M/UK    Writing poetry since my teens. Something I enjoy very much.

Poems

There is not much of me now, my Northern Light;
I hath been too torn to tell of my deeds,
I am a broken soul now, emerging from an invisible pit;
I hope the sun shall clear though, that I can but delight in belated rain again.
Rain, on thy forested land, that I hath begun to long to taste;
Coming to me like a five-year-old nymph: a succulent playmate,
Shadowing me but in cheerful grins and tireless haste,
What funny terms t’is little creature makes sense of!
Ah, a little one that brightens and salutes my days,
With lyrical giggles often stunning the entire forests of glee around me—
And taking my breaths away in dozens of waves of fierce smoke
That I often pause my breaths, feeling privilege and triumphant
Amidst its innocent odors, smudged with green hues and damp visions.
I feel comfortable then, as my pulse speeds and moans with delight
Spilling onto us from the brave storm above, as I always do.
Tasting rain, I shall twitch and sway around again with laughter, wisdom, and patience
That were undeniably stolen from me; leaving me in a deafening whine of tears.

They but told I did not belong, I was foreign, and so were my streaks of song;
My justice was but not their equal, I was a liar, I was wrong.
I was too humble to notice, I was too unarmed.
I was too innocent to be their companion—improvident and reckless beings!
No delicacy flashes across their eyes, neither do sympathy or softness.
All I could see was scorching hate and heat, shimmering in a blinding, officious smirk.
I was ample and blused oft’ with shyness—how come they came and stole my tranquil peace!
How ignominious and disgraced the whole nation is, who believes
that our own skin shall save us, unmerited and soulless!
How immature, timid, and vile; imbeciles that inherit only rainbows of sarcasm.
And what told they of my poetry, in such recursive envy and hate;
With disgust they said to me; ‘tis not my beloved, nor my fate.
They claimed I lived one life—and three souls too late, that I understood what life meant not;
They thought all was but a wealth of infamy around me, and I was rife with unseen disease.
I was a creature not to fall in love with, I was a disgrace;
I was ungodly, a shoddy strand of leaf to be killed unborn.
They figured I smelt like the withered summer weather;
Not a fit for their chilly smokeless air!

The air there smelt fondly like their absence of love;
And though it was silent, they were silent not,
It was a joy for them to ****, and to see my blood spill,
They said yet I knew not how to taste and feel.
It was as if I could not feel my own blood,
Nor that I could locate my gut’s instincts.
And what thought they of my ****** story;
For my presence was a nightmarish joke to all,
And I was a meaningless and too joyous of a little bud,
A small lavender which poorly knows its enemies and their fetal tongues,
That roses can sting and steal one or two of its crescent seeds!
Ah, and I was that degraded bland-smelling little bloom,
The mindless bloom t’ be plucked in their spring garden—harvested before my time;
That I shall cry and weep my blood out of me, in burning pain,
Destructing all my jutting illusions once again, without knowing why,
And finding my fierce heart, the next second, lying still!
That I think of my Immortal no more, and his face accusably so white and lean
For he has been forgetful of the love he once sustained;
His love, dimmed by the greed around his whole figure
Unsupported by the angered nature about him—which he barely sees.
Hungry for flesh, he is a snake of untold regret and hate;
Powdered with deadly lies only, in his season of love.
Bathed in austerity, and in his own madness running;
Running into the nowhere of my dreams, and dies finally, as I wake from my sleep.
I saw no compassion in his eyes, on those last old days, and after I left,
All that was dead not I deep buried,
I oft’ dream of him burning and rotting his own scattered life,
Melting his own flesh into a rogue wave of sins,
Questioning his divinity with rage that he himself be ragged before he knows it.
And so unseeingly he curses and is consumed by his own karma,
Gathering his own bulleted skins and fleshes by a knife,
But in doing so betraying his own domain of conscience,
Depriving him of ample wan pleasure, tumbling himself vehemently into death.
Scorching death that feeds but from our departing shades of life,
And shrieks in agony when no ferocious air growls at midnight.
Ah, at my dismantled nights in England but I once gave thought of thee;
Thou wert there in my perpetual mind, but not so inquisitive as my English journey was.
O, Northern Light, I was but all shivers upon their first mention of thee!
And so there was I, unknown to the English world but heard fairly of thy name;
That I, at times, thought of the Northern Light, aside from my streams of cries and desperation,
And the noble autumn on its land, when in my fluorescent night slumbers,
I’d love to dally on top of fall’s rebellious moors—and ah!
I can see my love, flapped with his native pride, storm down the maroon roads.
I can see his wait for me, encapped by forty feet of snow on a mountaintop,
ready for my warming fingertips and embrace whenever he thinks of me.
Ah! Though there is sun not on thy lofty linen land, my Northern Light;
I am grinning with joyous tears in sight of thy snowy night,
My dreams have finally drawn me to thy visible lines,
And soon, I shall have to renounce my weary sunshine.
I want to break free, enormous with youth and vibrancy;
With affluent rhymes and delightful vibes that come in time.
Poetry, for it has become one of my salient features;
A concise concoction of my soul, that I love in laugh and hate.
My daydreaming has not been too bad, for I have seen the fun once more;
I was too selfish to open my eyes and see its truth.

Come to me, my Northern Light, and shall I have to perish later along with age
into blue nothingness, I shall not die inside out;
For I know thou shalt come to help my toil
And relieve it of grease and oil;
filling my light up before it turns out.
I, who hath been consumed and decried within two sad springs;
I, who was made to survive an agitation and pain
Only by a jug of comforting cold,
Hath now left my past with a single shrug;
And so I hath dreamed of bouncing back into thy arms,
Thy arms that are too cold at first—to my fragile feet
And swim into thy hands that shall all but know me to well;
Blame me not for the fateful pairs of stories of mine, to tell.

And who are they anyway, to enjoy poetry whenst they see not?
They, whose shadow is to fall into death within the first three days—
But acknowledge the slim presence of death not, among us.
They, whose ******* glisten with envy, and a displeased countenance;
Haunting every guileless soul, dancing over their dismantled beings
Although they bear no trace of hate towards their very eyes.
All I see of ‘em is a beast, that encaps and murders decisively within a short breath;
None of them is eager to touch the deep,
Nor to be kind and set their hateful souls alight,
They are a boastful ally of the devil, far in their forest’s central gloom,
A hell by the deadly babbling brooks, sending water into every undying leaf
That all shall die within the unstable touch of their hands.
They are a bunch of strange apparitions that mock every treasured sight;
A rough incubus, waiting for every foreign man’s headlong fall,
They live only to scorn, ****** and fight,
Penetrating every fortune’s secrets, poignantly tearing their kind walls.

Not seldom that I began to wonder, in all my recursive roamings;
I wanted to see and listen to thee, ah, what a warming sound of thy Eolian lute there was!
All was in vast vain, for I was conceited to hear of my own vision;
Nor proceed my learnings, I was stupidly void of hearings, and rich with shortcomings!
My conscience was too thin, that I wrote when I heard not—and drew
when I saw not, ah, I was unable to hear thee, my love!
For everything I could see was but, in my red dreams, thy roads and their unspoken lines;
Telling me that I was dreaming and all wouldst be fine.
I failed to see though thou wert but very, very kind!
All was a parade around me and ah, yet I could see not,
Its loudly thumping winds but made me blind,
Squinting into the gust, all but myself I could not identify;
My whole soul was absorbed by its minutiae of unbearable pain.
Belligerent and poisonous, the circle was bitter as dread;
Sordid in life, uncivilised and mortified in death.
Aye, how I struggled hard to break free myself, from those violent thorns!
Finally all was clear, and I saw the vital path to light; ah, my Northern Light!
Now I can see again, I am grateful for having not capitulated to my desires.
My poisoned desires, that once retained me;
I am thankful that I hath wriggled free.
Ah, Northern Light, it seems that thou hast so much to tell;
I do not know, yet, how it all shall begin.
I shall dwell on thy grounds so well;
the grounds so beneficent and keen in the first place.
I have not heard of thy sweet voice;
I have known but thy cherry-red stories.
Stories as original as my love;
Willingly given to thee, should thou lift my heart away
and within one saturated breath, amaze and steal which from me.
Stories with red kisses plastered over its blushing pages;
Stories with a shy tint of love; that love of ours that demands recognition.
Stories with hugs and passion that are yet still unborn;
waiting for the frozen night to become known.
Oh, we all should seek the tremor our loving hands hath caused;
And a newly replenished joy, yet, that they hath so lovingly unleashed.
A new, formal joy, that delights both in giving and returning.
My Northern Light, I may love thee and seek delight within thee only;
The fire of thee has consumed the living of me violently,
and I have begun to see my other living side,
cheerful and jubilant may I be, on my front days.

Come to me, my Northern Light, lure me into thy sacred idle night;
When the time of our fate washes ashore, and all the wrongs shall turn right,
And all the fires grow into rain, multiplied by the benevolent immortal knight,
Who shalt fly as King of the Skies, whilst burning out the prejudiced sunlight.

Come to me, my Northern Dawn, moisten me with thy Victorian dew;
Draw me closer to thy sonatas, a realised romance written by bare hands
Bringing another vigorous pleasure to our reluctant bliss
And removing the worries of our juvenile present, marking it as the new Truth.

Come to me, my Northern Dusk, flirt with me like thou didst not with one;
Wish our hearts luck, and fight so our triumph be won,
Thou shalt **** hate with thy sword of victorious words,
Satisfactory to our chests, infallible to the sniggering worlds.

Come to me, my Northern Lamp, tempt me into the army of curling winds;
Rub my shoulders again the beguiling sweet rains, charm me away,
Far in the dark I shall be generous to thee, calming like wine,
I wouldst love to fall into the sky by thy wings again.

Come to me, my Northern Sky, envelop me in thy starlet dawn and blanket;
I want to embrace thy northern grass and tulips, and paint some rainbows,
To read some lullaby beneath the benign sky, and its amulets,
To write some poetic words, and sing them today and tomorrow.

Come to me, my Northern Sea, may thou enjoyest thy grounds’ cold clay;
That my wondrous script shall touch and place upon it a play,
Announcing my ragged arrival on the harmonious soil,
Adjusting myself to the convenient steep hills.

Come to me, my Northern Song, may thou be blessed without and in the unknown;
May thou remember the words of my late vow, o my attractive love,
May I in abundance love thee more, after my formative alone,
May this love grow strong, undeniable, and tough.

Come to me, my Northern Sun, bewitch me once more and entrap my mind;
That thou give birth but to a revitalised summer, young and free,
That this immortal joy shall last, like the oblivious moon,
Held hostage by thy beauty, whose half thou hath shared onto my soul.

Come to me, my Northern Rain, make me rejoice in the swirling autumns;
When the greens turn red and all shall die and wake again,
That we shall remain friends until tomorrow and delight,
Delight, that comes to us when we are united fellows.

Come to me, my Northern Grass, be dry and wet and tickle with pleasure and again;
Fulfill my heart with lithe atonement, for my graceful sins,
And by thee, I shall neither be dangerous nor unchaste,
I shall be a ******; my moonlit quest is just about to begin.

Come to me, my Northern Guide, heal my wounds and lingering past scars;
Scars that are immortal and once tormented my dreams,
I hath forgiven them with my tender cares,
Releasing them back prettily, into their domestic jubilees.

Come to me, my Northern Moon, in the merit of haste and run;
Nibbling thy water lilies as thou pass, and flying through the floating grass,
Thou shalt find me within the cheeks of Jakarta, in my cornered walk,
Moving around with unease, void of any candlelight spark.

Come to me, my Northern Star, thou art as warm as thou art cold;
My reason to keep on longing, and hold on to thy unmolested warmth,
That the cruel Coventry can thaw me no more;
Neither shall its herons fly over my untouched shore.

Come to me, my Northern Soul, so that I can be free;
Let me not be engulfed by the breathless dawn, and twilight,
Slide me free from the strain of tropical grief and sunlight,
I want to feel cold once more, all through the day and night.

Come to me, my Northern Tale, and hear me over the shrieking winds;
Let me steer my journey to thy mortal land, unite us as we have been;
Live inside me and feed my blood, make me known and beguiling;
Scoop me into thy arms, picture me asleep and welcoming.

Come to me, my Northern Poem, make me hear what thou couldst promise;
Make me twitch with delight, and shout pleasure within thy hands,
And sign that very night as my time of rebirth;
Pleasant and pure, free from the past sins and filth.

Come to me, my Northern Love, make my ****** soul glow green again;
Find thy way to me by my marked boughs of love,
My journey and love hath but not ended yet,
Thou shalt breed and unite with me—in our timeless breath.
T Jones Aug 2014
Not a poem but in protest of flagging truth about racism in Traverse City, Michigan


Traverse City, Michigan: Racism is still alive and well in our area.

We weren't always welcoming
Cross burning's (City of Traverse City, MI)
I'm born and raised in Traverse City, Michigan and still living in the same neighborhood where I grew up. I can remember when blacks were not welcome in most parts of town and the one or two around were military visitors.

We had two known cross burning incidents. One back in the late 80's or early 90's the other was around 1924, ******* groups like Ku Klux **** was behind both cross burning incidents. I found old articles on the earlier one but someone is trying hard to white wash history of Traverse City by hiding evidence of the most resent one. Ones like me who were there remember those dark days like it was yesterday. It don't bode well for tourism or the Cherry Festival if there's a record of racism in our city.

Copy pasting one two different retelling of story reported by our sometimes biased Record Eagle articles regarding the first and and will continue to dig for the other one.

January 31, 2009
KKK was active in early '20s

The 1924 bombings and cross burnings in downtown Traverse City were not the first **** activity in northern Michigan.

The Record-Eagle reported flaming crosses in the Mancelona area on Aug. 1, 1923, a full year before. Six weeks later, Traverse City commissioners refused the **** permission to hold a Sept. 17 open-air meeting at the corner of Front and Cass.

About 300 people showed up anyway and marched to a vacant lot west of Front and Union after the unidentified property owner gave permission, carefully noting that it "did not commit him to any relationship with the organization," the newspaper said.

The Record-Eagle also passed on information from an identified **** source in its Sept. 17 report:

Two, maybe three organizers had worked for weeks in Traverse City. About 150 Traverse City men from "among the leading citizens" had joined. An open-air ritual with the traditional fiery cross burning on a hillside would be held "sometime but not yet" in or near Traverse City, and it would be "merely a part of the **** ceremonies and have no special significance."

People who expected to see hooded men in white robes performing rites at the Sept. 17 rally were bound to be disappointed, the paper said. A new state law banned wearing masks in public. It also would be difficult to tell how many in the audience were KKK members because "every person who has signed the Ku Klux card has pledged to keep his membership an absolute secret."


Traverse City, Michigan wasn't always welcoming to people of color.


Traverse City Record-Eagle

February 1, 2009
Ku Klux **** terrorizes TC in 1924

KKK cross burnings, explosions rock city

By LORAINE ANDERSON
Black History Month has special significance, since it begins fewer than two weeks after the nation's historic inauguration of its first black president, Barack Obama.

But there are parts of that history that Traverse City, like the rest of the nation, would rather forget. The city never had a large black population, but it did not escape a visit from the Ku Klux **** during a frightening night of downtown explosions and cross burnings on Aug. 9, 1924.

Traverse City has never seen anything like that night of terror. Buildings shook. Store windows cracked and shattered. Houses as far away as 16th Street quaked, the Record-Eagle reported.

And though outside agitators were blamed, some local people may have been involved.

It started about 8 p.m. after three explosions went off across the river from the Lyric Theatre, where the State is today.

The crowd at the Lyric all but stampeded toward the door as women and children screamed. Panicked shoppers spilled out of downtown stores. City police phones jangled with alarm.

A large cross burned on the north side of the Boardman River near Cass Street. About 50 smaller burning crosses appeared almost simultaneously at the centers of intersections across the city. Each was crudely nailed together and swathed in oil-soaked rags. Sparks flew when several cars struck them. A city fire truck raced through town to douse flames.

Then, a "touring car" with four men, robed and hooded, though not masked, slowly trolled down Front Street carrying a sign surrounded by red flares blazing three letters: KKK.

Copies of the Ku Klux **** newspaper, "The Fiery Cross," later were found downtown, and police determined that at least two cars were involved in planting and lighting the crosses.

**** leaders called the explosions and flaming crosses a recruiting gimmick, but it was more than that. The 1920s was a reactionary time in the United States. The **** had risen again, starting in 1915, widening its anti-black focus to Jews, Catholics and immigrants, particularly those from southeastern Europe. Its membership was strongest in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

The ****'s most powerful year was 1924, when it reached an all-time high of 5 million members nationwide and virtually controlled the government of Indiana. Its most popular slogan was "100 percent pure American."

The **** had a solid base of support in Michigan. The **** fielded two candidates in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 1924 and a ****-backed candidate was elected mayor of Flint. A write-in **** candidate even made a strong showing in a Detroit mayoral race.

In June 1924, 1,000 men joined the KKK in an Oakland County cross burning attended by about 8,000 people. Traverse City's demonstration took place just two months later. But who was really behind it?

"There is some doubt among the authorities as to whether the offenses were actually committed by local people or men from outside. They believe that local people were associated in the affair," the Record-Eagle reported.

An unidentified spokesman for the local **** denied responsibility, speculating that it was the work of **** enemies or rogue Klansmen. He told the Record-Eagle that the **** repudiated terror tactics and burning of "unwatched crosses."

Two weeks after the bombing, city police obtained felony and misdemeanor arrest warrants accusing Ku Klux **** organizer Basil Carleton of Richmond, Ind., of setting off explosives. Indiana police arrested him on Aug. 29.

Witnesses testified in two trials in December and January that Carleton had purchased 25 pounds of dynamite, fuses and three caps from Hannah & Lay Mercantile Co. about two hours before the explosions. A Park Place Hotel clerk said he saw Carleton hurrying away from the direction of the explosions about 10 minutes later. Two **** members testified that Carleton was not at the scene.

Yet he was never convicted. Juries acquitted him in both cases because the prosecutor could not prove to their satisfaction that he was at the scene of the explosion or that he personally set off the dynamite.

The bomber escaped justice. But the good news was that in Traverse City, no night of terror like that happened again.

It was this event that sparked the cross burning in Traverse City. We had only one black family in our city, when Betty Ponder and her family left Traverse City for the first time due to no one wanting to rent to them, population of blacks in our predominately white city drop to zero.


******* Movement Targets Northern Michigan

by Robert Downes

National Alliance advocates the creation of "two Americas"

Traverse City, Mich., noted primarily for its beaches, tourists and cherry pie values, appears to be erupting as a national battleground of opinion over the ******* movement, with forces on both sides of the issue coming out of the woodwork to vent their outrage over racial issues.
On Thursday, June 5, residents along stretches of Washington and Front streets in town came home to find a slick package of information from the National Alliance hanging from their doorknobs. An outgrowth of the American **** Party, the National Alliance is a ******* group which advocates the creation of "two Americas," one of which would be "White Space only with no Jews or blacks." The Alliance, advocates genocidal practices if need be to achieve its goals, and plans to distribute 1,000 information packets in Northern Michigan.

Protest organized to oppose July "NordicFest"
The incident arose only a day after more than 150 people from throughout Northern Michigan gathered at a "Hate-Free TC" meeting to oppose the NordicFest, a skinhead rock festival sponsored by the Ku Klux ****, to be held at a secret location 20 miles south of town, July 3-6.
The NordicFest is being advertised on the Internet and will feature at least six skinhead bands featured on Stormfront Records and Resistance Records -- both of which are purveyors of neo-**** hate music. It will also reportedly feature speakers from the Ku Klux **** and Aryan Nations.

Thus far, the NordicFest's location has been a closely-kept secret by David Neumann of Bloodbond Enterprizes, the concert organizer and a former director of the Michigan Knights of the Ku Klux ****. Neumann has told local media that 300 tickets have been sold for the concert -- about half the number he expects to sell. Reportedly, concertgoers will be provided with maps to the secret location at a checkpoint.

Bands expected to play at the NordicFest include Intimidation One, Aggravated Assault, Blue Eyed Devils, Max Resist and the Hooligans, and No Alibi.

Local churches offering seminars on the ******* movement and the importance of diversity
GATHERING STORM

Journalists have made inquiries on the NordicFest from as far away as London, New York and Colorado as a result of the Northern Express story circulating on the Internet. A segment for National Public Radio is expected to take the issue nationwide, possibly focusing the world's attention on Traverse City on the eve of the National Cherry Festival -- an event which draws more than half a million visitors, many of them from ethnic minorities.
"We're creating a rainbow ribbon that we hope everyone will wear in rejection of skinheads and the ****," said Rabbi Stacey Fine of Hate-Free TC. "We hope to have hundreds of ribbons during the time the **** is here, available from downtown merchants."

Fine says the group also hopes to march in the National Cherry Royale Parade with a three-by-eight-foot banner covered with thousands of signatures in a show of support for racial and cultural diversity. Thus far, Cherry Festival officials say they have received no applications from Hate-Free T.C., but will consider the request if approached.

Dottie Kye of Hate-Free TC says the group doesn't plan to try stopping the NordicFest despite their opposition ot the concert. "We're ignoring it," Kye says. "We celebrate anyone's right to organize and free speech. But our thing is unity and celebrating diversity." In addition to several church seminars on the ******* movement and the importance of diversity, Hate-Free TC is organizing a three-day "Unity Festival" which will feature dozens of musicians, artists, poets, actors and peace activists at the Traverse City Opera House, July 3-6.

Concert organizers Tim Hall and Tom Emmott say that more than 40 musical acts will send a pro-diversity message to area teens, with performers including Willie Kye, Alright Already, John Greilick, Samantha Moore, the Motor Town Juke Boys, Bentley Filmore, the Sisters Grimm, and Lack of Afro, among many others. A concert with Fishbone is planned for later in the month.

"Even if the NordicFest doesn't happen, something positive is going to come of it because it gets people thinking about the prevention of violence"
THE TEEN CONNECTION

The Unity Fest counter-concert is seen as a vital tool in fighting the influence of the ******* movement on teens in the area. After the initial story broke, the buzz in local high schools was that the NordicFest would be offering free beer to minors. Although that notion is clearly erroneous, a small number of teens in the area still cling to the idea and have also been attracted by the rebellious nature of the skinhead rock scene.
Tim Hall believes that his Unity Fest concert will help turn that tide. The three-day concert will be located in the heart of Traverse City in the old City Opera House, with easy access for the hundreds of teens who hang out downtown, often with little to do. "Our message is going to be one that values racial and cultural diversity," Hall said. "And we've had a great response so far. We had to put a lid on the performers when we reached 40 acts, because everyone wants to play at this event."

The Unity Fest will also coincide with the Annual Reggie Box Memorial Blues Blast, which was created five years ago to bring the heritage of black music to Northern Michigan for the overwhelmingly white Cherry Festival. This year's Blues Blast will feature John Mayall, Marcia Ball and the Bihlman Bros. in a free concert downtown on July 6. The concert will also feature a strong message promoting diversity.

The law enforcement view Traverse City Police Chief Ralph Soffredine says members of the law enforcement community, including the State Police and sheriffs from Grand Traverse and Wexford counties, are taking a wait-and-see approach as to whether the NordicFest will even be held.

"People ask what we would do if the skinheads wanted to march, and it's our position that they have the same rights under the First Amendment as anyone as long as they're obeying the law," Soffredine said. "It's a neutral situation for us. We just want to maintain the peace."

He added that skinheads coming to Traverse City would be treated "no different than if longhairs come into town, or square dancers. We'd certainly observe them and respond if there's trouble."

The chief noted that a similar event occurred in the Buckley area several years ago when several motorcycle gangs gathered for a rally. While the event was monitored by local police agencies, few people in the area knew that it occurred.

"Even if the NordicFest doesn't happen, something positive is going to come of it because it gets people thinking about the prevention of violence, which has become a serious problem in our community and our schools," he concluded. "The unfortunate thing is that it sometimes takes a ******* or a racial issue for people to get active."

"Sheriff Barr implies that people who have the courage to confront them will be put in jail."
ANGER FROM ACTIVISTS

Not everyone is happy with the neutral attitude of law enforcement. Judy Lowenzahn of Traverse City thinks that local police agencies should get tough on the **** concert, which has no legally-required bond or liquor license.
"These hateful groups are using skinhead music to recruit soldiers for their facist movement," Lowenzahn said. "If they are allowed to hold this event, in violation of local, state and federal laws and in violation of common decency, we will be capitve audience to their deranged homophobic, anti-semitic, racist, sexist ideology. Those who protest this message, along with those who are their scapegoats will be targets for hate crimes."

Lowenzahn upbraided Grand Traverse County Sheriff Barr after he made comments in a local paper that "I'd just as soon personally let them have their little event and be on their way." Barr added that if there was a confrontation between the skinheads and protestors, "there's going to be someone in jail."

"Does Sheriff Barr suggest that people of color and others who don't fit the aryan model hide inside their homes for the holiday weekend?" Lowenzhan responded. "Rather than offer a plan to protect the community from the violence that grows whenever white supremecists do outreach, Sheriff Barr implies that people who have the courage to confront them will be put in jail."

Northern Michigan targeted because of the predominantly white population
KLUELESS

Up to now, the vast majority of Northern Michigan residents have been klueless on the **** and the ******* movement. Many, for instance, had no idea that there even was a Ku Klux **** operating in the region until Neumann revealed that there are about 60 members operating mostly as "a fraternal organization" between ******* and the Mackinac Bridge.
Similarly, the existence and agenda of the National Alliance is all-ne