Thursday March 2, 1988
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Published since 1889 by the students of the University of Kansas
Vol. 98, No.109 (USPS 650-640)
KKK heated topic Issues aired at meeting
By Rebecca J. Cisek Kansan staff writer
Students, faculty and administrators met yesterday to update each other on the forum scheduled for Monday that would bring members of the Ku Klux Klan to campus.
About 15 people attended the two-hour closed meeting yesterday in Strong Hall's Regents Room.
David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs, said the meeting was not called to make any decisions about Monday's forum. Wayne Webb, president of the Black Student Union, said the purpose of the meeting was to open the lines of communication.
Michael Foubert, Lawrence graduate student and president of Slightly Older Americans for titled "Fr sity Envi
Class meets at airport to question KKK
By James Buckman
Harry Jones, the instructor of the reporting class that conducted the interview, originally had intended his class to interview members of the white supremacist group, an affiliate of the Ku Klux Klan, in his classroom on the KU campus in February.
Kansan staff writer
A KU journalism class interviewed two members of the Missouri Knights yesterday morning in almost complete secrecy at Lawrence Municipal Airport.
But controversy and pressure from members of the black community, partly because Jones invited the Klansman to speak during Black History Month, caused Jones to find an alternate means of conducting the interview exercise.
Jones said his students were not told that they would conduct the interview yesterday.
"The class had a cue that it was going to be in March," he said. "I did it today because I wanted to get the damn thing over with." He said he told his class about the field trip
yesterday when they arrived at his class.
"They were told at 8:30 when they arrived in room 101 downstairs to get in their cars and go out to the airport." Jones said.
In a note given to his students before they left for the airport, Jones said the trip would be voluntary, with the expectation that the event would attract no attention and occur without incident. The note said that at the first sign of any incident or disturbance, such as a protest demonstration, the students would be free to leave and consider the class
"I had them meet me at a restaurant near the turnip cake, and then I drove them in my own car to the meeting place," he said. "I had two kids in my class tail我 just to make sure they didn't have somebody tailing us. They didn't try to double-cross me."
Jones said he had asked the Klansman Tuesday night to do the interview. He said he had an agreement with the members that he would give them only short notice before the interview so that they could not arrange for demonstrations or controversy to call attention to their cause.
He said that the secrecy surrounding the class exercise had successfully allowed for him to carry out his original objective: giving his students a chance to report on and
"It went exactly as I had planned except that it quadrupled in the educational value because of all the brouhaha," he said. "It heightened their interest in the whole darn thing, and the more interested they are, the better they write.
"We learned what a bigot looks like, and what a narrow-minded bigot looks like. We were born with that. I think."
Marilyn Pollack, Wilmette, Ill., sophomore, said the interview was a great experience.
canceled.
"It was absolutely both fascinating and repulsive at the same time," she said. "I'm glad we did it.
See CLASS, p. 12, col. 1
expose racism.
Knights tell KU students about goals
By Meredith Relph Special to the Kansan
Scrutinizing Supremacy
BY BRENDA FLORY
by John S. Hill and Wang; 269 pages; $17.95
Hill and Wang; 269 pages; $17.95
Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right by James Coates
Him and Wang, 200 pages
Talk show host Alan Berg pulled up to his Denver town house on a cool June evening in 1894. The radio personality didn't know that Bruce Carroll Pierce, a 30-year-old neo-Nazi, was standing behind the bushes. Pierce held a machine gun.
On May 16, 1986, David and Doris Young,
a middle-aged couple, drove to the red-brick
elementary school in the quaint rural town
of Cokeeville. Wwo. With armloads of firearms and a bomb,
the Youngs herded the terrified children and teachers into a classroom.
They demanded $300 million and a chance to talk with President Reagan.
 Their goal was to take some of the children to an isolated island to start a "new race." Later, it was found that
After 13 rounds, "Berg didn't make a sound. He just went down like I pulled the rug out from under him." Pierce later told another member of his right-wing group, the Order. Pierce seemed pleased that he had rid the world of a "filthy Jew."
their rambling journals often referred to Adolf Hitler.
James Coates, Chicago Tribune writer, has spent the past three years reporting on events such as these. In his book, "Armed and Dangerous," a November release from Hill and Wang, Coates takes his audience on a revealing tour through the netherworld of the strange force he calls the "Survival Right."
MEMUES:
Members of the Posse Comitatus, Latin for "power of the country," believe that the county sheriff should be the highest governmental authority. Paying income taxes, making Social Security payments, even purchasing license plates and acquiring driver's licenses violate this principle. And because the group's doctrine was "divinely revealed by God," paying taxes is a sin.
In his news-style narrative, Coates devotes eight chapters to the interrelated factions of the extreme right-wing movement. He offers the reader a history and insight into the ideologies and philosophies that are the foundation of many of these groups. Coates has followed groups such as the Order and the Posse Comitatus, which he notes are most active in the West and Midwest.
consentishing Coates dives directly into the hearts of the hidden right-wing camps spread throughout the United States. He paints a picture of paranoid sociopaths who hoard massive amounts of armaments and supplies in preparation for Armageddon, which they think will take place in the year 2000. Coates goes beyond the surface and reveals the violence and the bizarre religious rituals that seem to be commonplace in what he calls "Survival Sickness."
Anti-Semitism abounds in the minds of these groups' members. They consider whites to be members of God's chosen race, and their goal is to keep the race pure. They blame "devil-driven Jews" for anything that has gone wrong with the affairs of humans since the fifth century B.C. Many of the groups have secret plots to overthrow the U.S. government, which they call the
Zionist Occupational Government
stationed in Denver, Coates has been the Chicago Tribune's western-states correspondent since 1884. He grew up a Catholic in Wisconsin. After earning an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin in 1967, he joined the Tribune. "Armed and Dangerous" is his second book. He and Michael Killan wrote "Heavy Losses: The Dangerous Decline of
American Defense."
"Armed and Dangerous" is timely as the extreme right-wing movement takes an upswing in the United States. In Fort Smith, Ark., the jury selection began Feb. 16 for the trial of 14 supremacist leaders, including Bruce Carroll Pierce.
Although Coates doesn't offer any of his own opinions, he provides a complete, sometimes gruesome view of the supremacist scene. Readers will wring at the account of a brutal hanging of a five-year-old boy. They will squirm as Coates explains in detail the way a man was tortured by having his skin torn away with razor blades and pilors. "Armed and Dangerous" isn't a great work of prose, but its content and in-depth reporting make the book an unforgettable account of humans at their worst.
But the trial isn't stopping the followers of this movement. Recently, the racist group Aryan Nations, an Idaho-based organization, tried to establish its branches in Utah. And, closer to home, the Missouri Knights, a group affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, plans to produce a television show for broadcast in Kansas City on the American Cablevision community access channel. Such programs are already showing in California and Philadelphia. Two weeks ago, the issue of a Klan visit knocked at the University of Kansas' front door when a journalism instructor and a host of KJIKH's JayTalk 91 invited two members of the Missouri Knights to speak on campus. But that door was never opened.
Pierce has already been convicted of playing a role in the killing of Berg. The 14 leaders were charged with plotting to overthrow the U.S. government or kill federal officials.
Brenda Flory is a Lawrence senior majoring in journalism and personnel administration. She also is a Kansan wire editor.
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KANSAN MAGAZINE.March 2,1988 18
Craig Sandv/KANSAN
fissouri, there were more than 250"
had been a member : 10 months. He said he was "looking for entering."
member since 1981. ed after witnessing is in Miami.
Klan an "upbeat, and said that one of Ian was to promote
See FORUM, p. 12, col. 1
te
will be heard on the House bably within two weeks, said. The Speaker of the cides when the bill will be
Branson and Lowther said
would be considerable debate
oor.
should be done to get them iculum."
1 the speaker brings it up on ndar, there will certainly be ry storm debate. " Branson
associated Press supplied some ion for this story.
by violence in a middle-class orchid near the banking dis-On Tuesday, security agents yed an opposition radio station e neighborhood, apparently se it broadcast an appeal for orgiea demonstrations.
g army isloyals
constrators gathered yesterday the four-lane street in front of ation, set up barricades of and set fire to a mini-dar car.
riot police chased the protesto side streets and apartment ugs. Chunks of concrete were down at place from at least 10 feet.
e fired tear-gas grendashes and d tear gas into the buildings ortable tanks, filling the entire orthood with the acrid, stinging
officer in charge stood in the of the street and shouted to its. "You'll come out like cocks!"
did, and reporters on the aw no one injured.
jokersman for the Panama Commission said anonymous one callers warned Tuesday yesterday that a bomb was in commission headquarters. esman Franklin Castellion & Associated Press the build-e evacuated and searched both but no bombs were found.