Anti-Bigotry Group to March in Areas Hit Earlier by Neo-Nazis

Reacting to the distribution of racist hate literature in two districts here two weeks ago, a task force against anti-Semitism said Thursday that it will march through the same neighborhoods this weekend to demonstrate against white supremacist groups.

The Rev. Frank Eiklor, president of Shalom International, a Christian anti-bigotry organization, said members of the Orange County Christian Task Force Against Anti-Semitism will gather at 3:30 p.m Sunday in the 600 block of West Southgate Avenue and the 100 block of West Orangethorpe Avenue, “with a different message of unconditional friendship and love for all our citizens.”

White-supremacist groups in the predawn hours of Jan. 20 left racist newspapers and flyers smearing blacks and Jews at the doorsteps and in the mailboxes of homeowners and businesses in the two blocks. Fullerton police said it appeared to be the work of neo-Nazi “skinheads”.

“As Christians, we want to apologize to those good neighbors for having to awaken to such trash,” Eiklor said. “We join our outrage to their own. We will not tolerate hate aimed at Jews, blacks or any Americans.”

Eiklor said up to 100 people are expected to participate in Sunday’s march.

The leaflets included post office box numbers for four white supremacist groups, identified in the flyers as the White Aryan Resistance, the Aryan Women’s League, the Aryan White Separatists and the Western Hammer Skinheads.

One of the flyers included a San Francisco phone number answered by a tape machine with a 2 1/2-minute hate message against minorities and the federal government. Another flyer attacked the Jan. 15 holiday celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was pictured with a target on his forehead.

No witnesses or suspects in the incident have been found, but Fullerton police are trying to track the source of the literature through the post office boxes. If apprehended, the distributors of the leaflets could be charged with civil rights violations, Police Sgt. Joe Klein said.

Residents of the West Southgate neighborhood, an integrated community, said the incident was the first in which racist literature had been left at their homes and that it appeared that the block had been randomly chosen in a neo-Nazi recruitment drive.

“If they were trying to recruit others for hate, we’re walking the same beat, asking our neighbors to join us in Orange County in confronting walls of hate and building bridges of friendship,” Eiklor said.

The Christian Task Force Against Anti-Semitism staged a similar march in 1988 after Temple Beth Tikvah in Fullerton was the target of vandalism. Several rallies, some attended by more than 1,000 people, were held in the months after the incident.

Eiklor said the vandalism was especially outrageous because the temple’s rabbi, Haim Asa, is a survivor of the Holocaust.

Eiklor said Fullerton streets were also plastered with swastikas and skinhead stickers as recently as six months ago.

Asa said stickers that list a phone number for the White Aryan Resistance have been seen in Brea “in the last day or two.”

At the number, like the one in San Francisco, calls are answered by a tape machine that plays a lengthy, anti-Semitic message. Part of it denounces the Holocaust as “an evil hoax,” and urges callers to contact and harass a pizzeria worker whom the tape identifies as a member of a group called Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice.

“It keeps surfacing every so often,” Asa said of the hate literature. “It keeps us on our toes.”