Anti-Racist Group Fights Flyer With Flyer : Bigotry: Activists, residents angered by hate mail come together to distribute a leaflet of their own.

Before this day, they had been strangers, two women a generation apart from different corners of the San Fernando Valley. But on Saturday they came together to help fight what both consider to be an ugly precedent in their community: the circulation of racist flyers.

Joining some two dozen other area residents, church group members and incensed social activists, Margarete Allen and Tasha Phillips went door to door in a three-block area of this racially mixed neighborhood to circulate their own anti-racist flyer and speak their mind about people who advocate hate and violence.

For Allen, a Lake View Terrace resident, it was a day to try to take back her neighborhood, where anti-Latino flyers had been scattered just weeks ago at the height of the Proposition 187 campaign.

Phillips, a church group member from North Hollywood, just wanted to speak out about a topic that, frankly, makes her blood boil.

“We just want to make a statement,” Phillips, a 26-year-old apartment-complex worker, told one homeowner whom she approached in his front yard. “For me, it’s important to take a stand and say that this kind of bigotry is just not cool.”

Accepting the women’s flyer, the man paused and responded: “You’re right. It’s not cool.”

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The door-to-door canvassing came weeks after an unknown number of racist flyers were left in the mailboxes of homes in Burbank, Lake View Terrace and Santa Clarita. Organizers included the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council, the Valley branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional and the Burbank Human Relations Commission.

One offending flyer--which attacked both blacks and Latinos, advocating a tougher immigration policy along U. S. borders--was also left in students’ lockers in Burbank and Santa Clarita high schools, organizers said.

“The hate it would take for someone to first draw something like this and then put it in someone else’s mailbox is incredible,” said Dudley Chatman, executive vice president of the Valley Interfaith Council. “I have seen this type of hate before and it needs to be answered with an equally strong showing of love and unity.”

Meeting at the Lake View Terrace Community Center, the activists said the flyers indicated that racial hatred would not ease even after the passage of Proposition 187, which severely limits the social services available to illegal immigrants.

“The hate is out there,” said organizer Rhetta Alexander. “These things are just a terrible reminder of the racism that still exists here. We just want to let people know that this kind of thinking does not represent this community. It has to be stopped.”

Allen, a white construction inspector for the city of Los Angeles who said she is married to a black man with whom she has two sons, received one of the flyers in her mailbox several weeks ago.

“It was just so upsetting, the hatred it showed,” the middle-aged Allen said. “I didn’t even show it to my two sons. I didn’t want to hurt them.”

But she did show it to several fellow church members, who helped organize Saturday’s effort, in part, because they believed that leaving such flyers in mailboxes was illegal.

Splitting up into teams of two, the activists fanned out over the neighborhood. But for Allen and Phillips, spreading the message of hope got off to a shaky start.

They knocked on nearly a half-dozen doors before finding someone home: a man with a beer in his hand who said he didn’t even live in the house. He took the flyer anyway.

One woman accepted the flyer and brusquely ushered the women from her yard.

At another door, an elderly woman in curlers listened to Allen’s pitch, seemingly anxious to close her door. Suddenly, her husband appeared and said that so much of this kind of hatred has circulated over the years in Los Angeles that he just tries to ignore it all.

“Sometimes, you just let go,” the elderly woman said before closing the door.

At still another house, a man challenged the pair by saying that even circulating such well-meaning flyers was giving validity to those disseminating the hate mail.

But the group pressed on, vowing to continue their efforts next weekend in Burbank.

By afternoon’s end, both Allen and Phillips saw in one another a potential new friend. And both said they wouldn’t let a few rude reactions dampen their spirit.

“I’m not surprised at some of the responses,” Allen said. “People think you want to sell them something. Or convert them.”

Added Phillips: “It’s a touchy subject. I just don’t think people are comfortable even talking about prejudice.”