BELLINGHAM, Wash. -- An immaculate gray house overlooking a quiet park in this calm residential neighborhood may seem an unlikely place to find a gathering of women who speak out against encroaching militias and hate groups.

And the young mothers sitting around a dining table drinking tea with their morning bagels also may seem unlikely voices against racist violence and anti-Semitic movements.

But more than a year ago, these women grew tired of watching racists beat up black people in their city and militia movements growing in outlying towns. They decided to get involved. Nine Mothers Against Hate was born.

"What we were trying to say is there are moments in time when you have to draw a line in the sand and say, 'What's across this line is wrong,'" said Emily Weiner, the group's unofficial leader. "If you don't do anything, then the people who are organizing hatred win. We don't have the luxury to not be against this stuff."

Weiner and other Nine Mothers comprise but one of a growing number of groups of ordinary citizens all over the Northwest who fight back against what they see as disconcerting and sometimes frightening organization by hate groups and anti-government militia organizations.

Leaders say they are trying to counter the aggressive rhetoric of their opponents by instilling tolerance in their communities. Whether they're waging wars of words with militias in Oregon or trying to thwart neo-Nazi recruitment in Idaho, their efforts are beginning to pay off, they say.

"What's constantly encouraging at this point is individuals who have the courage to speak up, even in the face of intimidation and harassment," said Eric Ward, development director for the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment.

The Seattle-based organization provides technical and moral support for the many groups springing up in communities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado.

The group encourages and guides people to start their own groups, however small, with the goal of countering the attention the outspoken right-wing extremists gain simply by being loud and aggressive, Ward said.

"I don't think we should deny them their rights to speak, even to groups we don't agree with, but we should utilize our own freedom of speech, our own freedom of assembly, our own freedom of press," Ward said. "If we don't, we give silent permission to those groups."

At the Washington chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Seattle, activists say Ward and the other groups have the right approach.

"We defend anybody's right to speak their views, even if they are unpopular," ACLU education director Doug Honig said. "That doesn't mean we approve of the message. The far right is very good at grass-roots organizing, so if you want to counter what the far right is doing, form your own grass-roots groups to speak your own views."

In Mount Vernon, Wash., about a year ago, members of the Montana Militia held a conference in a local motel. A standing-room only crowd listened as militia leaders spoke of impending takeovers by the United Nations and the urgent need to unite in armed opposition to a federal government out of control.

Outside, about 50 protesters picketed the convention, toting signs that said, "Hate is Sick," and "No Militias."

Since then, those who formed the protest say, anti-militia organizing in Mount Vernon and the surrounding Skagit County has waned and is generally inactive.

That's the sort of roller coaster of opposition the permanent community groups want to prevent, Ward said.

"We're appalled and shocked, but as soon as they're gone, we forget about it until the next thing happens," Ward said. "But they aren't as outside the mainstream as we may think."

'Joining Hands Against Hate'

In Bellingham in 1995, a black college student was attacked in a residential neighborhood by racist skinheads.

Across town, The members of Nine Mothers were appalled.

They were already friends because they all had children in preschool. One day over breakfast, they decided to distribute a symbol of their message, a circle of multi-racial hands grasping each other in unity.

"They (extremist groups) are so active, and our perception was most people don't agree with them and weren't pleased that this was going on," Weiner said. "The idea of the symbol was to find a way for ordinary people to express their support of seeing human beings as human beings."

Eventually, the symbol, entitled "Joining Hands Against Hate," ended up on bumper stickers, reprinted as buttons and hung in front windows of homes.

The Nine Mothers admit their effort wasn't large. But they say at least they did something to show their opposition to racism and hate.

"We are saying to our children you must take a stand; you must do something," said Linda Allen another of the Nine Mothers. "It's important to have done something. It's more important that you have taken a stand."

'Together we can be courageous'

In Everett, Wash., the fledgling Human Rights Coalition for Snohomish County hopes to begin a series of efforts to bring anti-hate and anti-militia messages to schools, churches and public forums, member Pam Wessel-Estes said.

The group started last fall and now has more than a dozen dedicated members.

"The more of us who speak up and say this is not acceptable, then the louder our voice is going to be," said Wessel-Estes, the Snohomish resident and mother of an adopted mixed-race child.

"I have reason to be fearful," she said. "But I'm not willing to let it intimidate me to the point where I'm going to be quiet."

'Expose who they are'

In 1991, a group of area neo-Nazi skinheads announced plans to crash and disrupt a Eugene, Ore., concert by the rock band Fugazi, a hard-edged alternative group known for anti-racist lyrics. Concert promoters canceled the show rather than risk violence.

"They (the neo-Nazis) were sort of coming in and telling us what to do," said Michelle Luskowitz of Communities Against Hate. "How could we counter that kind of situation?"

The formation of Luskowitz's organization was the response. Now touting some 800 members, the group ranges north and south from Eugene to fight hate groups and militias all over Western Oregon, Luskowitz said.

And that region has had all too much violence and tension in recent years, she said.

In 1994, skinheads shot up a synagogue in Eugene and spray painted racial slurs and Nazi slogans on a black church.

A lesbian couple was murdered a year ago in Medford, south of Eugene. In Grants Pass, next door to Medford, a black high school student was harassed so badly he had to leave school.

Three months ago or so, Ku Klux Klan reared its sheet-clad head in the area, Luskowitz said.

In response, Communities Against Hate launched education campaigns and media-targeted events to counter the racist messages with words of tolerance.

"We find who they are, what their agenda is," Luskowitz said. "We work very diligently to expose who they are. And they run the gamut. They can be on the school board, they can be your neighbor, or they can be thugs on the street."

In one victory for the group, they brought a former neo-Nazi recruiter to a meeting to publicly apologize for the views he abandoned, Luskowitz said.

"We want to have a much louder voice, with more people breaking the whole anti-Semitic, racist rhetoric of those factions," Luskowitz said.

'Silence is acceptance'

When leaders of the Aryan Nations Church near Sand Point, Idaho, about 1991 started claiming the Northwest as a whites-only territory, residents in the 5,000-population town in the state's rural panhandle decided to fight back.

Organizing into the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force, the group held a public meeting to help gain support and speak out.

The neo-Nazis showed up in full regalia, Task Force president Brenda Hammond remembers.

"They tried to take over the meeting, but they did more to discount their own views than anyone else could have," Hammond said. "The rest of us stood up and made it clear that we won't accept such an agenda."

Since then, the group has continued to gain support, Hammond said.

The local arts community has helped to bring the concepts of cultural diversity to town by bringing black musicians to perform and Jewish Holocaust survivors to speak, Hammond said.

The most encouraging words came from a disillusioned former Aryan Nations member, who said the town's efforts had convinced the head of the neo-Nazis to take his recruitment efforts elsewhere, Hammond said.

"It's important not to let those groups set your agenda," Hammond said. "You have to have programs going on. You have to be in it for the long haul."

Now the group is focusing on convincing the rest of the world that Sand Point isn't a bastion of racism, Hammond said.

"Silence is acceptance," she said. "They would claim our area if we let them. We can't be silent. We have to make noise."

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