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White power ruled the night.
A mob of mostly men, including aggressive white supremacist skinheads, circled the giant wooden cross. Hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan put torches to burlap wrapped at the base of the giant religious symbol. Flames licked at a dark sky as red embers from burning wood flickered like crazed fireflies lifting off on a hot summer night.
With the cross fully lit, instead of joining prospective Klan members in taking the oath in the private farmhouse ritual, I quietly left the ring of hatred. Stepping deeper into the abyss was too risky. Despite looking like a bearded, long-haired outlaw biker, I was concerned somebody might recognize me as a news columnist. With adrenaline pumping, I was proud that night to work as a member of the free press who worked for a paper whose bosses recognized the importance of me joining that hateful scene so I could describe the awful glow of bigotry and dangerous defiance to our readers.
That July 4th cross burning near Jim Thorpe about 30 years ago is blistered into my memory.
Yet we have not come a long way since then. Little has changed. Perhaps we have learned nothing.
When a slick snake oil peddler from a KKK affiliate, the East Coast Knights of the True Invisible Empire, paid $35 for an engraved brick on a bicentennial column on Public Square in Wilkes-Barre, some well-meaning people lost their way. Instead of meeting the voices of hatred head-on with powerful voices of decency, too many people forgot who we are as a nation. Instead of principle, they offered censorship. Instead of using the almighty power of free speech, they tried to silence the monster.
Hatred is always heard.
That’s why we must listen.
My longtime friend Gene Stilp, a Wilkes-Barre native, trained lawyer and nationally-known political activist from near Harrisburg, showed up Friday on public property with a hammer and a chisel. City police charged him with disorderly conduct when he threatened to deface the Klan brick with paint. I expect to see Stilp plead not guilty, represent himself in a preliminary hearing and ask for a jury trial if the case is held over for court. If that happens, he can subpoena people and make a dynamic guerrilla theater spectacle out of himself and the issue.
But be prepared.
Klansmen and Klanswomen might show up on Public Square in real hoods to protest their civil rights and even recruit members as free Klan members in Wilkes-Barre where the Klan has the same civil rights as anybody else.
As an historic piece of the land of the free, Wilkes-Barre must remain a free and open city where all opinions are heard, not just those that meet the approval of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, anarchists, Communists and others. All non-violent expression must be heard no matter how vile the ideas. Our precious First Amendment specifically protects the expression of vile ideas.
The challenge exists in whether we’re up to the difficult task of using our intellect to trump ignorance. To accomplish that goal, we must do what smart people do best. We must think deeply and critically, pondering integrity, fairness, mercy and tolerance as we move together through the putrid depths of inequality, misogyny, racism and all else that makes any society unstable.
I truly wonder if Wilkes-Barre, a place I once called in a column “the most racist city pound-for-pound in America,” is up to the job.
In 2017 I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Stilp when he legally burned a Confederate/Nazi flag he called a “symbol of hate” at the Luzerne County Courthouse. Political activist Stephanie Bressler and I held two ends of the flag while Stilp lit the match and we dropped the rag into the garbage can.
More than 25 years earlier, I also got arrested in Wilkes-Barre, charged with a felony when my bosses and I stood firmly on First Amendment ground that allows a free press to publish the truth. In 1991 my co-defendants and I won a Scripps Howard Foundation “outstanding service to the cause of a free press” national journalism award for our trouble after government retribution against us became clear and Luzerne County prosecutors dropped the charges.
I’d do it all again.
Without spacious freedom of expression, we cease to exist as a nation and as a moral people.
Prejudice, discrimination and hatred remain strong in Northeastern Pennsylvania. We must increasingly call out bigotry for the vicious forces of evil it musters. We cannot ignore the existence of malice or wish away its power. KKK principles remain a driving force in our community. But the Klan has as much right in this land of the free to peacefully espouse their hatred as we have to peacefully advocate liberty and justice for all.
The great American social critic, political activist and firebrand Noam Chomsky saw our fight for what it is. Chomsky said, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
Power to the people. All the people. Even white power people.
Steve Corbett
Scranton