American Nazi Party adopts Salem road

Marion County has allowed a Portland-area skinhead group to adopt a rural Salem road as part of a volunteer litter clean-up program.

The signs proclaiming that Sunnyview Road NE between Cordon Road and 82nd Avenue is sponsored by the American Nazi Party NSM were installed Monday.

County officials say they were legally advised that excluding the organization would violate a constitutional right to free speech. Their choices, they said, were: allow the group to join the program, remove all of the signs from the program or refuse the group and risk a lawsuit.

Commissioner Sam Brentano said he wanted to turn the organization down anyway and face whatever lawsuits came.


He was outnumbered by commissioners Patti Milne and Janet Carlson. The commissioners did not vote on the issue, but gave staff direction by consensus.

Milne said she considers it strictly a constitutional issue that goes to the core of being American.

Carlson said she didn't want to end a good program for many volunteers as a way to keep this group from joining.

Several local residents, some of them who live on Sunnyview Road, said they are upset that the county would allow the signs or attach its own name to that of a hate group.

"To me, it just screams hate," said Jacque Bryant of Salem. "It screams doesn't belong here."

Bryant heard about the sign from her grandmother and had a strong emotional reaction to it when she saw it for herself. She hopes enough community outrage will force the county to remove the sign.

Salem resident Mike Navarro, whose mother lives near the area, also was stunned by the sign.

Navarro said that the group has a right to its own opinions but that it's poor judgment for a county to put itself in the position of appearing to endorse a hate group. There should be some level of sensitivity in these kinds of decisions, Navarro said.

"To me, that's kind of cowardly. 'We don't want to get sued,' " Navarro said. "You're probably offending the majority of the people in your county just to pacify the needs of a very select group of people who thrive on hating."

Marion County Assistant Legal Counsel Scott Norris regards the signs as a form of speech.

The cases Norris studied were out of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. One in particular involved a long-running dispute between the Ku Klux Klan and the state of Missouri involving a similar adopt-a-highway program.

The appeals court ruled that Missouri could not keep the Ku Klux Klan out of the program based on who they are and what they believe. Missouri appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided Jan. 10 not to consider the appeal.

In an apparent coincidence, Marion County Public Works Director Jim Sears signed the approval for the American Nazi Party's application that same day.

A Web site listed on the group's application is for the Tualatin Valley Skins. The group's Web site calls it a sister organization of the National Socialist Movement.

The application lists the contact person as C. Marchand. He declined to comment, referring all questions to the group's media spokesman, who could not be reached for comment.

Although the application lists C. Marchand, the county sent a letter accepting the Adopt-A-Road application to a Dylan Marchand.

It was not clear whether the two Marchands were the same or separate people. Both the letter and the application reference the same Keizer post-office box.

Mark Potok, director of the intelligence project that monitors hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said hate-group involvement in adopt-a-road programs has been going on since the early 1990s.

It was started by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke with a sign in Harrison, Ark., as an attempt to construct an image of a "kinder, gentler Klan," Potok said.

The courts have ruled both ways, he said.

To bar a group, Potok said, officials need to be able to show that they're applying the rule in a viewpoint-neutral way, that the program isn't a public forum and that barring a hate group is reasonable.

It is wise, he said, to create such guidelines before starting an adopt-a-road program.

"The unfortunate effect of these signs is that you become a participant in a hate group's propaganda campaign," Potok said.

Brentano said too much sacrifice already has been made to this kind of organization, referring to Nazi Germany in World War II.

He doesn't want to be cornered into publicizing it.

"They have a right to free speech. I don't have a problem with it," Brentano said. "But don't ask me to promote it."

Milne called the decision gut-wrenching and her most difficult as a county commissioner.

"We can't choose who we're going to give access to or to what extent," Milne said. "If we do that, we're going down a slippery slope."

Carlson said other jurisdictions in the United States already have tested the legal issues.

"It's important to take a stand on things like that," Carlson said. "It's also important to follow the law."

The few-mile stretch of road that the American Nazi Party is sponsoring is just east of Salem, in a rural area. Houses are separated by acres, and some spreads have spent generations in the possession of one family.

One neighbor complained to the county soon after the signs went up. Many others from the community have complained since then.

Although one sign was vandalized sometime Monday night, neighbors at the other end of the road and in between hadn't noticed the signs.

Deborah McDowell said she was not concerned about the sponsorship as long as the group does actually clean the road.

"We wouldn't view it any different than having criminals on the roadside doing cleanup," McDowell said.

Mary Fordyce, who described herself as a Mexican-American, said the sign and the adoption made her uncomfortable.

"That's not my family's -- or our neighbors' for that matter -- frame of mind," Fordyce said. "It's very disturbing to me."