White Nationalists Emerge In Lakewood, Drop Business Cards

LAKEWOOD, WA - The white nationalist Northwest Front group has reared its head in Lakewood, leaving its business cards on cars in at least one city park. The double-sided cards were left on cars on Monday, according to a woman who found one. The cards advertise the group's website and its goal of creating a whites-only state in the Pacific Northwest.

Lakewood resident Nancy Ivory-Saunders was driving home after visiting Ft. Steilacoom Park with her dog on Monday when she noticed the card stuck against her windshield. It wasn't until she got home that she looked at the card and saw what it was for.

"I had a fit," she said of her reaction to the card.

Saunders posted about the incident on social media site Nextdoor, and said she's heard from Lakewood residents expressing outrage about the incident. One woman, however, accused Saunders of being a "race-baiter," although those comments were swiftly denounced (and then deleted) by others in the group. She's also heard from that at least one other person has found one of the cards. Saunders has contacted Lakewood police about the incident.

Lakewood police Lt. Chris Lawler told Patch.com that it's not illegal to put cards on cars, but city police are aware of the the incident. Lawler said that this is the first such incident of leafleting involving a white nationalist group in Lakewood that he knows of.

"We notified our patrol officers of the activity (placing a card or flyer on a vehicle is not illegal) and notified the Regional Intelligence Group for our area," Lawler wrote in an email.

The Northwest Front is one of the older white nationalist groups operating in the Pacific Northwest. The group's goal is to create a white "ethno-state" by combining Washington, Oregon, and parts of Idaho and Montana. The group's leader, Harold Covington, describes his fantasy whites-only nation as "kind of like the white version of Israel."

It might not be a surprise that Northwest Front has reared its head. The events last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., appear to have emboldened white nationalists and neo-Nazis across the U.S. Covington hailed Charlottesville as an achievement for the white nationalist movement in a blog post published Wednesday; as recently as Aug. 10, Covington in a podcast was pleading for money and technological support to keep Northwest Front going.

"I have to congratulate [white nationalist leader Richard Spencer] on a genuine and impressive achievement. He did what we’ve all been trying to do for a long time. He got around five hundred White people, mostly younger males, to actually come out from behind their computers and get their asses into the street," Covington wrote in a post published Wednesday.

Northwest Front lists its address as a PO Box in Bremerton, but Bremerton police were not aware of any recent leafleting activities in that city.

But even before Charlottesville, white power groups were active around Puget Sound. In February, neo-Nazi posters were found on the University of Washington campus; some of the posters were tacked to the Glenn Hughes theater, which was hosting a performance of "As You Like It" featuring a cast of minority and LGBTQ actors. In March, a synagogue in Seattle was hit with anti-Semitic graffiti.

Based on her neighbors' reaction to her Nextdoor post, Saunders believes that locals are not going to let this activity stand.

"We've been complacent for a long time and we've woken up," Ivory-Saunders said. "I think there's going to be a backlash against this type of thing."

Images courtesy Nancy Ivory-Saunders