©Scott Sines
I’ve been sitting on this comment for a while.
Just like I’m sure Chris Peck, Peggy Kuhr, Neal Pattison, Bill Morlin, Dianna Dawson, Colin Mulvany, Jesse Tinsley, Anne Williams and many others have been.
It was good to hear NPR revisit Randy Weaver and Ruby Ridge in the context of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge story. It was good to hear Jess Walter’s voice as he talked about those two weeks in retrospect. You see I worked on that story with all those other good people. I’m not sure I can say I’m glad I was part of it, but I am richer for it of that I am sure.
It’s funny how sometimes, many times we just don’t realize it when we are witnessing history as it happens.
Randy Weaver was a racist on the run.
A federal fugitive with an outstanding warrant for selling a sawed-off shotgun to an informant. He holed up in a remote North Idaho cabin. Federal Marshall’s moved in and in the ensuing gun battle Deputy Marshall Willam Degan and Weaver’s young son Sammy were killed. Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies poured resources into the standoff. The roadblock leading to Weaver’s cabin became a rallying point for White Supremacists from Georgia to Las Vegas. Paul Harvey, in a national radio broadcast, urged Weaver to surrender. Still, Weaver’s family kept an army of federal agents at bay for ten days. By the time the shooting was over, the dead also included Weaver’s wife, Vicki. >more pages on Ruby Ridge
The Ragged Edge
The gunfire at Ruby Ridge echoed across the country. White Supremacists and government haters were outraged at what they considered the murder of Vicki and Sammy Weaver. Federal Marshall William Degan was a trespasser who got what was coming to him. Randy Weaver became a celebrity in radical right wing circles. “The line between Thomas Jefferson and Richard Butler (Head of the Aryan Nations) seems more like a ragged edge,” said editor Chris Peck. The scrutiny of the newspaper, its aggressive community outreach efforts to promote diversity, and the backlash from residents in the Inland Northwest, forced many of the Aryan Nations underground. They bombed a planned parenthood clinic, a newspaper office and robbed the same bank twice. The head of the Aryan Nations was eventually tried, convicted and bankrupted in federal court. The Aryan bombers are serving lengthy prison sentences. More pages on White Supremacists
