When Maplewood city council candidate Jim Llanas told the Minnesota Independent this summer, “Brace yourself. It’s just going to get ugly,” he wasn’t far off the mark. An anonymous flier being distributed about Llanas, who would be both the first openly gay and the first Hispanic city council member in the city’s history, is being described as racist and homophobic by a progressive group and a city council member.

“Llanas, a non-native of Maplewood, apparently spends much of his time in Minneapolis supporting gay politicians,” the flier reads. “How does this qualify him to run for Maplewood city council?”

It then says that Llanas has gone by several names, including his middle name “Moreno,” and that he has been involved in the LGBT community.

The fliers have been distributed in Maplewood neighborhoods, and in numerous instances they’ve been taped on doors along with an attached campaign brochure — in many cases affixed with the same blue tape — promoting conservative council candidate Dave Hafner and write-in candidates DelRay Rokke (council) and Ken Smart (mayor).

Current city council member John Nephew first spotted the fliers and posted them on his blog. “For whatever it’s worth, I don’t think those three were born in Maplewood either, but you know that’s not really what the flyer is getting at with the term ‘non-native.’”

There’s no proof that any of those candidates were responsible for the flier, and Llanas points to comments on a blog where Smart said he doesn’t have any knowledge of the flier.

The flier also attacks Llanas’ work in human rights. “Llanas wants to establish a Human Rights commission on the city council. The question is which humans? When was the last time a human rights commission did anything for you???”

Llanas condemned the flier on his campaign website:

Using a strategy right from the Karl Rove playbook, supporters of my opponents are using fear and hate to get votes. They blanket neighborhoods in the dark of night, afraid to show their faces. These slimey tactics make incorrect assumptions about Maplewood residents. They assume Maplewood residents are uninformed, comfortable with people who divide our community and tolerant of bigots. The fact is residents are deeply engaged with the affairs of our city and are fed up with this type of political nonsense!

Progressive Majority, a “political action committee committed to progressive candidates and issues,” also condemned the fliers and rushed to support Llanas in an email on Wednesday.

Jim has been called “a non-native of Maplewood” and been attacked for “supporting gay politicians.” The residents of Maplewood are facing a new low in the politics of bigotry and hatred …

The attacks, meant only to stoke racism and homophobia among voters, remind us of the Jim Crow days in the American South. While we are confident that the residents of Maplewood will reject the politics of bigotry, we also know that Jim needs help to get his message out.

Click here for a PDF version of the flier.

The neo-Nazi group, which up until late 2007 was headquartered in Minneapolis, announced it will protest the “More Than Skin Deep: Uprooting White Privilege and White Supremacy one cell at a time” workshop being held Saturday at the Midtown YWCA. The event “is for white people who already have an understanding of white privilege and white supremacy (WP/WS) and want to learn more about how to dismantle WP/WS through embodiment work, education, visioning and practical action.” Attendees will learn to “use critical race content and embodiment exploration to uproot ideologies of white supremacy and systems of white privilege in our lives.”

And workshop attendees will likely get a first-hand look at white supremacy if members of the NSM show up.

A number of counter-protests are planned for Saturday. “The NSM has been holding racist anti-immigrant rallies in southern Minnesota, and now they are seeking to establish a presence inside the City of Minneapolis,” reads a flier posted at the May Day Cafe in south Minneapolis. “They plan to bring their racist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, antisemitic message of division and hate right into the heart of the city. They must not go unopposed!”

On Wednesday, more than 100 Minneapolis residents attended an emergency meeting to develop strategies for the counter protest.

“We need to defend the vibrant, multi-ethnic diversity we have here in Minneapolis,” Dan Gannon, an anti-racist community organizer, said in a press release Friday. “Our city must remain a ‘no-go’ zone where white supremacists cannot organize or build a movement with their hate speech and violence.”

A Minneapolis resident who attended the meeting, Angelina Vazquez, said, “We’re not going to let this happen in our city. This is an attack on our multiracial, multicultural community. We refuse to be put under siege by violent right-wingers.”

Workshop organizers say they haven’t organized a counter-protest, but they’re happy the community is coming together to oppose the NSM.

Heather Hackman and Susan Raffo are organizing the YWCA workshop. “Susan and I are grateful that people are stepping up against these protesters,” said Hackman. “We are also very grateful for the support of the Y.”

“There are a number of people responding in a number of ways to this protest, and challenging racism and challenging white privilege,” she said. “It’s clear that this community is not going to stand for this.”

Hackman says the organizers will address the crowd at 10 am.

The Saturday protest will be followed by an NSM-organized rally “against illegal aliens and communism” at the Veteran’s Memorial in Austin, Minn., on Oct. 17, according to the group’s Web site.

In response, Hedlund inadvertently replied to all recipients saying, “Matt, We speak the same language. And I still need to let voters know they have a choice to ‘Seek Justice, Vote For Experience’ for the Minnesota Supreme Court.”

Hedlund is challenging Justice Lorie Gildea for a seat on the Minnesota Supreme Court. She has a rich history in evangelical Christian circles having taught at St. Paul’s Northwestern College, an evangelical Baptist college, and she attends the evangelical Wayzata Free Church. Hedlund has received the support of EdWatch (PDF), a religious right group so extreme that they accused Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty of being “pro-homosexual.”

Hedlund says she doesn’t know whether Obama is a Muslim or not. “I have no idea what he is. My level of information about the presidential candidates would not fill a thimble,” she told the Pioneer Press. Obama is a Christian.

Hedlund said she didn’t read the email before replying to it and simply meant that she agreed with a deal she and Look has reached on lawn signs. “I disavow it,” she said. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

Her opponent, Gildea, was appointed by Gov. Pawlenty in 2006.

“I’m afraid if he wins, the black will take over.”

“He’s not a Christian. This is a Christian nation!”

“He must support terrorists.”

“I’m concerned Obama and his wife could be anti-white.”

“I don’t like the fact that he thinks white people are trash because we’re not.”

Earlier: A May 2008 Al Jazeera report from eastern Kentucky featured similar responses

A pair of pieces from The Washington Post demonstrate in detail the dilemma the Republican ticket faces and how Gov. Sarah Palin has set about solving it. In “Politics at the Five-and-Dime,” reporter Anne Hull describes how life in Farmington Hills, Mich., has flatlined along with that state’s economy, leading folks who might not otherwise cast ballots to plan on voting for Democrats:

To understand why — and to understand Obama’s widening lead over McCain in a crucial state — is to see an American worker pushed to desperation. A Wall Street bailout for $700 billion dollars? After six years at Dollar General, Fleck earns $10.35 and hour and receives an annual raise of 25 cents. She gave up Fantastic Sams and now cuts her hair over the sink in the bathroom.

Today, columnist Dana Milbank makes graphic the GOP response in a piece called “Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame.” At a rally in Clearwater, Fla., where Palin promises to get “kind of rough,” ugliness abounds:

Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African-American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

Video from the Florida rally after the jump.

A Palin supporter has posted the Florida rally in four YouTube clips. Here’s Part III, in which Palin calls out Obama as a “Chicago politician” at the 3-minute mark, and the crowd jeers the mainstream media at 5:25, and The New York Times (”Toilet paper!”) at 6:30. Interestingly, the YouTube poster inserts a note at this point in the video that a shout from the crowd which Milbank reports as “Kill him!” is really “Tell them!” Judge for yourself:

Here are the other Florida Palin rally video clips from that series, which is labeled as “Tampa Bay Sarah Palin Rally” but is indeed the Clearwater rally Milbank describes:
Part I
Part II
Part IV

Clinton is, after all, likely to lose the nomination to Barack Obama. And if she is thinking about her long-term political goals, notes Gergen, now would be a time to address the fact that, if anything, the contentious campaigns have served to make obvious the country’s long-suffering ills caused by racism and sexism.

This follows a report by Johnston last week in which he described the emails, obtained through discovery proceedings in a suit filed back in 2000 by 10 black agents, as follows: “Secret Service supervisors shared crude sexual jokes and engaged in racially derogatory banter about blacks, and passed around an anecdote about a possible assassination of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to internal e-mail disclosed in a federal court filing on Friday by lawyers for black Secret Service agents…. The messages were written mainly from 2003 through 2005, and were sent to and from e-mail accounts of at least 20 Secret Service supervisors. The messages offer a glimpse into the darker recesses of an agency known for protecting presidents and other dignitaries but whose culture is regarded as one of the most insular in federal law enforcement.”

These disclosures come a couple of weeks after a separate incident in which a Secret Service agent at the Beltsville, Maryland, training center was suspended for leaving a noose in the classroom of an African-American instructor.

The whole matter has gotten little attention in major American media to date, apart from those Times stories and one in the Washington Post. But as the Telegraph of London reported yesterday, Jesse Jackson is demanding to see all Secret Service documents pertaining to him dating all the way back to his 1980s presidential campaigns. 

Bonnie Goldstein of Slate posted several sample emails from the court filing here.

Previously: Secret Service apparently botched Obama security at Dallas rally in February.

NSM head Jeff Schoep moved from Hutchinson to Detroit, bringing the group’s business operations with him, says Michael Brooks, a former Detroit resident who now lives in Toledo and covered NSM-sparked riots there for the Free Press two years ago.

Along with the move, NSM announced leadership changes and touted that it is “aggressively strengthening the organization with mandatory leadership requirements including mandatory training seminars and other measures designed to increase the level of efficiency across the board.”

The white separatist group has a track record of going into minority and mixed-race communities to rally, as it did in North Toledo, Ohio, in October 2005. When police shielded neo-Nazis from angry residents, the crowd turned violent. Schoep commented that the “Negro beasts proved our point for us.” (Its last Minnesota event of note was a January 2007 book-burning.)

But in Detroit, it’s Schoep (at right) who’s in the minority: around 88 percent of the city’s population is non-white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (by contrast, 18 percent of Minneapolis residents are African American).

Reached by email, Brooks said he didn’t think Schoep moved to stir up conflict. “I wouldn’t expect Schoep to suddenly turn into a one-man vigilante force, and I don’t see this as a ‘belly-of-the-beast’ move,” he wrote. “Schoep has always been a low-key, behind-the-scenes operative who participates in few public rallies.”

NSM has attracted the attention of hatewatch groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center for, among other activities, recruiting young people through its Viking Youth Corps. A SPLC report in 2004 stated that Viking Youth “will be taught military skills, national socialist theory and practice, the history of the white race and, in general, how to become ‘a more effective warrior.’” At that time, Schoep claimed there was so much interest that “we can barely keep up.”

The group has three endeavors that presumably target that demographic: a profitable record label (now promoting Arrow Cross, dubbed “real rock that you will be proud to turn up load [sic]!”), a first-person shooter videogame (for users who want to “vent your anger toward pro-Zionist regimes!”) and a social networking site for “people of European descent.”

Like MySpace meets Mein Kampf, the site states, “Hot topics of interest include defending the rights of white people, preservation of European culture and heritage, reform of illegal immigration policies, workers rights, withdrawal of our military from an illegal Middle Eastern occupation and promotion of white separation.”

Look for coverage soon by our sister site, Michigan Messenger.