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Bonner County Human Rights
Task Force

"The goal of the task force is to create a community where we're 'hate proof.' Now that doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to do away with the Aryan Nations and the Richard Butlers and the people who send out anti-Semitic literature but it does mean creating a community that is so community-oriented, so compassionate that when these people do speak out, as they have a right to do, it becomes discordant."

Gretchen Hellar, President of the Task Force, interviewed in 1999.

The task force sponsored a contest for school aged children who designed cards that celebrated diversity.

    The Bonner County Task Force was founded as a means to ensure that Sandpoint, Idaho, was receptive to diversity.  While based in a predominantly white county, the task force has supported diversity in a variety of ways over the years including inviting speakers and artists to the area's schools, sponsoring public forums on such issues as community compassion, instituting a hotline for people who witness or are victims of harassment, and designing contests, such as the one that generated the greeting card above, with a focus on diversity.     

• Clergy response to anti-Semitic literature