Countering Hate explores how ordinary people have accomplished extraordinary things to counter hate groups in communities across the United States. The book is relevant to college and university students and community members alike, providing examples from across the United States for people to draw from as fertile grounds for inspiring civic engagement and citizenship for healthy democracies in today’s turbulent times. Those interested in leadership, applied ethics, political science, sociology, psychology, communications and many other disciplinary fields will find benefit from the study of these cases.
The ten case studies presented in the text start with the rise of the hate group, the Aryan Nations, in Hayden, ID and include community responses to hate in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. Each case recognizes that communities have a range of response strategies and delivers multiple examples of non-violent outcomes, persistence, and resiliency on the part of those who stand for the rights of justice, freedom and equality. In many ways, the book tells the story of local heroes and inspiring lessons from ordinary people who unified their towns and provided leadership that can inform actions of today and the future. The closing chapter offers resources for communities to consider as they identify responses that are unique and contextualized for their specific needs. There is no one size fits all strategy, but rather a commitment to sharing options so that every town and city can build a culture of inclusion and act with solidarity.
A 2012 report titled A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future, prepared by the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement makes the case for colleges and universities to become more intentional about teaching civic engagement and preparing students to be active participants in democracy. This learning paradigm encourages connecting teaching and learning with outside the classroom, real-life experiences. Classrooms and communities choosing to read this text are leveraging the cases with a diverse range of learning outcomes. The timing of the release coincides with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Aryan Nations compound as well as the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations. The electronic classroom version includes quizzes and discussion questions, while the hard copy version includes the case studies with discussion points for community reads.
