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CANYON CITY -- Grant County residents turned out in force Friday morning to send a message to a white supremacist group: Stay out.
About 375 people -- in a northeast Oregon county of fewer than 8,000-- attended a town hall meeting to fight a plan by a group calling itself the Aryan Nations to plant a national headquarters in John Day.
"Never have I been to a community who reacted so quickly as you have to say no," civil rights activist Tony Stewart of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, told a standing-room-only crowd at the Canyon City Community Hall just south of John Day.
At least 100 others were turned away because of fire code restrictions. About 300 more watched a live stream on the Internet, said Scotta Callister, editor of the Blue Mountain Eagle newspaper in John Day, which sponsored the meeting.
"It gave this community a chance to put a voice to its values," Callister said. "That's powerful."
The community was reacting to a visit last week by Paul R. Mullet of Athol, Idaho, who told townspeople he is the leader of the neo-Nazi group and is shopping for John Day property for a new headquarters.
Best part of the story is the leader of the skin heads is named Mullet.



