Last month, stickers stamped with swastikas and the words “WE ARE EVERYWHERE” were planted on what’s believed to be the only Anne Frank memorial in the country, located in downtown Boise. The Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, which manages the memorial, is working to take the white supremacist, anti-Semitic message in stride.

In tandem with corporate and municipal partners, the center has reprinted the words “We are everywhere” on signs and banners to subvert the original message, countering, “people of good will, people of compassion, people who are considerate of their neighbor, are everywhere,” not hatred, said Dan Prinzing, Wassmuth Center executive director.

It’s an effort to “drown out the voices of hate and division,” Prinzing said. “Our hope is that if we can flood the state, certainly flood our valley, with the message that we are everywhere, I hope we can prove it in our action and how we reach out to our neighbors, how we build a community.”

The movement has already spread to Eastern Idaho.

Mary Anne McGrory, a social studies teacher at Alameda Middle School in Pocatello and the Wassmuth Center’s Human Rights Educator of the Year in 2016, requested one of the signs, and ended up receiving 50 to help distribute in this part of the state.

As of Tuesday afternoon, she had already given out about 20 of them.

McGrory said she gave some signs to other human rights teachers and English teachers who’ve been studying holocaust stories in their classrooms. She’s also given signs to advisors of Gay-Straight Alliance school clubs and area residents.

“I was horrified and heartbroken when the memorial was vandalized,” McGrory said, adding that she’s been impressed by the way the Wassmuth Center has been able to take a bad situation and turn it into a positive movement.

She believes there are many people who want respect, kindness, equality and justice for everyone in their community, but, she says, it’s important they speak up.

“We want people to be upstanders and not bystanders and let their presence be felt in the community,” McGrory said.

Local residents who would like a sign to put in their yard can contact McGrory at askmemcg@gmail.com for more information.

The Wassmuth Center’s signs aren’t just flooding Idaho; they’re spreading throughout the American West, Star resident Greta Dunlap said. Dunlap is distributing the typically free yard signs bearing the slogan in exchange for $10 donations, which are kicked back to the Wassmuth Center. She has received 80 orders so far, ranging from the Treasure Valley to North Idaho to Oregon.

After the signs were created, “They literally blew out of our office,” Prinzing said.

Dunlap, a Democratic precinct captain, began distributing the signs, with help, because she was “really tired of all the negative stuff going on. We need to do something positive in our community, something with civility.”

Fellow volunteer Carol Richel said, “It’s part of a larger campaign to get to know our neighbors regardless of their political values.”

Respectful dialogue remains key to differently opinioned Idahoans surviving a socially and politically “divided” environment, Prinzing said. “How are we ever going to heal the divide if we can’t talk to one another?”

Across Boise, signs were distributed by the Downtown Boise Association, some repeating the yard signs’ mantra, and others depicting Anne Frank’s face and reading “Love is everywhere.”

Some local activists, though, have knocked community leaders’ optimistic refrains like, “This is not Idaho,” and “This is not who we are,” in response to the vandalism. Activists point out hate groups’ historical and contemporary ties to the state, realities Prinzing understands.

“The signs — they’re aspirational,” he said. “Some would say (‘we are everywhere’) is a platitude. If you have been marginalized or demeaned in the community, you’ve not felt the love. There are those who are arbitrarily granted or denied the privilege of inclusion, respect, of justice. We recognize that.”

The 2020 vandalism was not the memorial’s first public brush with neo-Nazism; in 2017, the memorial was defaced with anti-Semitic, racist graffiti, the first of two similar incidents since the memorial’s 2002 inception.

Prinzing said, “We know that the number of hate groups and domestic terrorists has grown … in the last four years.”

The number of hate groups in the U.S. hit a 20-year high by early 2019 after that number continuously climbed for four consecutive years, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and in 2020, there were seven such groups in Idaho.

“Our goal is to recognize (hatred), but also encourage each other to become the upstanders to confront it,” Prinzing said. So when placing signs with slogans in our yards, “let’s proclaim it, and let’s live it. It’s not just a tagline. It’s a call to action.

“There are people that are hurting in our community,” he said. “We know they’re hurting. We’ve seen their tears. At what point do we say, enough?”