Patrice O'Neill: The first trip was the scariest because didn't know the terrain and the situation still seemed volatile. I had spoken to quite a few people before I arrived, almost all of whom were happy that our film crew was coming to town. I've been making documentaries for years, but I've never spoken with so many people who were reluctant to go on camera.

Left: Director of Photography Blake McHugh with Director and Producer Patrice O'Neill on location in Montana.

The Project 7 revelations made people understandably wary. If well known public figures like the sheriff, police chief and judges could become targets of a militia group, ordinary people and most especially anti-hate or environmental activists felt vulnerable as well. They had reason to be nervous. Activists and even teachers who angered listeners would have their names bandied about on John Stokes radio show.

On our first trip, we flew into Missoula. My associate producer Brian Dentz and I were driving up the east side of Flathead Lake when we tuned into John Stokes radio show. Stokes and one of his guests were talking derisively about the Hands Against Hate/Not In Our Town meeting scheduled for that evening at the community college. Stokes suggested that his listeners attend to find out what was going on.

"No John, I think I'll stay home and clean my gun. I'm going to take it apart, make sure the barrel is nice and clear..."

I don't remember the whole description of the gun cleaning, but it was my first experience there with how innuendo could be so creepy.

When we arrived at Brenda Kitterman's house, the phone was ringing constantly with callers wanting details about the meeting that evening. "We just got a call from someone who said a militia group called Project 56 is coming in from Libby for the meeting."

I would quickly learn that there are many types of militia groups. Some are just people who consider themselves ready to help if local law enforcement or their country calls on them in case of an attack or some emergency. Some, like Project 7 have an active anti-government agenda. They believe the county sheriff is the highest legal authority. Each county in Montana has a number that identifies the county on license plates. Flathead County is identified by a 7.

We drove into town with Brenda. She stopped into Citizens for a Better Flathead to pick up t-shirts that they had printed up for the event. She and her thirteen-year-old daughter, Tricia, then visited a downtown Kalispell art gallery to pick up some posters. Marion Gerrish, an attractive spunky sixty-something was there with hundreds of Hands Against Hate posters. "This friend of mine called me today and said, 'Marion, go to that meeting for us. I'm too afraid to go, but thank you for doing this.'"

Nearly two hundred people packed into the Flathead Valley Community College cafeteria for the first Hands Against Hate meeting. Many of the people we would end up interviewing — from all sides of the debate — were there that evening.

At the beginning of the meeting, they all watched "Not In Our Town," our film about how people in Billings, Montana resisted hate violence in their community. I think this was a critical factor in gaining trust as we continued filming.

Over the course of the evening, people from widely different perspectives got up and spoke. They all agreed it was good to be against hate, but they had different interpretations of what that meant. But the experience of publicly speaking out and treating each other respectfully in this place on this evening seemed to have a powerful effect. You could feel the tension ease through the course of the evening.

I remember leaving the meeting after we'd packed up most of the gear and walking by myself back toward the van. It was crispy cold and my cowgirl boots were clicking loudly on the asphalt. Someone could just shoot me right now, I thought. But the people I had just met had changed the atmosphere, and like them, I wasn't as afraid anymore.

It was over a hundred degrees in Northwest Montana when we returned to the Valley that summer of 2002.

Left: Co-producer Kelly Whalen with Director of Photography Blake McHugh on location in Montana

Before we left Kalispell the first time, a group of people had started to plan a follow-up "Hands Against Hate/Not In Our Town" event. It was organized as a "party in the park" — with food and music. Brenda Kitterman and the people who had joined her anti-hate efforts hoped such an event would bring people together.

Many of the Valley's civic leaders attended, including Kalispell Mayor Pam Kennedy, Kalispell Police Chief Frank Garner, Whitefish Police Chief Bill Dial and Columbia Falls Police Chief Dave Perry. They joined about 150 people who came out for the event despite the blistering heat.

That afternoon was the first time we met Gary Hall, who was then mayor of Columbia Falls. "I've been criticized for being with this group because I am a Republican, a conservative Republican, and I'd like us to get away from using the word extremist. That isolates, that divides us," he told the audience.

We took his words to heart and tried to be very careful about how we used the word "extremist" as we moved forward with the story.

He provided his analysis of how the anti-government militia movement was taking hold in the Northwest and the role of radio shows like John Stokes' in creating an atmosphere of intimidation.

We asked some people aside for interviews, including Carolyn Beecher and her boyfriend Dave Haddon, a local leader with Montana Wilderness Association. Carolyn was a close friend of Tary Mocabee — the local environmentalist who had recently died — and she had inherited Tary's property in Lake County just south of the Valley. Carolyn had lived with the uncertainty surrounding Tary's death for over a year, but said she had resigned herself to the police investigators' perspective that Tary's drowning was probably an accident. She said she identified with people who were out of work in the Valley who felt angry about the changes that were taking place. She felt it was important that those sentiments were not confused with the militia activity.

Scott Daumiller, a local activist who we would meet later, sat on a ledge watching the speakers, but didn't talk with anyone at the event, including us.

After the party, a large group of us headed for the Bulldog, a downtown Kalispell bar and grill which would become one of our local hang outs during the next few years (the Bulldog is now gone, and has been replaced by a wine bar).

We were settled into the back room, but Brenda came back from the ladies room and said, "Did you check out the table of guys in survival gear sitting at the front of the bar?" I wandered into the front room with Mayor Pam Kennedy. She asked the bartender if he knew the guys at the table and was told they were a group visiting from Florida. Associate producer and sound man Brian Dentz was about to go talk to the group, but had stopped to look at a large display of hunting knives on the wall.

Pam Kennedy and I just stared at each other and headed quickly to the front door. A huge thunderstorm had blown into town. The heavy wind was mixed with cracks of thunder and lightning (just a few blocks away, a fast food restaurant would become the evening's victim). As we were headed back in, the survivalists were leaving. The bartender had pulled out some candles and Director of Photography Blake McHugh and Brian Dentz were setting up a table in the front room. We settled in with a few beers to weather out the storm.

The next day, we met Scott Daumiller and his friend J.B. Stone at a cafe in Columbia Falls. They both wrote many letters to the editor about forest issues and the environmentalists. Someone had told me that J.B. had connections to the militia movement. When we first started talking, these guys put me off. J.B. was incredibly angry and talked about how much he hated the local environmentalists, including Keith Hammer. Scott had this very cold look on his face and kept staring at me. I asked if we go somewhere outdoors to do the interview. Scott suggested the Stoltz lumber mill where he worked.

Something happened when the cameras started rolling. They both pulled down their tough guy guards and started talking about what they cared about, and I started listening instead of being defensive. Scott had grown up here and felt like he was watching his town being destroyed. Where were the jobs going to come from if all the mills were closed, he wanted to know. "I can't feed my family from a seven-dollar-an-hour job at Target." He reminded me of many people I had met over the years who were angry about how the country was losing jobs to trade deals and corporations moving overseas. But unlike many people I'd spoken to, Scott seemed to personally blame environmentalists for the economic downfall.

After awhile we headed up into the woods. J.B. seemed to be the more ideological of the two. He had once worked in commercial real estate in Southern California and was active in property rights issues. He was pretty upset when he heard that we were told he was in the militia. He said he thought the liberals accused everyone else, but he believed they were the ones who were stereotyping. He said his beliefs set him apart from the most vocal members of both the left and the right. "John Stokes has my number blocked on his radio station," he told me. " He can't stand when I call him out on a lie."

Scott kept repeating the same message, "All I want to do is go out in the woods and pick huckleberries." Apparently the road closures resulted from the Clinton Roadless Initiative, which was designed to restore wilderness areas throughout the country.

The closures were the source of deep anger and resentment not just from the logging industry, but the increasingly vocal recreation forces who use off road vehicles. Scott told us that the forest service gates were cutting his friends and family out of their access to the forest, and one of their favorite hobbies — huckleberry picking.

I started to warm to these guys, despite our differences over the source of the friction in the Valley. Their passion about their cause helped convince me that I had to open myself up to a more deeply complicated story than the town's response to Project 7.

Our shooting day wouldn't end until sunset on the deck of a pub on the east side of Flathead Lake. I've been extremely lucky to work with cameraman Blake McHugh for the past twelve years. He's a stellar photographer and a good friend. But Blake dreads summer shoots with me. "She never wants to stop until the sun goes down," Blake warned Brian Dentz, a New Yorker who was working his first doc with us. In the Northwest, that means we still have light at ten o'clock. We had set up the camera for a time lapse of the sunset. Just as it was going down, I noticed a spider weaving its web at the corner of the deck. We all admitted later that this picture would aptly illustrate the ominous words that filled the airwaves in the valley.

I've never been in a more beautiful place than the Flathead Valley in the fall. We decided to dig in on this trip and spent several weeks trying to learn more about the conflicts in the Valley and see how they played out in local politics. We also tried to learn more about local environmentalists.

Growth in the county was a big issue in the local elections. Columbia Falls Mayor Gary Hall, one of the civic leaders who we had met at a Hands Against Hate event, was in a relatively tight race against Democratic contender Karen Reeves for one of only three county commission seats in the Flathead. Hall and Reeves had agreed to keep their campaigns clean and not to sling mud. We witnessed that commitment to civility when we followed them to be interviewed by Wendy Ostrom Price, another radio talk show host in the Valley. However, after winning the Republican primary, Gary Hall was suddenly being called a Green Nazi in some local advertising. The man Gary Hall beat in the primary was incumbent Commissioner Dale Williams. Williams had a lot of support from Stokes and his listeners on KGEZ and was running as a write-in candidate.

We went to a candidates' debate sponsored by Montanans for Multiple Use, held at the fairgrounds in Kalispell. Montanans for Multiple Use is a "wise use" organization, pushing for fewer regulations on logging and recreation on national lands. The group is also a loud political voice in the Valley.

Write-in candidate Dale Williams gained the most applause at the meeting, especially with his line, "The snowmobile accord is an abomination." He was referring to an attempt by the snowmobilers, environmentalists and the forest service to reach an agreement on use of the trails in sensitive wildlife areas. MFMU leaders seemed particularly angry about the snowmobile accord.

The only female candidate at the meeting was Donna Maddux, who was running for re-election as the superintendent of Flathead County schools. Given the animosity toward school leaders in the area, I thought she was pretty brave to be there. There were a lot of guys with folded arms and hard looks as she spoke. There wasn't much applause when she finished, but no one booed. We would meet Donna again later several times. As I talked to her more, it became clear that reaching out to a wide variety of constituencies was important to her.

I was surprised to see alleged Project 7 member Larry Chance Chezem on the speakers list. He was running for sheriff against long-time incumbent Jim Dupont. I had spoken with Dupont on several occasions. He flat out refused to engage in any debate with Chezem. Dupont seemed like a conservative straight-up cop who was very upset by the Project 7 revelations. He took the threat seriously and seemed adamant about disassociating the community with Project 7 activity. Although he won hands down, alleged Project 7 member Larry Chezem gained 2600 votes in the local election. (Find out more in the Film Update.)

Ever since John Stokes' Green Swastika rally in the spring, the anti-environmental rhetoric in the Valley seemed to be heating up. We heard the name Keith Hammer over and over. He was characterized by many as a "radical environmentalist." I wasn't sure what that meant, but people seemed to really hate this guy. I knew we should interview him, but I didn't want to get too heavily into environmental politics. I kept telling people I was doing a story about how the community was dealing with their differences, not environmental issues.

On the other hand, we pursued the story because I was deeply disturbed at the personal attacks, labeling and name calling in the community, especially against local environmentalists in the Swan View Coalition like Keith Hammer, and Cesar Hernandez from the Montana Wilderness Association.

Brenda Kitterman also told us about a local conservationist who was upset with John Stokes' radio show and encouraging people to respond. We went to meet Mike Raiman and his sons, who operated a tree service together in the Valley. Bob Raiman had been a computer engineer in Silicon Valley and Steve Raiman was a trained biologist. Both of them decided to return to Montana to learn what they could from their dad about trees and the forest. The three of them seemed happy about the business they had forged together. But the tension in the family about Mike Raiman's activism came to the surface the first time we met them.

In our first interview with Mike Raiman, we began to get a deeper picture of the intimidation felt by environmentalists. While we were talking, Mike took a piece of paper out of his wallet and showed it to me. He told me that a year before the Project 7 revelations, he had gone into a shop to talk to an acquaintance and the guy had pulled a gun on him. Mike was able to de-escalate the confrontation, and it turned into more of a conversation. The man apparently told Mike he was on a "hit list" along with Keith Hammer and others. The man then offered Mike a list of names of people "to watch out for." That was the paper that Mike showed me during our interview, and when I looked at the names, I saw that Project 7 leader David Burgert was among them. In our interview that day, Mike told me that when the Project 7 weapons were found and Burgert was arrested, he felt certain that the threats he had heard against his own family and his friend Keith Hammer were true.

Mike Raiman also said that he was concerned about the so-called "accidental" death of a local environmentalist and open Lesbian named Tary Mocabee. She had drowned in a very shallow creek near her home, and there wasn't a clear explanation why. Mike said he was skeptical because Tary was an active, healthy woman. "The only time I met her was at a rally in Kalispell, she was walking down the street on both her hands. She was like a gymnast. No way she could have drowned in that little creek."

In Kalispell, when we did go to interview an open lesbian, she answered the door with a holstered gun on her hip. We had walked into places like Packer's Roost on the road to Glacier Park where guys openly packed weapons, but I'd never seen someone armed at the front door of their home.

When I first heard about Tary's death, I thought people were understandably nervous, but maybe a little paranoid. People drown all the time. Because of the atmosphere, and what I'd seen in some reports about her death, we decided to look into it further. Carolyn Beecher, Tary's friend, agreed to talk to us on the property where Tary lived and died. Our visit there, and a few things Carolyn said in the interview, sent chills up my spine. The story around Tary Mocabee's death needs to be the subject of another inquiry, but it remains an old wound, left inadequately tended. Every time I probed a little deeper, new complications emerged. It may well have been an accident, but the unanswered questions around her drowning contributed to a sense of tension in a place where difference and disagreement can be threatening.

When we finally met Keith Hammer, he was not the person I was expecting. I don't know what I had in my head — a Hunter S. Thompson type or an eco-warrior, maybe. Certainly someone really outside the mainstream. After ten minutes of conversation, I realized I had also fallen into the trap of rumor and labeling that I was trying to document, even though I was speaking to someone that I knew needed to be "protected." I had heard this guy called an "extremist radical" so many times that I had started to picture him in a stereotypical way. Keith Hammer is an effective advocate for the environment who cares as deeply about the Valley as any of the people we spoke to. He has angered many people, but he works within the rule of law. People hate him for that.

I knew then that part of my job with this film was to try to present the deeply human part of everyone who spoke to us, regardless of their politics.

We may be passionate, and have strong disagreements, but when talk of violence against people because of their political beliefs starts to become normalized, we're in trouble. Labels and rumors, anger and fear can all lead us down a dangerous path. I'm so happy to have met many people in the Flathead Valley who are heading in a different, more hopeful direction.