Origins in Minneapolis hardcore punk scene , performing in 2020. Along with Kieran Knutson and Jason "Gator" Nevilles, he was one of the founding members of ARA from the earliest Minneapolis Baldies days. Anti-Racist Action originated from the
hardcore punk subculture in the
United States at
Minneapolis,
Minnesota, among suburban mostly
White American teenagers during the late 1980s. The wider punk subculture had flirted with extreme political symbolism, as a form of "shock value" from its early days, including
anarchist,
communist and
Nazi symbols, though many did not take this seriously. Eventually some bands such as
Crass in the United Kingdom began to more seriously integrate an
anarcho-communist political ideology into their music and associated
anarcho-punk subculture. The Baldies, who formed in 1986 and regarded themselves as leftist,
anti-racist skinheads, frequently engaged in political violence with rival far-right skinheads in Uptown. The Baldies were associated with bands such as Blind Approach, while their rivals from the East Side, the White Knights, were associated with Mass Corruption. According to Kieran Knutson, they organized a demonstration with the
University of Minnesota Black Law Student Association, including
Keith Ellison who later became the
Democratic Party's
Attorney General of Minnesota. A group called Skinheads of Chicago (SHOC) consisted mostly of black skinheads and adhered to left-wing and
black power politics. In 1989, some of them featured on
The Oprah Winfrey Show, opposing CASH who were guests. People in the hardcore punk scene became more widely aware of ARA across America due to a nationwide magazine called
Maximum Rock and Roll (MRR), edited by the counter-culture influencer
Tim Yohannan who worked at
University of California, Berkeley, which started to promote them from 1987 onwards. At a meeting in Minneapolis on January 14, 1989, with 80 or more anti-racist skinheads from
Milwaukee,
Kansas,
Iowa,
Kansas,
Nebraska and
Ohio, they founded a network called "the Syndicate".
1990s spread beyond the Midwest From the late 1980s into the 1990s, the network began to grow. One of their main rallying points was in relation to the trials of
Tom Metzger, a neo-Nazi activist associated then with a group calling itself the
White Aryan Resistance (WAR). Metzger, originally a "suit-and-tie" far-right talkshow show host, had begun to play a significant role in the creation of a
neo-Nazi skinhead subculture in the United States, inspired in part by
Ian Stuart Donaldson of
Skrewdriver. Many British skinheads like him also joined groups such as the
British Movement. This growing network of neo-Nazi skinheads in the United States were in conflict with the far-left leaning skinheads associated with Anti-Racist Action for control of the scene. In 1988, some of Metzger's skinhead followers in
Portland belonging to East Side White Pride killed an Ethiopian student,
Mulugeta Seraw, and were charged. Metzger was sued and ordered to pay extensive financial damages to Seraw's family.
Mic Crenshaw and some other Minneapolis ARA members relocated to Portland and founded the Portland ARA chapter there in response. Public attention given to this case caused a growth in networks affiliated with ARA. New sections sprung up around the issue, including in
Los Angeles, where it was also known as People Against Racist Terror. Some members of Anti-Racist Action in Minneapolis had been affiliated with an anarchist group called the Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League. Marty Williams of Chicago ARA stated that, by 1992, the network had expanded beyond its original subcultural base in the skinhead scene to include students, workers, anarchist punks and older left-wing activists. Anti-Racist Action built up connections to
black power groups in places like Chicago, and integrated aspects of
third-wave feminism and, as part of this, defended
abortion clinics against fundamentalist attacks. an unorthodox anarchist group with
Trotskyist and
New Left influences (some of whose members had previously been in the Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League), with whom they worked closely. Starting on October 15, 1994, Anti-Racist Action chapters in the Midwest began to organize an annual conference under the banner of the Midwest Anti-Fascist Network. The first took place in
Columbus, Ohio. These annual conferences had guest speakers at each event. The first featured Signe Waller, the widow of Michael Waller, a
Communist Workers' Party member killed during the
Greensboro massacre in 1979. The network expanded into
Canada, particularly
Toronto. In 1992, the
Heritage Front, at the time the largest neo-Nazi group in Canada, marched on Toronto's courthouse; organising against this catalysed the formation of a local ARA chapter. The police force's employment of
pepper spray against the ARA protesters was the first use of this weapon as a means to control a political demonstration in Canadian history. The Heritage Front supported the German-born
Holocaust denier and apologist for the
Third Reich,
Ernst Zündel, who was the subject of a significant political controversy with the
Canadian Human Rights Commission and the organized Canadian Jewish community. According to a 1997 article in
The Ottawa Times, Anti-Racist Action's Toronto branch built up a close working relationship with
B'nai B'rith Canada, a major Jewish advocacy group. In 1996, B'nai B'rith Canada attempted to secure state funding for Anti-Racist Action through Sam Title, who stated at the time that B'nai B'rith had "worked with them before."
Karen Mock, the National Director of B'nai B'rith was pictured at an ARA conference in 1997. After Mock attended the meeting the relationship was subject to the feature in
The Ottawa News in 1997, which courted controversy for B'nai B'rith due to ARA's links to violence and "extremism". According to
The Ottawa Times, "as reported by the
Canadian Intelligence Service, the ARA has also been linked by the
Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) with the 1995 arson attack on
Ernst Zündel's home". Zündel, of German-birth, was in any case deported from Toronto, Canada that year. The British-delegation were mostly working-class and argued for a class basis for anti-fascist struggle as well as for physical force against those it defined as fascists. The German
AA (M), who were more based in the middle-class intelligentsia, argued that the movement should be based primarily on a "feminist and anti-imperialist" analysis and downgrade "
squadism".
Early 2000s: dawning of the internet era , ARA gained an early internet foothold with his "doxxing" website
One People's Project. Two members of ARA from
Las Vegas,
Daniel Shersty and
Lin Newborn, were killed by fascists in 1998. During the 1990s, Anti-Racist Action was engaged in conflict with
white supremacist revival groups, as captured in the 2000 documentary film
Invisible Revolution: A Youth Subculture of Hate. With the rise of the
internet, the new millennium saw a switch to a more information-based "warfare" between ARA and their enemies active within the far-right groups. Founded in 2000 by
Daryle Lamont Jenkins and Joshua David Belser (under the
pseudonym "Josh Hoyt"), the ''One People's Project'' was a pioneer in the "
doxxing" of alleged far-right group activists; as part of their campaign against these individuals, they posted personal information of them on the website, including their full names, dates and place of birth, home address, their place of work, the names of their close family members/partners and any other contact information such as phone numbers. This was subsequently spread among other websites, forums and blogs associated with whichever ARA branch was local to the alleged far-rightist profiled. Anti-Racist Action's
Columbus, Ohio branch, including Jerry or Gerry Bello (also a prominent figure within ARA's
Cop Watch), were among several groups (including the Black Bloc, a coalition of anarchist organizations, including the Boston-based
Barricada Collective) who were involved in a street fight with far-right activists which led to the arrest of 25 people in
York County, Pennsylvania on January 12, 2002. According to
The Washington Post, on May 11, 2002, around 250 members of the National Alliance, a leading neo-Nazi group, arranged a protest at the
Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C. under
Billy Roper, distributing anti-Israel flyers with pictures of the
9/11 attacks and
Osama bin Laden with the words "Let's Stop Being Human Shields for Israel" and demanding to cut off
US aid to Israel. Their protest was attacked by around 150 opponents including ARA members, as well as some members of the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists and Labor/Community Committee in Solidarity with the People of Palestine. On August 24, 2002, the National Alliance returned to Washington D.C. for their "Rock Against Israel" protest; this time however, their opponents, under the banner of the East Coast Anti-Fascist Network (including ARA branches from Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Toronto, Columbus and Auora) were better organized in attacking their opponents. However, 28 ARA members were arrested and then when they returned to Baltimore, were subsequently called up on charges of rioting, aggravated assault, possession of a deadly weapon and others. They became known as the "Baltimore Anti-Racist 28" and were eventually released without charge. With the decline of the Creativity movement (due to the arrest of Hale) and the National Alliance (since the death of
William Luther Pierce), other groups on the white nationalist scene attempted to fill the vacuum that this had left, this included the
National Socialist Movement (NSM), who organized a rally to "protest black crime" on October 15, 2005, in
Toledo, Ohio. Here they were met by members of Anti-Racist Action and the
International Socialist Organization, upon which the
2005 Toledo riot ensued.
Late 2000s and rebranding as Antifa The first group in the United States to use the term "
Antifa" in its title was the Anti-Racist Action Portland branch, known as
Rose City Antifa, which was refounded in 2007, according to
Alexander Reid Ross, author of
Against the Fascist Creep, from
Portland State University. This was inspired by the German anarcho-communist
autonomists, who engaged in
black bloc tactics that year in a mass protest at the
33rd G8 summit (many of the autonomists are associated with
Germany's Antifa). While
Barack Obama was President of the United States, groups on the hard right began to grow and consequently, groups emerged to engage in violence with them. Some of these were officially outside the Anti-Racist Action network, such as NYC Antifa, founded in 2010, but others, such as
Indiana's Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement (HARM), were officially chapters of ARA. On May 19, 2012, HARM were involved in a significant incident in
Tinley Park,
Cook County, Illinois, when a group of 18 HARM members and others physically attacked members of the Illinois European Heritage Association, which was associated with white supremacists, in a restaurant. Five people involved were arrested and charged for their part in the attack with felony mob action, aggravated battery and criminal property damage charges, and were sentenced to between 3½ and 6 years. All were released by the end of 2014. They stated that this was not a disbanding or a schism, but an attempt to deal with the new realities of the
digital age and changing tactics. The Torch Network held the 1st Annual Torch Network Conference in 2014 at Chitown Futbol, Chicago. ==See also==