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| Abbreviation | ARA |
|---|---|
| Nickname | ARA |
| Formation | January 14, 1989; 37 years ago (1989-01-14) (as Anti-Racist Action) December 14, 2013; 12 years ago (2013-12-14) (asTorch Network) |
| Founders | Kieran Frazier Knutson[2] Mic Crenshaw |
| Founded at | Minneapolis,Minnesota, US |
| Type | Far-left militant cells |
| Purpose | Anti-racism Anti-fascism Internal factions Anarchism (majority)[1] Trotskyism (minority)[1] Maoism (minority)[1] |
| Location | |
| Methods | Political violence Direct action Doxxing |
| Affiliations | One People's Project IWW General Defense Committee Anarchist Black CrossSkinheads Against Racial Prejudice Support Prisoner Resistance International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund |
| Website | Anti-RacistAction.org(no longer updated) |
Anti-Racist Action (ARA), also known as theAnti-Racist Action Network, is a decentralized network ofmilitantfar-left political cells in theUnited States andCanada. The ARA network originated in the late 1980s to engage indirect action, includingpolitical violence anddoxxing against rival political organizations on the hard right, mainly violent groups of neo-Nazi skinheads, to dissuade them from further involvement in political activities. Anti-Racist Action described such groups asracist orfascist, or both. Most ARA members have beenanarchists,[3] but some have beenTrotskyists andMaoists.[1]
The network originated among thehardcore punkskinhead scene inMinnesota among a group known as the Minneapolis Baldies which had been founded in 1987.[2] The network grew and spread throughout North America. TheMidwestern United States, particularly the cities ofMinneapolis,Chicago andColumbus, were the main hotspot for activity, but notable chapters existed inPortland,Los Angeles,Toronto and elsewhere.
In the early 1990s, the Anti-Racist Action Network began to organize an annual conference, attended by representatives of the official chapters, along with prospective members. These events often feature guest speakers and hardcore punk bands. In the late 1990s, the network was affiliated with a short-lived international grouping which called itself the Militant Anti-Fascist Network and consisted of mostly Europe-based groups such as the UK-basedAnti-Fascist Action and various GermanAntifa factions among others.
Politically, the network has always stated that anti-racism and anti-fascism are its main goals, adopting a non-sectarian approach to party affiliation for chapter members, and there is no pre-requisite to adhere to any particular party line outside of the five "Points of Unity".
Anti-Racist Action originated from thehardcore punk subculture in theUnited States atMinneapolis,Minnesota, among suburban mostlyWhite 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, includinganarchist,communist andNazi symbols, though many did not take this seriously. Eventually some bands such asCrass in the United Kingdom began to more seriously integrate ananarcho-communist political ideology into their music and associatedanarcho-punk subculture.[4][5]
This spread to the United States and had a strong influence on theMinneapolis hardcore scene. Some of the people involved in this scene created askinhead street gang, inspired byNick Knight's bookSkinhead, known as the Minneapolis Baldies.[6][5] 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.[7][8]
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.[9][10] According to Kieran Knutson, they organized a demonstration with theUniversity of Minnesota Black Law Student Association, includingKeith Ellison who later became theDemocratic Party'sAttorney General of Minnesota.[7]
In May 1989, Chicago skinheads formed their own Anti-Racist Action (ARA). Chicago ARA activists fought with the neo-Nazi skinheads ofChicago Area SkinHeads (CASH).[11] A group called Skinheads of Chicago (SHOC) consisted mostly of black skinheads and adhered to left-wing andblack power politics. In 1989, some of them featured onThe Oprah Winfrey Show, opposing CASH who were guests.[12]
People in the hardcore punk scene became more widely aware of ARA across America due to a nationwide magazine calledMaximum Rock and Roll (MRR), edited by the counter-culture influencerTim Yohannan who worked atUniversity of California, Berkeley, which started to promote them from 1987 onwards.[13] At a meeting in Minneapolis on January 14, 1989, with 80 or more anti-racist skinheads fromMilwaukee,Kansas,Iowa,Kansas,Nebraska andOhio, they founded a network called "the Syndicate".[14][8] Other chapters in attendance included the Brew City Skins fromMilwaukee, the North Side Crew also in Chicago, and groups inCincinnati (people associated withSHARP),Indianapolis,Lawrence and elsewhere.[15][8][16]
From the late 1980s into the 1990s, the network began to grow. One of their main rallying points was in relation to the trials ofTom Metzger, a neo-Nazi activist associated then with a group calling itself theWhite 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 aneo-Nazi skinhead subculture in the United States, inspired in part byIan Stuart Donaldson ofSkrewdriver. Many British skinheads like him also joined groups such as theBritish 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.[17]
In 1988, some of Metzger's skinhead followers inPortland 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.[18]
Public attention given to this case caused a growth in networks affiliated with ARA. New sections sprung up around the issue, including inLos Angeles, where it was also known as People Against Racist Terror.[19][20][21] Some members of Anti-Racist Action in Minneapolis had been affiliated with an anarchist group called the Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League.[22]
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.[23] Anti-Racist Action built up connections toblack power groups in places like Chicago, and integrated aspects ofthird-wave feminism and, as part of this, defendedabortion clinics against fundamentalist attacks.[24] According to Bray, ARA was "predominantly anarchist and antiauthoritarian, as reflected in the influential role of theLove and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation,[24] an unorthodox anarchist group withTrotskyist andNew Left influences (some of whose members had previously been in the Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League[25][26][27]), with whom they worked closely.[28]
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 inColumbus, Ohio.[29] These annual conferences had guest speakers at each event. The first featured Signe Waller, the widow of Michael Waller, aCommunist Workers' Party member killed during theGreensboro massacre in 1979.[29][30] In 1995,Chip Berlet was the guest speaker, along with Rita "Bo" Brown of theGeorge Jackson Brigade as well as Waller.[30][nb 1]
The network expanded intoCanada, particularlyToronto. In 1992, theHeritage 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.[31] The police force's employment ofpepper spray against the ARA protesters was the first use of this weapon as a means to control a political demonstration in Canadian history.[32] The Heritage Front supported the German-bornHolocaust denier and apologist for theThird Reich,Ernst Zündel, who was the subject of a significant political controversy with theCanadian Human Rights Commission and the organized Canadian Jewish community. According to a 1997 article inThe Ottawa Times, Anti-Racist Action's Toronto branch built up a close working relationship withB'nai B'rith Canada, a major Jewish advocacy group.[33]
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 inThe Ottawa News in 1997, which courted controversy for B'nai B'rith due to ARA's links to violence and "extremism".[33] One of the more notable events involving ARA in Toronto was the trashing of the home of a Heritage Front member on 11 June 1993.[34] According toThe Ottawa Times, "as reported by theCanadian Intelligence Service, the ARA has also been linked by theCanadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) with the 1995 arson attack onErnst Zündel's home". Zündel, of German-birth, was in any case deported from Toronto, Canada that year.[33]
In October 1997, ARA Minneapolis and ARA Toronto attended a conference in London, which brought together twenty-two delegates from the emerging international, mostly European, militant anti-fascist movements. There was a significant disagreement between two of the major groups: theAutonome Antifa (M), a GermanAntifa delegation based inGöttingen, andAnti-Fascist Action from Britain, who had partly inspired the creation of ARA in the first place.[35] 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 GermanAA (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".[35] At the end of the conference, nine groups followed Anti-Fascist Action into the Militant Anti-Fascist Network, including the North American Anti-Racist Action branches, and the German groupsAntifaschistische Aktion Hannover andAktivisten-Gruppe ROTKÄPPCHEN, and a group fromZaragoza.[35] In 1999, the international collapsed, as Anti-Fascist Action in Britain became essentially defunct.
As part of their wideranti-police sentiment activity, including involvement withCop Watch, members of ARA were involved in supportingMumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook), who was convicted for the 1981 murder ofPPD officerDaniel Faulkner.[36] In September 1999 inBaltimore, ARA activists organized a seven-car caravan with a loudspeaker in each, voicing slogans in favour of Mumia Abu-Jamal and handing out leaflets to the general public.[36]
Two members of ARA fromLas Vegas,Daniel Shersty andLin Newborn, were killed by fascists in 1998.[37] During the 1990s, Anti-Racist Action was engaged in conflict withwhite supremacist revival groups, as captured in the 2000 documentary filmInvisible Revolution: A Youth Subculture of Hate.[38][39]
With the rise of theinternet, the new millennium saw a switch to a more information-based "warfare" between ARA and their enemies active within the far-right groups.[13] The white nationalist far-right most circulated aroundStormfront, while one of the more prominent website projects associated with ARA at the time was theOne People's Project, which maintained contacts with theSouthern Poverty Law Center, working together on projects such asErasing Hate.[40]
Founded in 2000 byDaryle Lamont Jenkins and Joshua David Belser (under thepseudonym "Josh Hoyt"), theOne 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.[41]
Anti-Racist Action'sColumbus, Ohio branch, including Jerry or Gerry Bello[42] (also a prominent figure within ARA'sCop Watch),[43] were among several groups (including the Black Bloc, a coalition of anarchist organizations, including the Boston-basedBarricada Collective) who were involved in a street fight with far-right activists which led to the arrest of 25 people inYork County, Pennsylvania on January 12, 2002.[44] The groups were protesting a speech byMatthew F. Hale'sWorld Church of the Creator at a local library; several other white nationalist groups were also in the area, such as theNational Alliance and theAryan Nations.[44]
According toThe Washington Post, on May 11, 2002, around 250 members of the National Alliance, a leading neo-Nazi group, arranged a protest at theEmbassy of Israel in Washington, D.C. underBilly Roper, distributing anti-Israel flyers with pictures of the9/11 attacks andOsama bin Laden with the words "Let's Stop Being Human Shields for Israel" and demanding to cut offUS aid to Israel.[45][46] 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.[46][47]
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)[48] 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.[49][50][51]
With the decline of the Creativity movement (due to the arrest of Hale) and the National Alliance (since the death ofWilliam Luther Pierce), other groups on the white nationalist scene attempted to fill the vacuum that this had left, this included theNational Socialist Movement (NSM), who organized a rally to "protest black crime" on October 15, 2005, inToledo, Ohio. Here they were met by members of Anti-Racist Action and theInternational Socialist Organization, upon which the2005 Toledo riot ensued.[52]
The first group in the United States to use the term "Antifa" in its title was the Anti-Racist Action Portland branch, known asRose City Antifa, which was refounded in 2007, according toAlexander Reid Ross, author ofAgainst the Fascist Creep, fromPortland State University.[53][54] This was inspired by the German anarcho-communistautonomists, who engaged inblack bloc tactics that year in a mass protest at the33rd G8 summit (many of the autonomists are associated withGermany's Antifa).[53] Portland Anti-Racist Action blamed neo-Nazis for the 2010 shooting of Luke Querner.[55]
WhileBarack Obama was President of the United States, groups on the hard right began to grow[56] 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 asIndiana's Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement (HARM), were officially chapters of ARA.[57]
On May 19, 2012, HARM were involved in a significant incident inTinley 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.[57][58][59][60] 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.[58][61][57]
The Torch Network continued the legacy of the ARA Network.[57] In a post on the ARA website in 2013, the Torch Network announced its formation.[62] They stated that this was not a disbanding or a schism, but an attempt to deal with the new realities of thedigital age and changing tactics.[63]
The Torch Network held the 1st Annual Torch Network Conference in 2014 at Chitown Futbol, Chicago.[57] This was attended by South Side Chicago Anti-Racist Action (the hosts), Philly Antifa, Central Texas Anti-Racist Action, Milwaukee Antifa, Hoosier Anti-Racist Movement (HARM) and Los Angeles People Against Racist Terror.[57] The event was sponsored by the Chicago May First Anarchist Alliance and Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation. There were two speakers at the event: Matthew Nemiroff Lyons and Michael Staudenmaier.[64]
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