Minnesota Experience

(dramatic music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund and the friends of Minnesota experience.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) (razor buzzing) - Okay.

Listen up.

This is the story of the baldies.

We were a skinhead crews an anti-racist skinhead crew.

Before things got political and before we fought Nazis, we were just a bunch of kids looking for fun and our stomping ground towards a little area in Minneapolis called Uptown.

- So Uptown Minneapolis in the 1980's was a good place to people watch.

And it was a good place to be seen.

- Everybody went there.

That was one of the Meccas.

If you want to know what's going on, that was like our internet.

- There was just tons of people up there.

I mean, I just remember all the lights, - People going to the Rocky horror picture show at midnights of the Uptown theater.

- And then you had the kids, the alternative scene, the punk scene.

(upbeat music) I would love to be the lucky one - The core group of people, we're friends.

Like we're all friends in the punk scene.

Older punks hated us because we'd go ape at the show and do all kinds of crazy stuff.

- I was like a punk rock kid, I guess.

Punk rock just means you aren't mainstream.

- I feel like the most normal reaction to being alive and being a teenager in the 80s was to be a punk rocker.

If you weren't like, what the (beep) were you doing?

- I can relate to the punk stuff, because for me, I was a poor kid.

You feel like that.

You feel angry that you keep getting (beep) on.

- [Announcer] I regret to say that we're in the worst economic mess since the Great Depression.

- I don't think you can understate the effect of sort of that punk rock, no future ethos that was going on with kids, who were punks at the time in Minneapolis, and what that made you feel.

- [Announcer] To reverse this terrible cycle of despair, we should return to the basic values that build help this nation.

- Back then it was like, if you're a punk, it was okay to kick your (beep).

- Hennepin Avenue they had that like car after car traffic until 1:00 AM.

So it was a place to go to see the freaks.

- For people to walk by and look at you and go, "Ew, you freak!"

And for you to be like, "Yeah, I'm a freak, what?"

(beep) you.

(laughs) Excuse me.

(laughs loudly) (cars honking) - [Reporter] City officials have received a few complaints about punk rockers.

Mostly that the kids loiter at the Uptown McDonald's.

A beat officer was added there a month and a half ago.

(rock music) - The cops were walking up and down the street.

They knew all of us.

They knew where we lived.

They knew who was supposed to be there, who wasn't supposed to be there.

Yeah, the businesses all hated us.

They all hated us.

(chuckles) - [Police] Give me a description- - So the problem or perceived problem with punk rockers will no doubt continue to persist while merchants and passers by keep a nervous and watchful eye on them.

- Well, they get pissed off at us if we'd be on top of the library, a lot of the kids would be skateboarding.

We'd be hanging out, smoking cigarettes, and they didn't want us to congregate.

And they would harass us.

- [Interviewer] And then where would you go?

- Well, under the bridge - Under the bridge.

(chuckles) (upbeat music) Think that I'm a loser 'Cause now my pants are too low Think that I'm a slob - We couldn't go to bars, right?

So, we would get malt liquor a lot of times.

Just go down there and drink because that way, the cops wouldn't see you on the street.

And it's a just a social space for young people.

- That's where we all grew up and learned a lot about everything, about being punk, about being a kid, about communicating with each other.

The brotherhood, the teenage family, or whatever, it was, it was huge.

I'm not a loser!

- I love my friends more than I love my family.

I mean, I love my family, but my friends make me a lot happier.

I'm not a loser!

Cruise down the boulevard wasting mommy's gas While you're looking for some kicks on Friday night Your only goal in life is to smoke (upbeat music) - I don't know, all of a sudden, I met all these people that were like, "Come on, let's let's do this.

Let's get crazy."

(rock music) - We all became a clique.

And we started talking about like being skinheads.

- There was a continuum.

So it was just hanging out.

You know, It was more of the punk scene and it was punk shows, and it was just the skateboarding in the neighborhood.

It was just the guys in the neighborhood, basically.

And so the skinhead thing, I don't remember when that started.

- But in America, a lot of people that were basically bald punk rockers were considered skinheads, which wasn't exactly like skinhead culture in England.

Po-po-po, po-po-po, po-po-po - [Narrator] Skinheads were a militant working class subculture.

They were anti-authoritarian.

Sometimes violent.

And their look was sharp and clean.

- Back then there was pictures, right?

You'd see pictures.

And then you heard about like the skinhead book.

- Little Tim got this book by this guy Nick Knight.

And it was about the British skinhead subculture.

And so we started looking at that book.

Po-po-po, po-po-po, po-po-po We're studying.

We're like, "What is our role in this cultural continuum?

Like do we have a place in it?"

- [Narrator] We learned a lot about skinhead culture.

We learned there was a division between anti-racist skinheads and Nazi skinheads.

- So I was reading about skinhead culture in Britain and learned about different struggles against racism.

And in Britain, the fighting against the fascist.

- [Narrator] We call them Nazis boneheads.

You know, we didn't see them as real skinheads.

You couldn't be a true skinhead and be a racist.

Po-po-po, po-po-po, po-po-po - What's really important is the roots of skinheads aren't about racism, they're actually about two racial groups coming together from a mutual ashen of style and music.

- The book talked about the birth of Ska.

(gentle upbeat music) - This is Ska.

- [Narrator] Ska is the original skinhead music.

- Well, Ska is, for people who don't know, is basically what reggae came from.

- [Narrator] Ska had come from Jamaica on a wave of immigration.

And with the Caribbean music, came the culture.

- And we learned that it was the black Jamaican immigrants bringing their style when they migrated to England.

And the working class white kids in England and the black kids mixing their fashion, tastes together, and that was the birth of the original skinhead movement, which for me was important because of the biracial roots of the movement, because I felt like I had a place in it.

- We sort of associated with that 'cause in our own little way, we were a mix.

We were kids from the north side and the south side.

And kids that were also black, and native, and Asian, and were interested in something that was rebellious and against the status quo, but also had a kind of life and a culture.

(razor buzzing) (gentle upbeat music) - My other friends that weren't skinheads were really upset about me shaving my head.

It was like I was joining a cult or (chuckles) a gang or something.

- The skinhead was a whole different thing.

It's like, instead of look at that freak, they're like, "Oh, look at that guy.

He looks like he could hurt me."

- You would see one.

And you're like, "No, I'm not (beep) going with that dude.

He looks like he's ready to go."

- What appealed to me about skinhead was it was working class.

I'm like, "Cool, I'm working class."

There's my mom, she's waitressing, right there.

- [Narrator] A skinhead working class look included bomber jackets, Fred Perry's, braces, and the most iconic and expensive piece of gear, Doc Marten boots.

(gentle upbeat music) - If you wanted to get a pair of DM's back then, you had to order them from Shelly's Shoes, which meant you had to get an international money order.

- And then you have to figure out the size difference because it's not the same.

- Three, four months later, you got a package.

- Yeah, a pair of 14 hole Cherry Reds.

I mean, you look good ya know?

- Skinheads wore suspenders, but we didn't want the thick lumberjack suspenders.

The cool ones were the thin ones, right?

Just a little bit wider than fat shoelaces.

And so Huey found some tuxedo shop.

You know where people go to buy their wedding gear and he found those thin suspenders.

So then we all got our thin suspenders and then it was like, we had it, had the look from, head to toe.

We look cool, we look like we're in a band or something, but we're not.

And then I started asking myself questions like, "Are we a gang?"

They're out on the streets, they turn on the heat I was like, "We don't look like disciples.

We don't look like Vice Lords, but we're a family, we're a clique."

What are the similarities between what we're doing and what is already out here?

All over the land The kids have finally startin' to get the upper hand - I mean, there was just a natural progression of, "Hey, we should start a crew."

(rock music) - The nature of all youth, they wanna belong.

But more than wanting to belong, they wanna belong something that blows people's minds.

So recognize your age, it's a teenage rampage Turn another page on the teenage rampage now, now, now - We loved The Warriors.

We loved the movie, The Wanderers.

- What are you talking about, man?

Nobody's tougher than The Baldies.

- We be sitting in Little Tim's basement and watching...

He had a video player right way.

And so we were watching The Wanderers and The Baldies was shaved head gang there, right?

- Beat it, nobody (beep) with The Baldies.

- [Narrator] We heard about a Minneapolis street gang from back in the 60s, also called The Baldies.

They were known for violently kicking their enemies.

- And so we just took that name and part of the culture, and we made it our own.

- We didn't really have a lineage per se, but there was a 45 that a lot of us had called The Baldies stomp and we put it on every once in a while.

I got a kick out of that.

All right, then clap your hands and feet Yeah!

You got The Baldie, people!

Oh, yeah - I think in the beginning, without the music, it wasn't anything.

- Just driving down the street through the city streets and that music playing and just feeling like, You know together, we're something.

- But I remember that when I did start hanging out with The Baldies, all the music was just right on time and just dynamite.

To have people that right away knew exactly what I was talking about and might know more about those bands or those artists, was really like cool.

And that was also a big way that we got our politics.

- The politics it's like, you don't realize it.

You know, like you're singing along, you're listening to the music and you don't really think.

Even to this day, sometimes I listen to lyrics and I'm like, "God, that was so insightful."

You'll know when we arrive, oh yeah It's all about unity and family and working class and being proud about that kind of stuff.

And that really pulled me in.

No more anger No more hate No more fighting black and white We must all learn to unite Unite!

- So in a lot of ways the politicization of our scene came through band's lyrics.

- [Narrator] This was working class music.

They called it, "Oi!"

Oi!

Oi!

Oi!

- Yeah, Oi!

is rock and roll.

Well, what they call Oi!

now is street punk.

Like sub genres in a subgenre.

- And most of the lyrics are about people that are of the bottom of society, underdogs, people that are poor and in conflicts with the cops.

- Something that speaks to what being a working class kid is about.

And that's all the good and bad, I guess, that goes along with it.

- There's so many great bands.

The Business.

- [Danny] Cockney Rejects.

- [Michelle] Angelic Upstarts.

- [Finn] The Oppressed.

- [Jay] Cro-Mags.

- [Michelle] Stiff Little Fingers.

- [Finn] Agnostic Front.

- [Kieran] The Exploited.

(rock music) - [Michelle] Oi Polloi.

A Nazi rally planned for our town But anti-fascist came from all around Cleared the scum completely off the streets Showed the fascists can and will be beat - It was a music that helped us understand these things more clearly.

It was a voice of the artist and the message and the music that helped us connect the dots and go, "That's that thing I've been feeling.

They're talking about it in this song."

If the kids are united They will never be divided!

If the kids are united - From the music we listened to, the lyrics, the camaraderie we had at the shows, and for five years, that was the center of my life.

Be divided - [Crowd] USA!

USA!

(clapping) (crowd cheering and clapping) - As you know, if you watch us with any regularity, parents already have plenty to worry about.

Now there's something different for parents to fear.

- Right around that time, was when all the information started coming out about Nazi skinheads in the media.

- My guests today called themselves skinhead.

- They are truly hate filled.

They are self-described racists, white supremacists, Nazi lovers.

- Most of the people in the country that got familiar with what a skinhead was, got familiar with it through the media narrative.

And they thought they were all Nazis.

And here we are, we're like, "We're not Nazis."

- But there's 11 different facets of skins.

You have scooter skin, gay skins, communist skin, socialist skins.

There's no real one group that you can pin down and say, "Well, this is skinhead."

- First of all, I like to say I'm a Jewish skinhead.

Second of all, I like to know why you have only white power up there and why don't you have non-racist skinheads up there.

- Show's not about skinheads.

Show's about racists.

- I just heard what you said.

You just said, "I don't sit with monkeys."

You think because she's black, because I'm black, we're monkeys is that- - It's a proven fact.

- [Oprah] That's a proven fact?

- They promoted it.

It's just so crazy.

They denounce it, but it's kind of like one of those tabloid magazines.

- I wanna get off my mind is- - No, I wanna talk about this monkey stuff.

(crowd chuckling) - That's what news media in this country really was when it came to that stuff.

It just sensationalized it.

- I think it's important that we get a sense of what the young skinheads are really about.

(crowd screaming) - [Narrator] The national news media has been paying a lot of attention to the increased activity of the Nazi party.

The state of Minnesota has never been mentioned in those reports, but a substantial number of community leaders here have voiced varying degrees of concern about the presence of organized racist elements in our area.

(suspenseful music) - All of a sudden someone had spray painted swastikas everywhere.

And I was just super pissed off.

This is the 80s.

Who's spray painting swastikas?

- And when the Nazis came, we all looked at each other.

We're like, "No, we're not gonna stand for this."

(rock music) - At First Avenue, there was a big show, It was the Cro-Mags, which was a hardcore band from New York City.

- When you had specifically bands like the Cro-Mags, there was always gonna be a big skinhead turnout at those concerts.

Most skinheads wouldn't miss those shows.

- I believe it was at the Cro-Mag show, where there'd be these guys, and everyone's like, "Oh, they're racist, they're white supremacists."

And I remember seeing Paul Holles and I'm thinking that dude is scary.

- Paul Holles was pretty much a skinhead.

I don't think anybody really knew much about this politics or something.

He was just a guy that was always around and he was kind of a jerk, but you know I mean, so were a lot of other people.

- The story goes is he just went to LA, met some Nazis out there and came back with a different ideology.

- And in our scene, Paul starts a group of kids and they're called The White Knights.

And their his Neo-Nazi skinhead crew.

- And The Baldies and The White Knights were both there.

And I remember that Paul Holles had thrown down one of The Baldies in the pit, a little guy.

And I remember Patty sticking his finger in Paul Holles's eye and saying, "You're done, you're done."

- The memories are kind of hazy, but I remember a huge fight.

- And that was kind of the line being drawn, that the Nazis weren't gonna be tolerated anymore.

- We had a purpose now, being true to the roots of skinhead, which was in a turn being true to our friends, who were from many different walks of life.

I am double U, O, O, O And I'm still up here again - It was, I think, a natural progression of, if you're a skinhead and you don't want a cancer in the scene, then you gotta get rid of 'em.

- Of all the people, Jay had a kind of vision for what The Baldies could be, and he had a method that I think was really smart and kind of ahead of its time.

If we saw a White Knight walk through Uptown, he'd go over to them and confront them and ask them, "Are you a White Knight?"

And if he said, "Yes."

Then Jay would say, "Okay, next time we see you.

If you're still a White Knight, you're gonna get ass your beat."

- It's really simple, dude.

Either you're white power or you're not.

And that's he used to them.

- It laid down the law about what was acceptable, but it also gave them a chance to think about their choices.

And I think a lot of those cats hadn't necessarily thought through their choice.

(rock music) - Friday and Saturday nights, he was having keg parties.

Paul Holles was at his home.

And a big swastika flag in the window, but it was punk rock, (beep) I didn't really think of anything.

And so we partied there and stuff and kick it in and they'd be talking some racist (beep), and I was just like, "Oh, it's not really my thing."

But I, again, was like, "These guys are giving me beer.

I'm 16 years old, I'm hanging out."

And I remember being confronted by a couple of Baldies.

- We found out where they were and we made it a priority.

We stopped what we were doing and we found them.

They were all meek and shy.

And I remember looking at 'em like, "You guys supposed to be racial terrorists, tough guys.

Why are you all scared right now?"

- They said, you come here again, "You're getting your ass kicked."

And I looked at the dudes I was with, and these guys are wearing army boots and big Y spenders.

And these dudes are looking fly with the creepers on.

And some of them were dressed real traditional.

I was like, "Man, these guys look more like what I'm with."

So I think that was probably my last night hanging out with those dudes.

- We let them go.

We left, we went to Rocky Rococo Pizza.

And eventually Brandon walked up there and sat down with us.

He's like, "What's it gonna take for me to hang out with you guys?"

Basically.

We're like, "Well, you can't be white power.

You can't hang out with them no more."

He was like, "I don't like those guys anyway.

I don't wanna be like them" Turns out Brandon was just looking for some kids to hang out with, which is a lot of what the dynamic is.

It's the young people looking for a sense of belonging, right?

- [Narrator] We were given these kids a chance to do the right thing.

Some did.

Others didn't.

- The next time we saw them, we fought.

And then we fought and we fought.

We fight at shows.

We fight on the streets.

- I mean, when it came down to it, I remember being very scared the first time I fought.

But I always felt like, "Well, what else are we gonna do?"

(rock music) - America's history tells us that that's sometimes what needs to happen with Nazis.

We know that that was a necessity.

People are willing to do horrible things to other people.

- Most of us that were poor, grew up in violence.

So violence wasn't something that we shot and waved, it was like, "Oh, we're scared of that."

I'm like, "Okay, well."

We're in a society where racist people do (beep) to our family members all the time.

So now, we can take it out on you guys, and feel totally justified by it.

- I don't think you have to be violent to be a skinhead, but in where we were, then, it was a big part of this, actually.

(rock music) - [Announcer] According to the Klanwatch Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, skinheads holds racial hatreds as their only ideology, and violence as their sole tactic.

For them, violence is not a means to an end, but an end in itself.

These two young men are skinheads who were convicted of vandalizing and defiling the kitchen of a Jewish dormitory at Macalester College in Saint Paul.

Among other things they defecated in a piece of kitchen cookware.

- They made such a big deal about it.

It's like, "Can't you take a joke or whatever?"

- [Man] "Bunch of cry babies" - Uppity Jews you know, just looking for something more to bitch about.

Who do I hate the most?

Probably right now, probably would probably be the Jews.

- Authority.

- Authority yeah, the system.

- We really felt like the white power skinheads were metalheads who had absolutely no style.

And the only way for them to make themselves cool was to shave their heads and become Nazis.

(rock music) - Minnesota had the second biggest white power band in the world, It was here, Bound For Glory.

Jesus Hitler!

- Have you heard that stuff?

It's really dumb.

(chuckles) It's horrible.

It's really bad music.

- We disrupted some of their shows.

We tried to sabotage and undermine them, but they got really big.

They were big in Europe.

They were big all over the world.

They became like a linchpin of the white power music movement.

Now we're getting into daily violence and the necessity to recruit because now recruitment and getting a bigger crew is a matter of survival.

(men shouting) (upbeat music) - The bigger The Baldies got, the more we attracted people from a lot of different backgrounds.

I mean, they gravitated towards us because we did some kind of righteous (beep).

- By the time I'm 18, so many people wanna be rockstar.

But (beep) that (beep).

I wanted to be a Baldy.

I don't wanna be in a scene that even allows Nazis to be in the room.

- The more of us there was together, the more fun it was to hang out.

And remember we're teenagers, so we liked the attention we get when there's seven or eight of us.

- You would show up to a hardcore show.

10, 15, 20 of your buddies all dressed to the nines.

In braces, shaved head, polished boots.

I mean, it looked like you meant business.

- Part of the thing about being a skinhead, 1 10th of 1% is in a fight or in something.

But 99% of the time, at the time, you are doing what most people are doing, you're going to parties, you're hanging out with your friends.

We are there to have a good time and relax and party.

(rock music) - Being young, it was just like, I was really kind of addicted to chaos.

It was just kind of like, your way of unwinding.

And then you kind of took that out into the night and then, you try to outdo what you did the night before.

I mean, yeah, we really took it to the edge a lot of the time.

- I think we bullied some people because we felt like we were righteous and they were wrong.

- You know some idiot at a keg, saying the N word.

And thinking he was safe, because, "It was mostly white people here."

And then you get beat down.

- I never felt like we were bullies, but we most certainly were.

But I feel like what we were doing was just having a great time.

It's not like we beat anybody up at parties often.

- And the cops hated us.

The bouncers at First Avenue hated us because if they try to throw one of us out, they get swarmed.

"Oh, crap, we're outnumbered."

- Anytime there's a group of young guys who were trying to assert their stance, there's a danger, it could come off as just bullying or something.

And I'm sure we probably, weren't always the most articulate, and probably sometimes got frustrated and short with people that didn't understand right away.

- There were people who said to us, something we really did not like to hear.

And that was, "If you guys are gonna attack people just for their political belief, you're just like them" - That mob mentality, at some point it starts to fester on itself, 'cause then you got egos and people being proud and so there was, I mean, there was times where it was crazy.

Fright!

- Sometimes it felt like, "Okay, boys, we're not in the Warriors movie."

I mean, there was always real behind everything, but it got a little dicey sometimes, where you're like, "Okay, come on."

Francis Ford Coppola is not filming you right now.

The end.

Naked woman, naked man Where did you get that nice sun tan?

Take him away!

- Take him away!

Skinhead girl - Some of the gals that hung out with us, that are The Baldies, they weren't having it.

Like the sexualizing women.

It just as valid as fighting racism.

If you're going to be about it, be about it.

And I think a lot of the guys stopped just going out for the weekend and grabbing the next bird.

- I think if they were called out on it, they would be like, "Oh yeah, for sure."

But nobody jumped in the line of fire to be like, "This is what we believe."

It was more us women calling them out.

- Yeah - That wasn't on their checklist of priorities, for sure.

- You can't say you're about this issue without bringing this one with you.

You can't say you're anti-racist or you're about something and then just (beep) on women.

You can't do it.

- There was a lot of feminist consciousness that really influenced our behavior.

Thinking about The Baldies that were women, young women at the time, they were really critical of our patriarchy, our sexism.

- Some of the strongest women, you know I met, were here kind of keeping the guys in check, not just standing there in the background.

- And I'm just gonna say, we weren't effectively integrating feminism or battling homophobia at the time.

And those were real issues.

- The classism, "Yeah we're all working class."

"Oh, yeah, we're all one race."

And I was like, "Oh, wait, yeah, women are people too."

"Oh, yeah, queer rights are human rights."

It was like an evolution.

We weren't all born smart.

(chuckles) I have to remind myself that like every day, is that we weren't all born gifted, brilliant, socially aware people.

And definitely not me.

And I remember driving past and telling some guys from Minneapolis, like, "Oh, yeah, this is where the spot where we throwing eggs at the drag queens."

And they would just turned around and looked at us like in horror.

"What?

You did what?

That's totally effed up.

That's not what you do.

Why would you do that?"

I was like, "Oh, I don't know."

I really just wanted to egg somebody.

Yeah, no, no, no, yeah Get your hands in the air, sir!

- There were neo-Nazi formations all over the country.

There were the Hammerskins, down south, and American Front, out west.

And we felt like we needed to build allegiances.

- The things that The Baldies were dealing with, it was happening all in these other cities at the same time, even though we didn't have the internet to connect us.

Do you believe I would take such a thing with me - We had this little road trip we took to Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago.

And we brought a stack of flyers with us because we wanted to start touching base with people in other cities.

And that was actually pretty fruitful, met a lot of people that were right on board with us and started immediately networking.

- We talked about what we would like to see in our city and supporting other cities, and so we're going to support other cities and clean the Nazis out.

- When we started meeting these crews that were facing the same kinds of questions we were, we saw that there was something there that could be bigger.

So we put out this call to organize a network.

- This idea of having, The skinheads come from all the different cities and kind of merge on one city.

And then it would be like workshops, all different workshops and lectures, and a lot of music, a lot of drinking, a lot of chasing Nazis.

- [Narrator] We contacted anti-racist skinheads all over the country and invited them to come to Minnesota.

We held a summit in Uptown.

- It was Martin Luther King weekend.

- And we all crowded up in that conference room at the library.

It's like over a hundred of us.

(rock music) Yeah, I got up and I was...

I was overwhelmed, I almost cried.

It was a powerful experience being... At 16, 17 year old kid, and looking out at that sea of faces and realizing that we did that.

- And we had a march, walked through freezing cold weather, covered up racist graffiti that was around certain neighborhoods.

- [Announcer] Then scrawled some graffiti of their own.

As police kept their distance, just down the street, they were mostly young whites at this Martin Luther King birthday march.

Many of them skinheads or Baldies as they're called here.

- But I was smoking cigarettes, I was going to shows, I was hanging out all night, I was drinking under a bridge, I was carrying signs and screaming at people.

And it was perfect.

Oh, yeah (gentle upbeat music) - Racist groups have organized, they have a complete network.

It's time for us to do something about it too.

- And so we had this idea of creating a federation of all of these different groups that were against the fascist.

Students and kids that were influenced by hip hop and graffiti.

- And it evolved from that early Baldies, where we were disenfranchised kids, street kids, evolved into this machine, this anti-racist action.

- [Narrator] Anti-racist action or ARA was an organization we started.

Dangerous - [Man] It was always... Had a connection with anti-racist skinhead culture, but it became less anchored to that.

- We knew that there was so much that needed to be addressed.

So much going on in the world that's not right.

- Then you realize, "Oh, it's not just these Nazis from Saint Paul, it's the system of government and the police system.

And there's all these other things, that if we're gonna really fight fascism, you gotta go and fight it all."

- They wanna start disrupting the establishment.

And so I'm all for it.

I don't exactly even know what that means right then, but it definitely sounds exciting.

- [Narrator] So now, whenever the Nazis came into our city, we had a coalition to confront them.

- White women.

White guilt.

These are robbers of free speech.

We came here not wanting trouble or violence.

(people shouting) - [Announcer] But violence is all they got.

Some threw rocks, others spit at them.

They all shouted down the Nazi message.

(people shouting) (rock music) - [Woman] Get out of here!

- No!

- Watch your back!

- [Man] Shoot back, shoot back.

(rock music) - ARA was becoming a real force of activism.

Why you do that stuff at all?

- [Narrator] Meanwhile, The Baldies were still playing street games with the Nazis.

- And by that time, we got a name for ourselves.

And so the white supremacists were onto us.

They would want to come through and test us.

At one particular time, they came through what they spray painted death to race mixers on my mom's house.

My stepdad who's black, opens the door, I'm coming down the steps.

Somebody fires two shots.

They're lodged in the ceiling and they ran off.

And so that was pretty close to home, man.

That's when it really escalated.

At that time, I was probably 17, I started carrying a gun everyday.

- We started to realize the consequences of the violence.

The consequences of the violence, were that we've showed them that they're not safe.

They're willing to retaliate.

Now, we're not safe.

No one's safe.

- [Narrator] The only safety was in numbers.

We continued to travel to meet people interested in ARA and The Baldies.

- Kieran was really key in the networking.

Kieran went on a tour as a member and representative of ARA.

And a couple guys from The Baldies went with him and they wound up, established in the first person to person contact with skinheads out in Portland.

Waiting for me when I die - The result of that was Portland chapter of the ARA starting up.

And ultimately we got permission to form a crew and call it The Baldies under the baldies umbrella in Portland, Oregon.

The harder they come The harder they fall, one and all - Portland's a unique place in the Northwest.

It was originally created as a whites only state.

So it's a very white state.

- [Narrator] The Oregon State Constitution, actually, forbade nonwhites, from settling in Portland for years.

And they think that they have got the battle won - In the early 90s, there was like 300 Nazi skinheads and multiple white power gangs in Portland.

- In the 80s, specifically, we had War, we had East Side White Pride, which were the guys that killed Mulugeta Seraw, which is really what set off our movement.

- [Announcer] Dead at 27 year old, Mulugeta Seraw.

- After Mulugeta Seraw got murdered, we all started pushing back and we pushed back really hard.

(upbeat music) - December 31st, 1992.

Portland, Oregon.

There was a massive ice storm.

The entire city was covered in black ice.

- [Announcer] Making the freeways in the streets a skating ring.

- We just got home from a party and these Nazis are calling the house and they're gonna shoot us.

They're going to do all this.

And we're like, "Cool, we got guns too or we could just meet and fight."

- We headed out, and we went to the spot where we were supposed to meet him and they rolled up.

It gets a little blurry right then.

Then there's a lot of yelling and screaming.

Car window, rolled down, and the guy pointed a gun at us.

I had a rifle that I owned legally, but I had brought it with me while drunk to this confrontation for reasons I can't justify.

I mean, I thought maybe we'll have to scare them away.

Whatever.

I started firing some shots into the air.

(gunshots fire) I fired a few shots in their general direction.

(gunshots fire) The detective said, "It's really a shame, what happened to that kid."

I was like, "Well, what happened to him?"

And he said, "Well, he died."

And I just started crying.

I never wanted to take someone's life.

- [Narrator] And through sheer coincidence, the victim was from the Minnesota Nazis scene.

- So I didn't know who it was.

Eric Banks was the lead singer of Neo-Nazi band from the Twin Cities, Bound For Glory.

I turned myself in and I made a complete confession.

I thought I had a pretty good self-defense case, on the other hand, we're an anti-racist gang going to meet a racist gang.

And we brought guns with us and we had a gunfight and that doesn't sound like a very good self-defense case.

I had five years prison and then consecutively five years post-prison supervision.

So.

(gentle rock music) - I didn't think it was gonna be a thing that suddenly there's kids in Portland.

And this other stuff, this fighting and this annoyance.

I just didn't think that the Nazis were tough enough.

I didn't think they had the guts, right?

I thought this was gonna be over quick.

And we can talk about where to get the next pair of Doc Martins.

- And I was really strangely optimistic that things were gonna change.

And that this was kind of gonna be the end of this racism.

I mean, sadly, (chuckles) sadly, it's not true at all.

(people shouting) - So there's these through lines that are part of white supremacist organizing and militancy that never disappeared.

They just changed the way they look because it's part of their strategy.

- I think politically speaking, the Nazis were probably smarter than we were.

They decided, we're too visual.

Everybody can see us who we are.

So let's start to blend in.

Let's start to figure out how to use computers to be a recruitment tool.

- And so what you see today, is you see the results of their appeal to a more mainstream white audience.

Obviously, that politic has now coming in different form.

So it's not coming through these sort of like youth subcultures anymore, but coming through this political apparatus that Trump has been associated with.

- So you're not really surprised by the depth of the racism in this country and how like white supremacy is always protected.

I mean, America is inherently racist.

There's no, if, and, or buts about it.

You grow up here and you're not brown, then you benefit from white supremacy, whether you like it or not.

That's just the way it is.

- So there's this adage that a lot of us black kids heard from our elders when we were young.

And it is, you can be friends with those white kids, but one day they're gonna be white on you.

And when you're a kid, you don't wanna hear that 'cause there's all this innocence around your social interactions and relationships.

So when something bad happens, you're still like, "Okay, that was a bad incident."

But because you have white friends that you're cool with, you don't go all white people are (beep) up.

Or white supremacy is dominant.

You still don't necessarily put that frame on it 'cause you're a kid and you're having fun and you're enjoying life.

You're not coming up against the structural elements that are systemic.

I'm still seeing the things I saw when I was a kid.

I just see them with more clarity and more consistency and more awareness.

I want to fight, I want to win In the Reagan years, it was punk rock that spoke to me because the lyrics and the punk rock songs spoke to the hypocrisy of society and the institutions that I felt in my body when I was trying to fit in and not allowed it to fit in.

And ever since then, I've been using emceeing, spoken word, and poetry to engage my activism around the consciousness around those questions that I first started to ask as a young person.

The village lifted Which you saw doing 'cause you are gifted Being in hip hop allowed me to establish myself.

Not only as an artist, but as an activist and an educator.

And that gave me opportunities to mentor.

And that's how I met Michael Fletcher.

- [Narrator] This is Michael.

And he was born to this storm of normal life Horrible excuse for a nuisance since we're quite adorable He's young, he's a skinhead, and he's dealt with white supremacists.

- I was involved in an incident on a train, where this bonehead was picking on these two little black girls.

- You suck!

You suck!

You suck!

- I intervened.

(beep) off.

Long story short.

I got stabbed in the throat and I got politically engaged from that.

- [Narrator] The FBI looking into whether hate crime charges will be filed against an alleged white supremacist.

- You're a whore!

You're whore!

(beep) - Through that, I'd already been to some punk shows.

And I knew that there were these politically engaged dudes that dressed real well and beat the (beep) out of the same kind of people that I didn't like now.

And now I had beef, you see what I'm saying?

It's different now, because now, it's personal, it's on my body.

I have to wake up and look at it every morning.

Skinhead revolt Someone (people chatting) Skinhead revolt - The fact that we were a bunch of kids that were kind of faced with something and we didn't really know what to do about it, and we just did the right thing, and you know we never backed down.

There was just a purity about it because nobody told us what to do.

And that was the beautiful thing.

And that's like what we took from punk.

- It's a special group.

The Baldies are something special.

And getting together with them to just kind of talk about what we started.

- White supremacy is a big part of American history.

But you know, a group of kids from South Minneapolis, isn't gonna win that battle, but we were there for each other.

- You know, you start getting older and you start getting kids and you get jobs.

And The Baldies themselves, they just went everywhere.

I mean, some of them became business owners, and some of them became employees, and some of them became drug dealers, and some of them died.

- In a lot of ways, a lot of us have grown up.

And like I was a paramedic.

My partner, he's a social worker.

- And I've also been involved in labor unions for the last couple of decades.

So that's where a lot of my organizing is now.

- And I've been able to sponsor some men who are whites supremacists, and then also connect them with another Baldy who runs a laser tattoo removal.

We've been able to get some of their white supremacist tattoos removed, and that's been pretty amazing.

Skinhead revolt Someone - We have to find new ways to fight.

I don't think beating everyone up is gonna solve it.

I mean, we have to educate people.

I'd like to beat everyone up, but it doesn't stop- - We're not going out fighting tonight, Lorraine.

I'll just tell you that right now.

- It doesn't stop it.

I mean, it's not gonna stop it.

So it is educating people.

One, two (upbeat music) - I mean, cause I never grew my hair out.

I never stopped liking the music.

I never stopped dressing the same way.

I just stopped going to shows and beating people up or getting my ass kicked.

- I wouldn't want anybody to have to go through any of that stuff 'cause I think there's a lot of people who got like PTSD from that.

If you talk to someone who is not from the city and you start telling them stuff, they think you're like a psycho killer.

You're like, "Well, that was the 80s."

(upbeat music) - Well, I'm not really much of a worker.

I'm from working class, but (groans) keep it.

(laughs) I just wanna have fun.

I still do at 55.

And I'm doing okay, got a lovely wife of 15 years, and a house in New York City.

Things are good.

- [Interviewer] So sometimes punk rock works.

- Sometimes it works.

(chuckles) - [Interviewer] Sometimes it doesn't.

- [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

The Katherine B. Anderson Fund of the Saint Paul and Minnesota Foundation, Darby and Geri Nelson, and other friends of Minnesota Experience.

(gentle music)