On January 12, 2002, three organized white supremacist and fascist organizations (the World Church of the Creator, the National Alliance, and the Eastern Hammer Skins) gathered for a public meeting and day of recruitment in York, Pennsylvania. York was chosen because of the recent prosecution of the City's mayor for complicity in the murder of Lillie Belle Allen (a black woman shot and killed while driving through a white neighborhood). Mayor Robertson, then an officer on the York City police force, is accused of encouraging white kids to "kill as many ni**ers as you can" and giving them the ammunition to murder Allen. The National Alliance had already been targeting York with a stickering campaign supporting the Mayor's 1969 actions (in protest of his recent prosecution). The other racists saw the value of publicly expressing support for racist murderers and they all agreed to hold their conference in York.

Unfortunately for these racist scum, more than 200 anti-racist militants from all sectors of society showed up to monkey wrench their event. The crowd ranged from devout pacifists urging demonstrators to love the nazis, to a masked white youth boasting to some black teenaged girls about putting a crowbar to the head of one of the Hammer Skin leaders. Those wearing bandanas over their face and engaging in black bloc direct action were mostly white (a very large percent women), along with many of the unmasked protesters. Much of the crowd consisted of Blacks and other people of color (many of whom were residents of York).

When Anti-Racist Action began distributing their flyer for the York counter-demonstration, they urged protesters to bring "rocks" and drive the racist out of town. Immediately, organizers of the conference went to the FBI and complained that ARA was taking away their "free speech" rights through intimidation. As a result, many different government agencies were out that day. The atmosphere was definitely intense. While I was there, one protester was arrested for throwing a snowball at the Nazis, and I left thinking that the day would end with people simply yelling threats at each other. However, from what I heard later, the masked anarchists launched attacks on the nazis: vandalizing their cars and bloodying their faces. An anonymous account was given (on the Philadelphia Independent Media Center web site) by one of the masked anarchists that engaged in hand to hand combat with the nazis. She began her morning scouting out York "with some tough as nails, nazi bashing women." She then provides first-hand accounts of anti-racists chasing down cars of Nazis and driving them out of town.

While I was there I interviewed one middle-aged Black resident of West Philadelphia who told me: "York is very racist anyway.... I feel, as a Black man that York is really not the town for Black people. For York to let this happen is a disgrace. Especially in a library {where the racists' meeting was held] where children are supposed to learn knowledge to better themselves...Not to fill their head up with that."

I then spoke to one multi-racial group of protesters that were all residents of York. One person in their group told me: ""We're out here because we live here and we hate them motherfuckers. They don't belong in our town. If those cops weren't there, they wouldn't be in our town. We'd be kicking their ass out of our town. Aint nothing wrong with using violence when it's used in the proper way,: against fascists".

When I asked one masked anarchist youth (from Philadelphia Anti-Racist Action) why he was wearing a bandana over his face, he told me that he was wearing it because he wanted to show solidarity with the others wearing masks and because he wanted to protect himself from having his "picture put on a Nazi web page." He explained to me that the Hammer Skins were known for posting photos of anti-racist activists and violently preying upon them when they're "alone and vulnerable" Indeed, in an article via the Philly IMC, writer Harry Tuttle reports that at a recent nazi rally in Washington, D.C. one Eastern Hammer Skin leader yelled to the anti-racist demonstrators: "Any of you gotten your asses kicked in Baltimore lately? If so, that was us!." Continuing my interview with this same masked anarchist he told me that he was out here "to protest nazis. We confront them wherever they go and it's a good idea to never let them have the streets. Our objective as a whole is to crush the far right while they're still small, because that didn't happen in Germany, Italy, or Spain, and some of the worst things of the 20th century happened as a result of that."