• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Skinhead Scenes and the Fight for Territory
• Anti-Klan Organizing
• The Canadian Connection
• Fight the Power: Anti-Racist Solidarity
• Our Bodies, Our Choice
• Be Young, Have Fun, Smash Racism
• Turning Point ARA
• End of an Era: Fighting the Right at the Dawn of the Millennium
• Legacy
• Glossary of Terms
• A Note on Our Sources
• Index
• About the Authors

• Short-listed, The Hill Times Best Books of the Year 2023

What does it mean to risk all for your beliefs? How do you fight an enemy in your midst? 
We Go Where They Go recounts the thrilling story of a massive forgotten youth movement that set the stage for today's anti-fascist organizing in North America. When skinheads and punks in the late 1980s found their communities invaded by white supremacists and neo-nazis, they fought back. Influenced by anarchism, feminism, Black liberation, and Indigenous sovereignty, they created Anti-Racist Action. At ARA’s height in the 1990s, thousands of dedicated activists in hundreds of chapters joined the fights—political and sometimes physical—against nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-abortion fundamentalists, and racist police. Before media pundits, cynical politicians, and your uncle discovered “antifa,” Anti-Racist Action was bringing it to the streets.

Based on extensive interviews with dozens of ARA participants, We Go Where They Go tells ARA’s story from within, giving voice to those who risked their safety in their own defense and in solidarity with others. In reproducing the posters, zines, propaganda and photos of the movement itself, this essential work of radical history illustrates how cultural scenes can become powerful forces for change. Here at last is the story of an organic yet highly organized movement, exploring both its triumphs and failures, and offering valuable lessons for today’s generation of activists and rabble-rousers. We Go Where They Go is a page-turning history of grassroots anti-racism. More than just inspiration, it's a roadmap.

“I was a big supporter and it was an honor to work with the Anti-Racist Action movement. Their unapologetic and uncompromising opposition to racism and fascism in the streets, in the government, and in the mosh pit continues to be inspiring to this day.”
—Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine

“Antifa became a household word with Trump attempting and failing to designate it a domestic terrorist group, but Antifa’s roots date back to the late 1980’s when little attention was being paid to violent fascist groups that were flourishing under Reaganism, and Anti-Racist Action (ARA) was singular and effective in its brilliant offensive. This book tells the story of ARA in breathtaking prose accompanied by stunning photographs and images.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

“We Go Where They Go offers a new generation of antiracist, anti-fascist activists an essential dose of revolutionary history, and provides a bloodstained blueprint for the next chapter in the long, noble, and utterly necessary fight against fascism. The struggle is never over, and it’s on all of us to wake up, read up, and stay ready.”
—Kim Kelly, author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor

“‘History,’ as The Story of Anti-Racist Action observes, ‘is a weapon.’ Yet in this timely, much-needed book, set against the backdrop of today’s resurgent fascism, it is far more than that. History is a teachable, or learnable, moment. History is remembrance, or never forgetting, and honoring our dead. Most important, history is possibility. Because as the authors and many ARA participants so ably demonstrate on these pages, and with such clear-eyed insights, those who collectively self-organize and take direct action can make history—a people’s history of courage and solidarity. And thus, this engaging history is a compass, guiding us away from unnecessary perils and pitfalls, and toward potentialities for not only community self-defense but also community care.”
—Cindy Milstein, editor of There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart: Mending the World as Jewish Anarchists

“We Go Where They Go takes readers to the front lines of the little-known struggle against white supremacy and fascism that raged across North America at the turn of the twenty-first century. Based on insider accounts, this concise, riveting, and truly groundbreaking history of Anti-Racist Action is essential reading for the movements of today and tomorrow.”
—Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook

“We Go Where They Go is the story of those who bravely went steel toe to steel toe against the Nazis in the 1990s. It is a meditation on organizing when your life and community depend on it and the finest two-fisted street scholarship. Today’s foes of fascism will find a treasure trove of perspectives, history, insights, and strategies here. It would be a mistake to call the nineties the ‘lost decade’ for radical action in the United States, and this book corrects the record.”
—James Tracy, co-author Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Interracial Solidarity in 1960–70s New Left Organizing

“There is a history of antifascist organizing and defense that has been a quiet one, but it is one we should all be proud of. This book will take the reader on a journey through that history, which I myself have been a part of, and they will be amazed - as we often are - by what they never knew and wish they did. I am very happy that finally the story of Anti-Racist Action is being told.”
—Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder and executive director of One People’s Project

“We Go Where They Go is a rich, granular history of Anti-Racist Action, from its origins in the Midwest skinhead and punk scenes in the 80s, to its growth into a grassroots international network with nearly 180 chapters by the end of the 90s. ARA not only effectively challenged nazis and the Klan on the streets, its activists struggled to connect their street level actions with efforts to challenge more pervasive institutional racism. It took on sexism, abortion rights and homophobia as key issues, and allied with other groups fighting for social justice. Today, as democratic norms continue to erode in the declining imperialist centers, the threat of fascism resurfaces. We Go Where They Go reflects on fundamental questions of organization and strategy that antiracist activists must consider in the 21st century.”
—Tim McCaskell, author Race to Equity: Disrupting Educational Inequality and Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism

“This book is a must read for anyone wanting to know the unknown histories of activists who set out to destroy fascism in their communities. These activists did not seek fame or recognition, but put themselves continually at risk. While the stories of comradery and conflict show the fissures of any movement, what I find important and necessary is to uplift these heroic voices in our activist history and in our radical imaginations.”
—Sharmeen Khan, organizer with No One Is Illegal Toronto and editor of Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action

“Before Antifa became a household name in the US, there was Anti-Racist Action. These were the folks we followed as antifascist activists in Europe in the 1990s. I’m glad to see that their experiences have now been chronicled. Plenty to learn for all of us.”
—Gabriel Kuhn, author of Sober Living for the Revolution, Soccer vs. the State, and Antifascism, Sports, Sobriety

So, Merz has announced that German workers will need a note from a doctor day one of calling in sick, and they must get that note in person: phone calls are no longer acceptable.

All the usual garbage: uncompetitive, high costs for employers, blah, blah, blah. (This comes after raising the retirement age.)

Here’s the actual sick leave situation:

Hey, it suddenly increased after 2020? Is anyone surprised? Bueller?

Anyway, doctors and clinics are a fixed resource. Forcing people to go in and see a doctor (normal wait times in Germany are two to three days) mean taking more time with the patient. That means pushing other patients back. So wait time will increase.

Second more sick people will go into work. Some of them will be infectious. More people would wind up sick than if you just let people stay home.

Sub voce this is “we don’t trust people, we think some of them are lying” plus “people really should work when only slightly ill. Suck it up sunshine.”

But the increase in sick time is clearly Covid related, presumably long Covid, so it isn’t likely there’s a sudden epidemic of malingering. And while you can’t pass on long Covid directly, it still means that other people who do have diseases they can donate to their co-workers will come in.

Governments rarely seem to think thru these second order effects and ask if they’re worth it. The City of Toronto has been forced by the Province of Ontario to shut down supervised injection sites.

Now if you’re a normal human person you’re probably thinking “oh no, people will die!”

And that’s true. But Premier Ford doesn’t give a damn about that. There is another effect, however, that he should give a damn about, because voters care, and the Conservaties do have seats in Toronto.

Average wait times in emergency wards are a bit over an hour thru the province. But they’re much higher in Toronto. As of this writing the closest emergency department to me has a wait time of a bit over five hours.

According to ER doctors overdoses can drive those times up significantly. Overdoses require priority treatment, after all. So if more drug users are overdosing (or their drug wasn’t what they thought it was, because the supply is so adulterated), then wait times will go up more.

And voters care about this. A lot. (Last time I went to an emergency department I waited over eight hours. I needed stitches, it was overnight, but I was in no danger, so I got to wait a very long ) People have in some cases died because of wait times, since it isn’t always obvious how bad something is, and while the number may not be large, the bad publicity often is.

This is something Ford and the Conservatives should care about, but it’s rarely mentioned. Bleeding hearts (which I mostly am) tend to lead with “drug users will die”, not getting that to Ford that’s probably a good thing. But “regular citizens will wait longer in the ER and some of them will die” is not something he wants. He may not personally care (I doubt he cares about anybody but himself), but he does care politically.

As for Merz, he’s the worst German leader of my lifetime, trying to run military Keynesianism and letting Germany’s industry be destroyed while he fiddles with marginalia. A few extra sick days aren’t why Germany’s losing its industry and it won’t make the least bit of difference. What is required is innovation and driving down energy prices, but that would require making peace with Russia and Merz is a warmonger.

Ruled by fools.

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I experienced a trauma that my fellow disabled people encounter on a daily basis.

It was early in the morning, and I was checking my email. I got an email from someone that wanted me to consider writing about their disabled business or whatever it was. They weren’t important, so I was just about to dismiss it, but something got the better of me and I opened the email and skimmed the first line out of curiosity.

The first thing I heard was,

"75655356878796656432190.JPG."

I immediately reeled back like I’ve just been slapped across the face. I skimmed the email some more. They wanted me to look at their website. Links were displayed all throughout the email, insisting I check out this page or that page or this other page.

I had no drive to click on any of them, at all, thanks to the unlabeled image at the top of the email. If they couldn’t be bothered to make sure an image was labeled, I didn’t want to experience their attempt at an accessible website.

I deleted the email. The next email was an email from a friend. It contained an attachment to their book they wanted me to read and enjoy, but I didn’t know what format the book was going to be in because they didn’t ask me, so I sat there, pondering the gravity of converting a, most likely, untagged PDF into something I could easier navigate through with my Braille display and screen reader. How much work was it going to be to convert this PDF? I navigated to the attachments section in question and opened it. Sure enough, it was a PDF. Reacting before opening it, because I didn’t want to be disappointed, I just immediately wrote back to the friend and said,

"Can you send this to me in Microsoft Word format or plain text?"

I sat there after sending the reply wondering if I should even try to convert this or not. I went to the next email.

It was an email from my publisher, sending me my royalty statement for one of my books. This was a PDF, but, at once, flashes plagued my mind of trying to convert the previous inaccessible PDF into something that could be easily navigated. I was terrified. I didn’t want to go through that again!

I didn’t even want to deal with this now, even the sending of the inevitable reply and telling the publisher, again, that I was blind and used a Braille display and screen reader so could they send it in a different format? I knew I was retreating, and retreating fast, and the day hadn’t even started yet. As I was navigating through my other emails, I just kept having visions of a few days ago wherein I was trying to convert an untagged royalty statement holding tables and untagged charts and no headings into something readable. That one task took me the whole day and I didn’t want to go through that again. I didn’t want to spend my whole morning trying a method that previously worked in order for the conversion attempt to fail, leaving me to send it to a friend and schedule a Zoom meeting just so my royalty statement could be read. I didn’t have anybody that lived with me that could read this, and I didn’t want to schedule a video call just yet with someone, so I just tried to focus on other emails.

As I skimmed the subject lines of emails, one singular thought kept percolating, like a restaurant that always serves burnt toast or a city that never fixes its hostile pavement designs. I don’t want to open these because I don’t want to deal with the inaccessibility of the content today.

The email subjects soon became a repeating question. What access hell would I need to endure in order to read this email? Is it worth opening just to be confronted with an inaccessible email? Probably not, so why should I even bother with this one when I already experienced three inaccessible emails today?

Thankfully, my phone rings, shaking me out of my recrimination. it’s an offline friend, and he wants to know if I’d like to go to an open mic tonight. I would, but how loud would the venue be? Would there be a lot of chairs? Was the venue going to be so small that I’d end up knocking things over like last time? I didn’t want to experience that again. So, retreating into safety, into a world where I knew things were going to be accessible because I was going to make it so, even if I was going to be at home, alone, I said, not tonight.

I was retreating into access, and he knew it because he suggested we could watch an audio described movie at his place instead of going to another unfamiliar place. I knew the layout of his house, I wouldn’t need to plan ahead, or to try to save up energy for tonight. I knew I’d be in a supportive environment with the movie and dinner at his place. I knew what access I was going to encounter and the limitations of the environment. I knew the access I was going to get, and this made things far easier for me to agree to. As I said yes, though, I was trying to pinpoint my visceral refusal of the open mic earlier. What feeling was that? Why did I have such a visceral reaction when I unequivocally love open mics and open mic style events?

As I smiled to a grateful exclamation of my company tonight, filled with an audio described movie and a place where food would be cut up for me so I wouldn’t have to worry about taking to long or holding others up, I examined this feeling I was having all morning. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but I could describe it.

A visceral reaction to a hostile environment. Knowingly or unknowingly.

Flashbacks of a previously inaccessible experience, putting me back into that feeling of ache and emotional pain.

Assessing an environment long before even dipping my toe into the environment based off earlier harm with the intent of avoiding a hostile environment.

I wrestled with this feeling all morning before finally going to a search engine and typing in something I’d thought I’d never type. What are the symptoms of PTSD?

PTSD came to mind because previous encounters were shaping my current feelings. While I didn’t experience all of the symptoms or causes, still, some jumped out at me starkly.

Re-experiencing

Avoidance and emotional numbing.

Hyperarousal (feeling "on edge")

These described what I was going through, but nothing tied it to being disabled in a world that was never designed for me. Some academic papers, like this one, identified this exclusion but didn’t put a succinct word or phrase onto this. On some days, I was willing to tolerate it, to even push past it, but today, I just wasn’t having it. While spoon theory didn’t quite match up with my feeling, it was tangential. I had absolutely no more energy to fight with an inaccessible world.

At that moment, I was extremely grateful for my offline friend that immediately suggested a safe space. I guess he could hear the utter exhaustion and frustration in my voice so wanted to do his part. I wished more of my friends did that.

I then began looking up something strictly related to accessibility. Accessibility trauma. Disability related PTSD? Spoon exhaustion. I didn’t have a good word for this feeling, and none seemed to exist. After contemplation, I think I have a phrase for this feeling.

This was the opposite of Access Intimacy.

I tried on a phrase, like I was tasting the words.

Access trauma.

In truth, I think it fits perfectly. While I have a different kind of access trauma than, say, my Deaf friends, I think we can all appreciate and understand the feeling of the world constantly reminding us that the world we’re forced to participate in wasn’t designed for us.

The important thing about access trauma is that it isn’t a thing I can leap over because it will creep up again or ram smack dab into me again when I least expect it. It will be relentless, unforgiving, and not at all surprising. Throughout my whole life, I’ll be forced to confront access trauma daily, even with friends that are temporarily abled. Access trauma, or accessibility PTSD, or whatever term ends up defining this feeling, isn’t something we’ll be able to just brush off like a pernicious crumb. It’s going to remind me, over and over again, that I’m adapting to a world that isn’t designed for me and it’s going to remind me that my tricks for skirting around barriers won’t always work the next time I try a trick to get around an inaccessible world and it fails.

I don’t have a solution other than to surround myself with people that understand inadequate access and who just understand that community care can help ease the pain. Will it be perfect? Of course not! Nothing is perfect. At least, though, with community care, and interdependence care, we’re building off other’s knowledge and resources and skills. Temporarily abled people can help strengthen community and interdependence care. In fact, I wish more would, even if they’re not perfect at it. Even if they mess up the first time, they’ve got my support even if they don’t always get it right.

I haven’t figured out a good way to combat access trauma because it’s embedded into society, and I know there will be days where I don’t have the spoons to leap over the inadequate and inaccessible society I must battle every day. As of right now, I’m taking small steps that will cultivate spaces where I don’t have to battle access trauma. I don’t expect everybody to understand my hesitation when they invite me to an unfamiliar location, but I am making them listen and pay attention.

I think, when it comes right down to it, that’s the best way I can think of to really combat access trauma. Professional, personal, or sexual. While I can’t battle every inequity that comes my way, I can stop and make people understand why I’m refusing to experience access trauma again. I think that’s a form of self-care we all should take. My true friends will listen and act. I don’t know what I’ll do with the friends that refuse to hear or listen to my pain.

If you enjoyed this blog post, you might enjoy the fiction podcast Tales After Dark: Erotic Audio Dramas