When I was 17, I was driving to one of the many coffee houses on the east side of Las Vegas where my community of artists, freaks and outcasts found refuge. In the car were a few of my friends from the scene, including Lin “Spit” Newborn―an imposing, Black punk rocker and member of the Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice―along with my 13-year-old brother. My little brother was socially awkward, and had little exposure to my world of poetry slams, punk shows, and artist enclaves. And yet, Spit―who was even a few years older than me―didn’t treat him like a weird tween. He was―or at least tried to be―as inclusive and welcoming to my brother as he would have been any member of our “tribe.”
That would forever shape my view of this man who was not only ever present at poetry readings, Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings, and the Huntridge Theater―a concert venue from which his noise-punk band Life of Lies would be ejected for the chaos it caused on stage―but also literally fought against the neo-Nazi skinheads who often turned up at such events. So, when Spit and his fellow S.H.A.R.P. Dan Shersty were murdered, execution-style, by neo-Nazis in the desert outside Las Vegas in the early hours of July 4, 1998, that shocking event not only reverberated throughout our scene, but personally hit me like a tiny bomb.
Every July 4 since their murders, I’ve taken the opportunity to remind the world to “never forget,” as many others would also continue to do. By the fifth anniversary of their passing, I had a larger platform by which to memorialize Spit’s legacy, by then becoming a contributing writer for a local weekly newspaper. But as I kept track over the years of the serpentine legal proceedings that surrounded the conspirators in Spit and Dan’s murders, it became clear that justice would never be fully served, and I sought to understand why.
Then, while starting development on a documentary project rooted in that same subculture from which Spit and I emerged, the world started changing. Fascists were coming to power across the globe. The “alt-right” rose to prominence, painting buttoned-down lipstick on the same racist pig that murdered my friend two decades earlier. As Donald Trump took office in the U.S., violent hate crimes perpetrated by white supremacists began to rise. The unintentional sacrifice that Spit and Dan made seemed to be in vain.
So, again, having the privilege of a platform―in this case, filmmaking―I realized I had an opportunity to not only bring Spit and Dan’s stories to the world at large, but to place them in the larger context of the legacy of white supremacy movements, especially the ones that brewed under the surface in places like Las Vegas, where authorities took a “both sides” approach to racist-anti-racist conflicts. To make sure the world over learns the lessons of their stories and, like those of us directly impacted, will also “never forget.”
–Pj Perez