Straight Edge: Is It a Gang or a Brotherhood?
The Salt Lake Tribune (usa, 31-01-1998) - by kelly kennedy (salt lake city)

The group Straight Edge is not a gang, members insist, but they concede that some in their midst are becoming violent, especially in Utah. Salt Lake City police classify the entire group as a gang, pointing to Bernardo Repreza as proof. The 15-year-old boy was beaten and stabbed to death Halloween night, investigators say, by two Straight Edge members milling around with dozens of buddies on State Street, yelling insults at passing motorists. Other teens have been beaten up by group members, purportedly for smoking.

"Straight Edge is not about violence -- it's about brotherhood and making a change for the better in our communities and nations," said Trevor Anderson, a 15-year-old from California. "Anyone who claims to be Straight and then beats someone up because he is smoking is not Straight. We refer to them as Hate Edge. They are just looking for a fight and giving our scene a bad name."

Though violence connected to Straight Edge has erupted across the country, Salt Lake City has been the site of fire bombings, vandalism, fighting and, ultimately, Repreza's murder, police say.

Salt Lake Straight Edge teens are dealing with the repercussions. Other teens are forming gangs to beat up Straight Edge kids -- violent or not. And some Straight Edge bands refuse to play in Utah.

Those who joined the Straight Edge "scene" to denounce alcohol, drugs and promiscuous sex see their reputations for being good, clean kids changing into prideful, intolerant monsters.

"I could believe that these kids are struggling against stereotypes," said David Williams, regional director for the Midwest Gang Investigators Association. He has seen sporadic incidents of Straight Edge-related violence in Dayton, Ohio, where he works as a gang-unit officer, but nothing like attacks in Salt Lake County. "Many of these young people are not violent. And, in the United States, you can choose to believe what you want to believe. But when you cross that line, you're criminal."

The majority of Utah Straight Edge members say they want to fight their bad reputation -- with words.

Ryan Spellecy, 25, has returned to the Straight Edge scene after leaving it to become a husband, father and philosophy teacher's assistant at the University of Utah. He retained his drug-free, alcohol-free, promiscuous-sex-free status, but moved away from his days as a singer in a Straight Edge band called Counterpunch.

"I came back to be a positive role model for the new kids," he said.

"The '80s kids left to get on with their adult lives. Now we're coming back to take a stand. We used to do things like benefit concerts for Amnesty International or homeless shelters. Nowadays, there are these kids who are violent. Beating up a kid for smoking a cigarette -- that would have never crossed my mind. Some got cocky, preachy maybe. They started polarizing, so proud they got violent."

Spellecy said the philosophy of Straight Edge is not about being violent.

It began with Ian MacKaye and his band Minor Threat singing a song in the 1980s as an obituary for a friend who died of a heroin overdose. Since then, the ideas have spread as the music -- kind of punk, kind of ska -- gained popularity with teens and college students.

They marked an "X" on their hands the way bars used to do to show someone was too young to drink, and that evolved into tattoos of the same symbol or of ``sXe.'' Spellecy said the piercing often seen on Straight Edge kids is new. (He decided against a tattoo when he was younger because he did not want to look like a gang member.)

Spellecy said he sees about 9,000 kids at Straight Edge shows. Police say there are about 400 Straight Edge "gang members" in Salt Lake County.

"If they associate together, dress the same, socialize and commit crimes, they're a gang," said Salt Lake City Police Chief Ruben Ortega. "They're not different from other gangs we're dealing with."

Countered Spellecy: "Police officers socialize together. They wear the same clothes. I certainly don't want to say the police are a gang, but we all remember Rodney King. Some members of their group have committed crimes. I'm just saying that if they're going to give that vague of a definition, they're going to categorize people they don't mean to.

But police and nonviolent Straight Edge youths know that violence must be dealt with.

Rich Montano, director of the Utah Coalition of La Raza, said the good Straight Edgers are facing stereotypes, much like Latinos.

"It just sickens me that a small group in our society can make it so bad for the rest of us," he said. "We need to concentrate on the good kids. There are a lot more kids not in gangs than those involved in gangs, and those are the ones we need to concentrate on."

Some Utah Straight Edgers move on to the Animal Liberation Front, a group monitored by the FBI for its violent attacks on fast-food restaurants, furriers and farms. And some Utah Straight Edge kids have become hard-line vegans who try to push their beliefs on others through violence.

Washington State University Professor Emeritus Jim Short, a sociologist who studies gang cultures, said young people are susceptible to influence from these outside groups.

"Young people today don't have much of a place in society," he said. "So these youth cultures arise to fill the gaps. But youth cultures in general kind of take on a life of their own. I'm always suspicious of any group that comes about trying to establish their own agenda. They can become distorted and counterproductive."

Short said youth cultures usually do not have an authority figure to guide them.

"They are more difficult to predict, for leaders to control,'' he said.

Spellecy said the violence may come when change doesn't come fast enough.

"These kids who are doing terrorist acts are frustrated because nothing's changing," Spellecy said. "But violence is stupid. That kid blew up Tandy Leather, so the guy's insurance covers it, and he builds again, and they kill more cows to replace the ones the vegans blew up. It's almost as if they'd bought the leather themselves."

In smaller communities such as Salt Lake City or Dayton, Williams said, it's easier for violent groups to infiltrate.

"There is not a big enough population to support all the alternative lifestyles, so they mix together, melding ideas and making it hard to tell how many are in each group," he said.

"You end up with vampires hanging out with Gothics who listen to similar music to the Straight Edge kids, and the PETA or ALF kids mixing in with the Straight Edgers."

He said the biggest problem with the nonviolent kids is that, if they dress like Straight Edge kids, they could face gang violence.

"I worry some kid like me is going to get shot because someone thinks I'm in a gang," Spellecy said. "And worse things can happen to the kids who don't know what they're getting into with violence. If you're a parent, you want to talk to the kid and find out what he believes in -- if they are violent or not. [You] don't want to see them going to jail for burning a mink farm or getting in a fight and getting killed.

"Straight Edge kids have no business in the gang scene. That's not what it's about."