Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 13:27:10 -0400
From: Gabo3@aol.com

New York Newsday - Thursday, July 13, 1995
BUSTED HEADS AND TWISTED MINDS
by Gabriel Rotello
	New York - It was just past midnight last Saturday. We met on a corner in
the East Village - six or seven activists from New York's Gay and Lesbian
Anti-Violence Project and three or four journalists. The activists planned to
leaflet the Cherry Hill Bar, a notorious skinhead hangout on East 6th Street
where, a month earlier, bar patrons had attacked a young gay man passing by,
cursed him as a faggot, knocked him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly
in the head. The AVP was now venturing back into the lion's den, determined
to enter the bar and pass out fliers offering a $2,000 reward for information
about the attack. We journalists were there to record what happened.
	As the group headed off, a young woman spoke up. "I've been beaten by skin
heads twice," she said. "And I just want you to know what you're walking
into. They love violence, and they hate queers. It could get nasty." 
	The AVP activists mulled this over. They knew what they might be walking
into, but they also know the price gay people pay - the price anybody pays -
for not confronting these kinds of attacks. The degrading feeling of being
exiled from parts of your own neighborhood, of having to walk a block out of
your way to get to your own front door. They were determined not to cede an
inch of what is, by all counts, a largely gay and lesbian neighborhood to
antigay goons. So, after acknowledging the young woman's words of warning,
they continued, determined to confront the hate brewing on East 6th Street. 
	Just yards away from the dim exterior of the Cherry Hill Bar, Avenue A
glowed in the warm summer night, a vibrant promenade crammed with sidewalk
cafes and nightclubs and teeming crowds of young, hip urbanites. But here, on
a side street just a few doors off the avenue, a very different crowd lurked
in the gloom, sullen, sitting on garbage cans and cars, slurping beer.
Tattooed, scarred, heads shaved, bristling with hate, proud members of a
skinhead culture boastful of its racism and anti Semitism and homophobia, its
reputation for mindless violence.
	The activists hesitated as they approached. AVP leaders Matt Foreman and Bea
Hanson were clearly having second thoughts about entering the bar, and I
could see why. I was having second thoughts about being within a mile of the
place. A few skinheads had already noticed us from a distance, and their
drunken stares were not exactly welcoming. Foreman announced a change in
strategy. The activists would simply leaflet the crowd outside the bar and
leave peacefully - and quickly.
	But not quickly enough. It didn't take the skinheads more that fifteen
seconds to read the fliers before shouts of "f...ing faggots." Then the
sickening "oi, oi, oi" that skinheads chant before they attack. Then shouts,
jumps, shoves, fists, kicks. 
	First a photographer from Impact Visuals went down, her camera smashed. Then
Matt Foreman, trying to assist her, also fell beneath a flurry of kicks. Then
another activist down, and others being shoved, kicked, punched. Then Kendall
Morrison of the gay newspaper LGNY, daring to take some photos of the attack,
was set upon. The attackers chased him to Avenue A and, in full view of the
sidewalk cafes and fashionable strollers, knocked him to the ground, smashing
his camera and brutally and repeatedly kicking him in the head. 
	It's one thing simply to read about the nasty reactions that befall gay
people with the courage to confront antigay violence. It's another thing to
watch it erupt all around you in sickening, terrifying intensity.
	Cops eventually came and took statements, and thanks to the quick action of
journalists like Morrison, the police have photographs of the assailants and
expect to make arrests. No one was seriously injured. After spending a night
in the hospital, Morrison was released with just a deep headache and a deeper
sense of unease about the streets of his own neighborhood. 
	But New York's gay and lesbian population and anybody else who is Jewish,
Latino, African American, Arab American, Asian American - anybody who has
been targeted by skinheads - should share an equally deep unease about the
existence of places like the Cherry Hill Bar. Those who care about civility
should know that the next time the AVP sends out the call for volunteers to
confront the hate that all too often stalks the streets of our city, they
need, and deserve, an army. 

Copyright 1995 - Gabriel Rotello

(Gabriel's column appears in New York Newsday every Thursday. His email
address is gabo3@aol.com)