Legacy of a hate crime: Mulugeta Seraw's death a decade ago avenged. Editor's note: This story first appeared in The Oregonian on Nov. Mulugeta Seraw's murder at the hands of three racist Skinheads. The street holds no bloodstains, no shattered glass, no cries. Avenged Sevenfold Edit. The touring kit includes two new limited-edition Mike Portnoy signature. They have been whisked clean by passing cars, cleansed by 1,0. Ten years ago today, three men who shared a racist version of the American dream clashed with an African student with a different vision of America. They came together by chance - - a carload of neo- Nazi Skinheads and a 2. Ethiopian named Mulugeta Seraw - - at the Southeast Portland corner of 3. Avenue and Pine Street. There, amid racial slurs, one of the Skinheads raised that most American of symbols, a baseball bat, and clubbed Seraw to death. Because he was in the way. Because he was different. Because he was black. The killing sent three of Portland's sons to prison. It launched a war among Skinheads. It prompted a series of hate crimes and a groundbreaking state law to monitor them. It galvanized the horrified citizens of Portland against racism. And it led to a landmark trial that pitted a famous civil rights lawyer against the West's most notorious neo- Nazi. The specter of white American racists waging war against African immigrants - - after centuries of terrorizing black Americans - - drew international attention. The case uprooted perceptions that the Northwest was a growing bastion of racial tolerance. And it planted shame in Oregon's back yard. But human rights watchdogs warn that the number of such organizations appears to be increasing. Many of them - - including the Willamette Valley's biggest neo- Nazi group, Volksfront - - have dropped into a shadowy world of Internet traffic, telephone answering machines and mail drops. Such groups are said to be responsible for fewer than 1. America's hate crimes, but their public influence can't be measured. In June near Jasper, Tex., three white men loosely tied to the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Brotherhood were accused of dragging an African American man behind their pickup until he was decapitated. Then last month, two men were charged with savagely pistol whipping a gay college student and leaving him to die, tied to a fence near Laramie, Wyo. Skinheads in the NWThe Seraw murder stunned Portland, but it shouldn't have. Racist Skinheads began to roost in the city in about 1. All Music Guide: One of the more successful and accessible metalcore outfits to come out of the early 2000s, Avenged Sevenfold endured changes both stylistic and. Avenged Sevenfold are one of the most successful American heavy metal bands of the third millennium, with an estimated 8 million copies sold of their six studio albums. Lyrics to 'So Far Away' by Avenged Sevenfold: How do I live without the ones I love? Time still turns the pages of the book its burned Place and time always on. You can watch Avenged online for free on this page by streaming the movie in the video player above or by choosing a different version to play below it. AVENGED was a schizophrenic watch for me! When it was good, it was rocking like Dokken and when it stumbled, it put Mr Magoo to shame! The key strengths of the film. Get this from a library! The Borrowers avenged. The Ship Avenged: SIGNED Paperback – 1998. Stirling (Author) Be the first to review this item. See all 3 formats and editions Hide other formats and. Avenge, revenge both imply to inflict pain or harm in return for pain or harm inflicted. Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003. But police mistook them for punk rockers and paid them little mind, Christensen said. Then in October 1. Old Town District carrying baseball bats, axes and pipes. And in March 1. 98. Skinheads stomped an Asian man nearly to death while his horrified wife and children watched. White racists had long recruited in the overwhelmingly Anglo states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Some wanted to stake the territory as a white stronghold for a national race war, an idea that came to be called the . Mathews parted ways with a growing Idaho neo- Nazi group called Aryan Nations and formed a revolutionary racist gang called The Order. Mathews' gang robbed banks, porno shops and a Brinks armored car to finance an American race war. The Order assassinated a Denver radio show host named Alan Berg in June 1. Northeast Portland motel that November. Two weeks later, Mathews died in a standoff with FBI agents on Washington's Puget Sound. Mathews' beliefs inspired Tom Metzger, a Southern California TV repairman, former Klan grand dragon and failed candidate for the U. S. Metzger, an energetic man who often spoke of himself in the third person, founded the White Aryan Resistance (WAR) in 1. Mathews' torch. He thought their trademark shaved heads and Doc Martens boots were peculiar, but he embraced the growing Skinhead subculture and installed his son, John, to lead WAR's Aryan Youth Movement. A mad violence and death. Dave Mazzella was a rising star among the Metzgers' growing Skinhead clan. A bookish teen with a swastika tattoo, Mazzella was a veteran of racist street violence and John Metzger's best recruiter. In early fall 1. 98. Mazzella traveled to Portland to organize a Skinhead gang called East Side White Pride, a ragtag bunch living on the city's southeast side. Mazzella hooked up with Ken Mieske, a death- metal rock singer known as . They spent evenings handing out racist leaflets and beating up non- whites. On the night of Nov. Mieske and two other Skinheads, Kyle Brewster and Steve Strasser, handed out racist tracts at Pioneer Courthouse Square, then drove across the Willamette River to a beer bash on Southeast 3. Avenue. A cold fog was rolling into Portland in the first hours of Nov. Skinheads left the party and Brewster spotted Seraw. The Ethiopian had been dropped at his apartment by two countrymen after a night of eating and drinking with friends. Seraw stood outside his friend's Oldsmobile, parked in the middle of the narrow side street, to bid them goodnight. The Skinheads piled into a Nissan Stanza and pulled up to the Olds, screaming at the Africans to move. Angry words followed, and obscene gestures shot up in both cars. Brewster was screaming a torrent of racial slurs when he climbed out of the Nissan and squared off with the much smaller Seraw. The other Skinheads jumped from the Nissan and smashed the Olds' windows with boots and a baseball bat. Wondwosen Tesfaye tried to flee the Olds, but Strasser toppled him with a boot. The terrified man crawled partway under a parked car, crying as Strasser kicked his legs and Mieske beat him with a bat. The driver sped away for help. Brewster was punching Seraw when Mieske moved behind and struck the African twice on the head with the bat. His head lay bleeding on the cold macadam as if presented on a chopping block. Mieske took a final swing. Tom Nelson, a key detective in the case. The Skinheads sped off. Mulugeta Seraw, who had grown up in the green fields of Ethiopia, whose father sold off livestock to send him to America, who had worked as a janitor at a Catholic school and slept in a boiler room to pay for college, began to die in a growing slick of blood. A participant breaks ranks. Seraw's terrified friends did not know the men who attacked them and gave detectives little to go on. Days after the murder, a confidential informant affiliated with East Side White Pride cracked open the case by identifying the three Skinheads. About a week later, detectives interviewed Strasser's roommate, Mazzella, who told them that the Metzgers had sent him to Portland and that he wanted out of the racist movement. Mieske and the other two Skinheads told their lawyers the Ethiopians had started the fight by blocking the street and jumping out to tangle. This was no hate crime, they said, just a fight between motorists gone too far. Prosecutors didn't buy it. All three Skinheads eventually pleaded guilty to their parts in the slaying. They drew terms varying in length from nine years to life. Two lawyers' manhunt. The words were monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the nation's leading civil rights groups. They infuriated Morris Dees, the center's lead trial lawyer. Dees, a curly- haired barrister with a silky drawl, kept up with the Seraw case from his office in Montgomery, Ala. He was convinced that Metzger helped to influence the murder. But he lacked evidence. Four months after the slaying, Dees got the evidence he sought. One of his investigators had obtained a copy of a letter, penned five weeks before the killing, from John Metzger to Mieske. It advised the Portland Skinhead that Mazzella was coming to town to show his friends how the Aryan Youth Movement worked. If Dees could prove that Mazzella incited Seraw's murder as an agent of WAR's youth wing, he might be able to bankrupt Tom Metzger's organization. Dees enjoyed an excellent trial record against hate groups. In 1. 98. 7, he won a $7 million verdict against Klansmen who murdered an African American teen- ager in Alabama and strung his corpse from a tree limb. A few months after the Seraw murder, Dees asked Elden Rosenthal, a Portland personal- injury lawyer, to handle the local end of a lawsuit against Metzger. Rosenthal had lost family to the Holocaust and had strong feelings about neo- Nazis. Rosenthal worked the case free of charge. As they worked, the Portland area began to average more than two hate crimes a week. Oregon reacted by passing a groundbreaking law to track such crimes. Congress soon followed, passing a similar law to collect national hate- crime data. Dees and Rosenthal went to court. Seraw family in Multnomah County Circuit Court. It accused the Metzgers, WAR, Mieske and Brewster of causing Seraw's death. Dees hooked up with Mazzella, who willingly told him all he knew about the Metzgers, and turned him into his star witness. While hiding out before the trial in Southern Oregon, Mazzella was accused of organizing as many as 6. Skinheads and touching off a spate of hate crimes. Metzger chose to defend himself in court but wanted control over who heard his case. Before one pre- trial hearing, he told a court clerk he objected to being tried by the county's chief judge, Donald H. Londer, saying his name sounded Jewish. When Londer, who was Jewish, heard about the comment, he asked Rosenthal and Metzger whether they objected to being heard by Judge Ancer L. Haggerty. Rosenthal had to stifle a laugh as Metzger - - perhaps thinking Haggerty an Irishman - - agreed to be tried by an African American judge. Metzger would later attempt to remove Haggerty, but the mild- mannered judge with the heavy gaze heard the case. A racist group foiled. On Oct. 7, 1. 99. WAR case went to trial, more than 1,5. Portland to condemn hate. Protecting the marchers were 1. Portland event. Police put the Metzgers, the plaintiff's lawyers and Haggerty under 2. Skinheads and civil rights activists gathered outside the courthouse each day as police snipers set up on nearby rooftops and a surveillance helicopter hovered overhead. Police led the Metzgers in and out through a freight elevator in the sidewalk.
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