Denial Hall of Fame: We have a winner.
The Fresno Bee called it a “dance” sponsored by a “multi-racial” motorcycle club. So did the Washington Post.244
Here’s what they were talking about: The “official after party” for the largest gathering of black motorcycle clubs on the West Coast. A weekend collection of violence and mayhem of 5000 black bikers that descend on Fresno twice a year for the “Half Way Run.”
This was no dance. And there was nothing multi-racial about it.
The event is so named because it is the halfway spot for black bikers from the Los Angeles and Oakland areas to gather and party.
Or shoot each other. This time, October 2013.
By the time this “dance” was over, 13 people were shot, one fatally. More than 100 police were called to subdue the “running gun battle.”
In attendance were many of the 5000 members of dozens of black California motorcycle clubs, including the Soul Brothers, Unknown Riders, Kings of Cali, Bad Boyz, Black Pearls, Black Sabbath, Good Tymez, Most Wanted, Buffalo Soldiers, and others. All listed at a web site called blackmotorcycleclubs.net.
If anyone puts up a web site for multi-racial motorcycle gangs, I will let you know. But I promise you one thing: None of these clubs will be on it.
“The Fresno Bee and Associated Press may think this was a “multi-racial” gathering,” said Taleeb Starkes, author of the Uncivil War, a book that confronts the criminal subculture within the Black community. “But they are just about the only ones. This incident in Fresno was just the latest example of how the press ignore, condone and even deny black mob violence.”
Here is how one of the participants described a recent Half Way Run:
“Every year we head to the middle of Cali in Fresno where all the bike clubs meet up and kill it...this is our version of Black Bike Week on the west. Thousands of bikes.”245
You know: The one in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where a bunch of people were shot and died in 2013 after the West Coast version was over.
Back in Fresno, a group called In Traffic TV productions made a video of the festivities from 2012.246 The black host immediately pronounced to his “niggas” that the weekend was “ghetto fabulous.”
Guess he did not get the “racially mixed” memo from the Washington Post.
The 13-minute program showed thousands of black bikers, police helicopters, sirens, and lots of law enforcement -- all set to a variety of hip hop tracks that talked about violence, using drugs, dealing drugs, killing and riding motorcycles. And above all, growing up “in the hood.” With lots of obscenities and N-bombs.
The killing happened at just one of the weekend’s activities: The “official after party” at the Soul Brothers Motorcycle Club headquarters outside of Fresno.
The Fresno Bee claims Soul Brothers is a multi-racial group because of the crossed black and white arms that comprise the group’s logo.
But anyone looking at the thousands of pictures and hours of videos that club members have posted on various sites around the Internet know this is a black club. That is what the club called itself when it produced a video with the club’s founder, where he talked about its roots as a black motorcycle club.
The Fresno Bee, Washington Post and Associated Press may have failed to capture the true size and nature of the event. But they did at least hint at the chaos created during the semi-annual mayhem.
Or did they? The Fresno Bee cannot make up its mind: In one paragraph of a recent news story, this gathering of black bikers is described as “peaceful.” But the next sentence says the opposite:
“While the motorcyclists generally are peaceful, police usually put extra officers on duty to prevent bikers from speeding, pulling wheelies and drinking in public.”
Violence has occurred frequently at the gatherings. This spring, a shooting broke out at a motel near Highway 99 and Olive Avenue where bikers were gathered and several were wounded. Several years ago, one person was killed at a “dance” held by bikers in southwest Fresno.
The Bee does report that neighbors say the clubhouse is the scene of frequent and intense violence and mayhem. Including gunshots and loud noises from parties over a several year period.
American reporters may not be able -- or willing - to talk about the epidemic of black mob violence so recently on display in Fresno. But a reader of a newspaper in London did not seem to have any trouble when he commented on an excellent account of the Fresno shootings in the Daily Mail: “Gangs of 'Soul Brothers' with guns in a warehouse at 2am on a Saturday night,” said the commenter. “What could possibly go wrong?”247