Fuck Shit Up / Friends Stand United / Finance Sector Union

    Update (November 1, 2008) : Three men convicted in 2006 beating death of Corona man, Sonja Bjelland, The Press-Enterprise, October 27, 2008: Three Corona men were convicted of second-degree murder Monday in a beating death connected to a national gang. Richard James Dugan, 27, Jonathan Richard Morgan, 24, and Travis Daniel Westly, 25, face sentencing Dec. 12 after the jury found all three guilty of second-degree murder for the benefit of a street gang. Sean Gardhouse, 19, of Corona, was beaten June 23, 2006, in the parking lot of the Jack in the Box on Ontario Avenue in Corona and died five days later. His death focused attention on two gangs, Friends Stand United and El Cerrito Boys. Friends Stand United, a national gang, was written about in Rolling Stone in 2007. The group attracted attention with a DVD called “Boston Beatdown,” featuring footage of fights and music from hard-core punk bands…

Yeah so anyway. Anti-racists, thugs, or both, I dunno.

But so much for the Finance Sector Union.

*boom–tish*

FSU is “a fairly new phenomenon here and we’re still in the beginning stages of figuring out what these guys are all about,” Seattle police spokeswoman Debra Brown said. I say: following on from a string of other incidents (Friends Stand Charged: FSU Members Arrested for Weapons, Drugs Outside Local Club by Megan Seling, The Stranger, March 2–8, 2006, details one such incident), news that someone, allegedly a member of FSU, was charged with manslaughter back in January last year triggered a small amount of reflection on the gang’s (crew’s) past and present. Its past is fairly clear: the crew (gang) emerged as a response to the desire to rid Boston hardcore of boneheads and other racists; presently, the name has been adopted by a large range of others, in and outside of Boston, whether affiliated in some way to the original crew or not. Despite the overtly-hostile title, ‘Violent group spoils party for segment of music scene’ by Sara Jean Green (Seattle Times, March 7, 2006) provides a useful overview of the history of FSU, noting that the handful of arrests detailed in Seling’s report was more likely to have been of SHARPs than it was the Seattle FSU crew. Interestingly, Green notes that some of the friction in the scene is:

A matter of economics

The schism that’s occurring in the hardcore scene is at least partially due to economics, with a growing number of middle-class suburban kids getting involved in hardcore… Many don’t understand the etiquette or history of the scene, which has always had violent undercurrents, Collins said.

“I grew up in a trailer park with no money. A lot of guys in my crew, we grew up hard,” said Collins, originally from a rural area near Bremerton. Kids who grew up in places like Bellevue or Redmond “had to deal with tennis practice — we had to deal with not getting beat up on the way home from the [school] bus,” he said.

Though police have characterized FSU assaults as “random acts of violence,” Collins said that’s not the case. If FSU gets into a fight, there’s always a reason, he said.

“We’re civil people — we just don’t beat people ’til we can’t beat them anymore,” he said. “If I fight them, I’m going to fight them ’til I think they got what they deserved.”

But others worry that violence associated with FSU members could have a lasting impact beyond bruises and bloodied noses.

David Meinert, a former president of the Northwest chapter of the Recording Academy who manages the Seattle band Presidents of the United States of America, said FSU’s propensity for violence “is a negative black mark” on Seattle’s otherwise healthy hardcore scene. Meinert, who spent 10 years working to have the city’s Teen Dance Ordinance rescinded, worries that FSU’s reputation could prompt more police attention at all all-ages shows.

Speaking of economics, the producers of hardcore DVD Boston Breakdown offer an unnecessarily laboured response to accusations they unfairly profit from violence associated with the scene in Boston on their website. A not very posi review of the documentary is here; David King reflects on some hardcore issues here. Good, bad or indifferent, Alexander J. Franklin, the person charged with committing manslaughter in January 2007, has been acquitted.

Charges dropped in fatal fight at Asbury club
APP.com
February 29, 2008

FREEHOLD — A Monmouth County grand jury on Wednesday refused to indict a Brooklyn man on manslaughter charges that had been lodged against him in the death of a Bass River man last year, the Prosecutor’s Office said.

Alexander J. Franklin, 34, a tattoo artist with reputed gang affiliations, had been accused in the beating death of James Morrison, 25, on Jan. 14, 2007.

Morrison died of blunt force trauma after an altercation at Club Deep, an Asbury Park nightclub, where he was allegedly punched in the head and later died of his injuries.

“A very thorough investigation was conducted at the time this crime occurred,” Monmouth County First Assistant Prosecutor Peter E. Warshaw said. “That information was presented to the grand jury in a thorough and comprehensive manner, and the grand jury declined to return any indictments.”

The grand jury’s vote means the police charges against Franklin are now dismissed, prosecutors said.

Franklin was initially arrested three weeks after the fight. At the time, police said Morrison hit his head on concrete after being felled by a blow to the head.

Morrison and his friends had allegedly been involved in an altercation inside the club over a T-shirt worn by one of Morrison’s friends. Show attendees said someone took offense that the shirt depicted a Confederate flag.

Prosecutors said Franklin was associated with the FSU gang — an acronym standing for Friends Stand United or two profanities followed by the word “up.” The group is reported to be responsible for driving neo-Nazi elements out of the Boston hard-core punk scene in the mid-1980s.

Warshaw said he could not comment further on the matter because of court rules that require grand jury proceedings to be kept secret.

Staff writer Matt Pais contributed to this story.

About @ndy

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I like anarchy. I don't like nazis. I enjoy eating pizza and drinking beer. I barrack for the greatest football team on Earth: Collingwood Magpies. The 2024 premiership's a cakewalk for the good old Collingwood.
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103 Responses to Fuck Shit Up / Friends Stand United / Finance Sector Union

  1. josh says:

    butler,pa. needs your help really badly friends.

  2. josh says:

    the kkk will not just leave us in peace here and i think fsu needs a chapter here as well.

  3. Jeebers says:

    It seems that most people here aren’t aware that FSU is not a SxE crew, plenty of them use drugs (cocaine being the drug of choice in the LA circle). I have also heard their idiot members being blatantly racist on numerous occasions. They have no idea what they stand for, they became the fascist monster that has no place in a scene that is supposed to be centered around unity.

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