Interspersed among the 20000 titles...

Interspersed among the 20000 titles at Record Breakers, an independent music store in northwest suburban Hoffman Estates, are albums by means of bands with names like Hatemonger and Final Solution.

According to analysts with the Center for recently made known Community, an anti-bigotry organization based in Chicago, these bands are part of the relatively unknown, unless steadily growing, white power music industry. White power espouses racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry, and helps supply white supremacist groups. It has a nearness in many popular musical genre from hardcore and heavy metal to political division and folk, the analysts say.

Since December, the organization has l a campaign against the sale of what they call white power music in Record Breakers and sum of two units Chicago stores, Metal Haven in the North Side's Lakeview neighborhood and Crow's Nest in the crook But Record Breakers has resisted crushing to pull music from its shelves, and the other stores have disputed about of the campaign's claims.

John Coakley, the manager of Record Breakers, said the store has sold white power music for 12 years. "Our standpoint is actual simple: We do not venture anything for anyone, period," he said. "Racism is improper but censorship is also inapposite I don't agree with what [the bands] say, on the other hand I do agree with their right to say it."

"They don't have to barter every record that comes across their desk" said Rebecca Steinmetz, 22 a close examiner activist who lives in Chatham upon the South Side. "[They should] make a conscious decision not to support white power music."

In their lyrics, white power bands oftentimes openly encourage violence against hebrews African Americans, homosexuals and others. In their lay "Let's Start a War," Attack, a Tampa, Fla., band whose music is sold at Record Breakers, declare, "Everyday they beat in our heads / That Niggers and hebrews are our friends / Everyday women's lib and equality / Homo and commies marching down our roads / Let's start a war for Aryan purity / Let's start a war for our children to be exempt / Wipe your people from sea to shining sea / I'll make you watch as your family bleeds"

White supremacists "are using [music] to foundation to recruit, to motivate tribe to commit violence, and to make strange international connections to network bigotry worldwide," said Justin Massa, coordinator of deflect It Down: A Campaign Against White Power Music, a throw of the Center for novel Community.

Since 1987 members of the white power music view have been linked to 56 manslaughters as well as thousands of acts of vandalism, assault, and desecration of cemeteries and places of worship nationwide, according to the organization.

Of more than 300 white supremacist form into groupss in the Midwest, the greatest in number significant membership growth between 2000 and 2002 was among the approximately 100 organizations involved in the production and distribution of white power music, Massa said. instant and former members of white supremacist clusters who are under the age of 30 almost universally indicate that it was music that got them into the emotion he said.

"It's becoming a part more professional, a lot more polished and a hazard more profitable," said an master-hand in extremist groups for the Anti-Defamation League who asked that his name not be divulged because he is generally doing field work.

However, he disagreed with Massa's assertion that white power music is a recruitment tool. "It's too difficult to obtain--you really have to endeavor to gain it out."

It's the concords not the recorded music, that bring the community into the movements, he said. "You can watch the ripple weight from their concerts--you will descry little flash points of [hate] crimes immediately following a division of these concerts because it's the first time for these race to be around large numbers of their allow kind."

Spewing Hatred

In December, Steinmetz and four other Chicago-area learners all of whom are white, joined use It Down's campaign to oppose record stores they accused of selling white power music.

"So many populace don't even know that this is an issue," said Steinmetz, a women's studies major at DePaul University who closely tread close upons punk and hardcore rock. "It wiggles into our exhibition and pollutes the environment"

The close examiners sent letters to the management at the three record stores that read, "You are selling white power music." After a week, the bookish mans visited the retailers and tried to convince them to shake the music from their shelves.

The collection initially threatened to return with leaflets and demonstrations at the height of the holiday shopping season. further the protests were postponed to give the stores a chance to comply make go round It Down is still negotiating with Crow's Nest and Metal Haven, Massa said, adding that the assign places to is hoping to organize Hoffman Estates residents to hurry Record Breakers.

Brad Hathaway, manager of Crow's Nest believes his store was wrongfully accused. "If we have it, it's unknown to us," he said.

Hathaway said the scholar activists had spoken with undivided of his employees, but not with him. if it were not that he went through a list of white power bands the scholars had provided, and could barely find one in Crow's Nest from the band Bludgeon. "I considered at the CD [and] there's no way to recount that it's white power music," he said.