The Hells Angels Northwest Indiana Region Motorcycle Club was in charge of bell-ringing and kettle collections for the Salvation Army outside the Valparaiso, Indiana, Walmart the Friday after Thanksgiving. This means that several members of the group collected donations at the entrance of a popular store for a few hours. Seems innocuous, right? Alas, the people collecting donations on behalf of the Salvation Army were apparently white supremacists.
A picture of members wearing patches that read WAR (White Aryan Resistance) and Aryan went viral on social media. One man wore a Confederate flag patch. According to the Daily Haze, the man wearing the WAR patch has been identified as Jeremy Robinson, a “former” skinhead.
After customers complained, Walmart store managers asked the group to leave.
“As soon as this was brought to our attention we asked the Salvation Army Bell Ringers to leave. We made the Salvation Army aware and they apologized,” a Walmart representative explained. “The Salvation Army is responsible for screening its volunteers stationed outside our stores. We’ve had a long history of supporting the Salvation Army and regret this isolated incident. We will direct further questions to the Salvation Army.”
After pictures went viral on Facebook, some posts with as many as 10,000 shares, a representative of the Hells Angels Northwest Indiana Region Motorcycle Club gave a comment to Northwest Indiana Times, including the following:
Sometimes freedom means you see and hear things you may not like. We accept that. The focus of today has nothing to do with freedom though. It has to do with charity and sacrificing for you[r] community.
The representative also clarified that members may wear "heritage-based" patches. Examples of “heritage-based” patches? Latinx members wearing "LATINO," Japanese members wearing "BUSHIDO," and white people wearing "ARYAN." One of these things is quite obviously not like the others, of course.
Outside of this incident, the Salvation Army has a long history of being unfriendly to minorities and marginalized peoples. Most recently, a leaked internal document advised employees not to bring up their political views on same-sex marriage or abortion. It has reportedly also assigned shelter spaces based on biological sex and not gender identity; asked same-sex couples to break up in order to receive services; and has been blamed for a trans woman freezing to death after she was reportedly denied shelter housing.
This time, the Salvation Army has technically apologized.
“Our commitment to nondiscrimination includes a dress code for bell ringers, requiring that they wear red Salvation Army aprons, and making it clear that no ‘symbol, marking, or lettering that is viewed as discrimination’ may be worn,” Lieutenant Christopher Nicolai of the Salvation Army of Porter County said in a statement.
“Clearly, the bell ringers in question did not comply with this dress code,” Nicolai said. While an apology is something better than people have gotten in the past, it’s maddening that the subject was framed as a dress code violation and not, well, a demonstration of white supremacy.
According to Nicolai, members of this Hells Angels branch will “not be allowed to volunteer in the future.” While this is, again, something, it’s still not an explicit refusal of white supremacy, which means it still isn’t enough.