Word: utah
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This was a vegan act and not Straight Edge, says Josh, who has completed probation. Asked why Utah Straight Edgers are prone to violence, he says, "Maybe because this isn't the most exciting town, and a lot of kids need a cause...
...unclear how Salt Lake City, of all places, wound up with the most crime-happy crew within Straight Edge, an unstructured international movement of young people, many of them pacifists who don't get high or sleep around and would never dream of calling themselves gang members. Even Utah's nonviolent Straight Edgers, who constitute the vast majority of the state's several hundred members, are clueless as to what went wrong here...
Maybe it's just that in Utah, joining a social order devoted to clean living doesn't exactly distinguish you. Firebombing meat and leather outlets, using pipe bombs on a fur-trading office and setting minks free, however--as Straight Edgers and closely linked animal liberationists have been accused of doing over the past several years--tend to drop you from consideration for membership in the church choir...
Last year, outside a pizza joint, University of Utah student Mike Orthner says, "I asked a stranger for a light, and he said, 'We don't believe in that.'" Next thing Orthner knew, he was clocked with brass knuckles, and "some wacko" was waving a sword. Assault charges against Randy, who claimed he "didn't hit anybody with it," were dropped for lack of evidence...
...violent fringe that interests University of Utah assistant professor Theresa Martinez. It's the nonviolent majority. "Thank God someone is coming out and saying we need structure," says Martinez, whose Straight Edge e-mail pals tell of alienation and disillusionment. Ryan Spellecy, 26, a teaching assistant at the University of Utah and a longtime Straight Edger and pacifist, says the organization constitutes a rebellion against a culture that glorifies heroin chic and the idea that you have to smoke or wear Guess? jeans to be cool...