Welcome to Middle America. My name is Wendell Bauer.

Just a quick note at the top, this episode deals with racism, violence, and self-harm and may not be suitable for some audiences.

Jared Grabb “Prison Bars (Middle America Version)”

11A

The gas finally put an end to the day inside the downtown branch of Peoria’s public library. This was after the stink bombs hadn’t cleared the room. Everyone was choking and gagging and there was blood. Peoria Police Department had an ambulance roll in to the corner, but everyone declined care. There was a lack of trust on all sides.

This had all started because of a group of white separatists called World Church of the Creator. Led by an East Peorian in his late twenties by the name of Matthew Hale, the quote, unquote church had been hosting what they booked as history-focused events. What these events truly were was an abuse of the freedom of speech to spread a doctrine of hate in public institutions such as libraries.

But World Church of the Creator and these events hadn’t been Hale’s first attempts to rally white people to his racist cause.

Born in 1971 as the son of an East Peoria police officer, Matthew F. Hale had formed a Nazi-themed group in his school by age 12. Later, as a student at Bradley University, Hale created a series of racist organizations including a “White Student Union,” the American White Supremacist Party, an unrecognized chapter of David Duke’s National Association for the Advancement of White People, and the National Socialist White Americans’ Party. None of these organizations managed to gain local membership, so Hale abandoned each of them in time.

Around 1992, while Hale was experimenting with his own organizations, he became acquainted with Ben Klassen’s Church of the Creator. Among other beliefs, the Church of the Creator believed that a racial holy war was necessary to free the world of Jewish and non-white peoples.

When Klassen committed suicide a year later, it created a vacuum of leadership in the religious organization.

Two years after that, Matt Hale stepped up to fill the vacancy, or to co-opt the organization, by declaring himself leader of the New Church of the Creator, later renamed the World Church of the Creator. By taking on this organization, Hale switched from a political focus to a religious focus, and in doing so, he was able to gain traction that he had previously found unattainable.[1]

Hale’s next plan was to acquire a law degree at Southern Illinois University. While he graduated in the Spring of 1998, the Illinois Bar decided to deny Hale’s application for a license to practice law on the basis of his character and fitness.[2]

Two days after losing the appeal on this matter during the summer of 1999, a 21-year-old follower of Hale’s committed a spree of drive-by shootings across Illinois and Indiana in attempt to spark a racial holy war and become a martyr in the eyes of their faith. Altogether, one black school coach was murdered, one Korean student was murdered, nine orthodox Jews were injured, and nine other victims were narrow misses. When confronted by law enforcement, Hale’s follower committed suicide by crashing his car while shooting himself twice in the head and once in the heart.[3]

In the aftermath, Hale used his suit and tie demeanor to acquire press with the “Today” show, Newsweek, Time, CNN’s Burden of Proof, and in newspapers across the country.[4]

Scouts Honor “Mother Nature”
11B

By the 2000s, Hale had begun his speaking events around the country, including near his own hometown at Peoria Public Library on March 24, 2001.[5]Police presence was minimal with two plain clothes officers attending and a handful of uniformed officers posted outside.

Peoria Police Department should have known better than to be so underrepresented. Not only had the 1999 shooting spree been inspired by Hale’s teachings, but World Church of the Creator had already had a library event display serious warning signs in Wallingford, Connecticut only two weeks prior to the Peoria appearance.

Matt Hale and his followers had decided to hold the earlier event at Wallingford Town Library after the mayor of Wallingford had refused to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day for public employees. The state of Connecticut had then stepped in to force the city to distribute holiday pay to the employees on this day, but the legal battle showed signs of fertile ground to grow the white power movement.

However, many residents of Wallingford disagreed. A crowd of anti-racist activists attended, including about a dozen members of a nearby black church congregation. Snowballs and slurs were thrown. The anti-racists then proceeded to yell for Matt Hale to “Go home!” for the entire allotted two hours of the speaking engagement.

While there was only one arrest made at the event, there were more police involved than in Peoria two weeks later. The officers in Wallingford had for instance managed to keep the two sides largely separated. They also managed to search for weapons on all attendees, finding an assortment of knives and a .357 Magnum handgun.

After the event, the parking lot was forcefully cleared by a line of police officers firing pepper spray and swinging batons.

So, why didn’t Peoria heed this warning that even written about in the New York Times?[6]

Jared Grabb “Cold, Hard World”

11C

At age 20, I gravitated to a small student organization at Bradley University called the Peace Network. The club had recently been revived by some political punks and a sociology professor. I liked the idea of being an activist for peace, so I attended a couple meetings held off campus at a member’s house.

While I felt right at home with the array of writers, artists, and musicians involved, I quickly noted that my belief systems differed from those of the anarchist-leaning majority of the organization. There was a lot of anger in the room, and I noticed more urgency toward confrontation than resolution. The cognitive noise of a confrontational peace network left me unsettled and confused. I was a soft-spoken kid, so I quietly bowed out of further involvement with the group.

I did continue to cross paths with members of the Bradley Peace Network at local punk shows, but I failed to follow up with the club’s activities. It wasn’t until many years later than I came across a video online featuring some of the members.

As it turns out, on March 24, 2001, Anti-Racist Action activists drove down from Chicago and set up camp at One World Coffee. Here, they began recruiting Bradley University students to join them in protesting a speaking event being held that day by World Church of the Creator at the downtown branch of Peoria Public Library. Members of Bradley Peace Network had already heard about the event the day before and were also planning to protest.

The Peace Network members had previously tried to disrupt another small town meeting, but this one was on Hale’s home turf and the numbers were expected to be greater.

The compiled protestors carpooled down Main Street the twenty-some blocks to the library. They arrived at the library parking ahead of the event to post up. Unfortunately, the protestors arrived at the same time as Matt Hale and his supporters were arriving to the same parking lot.

Fights immediately broke out, with skinheads throwing punches at anti-racist activists as soon as they exited their cars. Other protestors rushed to pull and push the racists away.

As the protestors got their bearings, they took stock of what was to be seen of World Church of the Creator. What they found was a thin, young man in a suit at the center of a pack of rough-looking thugs. Matt Hale was the “civilized” face of a brutal and hateful movement. Hale was making the attempt to stand above the fray so that he could spout off his destructive ideology, and to some extent, the sleight of hand was working.[7]

The anti-racist activists failed to prevent Hale from entering the building. They did, however, manage to tear away the two World Church of the Creator flags that were intended for display. Hale’s thugs then used the remaining flag poles as weapons to try to keep the protestors from entering the building and disrupting their message. Fighting ensued. The police, who had been waiting for crowds inside the building caught on to what was happening at this point and tried to break things up.

A trio of arrests were made and then the group filtered into the library’s meeting room. Before the meeting could start, two men got into an argument with punches eventually being thrown after a chair was kicked. More bystanders joined into the fight, and the plain clothes officers ran to get backup from outside the building. Uniformed officers outside were breaking up scuffles of their own, and by the time officers returned inside, irritating gas was pouring out from the room.

While the police had been outside, the fighting inside had rapidly escalated. Protestors seeking to shut down the event grabbed ahold of metal folding chairs stored at the sides of the room and began tossing them at Hale’s followers. The room erupted in metal clanging and then gas filling the air. One racist caught a thrown chair and proceeded to use it as a bat, smashing it into and bloodying the face of a protestor.[8]

As the gas rapidly permeated the building, protestors and World Church of the Creator members alike poured back outside. Here police, who now had some backup, forced the angry attendees into two separate camps.

The two groups then chanted and yelled through bull horns at each other while standing in the library parking lot.

Finally, after 45 minutes Hale and his followers dispersed, leaving the protestors to claim victory for the day: victory at the cost of 3 arrests, bloodied bodies, hacking, and coughing.

Scouts Honor “Canvas”

11D

Following the Peoria Public Library engagement, Matt Hale went on to speak at many more public libraries around the country.

He returned to Wallingford, Connecticut one month after Peoria to speak at Community Lake Pavilion. The crowds were larger this time, with concrete barricades to divide the protestors from Hammerskins, Ku Klux Klan members, and World Church of the Creator members. Packs of police held the peace while a helicopter hovered overhead. Even if Peoria had not learned from Wallingford’s first speaking engagement with Matt Hale, Wallingford had.[9]

In August of 2001, Hale hosted a speaking engagement at Schaumburg Township District Library northwest of Chicago. Schaumburg was one of the libraries that only capitulated to hosting World Church of the Creator after a lawsuit.[10]The city spent $17,000 to keep the peace with at least 250 armed officers on site.[11]

September found Hale speaking at Champaign Public Library in Champaign, IL two days before 9/11. More than one hundred police officers were on site.[12]

One of the more disgusting and outrageous appearances was on January 12, 2002. World Church of the Creator had reserved a room at Martin Memorial Library in York, Pennsylvania.[13]

York had been the site of horrible race riots in the summer of 1969 with white and black gangs shooting and brawling in the streets. Entire city blocks had been burned, neighborhoods were barricaded, and the National Guard was called in. A high profile murder from the riots involved a black woman named Lillie Belle Allen whose car stalled in a white neighborhood and was then shot with over a hundred bullets from multiple shooters. In the Spring of 2001, ten white men including York’s mayor were finally charged in the 1969 murder.[14]

Matt Hale’s World Church of the Creator appearance in January was intentionally booked to inflame racial tensions that had resurfaced with the trials. The city of York responded with hundreds of police and a state helicopter to keep the peace during the library speaking event.

National Alliance and Hammerskins members came out to show support for Hale while anti-racists positioned themselves in opposition. Two hours before the event protestors broke out a window of a truck driven by a National Alliance member and then proceeded to pepper spray the man. During the speech, a clash occurred on the blocks between the visitor parking and the library building. Horse-mounted officers rode in to break up the fights, but when the crowd let out after the speaking event, fights again occurred in the parking lot. During these fights, another window was broken and a white supremacist drove his truck through a crowd of protestors. At the end of the day, 25 people were arrested and eight were sent to the hospital.[15]

World Church of the Creator followed these events with more appearances in Chicago, Illinois; Yorktown, Virginia; Wakefield, Massachusetts; and Baltimore, Maryland.[16]

Scouts Honor “Devils’ Serenade”

11E

When I recently rewatched the video of the protest of Matt Hale’s speech at Peoria Public Library, I was struck by how much it reminded me of the last year of life in America. I attended several marches in support of Black Lives Matter. I wore all black and had a mask on. I laid down on hot pavement for the 8 minutes and 46 seconds that it took to kill George Floyd. I truly believe that I recognized at least one face from Matt Hale’s supporters eyeing us from across the street at a protest in Pekin, Illinois.

Seeing America’s struggle with racism and classism over the last decade has brought me to reassess my cold shoulder to the Peace Network back in college. What the activists were doing back then was difficult and bound to be imperfect, but they were fighting for a better world while I looked the other way.

I didn’t hear about Matt Hale’s speaking event when it happened. I don’t know that I would have gone if I had known. But, looking back, I see what the protestors did as important. When people are spreading hate for their fellow man, others should make spreading that hate more difficult. The voices of those spreading love needs to be louder.

Ironically enough, it was a lawsuit from a peaceful, multi-racial Christian church based out of Oregon state that brought about the beginning of the end for Matt Hale.

Ashland, Oregon’s TE-TA-MA Foundation was also known as Church of the Creator[17]but unlike Hale’s organization, they had actually trademarked the phrase “Church of the Creator” back in 1987. After an appeal, United States District Judge Joan Lefkow ruled on July 25, 2002 that Matt Hale’s World Church of the Creator had infringed upon TE-TA-MA’s trademark, forcing Hale’s organization to become the Creativity Movement.

In response, the far-right white-supremacist website Stormfront posted Judge Lefkow’s home address along with family photos and death threats.

On January 8, 2003, Matt Hale was arrested for plotting to have Judge Lefkow murdered.[18]Hale’s chief of security since 2000, Tony Evola, had actually been an undercover FBI informant keeping tabs on the group, submitting audio recordings from behind the scenes to the United States government.[19]

As Hale’s “conspiracy for murder” trial continued on, death threats rolled in for both Judge Lefkow and Evola. Despite this, Lefkow ruled in April of 2003 that World Church of the Creator pay $1000 per day until all mentions of their name on the internet and printed materials were removed.

Then on April 6, 2005, Matthew F. Hale was found guilty of conspiracy for murder, sentenced to a 40-year prison term, and sent to Florence, Colorado’s maximum-security prison.[20]

Vin Chilz “No Cake (Radio Version)”

11OUT

Thank you for listening to Middle America.

The featured music for this episode was “No Cake” by Vin Chilz. Everything else was created by Jared Grabb with help from Kent Wagenschutz, Bob O’Neil, Thomas Satterfield, Dustin Addis, Jeremiah Lambert, Nick Schone, Chris Mackey, Brent Levitt, Nate Kappes, Mark Perez, Pat Nordyke, and Sean Dileonardi. You can see a full listing of the music used in today’s episode on the episode’s webpage at midamericapod.buzzsprout.com.

Editing assistance was provided by Becca Taylor and Grant Reynolds.

If you enjoy the show and would like to support it, 5-star reviews on Apple Podcasts and subscriptions over at patreon.com/midamericapod are the best ways to do that. We also have transcripts at the Patreon.

I hope that you are all out there making love louder than hate.

Until next time…