ABATE-True Believers

ABATE The Alliance of Bikers Aimed Towards Education

True Believers

by Edward C. Truax

"Now we all get to sit around and watch this begin, but I bet there won’t be many left to see it really end. Cause the fire in the heart ain’t like the fire in the street. And this thing could all begin, on any street from any town; if some clown begins to fight for something he just feels ain’t right. And if a million more agree there ain’t no great society..."

—Frank Zappa

Those words are borrowed from Zappa’s Freak-Out album, which was released in 1966. Few could have said it better. Frank Zappa, if you’re listening or reading, tell Jerry that I caught a glimpse of his beard in a cirrus cloud the other day. And you know what, he was right, behind every silver lining there’s a touch of gray. We will survive, we will get by.

At dawn their motorcycles roared to life. Kick started and converging through every pass which led to the valley holding the people’s house of government. Horsepower harnessed under names like Harley Davidson and Indian. Badges as American as the flags which the tribal gathering displayed...Old Glory, POW/MIA, and the occasional Confederate banners from a time that is no more. Motorbikes, women, and their men, dressed in uniforms like some nomadic army... leather jackets, faded denim, boots and helmets. Hopped, chopped, customized, chromed, and laden with full-dress saddle bags, the formations that swarmed the Capitol Complex were not to be confused with their Honda, Kawasaki, or Yamaha-riding counterparts, who cruise the fast lanes like mutant ninja bikers in coordinated body leathers, painted in pastel shades of neon colors.

Nope, this group was different, a bit more hip and less vogue. It seemed as if, through the contrast they made with the pinstriped onlookers, that a siege had been laid against a Czarist government whose laws had infringed upon their liberty and pursuit of happiness. Not a "bubba get your gun" kind of thing, more like an old Ronald Reagan rally or something. You know a lot of flags.

It was the annual gathering of A.B.A.T.E. (Alliance of Bikers Aimed Towards Education), a reunion of friends, drawn from winter’s hibernation by the beckoning of the Spring Equinox. They came to damn laws, which they feel are restrictive and unfair. Yet the barricades erected around the capitol building that day were not to keep the demonstrating mob away from the legislators, rather they were to provide room to let them through.

That’s right...democracy in motion. Brothers and sisters you’d better believe it. Because once upon a time in a place called Oklahoma City, some sickie thought otherwise, so he made his own personal pilgrimage to a government center in a Ryder rental truck. Unlike the folks just mentioned, he had tired of the slow and deliberate speed of government and decided that he would veto it and the lives of people just like the ones who read this paper. No, Timothy McVeigh, the government did not, as you suspect, shoot a computer chip into your ass to read your mind (interesting accusation considering the source). No, Timothy, you did not start a revolution which toppled our government, you only toppled a building*. Now, God would like to talk to you about those people you killed. Let’s not keep our creator waiting for Timothy.

Is it the memories of the rubble and ruined lives in Oklahoma City that gives the cynic in us reason to appreciate the faith demonstrated by those who gathered to protest the helmet laws? I mean, let’s face it, what does A.B.A.T.E. have of repealing the helmet laws? What makes a group of bikers doing a "Billy Jack goes to Washington" routine so great? I’m not sure. But as long as those people still believe, then they can indict everyone and everything except our faith. That’ll be important to remember as the latest money-gate scandals unfold in Washington.

There are surely other examples of keeping the faith in America, but few as striking. But still, I almost missed being reminded, when I slowed my car at the traffic control point run by one of the citizens in Hells Angels get-up that day. I was in a rush and angry at the delay. Which in turn reminds me, the next time I pop in the video tape Gimme Shelter, I’ll keep in mind the image of those same bikers from A.B.A.T.E. dropping off tons of Christmas gifts for kids each year.
Gimme Shelter is a documentary about a time in 1969, at the Altamonte Speedway in California. A free rock concert was given and the real Hells Angels were asked to police the unexpected 100,000-plus fans that showed up for the happening. Well, somebody started kicking the bikes and then somebody got hurt...bad. I was thinking about that as I covered the event in Harrisburg with my camera. I was backing up to widen my field of view when I bumped something, thank God, it didn’t fall...like a first domino. Silly me to have been frightened by the image of a thousand bikes tumbling over one after the other, all because, I just had to get that shot. Foolish of me to have let my cell phone drop out of my pocket and onto the street while I was laying down to get the right angle. Lucky me, that as I stood up and started to leave three or four bikers yelled out from different directions, "Yo Dude, you dropped your phone!"

So no, maybe new compromises in helmet laws will not be passed. The diseases that A.B.A.T.E. raises funds for may not be cured and the big lobbyist firms may always seem to win. But rolling back to Frank Zappa’s social commentary, I think that it is safe to say that a million or more do agree that this is a great society. Yeah, we will survive, we will get by.

* As this issue went to press, a jury had not yet returned a verdict for the crimes Timothy McVeigh stands trial for.