On July 4, 1998, best friends Lin "Spit" Newborn, 24, a Black skinhead, and Daniel Shersty, 20, a white US air force serviceman, both members of Anti-Racist Action (ARA), were murdered in the desert outside Las Vegas by a gang of white supremacists.
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Newborn's friend, PJ Pérez, described him as "a madman. A poet. A motherfucker whose good side you'd want to stay on. He was a father, a son, a passionate and dedicated fighter for what's right." Shersty was born to a working class family in Florida, and joined the Air Force in order to fund college which his parents could not afford.
The pair, both amateur musicians, met in Las Vegas, became fast friends and helped co-found the local chapter of militant anti-fascist group ARA. ARA took the fight to neo-Nazis who were recruiting in the local skinhead scene and attacking Black and Latino schoolchildren as well as white "race traitors".
One neo-Nazi was swiftly jailed for the murders, and others were convicted in 2012. ARA continued their fight against white supremacists across the US, and helped disrupt many of their activities, and successfully drove them from many local youth subcultures.