Rose City Antifascists Expose Nazi Neighbors and Coworkers During Day of Action, Call for Community Responses

Published on Aug 14, 2012

Originally posted on 8/14/2012

​On July 31, as promised , Rose City Antifascists delivered a message to white supremacist organizers our state. We tracked down leading Volksfront International activists Casey and Alaina Joy Banyas of Albany, OR at their residence, and also located Volksfront leader Nick Cheshire at his workplace, Morgan Distributing in Portland. In addition, our organization also asked for information from those living near the last known address for Nick Cheshire and wife, Leah Cheshire (née Crandall), in Oregon City.  We mailed flyers to about 250 to the neighbors of these neo-Nazi thugs, and also contacted Nick Cheshire’s employers at Morgan Distributing about the presence of a neo-Nazi activist within their company.


Why Volksfront is a Threat to Communities and Workplaces

While allowing time for the landlord of the Banyas couple in Albany as well as Nicholas Cheshire’s employer in Portland to respond following the information revealed on the Day of Action, one of the worst cases of neo-Nazi terrorism in recent years took place in America. In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Hammerskin Nation member Wage Michael Page murdered six people in his attack on the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin there. While Page himself was not a member of Volksfront International, the organization we concentrated on in our Day of Action, Rose City Antifascists and the media at large have compiled documentation that several links exist between the murderer Page and Volksfront.

Volksfront also has its own extensive history of violence, including the targeting of synagogues, numerous racist street assaults, and even the murder of a homeless man, Mark Randall Townsend, in Tacoma, Washington by the leader of a probationary Volksfront unit and his associates there during 2003. Volksfront furthermore have raised funds for one of the 1988 murderers of Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw in Portland, while involving another of these killers in Volksfront circles once he was released from prison. Volksfront has also raised funds for and supported members of The Order/Silent Brotherhood, a racist terrorist group responsible for bank robberies and murder in the 1980s. Given their extensive history of violence plus ties to racist murderers and terrorists, we believe that the presence of Volksfront members in workplaces and communities poses a clear danger to people of color, Jewish people, sexual minorities, and other potential targets for Nazi violence within these settings.