“Buddy, when I’m older, will I be strong like you?”
“Yes,” I’d say. “You’ll be stronger.”
“Will you teach me, Buddy? I want to be tough and beat people up, too.”
“If that’s what you want,” I’d laugh.
He’d smile and I’d throw my arms around him, pretending to wrestle.
I never lost interest in him, but as I got increasingly involved in the white supremacist movement and then got married and had kids of my own, I had less and less time to share with him.
Sometimes this made him sad, and he’d fight back tears welling up in his eyes when I said, “Nah, can’t take you with me this time, Buddy. Next time.”
Next time seldom came. He knew it’d be that way, but still, he’d smile and say, “Okay. Promise?”
I’d promise.
But we both knew it was unlikely.
When he got older, he stopped pretending “sometime” would come. He became angry with me. Resentful I’d left him behind. Betrayed. Deserted. His tone of voice had not been one of understanding when he was fourteen years old and confided in my mom that I was more a distant relative than a brother. He wanted his brother back. His Buddy. Though he’d never ask or let me know that himself.
But whether I was there for him or not, he was still influenced by me, his big brother. Like younger brothers are.
So he started misbehaving about the time he reached high school. Hanging out with negative influences. Gangs. Earned himself a reputation like I had. Although his was different. I was known as defiant, tough, someone who wouldn’t back down. A leader.
Buddy, on the other hand, was a follower. You could count on him to go along with whatever was going down. And he’d take the fall if someone needed to. He’d seen me go through petty arrests and trials. It was no big deal. Life went on. Consequences could be dealt with.
Like me, he drank. But more than I had and not to be sociable, but to get drunk. Unlike me during my skinhead days, he got into drugs. He spent time in jail for marijuana and illegal firearm possession. It was a small amount of weed, insignificant, but the gun was enough to get him locked up. The judge sentenced him to do community service since it was his first offense, but Buddy wanted to prove he was tougher than me and demanded jail time instead. I didn’t understand why he’d ask for such a stupid thing. I’d done my share of community service. It wasn’t hard. Jail was. I worried about his choices, wrote to him and visited when he was locked up. Tried to reconnect, to find out what was going on with him. How I could help. I knew he still maintained friendships with people who were in street gangs like the Latin Kings. That worried me. He assured me he wasn’t in a gang, but I knew hanging out with gang members—whether he was officially a member or not—would lead to more trouble. Violence. Danger.
Despite his gang friends, jail time, misbehavior, Buddy was a good kid. Sweet through and through. A warm heart. He was like a big teddy bear. No longer the tubby little boy I used to wrestle with as a child, he was now thick, solid. A man. You could depend on Alex for a smile and a good time.
When I moved back into my parents’ basement after the divorce, I became more concerned about his choices. I tried talking to my parents, telling them where it would all lead. But they dismissed me, not having the courage to stand up to him, the same way they had feared me.
I had arguments with my brother about the path he was on, lecturing him even though I knew there was no way my words would penetrate. My efforts to point out that nothing good would come of the lifestyle he was leading only made him more angry. “Who the fuck are you to talk?” he’d say. “You aren’t my parent. It’s not like you even remembered I existed until now. You can’t come back after all this time and expect to jump right in and be my brother again.”
“Buddy, these guys you’re hanging with are bad news,” I warned.
“My name is Alex. I ain’t your buddy,” he’d say.
Other times he’d throw it in my face that I’d been way worse than him at his age and laugh it off. The laugh was bitter, leaving a chill around my heart.
“And look at what happened to me,” I’d say. “My wife left me. I nearly lost my kids. Everything that mattered to me disappeared. And I wasted seven years of my life throwing it all away. You want that to happen to you? Open your eyes. Please, Buddy, see what’s ahead.”
“Fuck you.”
After a while, I gave up trying to reach my brother. It only made him act out more. Besides, who needed the aggravation? Life got in the way. Work. Classes to attend. Two little boys to raise.
One night he was out driving around in a shady neighborhood with a couple of his gangbanger friends trying to buy a dime bag of weed. None of them were aware that a month before, blood had been shed between two rival gangs in that area—one black and one Latino. Guns were fired in a drive-by. That sort of bad business.
When the black kids on the corner saw the unfamiliar van my brother was in cruise down their block that dark night—driven by a young Mexican male—they thought the vehicle was full of rival gang members rolling up on them.
They opened fire.
The driver, my brother’s friend Flaco, was shot in the spine.
Another bullet grazed my brother across the abdomen. A second one hit his groin, cutting through his femoral artery.
The other two passengers with them ducked in the back seat of the vehicle, escaping injury.
Seriously wounded himself, Flaco managed to drive to the hospital. The two in the back seat jumped out of the car and fled.
Flaco didn’t make it in time. My brother—my Buddy—was pronounced dead on arrival. He was a month shy of his twenty-first birthday.
What followed—the arrest, arraignment, trial, and the ultimate acquittal of the person who allegedly murdered my brother—is perhaps another book. One I’m not yet ready to write. The guilt over the actions of my own misspent youth that may have ultimately led my brother to his end is still too overwhelming.
I felt then, as I do now, that I am to blame. I wish I’d been more involved in his life, more insistent he stay away from gangs and violence. More of a role model. He’d been following in my footsteps.
But more than that, I felt that somehow his death was retribution for all the violence and hate I’d projected into the world, for the pain I’d inflicted on others because of the color of their skin, and my misplaced idea that by abusing them, I could be somebody.
My brother was killed because he was in a car with people whose skin color threatened a bunch of scared, ignorant kids with a different skin color.
My brother’s death was on me.
At the funeral, old racist friends of mine, my brother’s friends, even family members who’d never been involved in any racist or gang activity in their lives, came up to me to see if I was going to seek revenge. They urged me to. Hungered for it, even. The score had to be settled.
To say I was dumbfounded is an understatement. Full of guilt and regret, the last thing I wanted was to keep the cycle of violence going.
It had to stop with me—with Buddy. I would never again be part of that world of hate. Never again live in a world where the color of someone’s skin, the object of someone’s love or faith, would inspire violence or judgment.
My brother had paid for my sins.
I would spend the rest of my life atoning for them.
Christian with Britton, Devin, and Brandon, Grand Canyon
EPILOGUE
How has my atonement gone?
After seven years with IBM, I returned to the music business and the world of entrepreneurship. I served as general manager and executive producer of JBTV, an iconic, Emmy Award-winning music television program that helps expose the world to talented emerging artists. I am a writer, teacher, record label owner and artist manager, representing bands based on the strength of their music and character.
While I was earning my bachelor’s degree from DePaul University, I ha
d an extraordinary opportunity to work as a rapporteur for the United Nations’ 57th Annual Conference on Civil Society and the Millennium Development Goals. As a result, I was able to produce an informational short film, hoping to inspire people to come together in peace to work on serious global issues like poverty and hunger, AIDS, and to promote gender equality in developing countries. As my final assignment before graduation, I wrote a twenty-page thesis detailing my involvement in the white power movement and my ultimate de-radicalization from violent, far-right wing extremism. Ten years later, that project became this book.
In 2008, I was invited to write an opinion editorial for the popular music magazine, Alternative Press, where I denounced my seven years of hate. The publication of that piece was pivotal for me, as it was the first time I’d openly spoken about my past in a large public forum. I urged readers to heed my story and find ways to make the world a better place. A world that promoted inclusion and equality for everyone.
For years after, I volunteered as a coach for my sons’ soccer teams and encouraged all the young athletes I mentored to strive for integrity in what they do, both on and off the field.
On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in 2010, I co-founded Life After Hate, a nonprofit organization striving to be an agent of change for those struggling with hate. By sharing our unique perspectives on empathy and compassion, and by promoting basic human goodness, we aspire to be a shining beacon of hope for those who feel mired by racism and prejudice. Leadership within the organization is made up entirely of reformed white power skinheads—both male and female. By and large, some of the kindest and most courageous people I know.
And I have written this book, acknowledging the dark legacy I’ve left behind, knowing that toxic weeds may still be sprouting from the infected seeds that I planted all those years ago. Knowing that there may be retaliation both from the racists I helped create who are still strong in my country, and from law enforcement, who still have me in their files; hoping that it will keep others—even one person—from making the same selfish and uneducated decisions I made, from going down that dark, evil path of racism and supporting the ignorant belief that anyone is better than anyone else solely based on their race, gender, religion, or sexual preference.
While regrets over my past still haunt me, I have made meaningful changes in my life and can now look in the mirror without seeing a monster staring back at me. I graduated from DePaul and married Britton, the most understanding and loving woman on the planet, someone who has never known a racist moment. Every day, I thank the gods of fate and destiny for letting my path join with a woman of her strength, character, intelligence, empathy, and loving nature.
I am the father to my sons I wished my own father had been to me. I have attended every one of their soccer and football games, their school events, and parent-teacher conferences. Now that they are young adults, wiser than I ever was at their age, I still hold them accountable for their actions, unafraid to talk to them when they do something I know could harm them or someone else. And it was my role as a father that I credit the most for my transformation. It made me constantly question the path I was on, as it was certain to separate me from my sons by either death or imprisonment, as it did for many people I’ve known.
Once I took those first steps away from the movement and towards my children, each successive stride became easier. I took great pleasure in experiencing new things with my sons and not being concerned with the unjust barriers of race and prejudice that might have clouded those special moments. It evoked a tremendous amount of emotion in me to think about anyone hurting my children—or anyone else’s for that matter—because they might be “different.” And I paid close attention to those powerful feelings, envisioning the pain other parents of sons and daughters who I’d hurt along my journey might have felt.
In 1996, during what were some of the earliest and darkest days of my depression and fear after I’d left the movement, I turned to recreational drugs and alcohol to relieve my pain. But they only made my feelings of worth feel even thinner. Knowing that my drug use and sudden detachment from society after I closed my store had begun to destroy me, I grabbed a lifeline and decided to revert to the only thing I knew how to do well—perform music. I put together a little-known punk band called Random55 to try to keep my mind from shutting down. This time the lyrics were about heartbreak and loss and not about prejudice and hatred. I was fortunate enough during my time with Random55 to meet one of the heroes of my youth—the venerated Joan Jett.
An acquaintance I’d met through my record store the following year was a concert promoter at a club across town. She called me one afternoon when she had a last-minute cancellation from one of the bands she’d booked to open for a major headliner that night. She asked if we could help her out and fill the slot. We were thrilled. Before I could ask who the band was that we’d be supporting, she hung up. We packed our gear and booked it to the club. When we arrived at the venue, we were ecstatic to learn that Random55 would be the opening act for Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.
Shrouded by the excitement of the night, inside I was battling a solitary depression that all but incapacitated me and constantly made me question whether my life was worth living. Shortly before the doors of the venue opened that evening, as Joan wrapped up her sound check before heading to her dressing room, she noticed me sitting quietly backstage. She must have sensed that I was hurting, because she approached and put her arm around me.
“I saw your sound check earlier,” she said. “You guys are good.”
“Thank you,” I replied. Suddenly becoming starstruck snapped me out of my funk.
“I think you have a bright future. What’s your name?”
“Christian. My name’s Christian Picciolini.” Though I think she probably meant my band’s name.
“Christian, I’m Joan.” I laughed as we shook hands. Of course I knew her name. She put her arm around my shoulder again. “Get up there and warm up the crowd for me.” I told her I would.
Backstage later that night, after her second encore, I mentioned to Joan that I had actually met her briefly once before when I was thirteen years old. It had been while she was filming the movie Light of Day with Michael J. Fox, which they’d partly shot in Blue Island.
“Thanks for making me feel old,” she joked. “Why were you so sad earlier? You guys played a great show to a sold-out crowd. You should be happy.”
I told her that I’d been going through a rough patch. “You know, relationships, work, that kind of stuff,” I replied.
“Well, cheer up. Things will only get better if you let them.” Her voice was kind and caring. “We’ve actually got a tour coming up in the winter. If you guys aren’t busy, I’d love it if you and the band would come along and be our support act for a few of those shows.”
To this day, those gigs remain some of the highlights of my life. And throughout that tour, Joan continued to shower me with empathy.
Her words and actions helped save my life. During those dark and confusing days, when I often contemplated whether it was worth living, it was her kindness that lifted my spirits when I needed it most.
All human beings have a need for compassion and possess the ability to give it. To empathize—or to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and allow yourself to understand the pain they feel are feeling, to humanize them—is the most important thing we can do. We all share the ability to laugh, to enjoy life, and to love. To process pain and loss and fear. Arbitrary things like skin color or sexuality have no effect on these and other wonderful human abilities.
I am far from perfect. I know I never will be perfect. I will stumble, I may even fall, but for the rest of my life, I will continue to pick myself up and strive to honor all people and try to be of service to that which will benefit mankind.
I am my father. My mother. My grandparents. My brother. My wife. My children. My friends. I am part of everyone I have ever met and they are part of me.
I urge you to recognize that and to honor it in your actions and decisions.
Be part of the good in the world. Part of the ever-growing community that seeks fairness, justice, and compassion. We all have the ability to make good happen if we just try.
You are me, and I am you.
Peace to us all.
Random street art, Chicago (artist unknown)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the extraordinary support of a number of people, beginning with my incredible wife Britton, the rock on which my new life has been built. Although I began to take my first few steps toward my transformation before I met you, Britton, you’ve been the support I have needed to continue to move forward every day. Your wisdom and rational mind are a much-appreciated ballast to my frequent risk-taking and impulsive decisions. You are my partner and best friend, and I am forever grateful for being a part of your life. I can only hope my endless love for you offers some consolation for my numerous preoccupations.
I can’t say enough to acknowledge my sons, Devin and Brandon, the catalysts for the awakening from my slumber. Words cannot express how immensely proud I am of these fine young men. May they remember that all people are imperfect, and that through our imperfections we become part of the same family—the human race. If I could impart any wisdom to them it is this: Follow your dreams and let your words and actions reflect your true heart. Make sure everything you do benefits peace and promotes acceptance, caring, and equality for everyone. I love you both so much.
I want to express my love and gratitude to my parents, Anna and Enzo Picciolini. I owe them both so much for refusing to turn me away when I needed their help the most. Looking back, I fully recognize that they sacrificed their time with me because they loved me and wanted to make a better life for me and Alex than they’d had, and I respect them for that. I thank them for doing their best and for being good and decent people who truly care and love with all their heart.
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