Former Hate Group Member Speaks at SBHS

Article Tools

Print friendly
E-mail story
Contact an Editor
iPod friendly
Comments

Bookmark This

del.icio.us.
Digg!
furl
google
newsvine
reddit
technorati
Facebook
Yahoo!

Tom Martinez is a former member of the hate group The Order, and has spent the last 23 years traveling the country telling high school students about his experiences with white supremacist organizations, why he feels he joined the groups, and what kinds of racist propaganda the groups he escaped still continue to pass off to unsuspecting students.

Martinez visited Santa Barbara High School Wednesday, February 7 as part of the school’s Diversity Week. He said that he goes around the country and tells students that hate groups, such as The Order are not the way to go in life. He said that he doesn’t go to schools to speak about “wearing sheets and hating blacks.” However he did not speak out against racism itself.

This is not the first time Martinez has visited an area high school. He was at Dos Pueblos six years ago and San Marcos three years ago. Santa Barbara High School psychologist Christina Aguirre-Kolb was contacted by the tri-counties’ chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, who sponsors Tom Martinez, to have him speak. Santa Barbara is also an ADL-certified school, and Martinez’s lecture was one of three activities last week that qualified the school, according to Ms. Aguirre-Kolb. ADL has brought Martinez to not only countless other schools in the country, but has also featured him in presentations made to Casa Pacifica, local law enforcement agencies, and other juvenile facilities.

The largely silent assembly held in the J.R. Richards gymnasium was attended by several hundred of the school’s students. Martinez opened his 45-minute speech with an explanation of his life in a suburb outside of Philadelphia, which became incredibly impoverished as he grew to adolescence. He attributed much of his anger and frustration in his teenage years to an abusive father, and being one of few, if not the only white student in a high school that was predominately Black or Hispanic. Recalling one particular instance, an African-American gang of 12 boys barged into his class one day and threatened to kill him. Martinez recalled his teacher doing nothing because even he was afraid. At that point, he could have no more, and at age 16 dropped out of high school. Later, he hinted that to this day he has not settled his anger towards other races, but did not directly address the audience about his current feelings on different races or religions.

With no education, and after a stint in the armed forces, Martinez returned home to a low-paying job at Dunkin’ Donuts and a forthcoming child. While watching TV late one night, he was introduced to the leader of The Order, Robert Matthews. Martinez, taken by the words of this man, personally wrote him a letter. He was more surprised when the man sent him a written response and invited them to one of their meetings. That is where Tom Martinez acquired the stories he has been telling students for the past two decades.

Martinez did not hold back the gory details of crimes that had been committed by The Order across the country. He told of how in late 1984 he became an informant for the FBI to arrest people for the crimes that had been committed, but when the group’s leader discovered Martinez’s involvement in his attempted arrest, he hired a hit man (who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent) to kill him. Martinez’s death was faked, and the man arrested. In his story to the students however, Tom Martinez was not content with telling just about his experiences. He continued by detailing his arrest in 1985 for counterfeiting money for the group, and how he essentially has to lie low. He added how these white power groups are staunchly against homosexuality, and told the tale of men who held up an adult bookstore and shot five customers and one employee in the back of the head execution-style, and how despite that one of the two survivors of the event testified against the group, the men charged for the crime were acquitted by an all-white jury.

Comments

Discussion Guidelines

Currently:
Clear Sky
Temperature:
57.9°
Wind:
5 W