Time | “Motorcycle clubs are function of military service, period,” declares William Dulaney, who is both national
president of Hell on Wheels Motorcycle Club and a professor of
organizational communication at Air University, located on Maxwell Air
Force Base in Alabama. “Chain of command is very strictly adhered to.
Its’ about identity for a group of people who, outside this social
structure, don’t have much identity. You’re talking about a core
identity to a bunch of warriors.”
And yet, even as Harley sales soared and weekend warriors, known
derisively by outlaw clubs as RUBs, or rich urban bikers, crowded
highways, the clubs that started it all lost a lot of their juice. “Back
in the ’80s, or like 1995, dude, gangland, no doubt about it,” Dulaney
says. “But those days are gone. ” Federal RICO prosecutions and other
law enforcement efforts have dramatically reduced the criminal threat
level from outlaw groups, as perhaps has aging. Dulaney now numbers
himself among the older generation, and understands the violence in Waco
as a problem of kids these days.
“They don’t have years and years if not decades in the subculture,
understanding that there is hierarchy,” he says. Young bucks may enjoy
the swagger of wearing a leather vest, but they fail to respect the full
import of the patches, or “colors,” sewn on the back, he says. The
diamond-shaped patch reading “1%” denotes the wearer as a member of the
outlaw elite. And the place name — “Texas” — sewn at the base of the
vest in the embroidered crescent bikers call the bottom rocker,
announces more than a claim on turf.
“The way to understand the bottom rocker, with 1 percenters, is it’s
territory, yeah, but it’s responsibility,” Dulaney says. “Because they
have responsibility to enforce peaceful coexistence in that area.
Because if they don’t, law enforcement will come in and be all over
you.”
