Eyes on the RISE: One People's Project tracks the boom in the power and might of the far right.

AuthorMcMenamin, Lexi
PositionDaryle Lamont Jenkins

"The past four years have just been us and other antifascists out there, basically saying, 'We told you so,'" Jenkins says in an interview. "But the past [few] weeks have been us pretty much saying, 'Why the hell aren't you listening?'"

One People's Project was launched in 2000 as a platform to disseminate information about fascist and white supremacist figures and groups. Jenkins became interested in the topic while serving in the U.S. Air Force after high school in the late 1980s, sparked by a now-famous 1988 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show about skinheads. Jenkins was born in Newark, New Jersey, and established One People's Project in Philadelphia, though he now splits his time between Philly and central New Jersey.

"One People's Project was formed because people weren't talking about the things that we felt were important to talk about," Jenkins says. "If you see a need that isn't being tended to, there's nothing stopping you from tending [to it] yourself."

While some antifascists prefer to work anonymously or covertly to avoid harassment and targeting from white supremacists and the government alike, One People's Project brings the heat directly to fascists by publicly exposing their names and information. One People's Project and its media arm, Idavox, track and publicize rightwing rallies and events as well as encourage public shaming and deplatforming of those they identify.

Jenkins is mostly self-funded--as recently as 2017, he worked as a delivery driver. He runs both One People's Project, which documents the activities of the far right while issuing calls to action, and Idavox, which publishes news articles expanding on that research.

His efforts are supported by a close-knit volunteer network of antifa organizers, researchers, and journalists, and largely reliant on crowdfunding. Jenkins routinely attends events like the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, where, as one reporter wrote of the group's 2017 event, he "patrolled the halls like a leftist Ghostbuster, watching for any budding white-power radicals to reveal themselves."

Jenkins has had some success prompting members of far-right groups to defect. Bryon Widner, the subject of the 2011 documentary Erasing Hate and the 2018 film Skin, was a virulent white supremacist who left the white power movement in 2006 after reaching out to Jenkins, who put him in contact with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Widner's face was covered in tattoos of white supremacist iconography; the...

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