May 25, 2023

The Underground Scholar

Randy Omar Felder was 26 when he attended a Klu Klux Klan rally in Anaheim. He and his friend drove to Pearson Park to watch the Klan at noon. It was a dystopian spectacle of organized hatred and racism. The once small group of spectators turned into a mob of posters and chanting of anti klansman obscenities. Many reasons brought Felder to that park, but one stuck out amongst the rest. ”Love,” Felder said, “I protested for love.” He loves his multicultural ethnicity and loves seeing people unite against oppression. And it was that same love that led Felder to sock a Klu Klux Klan member in the face. 

Originally Felder found out about the rally from an Los Angeles Times article, and he and his friend ‘Moose’ wanted to see if the Klan would show up in their white hoods. The rally itself was very contained at the beginning, Felder recounts, until the anarchists began to attack the Klan. One by one, the crowd was dragged into the violence. For the Klan, hand sharpened PVC pipes that held the American flag at the other end were used against the protesters. 

Felder originally thought it was ludacris, funny even, that this rally was happening. But after the violence broke out, and one of the members targeted him with the hand sharpened spear, the dark reality of what the Klan stood for truly sunk in. After dodging the potential stab, Felder lost it. 

“Sometimes you gotta punch a motherfucka in the mouth.”

There stood Felder and Moose, amongst the bloodied and battered, after the violence was over and the Anaheim Police Department finally arrived. Many protesters and Klansmen had fled, but the two friends waited as police restrained them against the afternoon cement while the Klansmen were assisted and smoked cigarettes on the large rocks that lined the scene. 

“I wasn’t afraid, if anything, I felt more free in that moment than I ever had because we stood up to our oppressors,” He paused, “Little did I know it was going to change the rest of my life.”

A thin black tank top exposes Felder’s wide variety of ink. From pistols and Marxist script, to his daughter’s name, Mya, engraved in his skin, Felder is covered from the scalp down in tattoos. 26 with a head of curls in the Los Angeles Times photos of him at the Klan rally, now 32, with a buzz cut and white specs in his gote. But his thick Long Beach accent has never changed. 

6 years after the rally, Felder is entering his first year as a PhD student in History at the University of California, Irvine. If he’s not in class, he’s writing an essay. If he’s not writing an essay, he’s grading student’s papers. If he’s not grading student’s papers, he’s at the gym. If he’s not at the gym, he’s eating. If he’s not eating, he’s asleep. Being in this program, as Felder says, has infiltrated every aspect of his life. 

“When I lived in Long Beach I was able to like, kind of, turn off and program out a little bit versus here. I wake up on campus. I sleep on campus. I work on campus. I go to the gym on campus. I eat on campus. I’m consumed.” Felder pauses, “But I might get a new tattoo.”

His life is academia centered now, but he makes time for his daughter on the weekends, “If you love something, if you've got something you want to do, you’ll make time for it.” 

Felder’s daughter was born during his service twelve years ago. Now in the 6th grade, she and Felder spend their weekends on campus doing ‘whatever’. 

He twirled a thin gold chain between his index and thumb. It held a sun pendant with a single word at its center. 

“Allah” Felder said, “I’m trying, but I’m not the best Muslim.” 

He converted at the end of 2011, the year his daughter Mya was born, and three years before he began community college at the age of 23. 
“History has been my main focus, although my degrees are not titled specifically history though. So my Bachelor's is in history and political thought. And then I have a Master's in War and Society. And now, I'm here.”

As highschool ended, everyone he knew was either getting a job, staying at home, or going to college. At the age of 17, fresh out of high school, college wasn’t an option Felder was interested in yet. So as soon as the diploma was in his hand, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was shipped off to spend his new life at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. 

In Felder’s words, he was a ‘piece of shit’ private until he learned the value of discipline in the Long-Range Surveillance Unit, LRS for short. Not a unit anymore because casualties were high and the risk factors could be evaded now with drone technology. But in Felder’s operations, his main goal was reconnaissance. He and his unit worked on clandestine military information operations to gather direct intelligence deep in enemy territory. 

“They didn't play games, and they was strict as shit.” Felder let out a dry laugh, “I went, and when I got there, I got my ass handed to me. Big time. I don't regret it though, LRS is the best fucking unit on the planet.”

But as Felder discovered more about who he was, something about the Army began to clash with him. 

“The Army doesn't let you think for yourself. You know, they tell you what to think. They tell you where to go. What to eat and how to feel, all that stuff,” shrugging, “And when I started to question things, they looked at me differently.” 

His biggest question arose on tour in Afghanistan. Eight months into his tour, he began to ask, “Why the fuck is we in Afghanistan?”

For him, he was there to win the hearts and the minds of the people living in Afghanistan, but the longer he stayed on tour, the worse he felt about the experience.  

At the time, Felder didn’t know about imperialism and colonialism. It wasn’t until he attended college that he understood the part he played and how much he hated being unaware. 
“It was kind of like… when you’re looking at something… and you know something ain't right.  But you just don't know what. You know what I mean?”

In the end, his intuition was right. 

After the military, Felder struggled with the fact that serving his country didn’t lead to any real change. Overwhelmed, thrown back into society with trauma from being overseas, and with no real evidence that it had a positive impact threw him into a chaotic headspace. 

From that, Felder’s political activism was sparked from a need to make real change. In the end, he led rallies and strikes, most recently, the 2023 UAW Student Strike. But this came after he learned through trial and error how to fight back against the government, and create real change, through knowledge and protest rather than rifles and violence.  

Felder was unbalanced in his activism when he first started, valuing retaliation over strategy, and this led him to his second arrest. 

Active on Twitter and Instagram, he was known for his political posts. Still a firm believer in Communism, he was a vocal radical online- and one tweet in particular sent the Federal Bureau of Investigation to his home where they found multiple guns and a library full of anarchism literature and political theory. 

Day one of his second round in jail, he knew that his methods needed to change. 

“When I first got out of the military, I didn't have enough theory. And I simply thought that the strongest weapon I had was a rifle in my hand. I didn't understand that my brain was the strongest weapon that I had.”

This was the moment Felder knew he would get his PhD. Through the discipline he gained in the army, and with the help of a UC wide program called Underground Scholars, he was able to start on this path in 2022.

“Everybody in Underground Scholars was incarcerated at one point. Some are going for a B.A., some for an M.A., and some are getting PhDs.” Felder’s tired eyes didn’t match the pep in his voice, “Shout out to Flacco! That's my boy game. Gabe, too. They're all part of the program.”

Felder grew up in Long Beach. The city, huge and full of life, was more interesting than school. So like most kids, he spent his time playing with his G.I. Joe’s, or, riding the bus. 

More specifically, he and his friends loved to do ‘stupid shit’ on the Long Beach Transit.

“Near my home, we used to take the bus everywhere” Felder recalled, “ So much dumb shit. Like some of it was funny, but other times it was like, yo, like, we could’ve went to jail for that shit, bro.”

Now, with a new chapter of his life beginning in Irvine, away from the nightlife of Long Beach and the gunfire in Afghanistan, he sits. 
Felder can clearly picture the degree in his hand. But after, he’s not sure what will happen. What he wants to do for his career is blank, a canvas waiting to be painted. He might not even pursue a field rooted in activism or politics. 

But that doesn’t mean this sense of duty to protect, serve, and speak out against oppression won’t still find him. 

Felder has pushed the limits of who he can become as a previously incarcerated Black and Latino man. He’s jumped out of military planes and fought overseas. He’s stared at the worst of mankind in the eyes, hoping to never see it in his own reflection. He’s rallied masses of tired Masters and PhD students to fight for humane living wages. He’s been handcuffed for what he believes. In the end, he decided to be the change he wasn’t seeing in the world. 

“I wasn't afraid, you know what I'm saying? ” Felder’s necklace still danced between his index and thumb. “In that moment when I was ready to die, fighting my oppressor, I truly was free.”