How a Biker Club Evolved Into Protest Marshals and Fundraisers

Some members of the BRAPB group (photo by Sarah Whiting)

We recently talked to a few riders in a Twin Cities motorcycle club — including people named Amie, Barbie, Breanne, Erica, Kassie, Marni, Megan, and Rachel. The group is known as Bikers Riding Against Policy Brutality — the acronym, BRAPB, appealed to one of the founders because it connotes the sound a motorcycle makes when revved.

The club largely started in the summer of 2020, after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police. A small group of motorcyclists began to protect protestors — helping to keep vehicles outside of their space during street marches and at Capitol rallies in Saint Paul. As far as the group knows — and they have done research — they are the first, and maybe still the only, biker club engaged as protest marshals. Today, they also protect protestors for marches that include reproductive, queer, and labor rights.

One of the club founders, Adam “Grandpa” Harvey, says he was motivated to spark something after George Floyd was murdered a few blocks from his home. As “this white old man,” he wanted to get engaged with community in a new way to “learn and be a better person.”

Another co-founder, Griffin Goode, said he was motivated to co-create a club that would help change the perception that motorcyclists were all “Sons of Anarchy. “There are a lot of riders who might be racists and other bad things, but there are also people like me who want to fight for rights for minority communities. It’s a much safer community to be able to ride with people who think we do.”

Marni Lewis-Harvey (photo by Sarah Whiting)

Marni Lewis-Harvey also was a founding member — the first official female rider in BRAPB. Soon after Floyd’s murder “I was going to three marches a week.”

As marshals at protests, she says, “We’ve had people point guns at us. Some of us have been run over. Some of us have been pushed off our bikes, intentionally.”

At her third march, blocking traffic in south Minneapolis during a protest, some drivers “sped right through us. They went right in between me and another person. As they were blowing through us, they held up their gun. But we knew we were putting ourselves at risk when we were out there. We started communicating with other groups to learn skills in safety and de-escalation.”

Lewis-Harvey says she and others marshaled earlier this year in below-zero weather during the large downtown Minneapolis protest against the ICE occupation. “I got frostbite.” Since then, with international attention, they have heard from people in other states who have expressed interest in launching similar clubs.

Breanne “Bre” Krzyzanowski (photo by Sarah Whiting)

Expansion

In 2021, there were three women, who encouraged the founders to host a new member meeting for recruitment. Many of the women who came that night are still in the club.

In March 2020, Breanne “Bre” Krzyzanowski had just had knee surgery. When marches started coming through her Northeast Minneapolis neighborhood, “I couldn’t physically walk as far as others. It became easier for me to show up on a moped or motorcycle, because then I knew I could get myself home. If the police started showing up and being aggressive, I could get out safely — which I could not do on foot. So the first time I saw motorcycles out on the streets, I realized that made so much sense. That was something I could do.”

When Krzyzanowski went on her motorcycle to her first new member meeting — in a packed room — the club was =focused on marshaling. She loved the volunteer work, but she also saw ways the group could expand what it was doing. Club members credit her with much of the leadership that has made the group what it is today.

“BRAPB had been looking to branch out into even more than marshaling when I’d joined but it can be a big lift to restructure and reimagine goals for a group. I signed on to lead the group through these changes,” she says. “It was a hurdle for us, since we’re all volunteers with lives, jobs, and other responsibilities. But we managed to restructure, set new goals, and increase our membership in just a few years.”

Today the group also includes bicyclists and mopeds — since some people wanted to be involved in marshaling but didn’t own a motorcycle. There are 20 highly engaged members who attend monthly gatherings and help with fundraising and outreach. Another 20 members are engaged as life allows.

Many members have day jobs in education, counseling, restaurant work, healthcare, and marketing. Some live in southeast suburbs, as far as Afton, and northeast to Forest Lake, but most are based in the Twin Cities metro — Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Richfield, Bloomington. “For a few of them, it can take about 45 minutes to come in to participate in something,” says Krzyzanowski. “We love and appreciate the dedication they’ve got.”

Rachel Sporer (photo by Sarah Whiting)

She says that when the group was mostly a standalone motorcycle marshaling group, they “noticed and acknowledged that a group of mostly white bikers pulling up might not always be the positive thing we want it to be if people don’t know and trust us.” They started a scholarship fund so new riders could get riding and safety training.

Growing Pains

BRAPB riders (left corner) preparing to lead a group of Mayday marchers (photo by Mikki Morrissette)

Another early member was Miguel Hernandez, who admits — as a Latino man — that he grew up with machismo, not necessarily acknowledging the leadership power of women. As BRAPB expanded in scope and diversity of members, he says, some of the group had to “unlearn sexism.”

Many of the longtime activist groups they started working with were organized by women, especially women of color. BRAPB leaders started hearing, ‘Hey, one of your riders said an off-color thing’ or was making young women uncomfortable. The group decided to have a talk about identity. “What kind of group are we going to be?,” Hernandez says. “When that happened, we decided to go the more activist nonprofit route. That happened around the same time Marni was standing her ground and saying, ‘Some of the things I’m seeing are disrespectful.’”

“I, myself, had a lot to learn. Marni stuck by us. Then we started taking that more nonprofit route, which luckily coincided with Bre and Rachel joining.”

The group is now six years old, and he credits its growth to “a lot of women joining and taking the leadership. I’m more of ‘tell me what to do, and I’ll go do it.’”

One lesson the group is learning, he says, is how to listen and care about each other. With so many protests engaged with people who have experienced trauma, Hernandez says, they had to co-learn how to not simply “drop the hammer on people for a remark, but to educate them.”

If a biker sees terrible things at a protest or during ICE operations and needs a break from that trauma, the group has learned to check in with each other. “I’ve been hit by three cars. A couple of us have been hit and threatened at gunpoint. With so many teachers and women joining the group, we’ve been learning there are better ways to interact with folks who want to hurt us, and 99 percent of the time it works,” Hernandez says.

Mutual Aid

Lewis-Harvey says she was “very grateful when Bre and Rachel joined and took the reins in the direction I envisioned for BRAPB. They hit the ground running, which gave me breathing space to be able to take step back and focus on much needed personal wellbeing.” These days, she spends more time with her family, her horses, and her dogs, and takes long motorcycles rides away from the city. She was instrumental in branding the organization.

Originally, club members were wearing homemade T-shirts with the club name — “people drawing on shirts with sloppy handwriting,” she says with a smile. As a brand manager and creative director, she designed a logo and branding and launched a website. On the night of our conversation, she was engaged with kids, women, and men screen-printing t-shirts with the BRAPB logo on it.

Today, the now-nonprofit group engages in a variety of “fun and quirky” do-it-yourself craft projects — including making fidgets and 3D-printed keychains — to raise funds.

In addition to fundraising to diversify motorcycle culture with scholarships, the group does rides for charitable organizations and fulfilling mutual aid needs. The group offers road safety training and even distributes jump-starter packs to charge stalled cars, inflate tires, and boost phone power.

During Operation Metro Surge, BRAPB raised funds for two towing companies that were helping return vehicles to families whose loved ones were abducted from the street by ICE agents.

“We’re going to continue to pay as long as we’ve got those funds,” says Krzyzanowski. “They’re still picking up cars and returning them to either people or properties or holding on to them if the car couldn’t be returned to a place or they couldn’t find who owns the car.”

Other Members

Barbie Shock (photo by Sarah Whiting)

Barbie Shock had lost connection with significant sources of support in her community after George Floyd was killed, and learned about BRAPB. She was a relatively new motorcycling enthusiast — involved for the first time in her 40s — who owned a pearl-white Harley Free Wheeler trike. She saw a pool of motorcyclists protecting community at a Capitol rally and decided to connect.

“I’m deeply grateful for this community and for the people who make it what it is. The commitment, the experience, the willingness to show up, and the work itself are real,” she says. “It has been a place where I’ve grown so much, simply by showing up, being involved, and listening to people who have been doing this work.” Today she is more involved in bicycle riding, with a 1989 Trek touring bicycle that “is older than my kids.”

Megan Fink (photo by Sarah Whiting)

Megan Fink connected with BRAPB in 2025 after the Trump inauguration. “As a cis white woman, I wanted to be active, but I knew that it wasn’t my voice that needed to be elevated. This is a good way for me to be active and supporting marginalized voices without centering myself, which I felt was very important.”

Fink bought her first winter bicycle last year and was marshaling in the streets with studded tires when provocateur Jake Lang came to Minnesota the first time. “On that very cold and snowy day, things got real,” she says. She loves the camaraderie of the group, knowing “these people have my back if I need, and I have theirs. We’re not just being paralyzed by an inability to do anything — it was important for me to have something tangible to do.”

BRAPB has a relationship with several other groups, such as Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), Fury Du Nord — a queer and trans biker group — and People’s Action Coalition Against Trump. The latter has led to collaboration on safety trainings and de-escalation skills, to be prepared for agitators. MIRAC is one of the organizations that identifies marches that need marshal support.

Says Fink, “In the community, people know us and trust us. I’ve heard multiple times that people feel safer when we’re around, and I am grateful that I can be a part of that.”

Amie Kolesar (photo by Sarah Whiting)

Amie Kolesar grew up around motorcycles and dirt bikes, “but they were tied to the masculine culture of my family. Women were discouraged from riding except on the back.” She was introduced to BRAPB during a 2022 protest and fundraiser that responded to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision by the Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.

“I was volunteering to help raise money for local clinics that provide women’s healthcare when this sea of motorcycles rolled in,” Kolesar says. “By that point I had my 1979 Motobécane moped and I was starstruck by the reputation this group had and that their sheer presence allowed others to feel like they could safely have a voice. I immediately looked them up, found out they had a scholarship fund for a motorcycle safety riders course and wrote my essay. I’ve been tagging along ever since. To me, the most meaningful thing BRAPB does is elevate others.”

 

Kassie Sporer (photo by Sarah Whiting)

Kassie Sporer grew up with her sister Rachel in the Iowa countryside with a Harley-owning and dirt-bike dad who took them every year to the Daytona Beach Bike Week. She was invited to BRAPB by her older sister and is highly engaged with the do-it-yourself crafting and fundraising work.

screenprinting group t-shirts (photo by Sarah Whiting)

Erica Whitaker (submitted photo)

Another member of the group in the early days was Erica Whitaker, who has since moved out of state. During the uprisings after George Floyd was murdered, she was working with immunocompromised people during the pandemic. She felt she needed to be sidelined during protests, to protect the health of her clients. After she was vaccinated, she went to a protest at the courthouse during Derek Chauvin’s trial that led to a march. Someone blocked the march with their car, so she offered to use her motorcycle to help them. Eventually she learned about and joined BRAPB.

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