Photo via Jason Bui.
When Ian MacKaye wrote the lyrics to Minor Threat’s “Minor Threat in 1981, he was—not so subtly—challenging his fellow youth to do something different; to make a statement to those who don’t think much of them.
That message has transcended generations, still inspiring young punks to do great things, whether it be starting a band, organizing a protest, or, uh, winning chess tournaments. Case-in-point: Philadelphia’s Minor Threats Chess Club, a chess team of inner city Philly youths that’s winning tournaments up and down the East Coast.
Jason Bui, who works as a teacher for Philadelphia School District, started the Minor Threats Chess Club back in 2012 as a way to give the inner city children he’d been teaching a constructive extracurricular activity to get excited about. The club, comprised of kids aged 7 to 13, has since competed in 32 tournaments, in places as far as Manhattan, Nashville, and, yes, D.C. The club even took home a state championship last year.
So how did Bui start the club and what’s the story behind the clever name?
Bui says he had been coaching the chess team at the elementary school where he teaches when it “got bigger than the school.” A friend who had started another youth chess club, the Paul Robeson Chess Club, told Bui that he should start his own team so he could include children outside of the school.
And so a chess club was born. But what to call it? Bui’s friend named his club after one of his heroes, the American singer, actor, and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. “So I thought, ‘OK, what would I name my chess club?” Bui tells DCist. He thought about the heroes that inspired him as a kid.
“A lot of my core beliefs were formed as a young kid listening to punk rock,” he says. And thus the inspiration for the “Minor Threats Chess Club.” What’s more is that the name serves as a kind of double meaning: all of the members are, technically, minors and the game of chess deals with threats based on an opposing player’s move. “It all just kind of fell together and made sense,” Bui says.
In any given year, Bui’s roster bounces between 10 and 15 kids, but the interest in joining the club is growing as the club becomes more of a forceh. They’ve been traveling all over to compete—and win—in tournaments. Last year, Bui took ten kids to the state championships and took home seven trophies. They just got back from the State Championships in Lancaster and they’re looking to attend a bunch more tournaments before the year ends.
Of course, traveling for tournaments isn’t cheap, which is where the team’s fundraising efforts kick in: they’re selling team shirts and stickers through a Big Cartel Web site, and one that looks mighty familiar to old D.C. punks. The Minor Threats Chess Club gear features the legendary band’s iconic font with the notorious “Flex Your Head” slogan on the back.
The history of bootleg Minor Threat t-shirts is a long and tumultuous one. One that ultimately led MacKaye to let someone else deal with it because his “time is better spent doing other things.”
These, bootlegs, however, aren’t one that MacKaye is too concerned with. Bui says that a friend sent him a screencap of an email they had sent to MacKaye about his team “and he wrote back ‘yeah, I heard about that last week and it really brightened my day.'”
DCist reached out to MacKaye about the Chess Club but he was unable to comment at the time.
Bui’s Chess Club—and its clever fundraising campaign—has made splashes elsewhere in the punk community. He says the whole idea to sell those t-shirts as a fundraiser came from Toby Morse, frontman for longtime punk band H20. They also serve as a team uniform.
And last year, Bui says he received an order for a shirt from a man named Brian Baker. He emailed to see if he was, indeed, the Brian Baker who played with MacKaye in Minor Threat. It was.
Currently, Bui is trying to raise money to take the team to compete in the High School Nationals in Columbus, Oh., the Junior High Nationals in Louisville, Ky., and the Elementary Nationals in Nashville, Tenn.
Oh and that state championship Bui’s club took home last year? He says they were going to mail the trophy to Dischord Records, but decided to hold on to it for a little bit longer. Perhaps this year’s trophy will find its way there.
