December 7, 2020 • 55 mins
Over the course of June, 2020, BLM protests in most of the country either fizzled out or started to wane in frequency. Portland kept right on going, every single night, without break. In this episode we explain the infrastructure of resistance that gave birth to the Portland Uprising, and we talk about the fateful decision that turned President Trump's eyes towards the City of Roses.
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The art world, it is essentially a money laundering business.
The best fakes are still hanging on people's walls. You know,
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atle like Baldwin, and this is a podcast about deception, greed,
and forgery in the art world. I just walked in
and saw this great red painting presuming to be a Rothko.
Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to
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(01:03):
they're paid for each thing. It was an incredible, mandsome money.
You knew the painting was fake. Um Listen to Art
Fraud starting February one on the I Heart Radio app,
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New Year's resolutions with the Before Breakfast podcast. In each
bite sized daily episode, you'll learn how to make the
most of your time with practical tools to help you
feel less busy and get more done. Listen to Before
Breakfast on the I Heart Radio app four wherever you
get your podcasts. We started the series by asking why
(01:53):
Portland's and the most accurate answer to that question is
the history lesson. We gave an episode one, but the
most direct and to why the city of Portland became
the nexus of an uprising starts with a bunch of
teenagers in a statue of George Washington. Our own Garrison
Davis was there. Here's what he experienced. On Thursday, June eighth,
(02:13):
I set out for a park in East Portland. The
teenage activist group Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front or just
the Wire Left posted on their Twitter account that something
was planned for eight pm, so I made my way
expecting something interesting to happen. The previous night, the Wire
Left and some New Black organizers had set up an
(02:35):
autonomous zone style occupation in front of the Mayor's apartment
in the upscale Pearl district. Inspired by Seattle's Capitol Hill
occupied protest slash Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone coome morning. Not
enough bodies were present at the attempted autonomous zone to
resist the riot police who arrived to clear the area.
(02:55):
After the very short lived autonomous zone, I had wondered
what the wire left had planned next. As eight pm
approached on that Thursday, only a little over a dozen
people gathered at the original meeting spot. The small group
were mostly in black block. Black block is a tactic
that originated with German anti globalization protesters. It involves wearing
(03:17):
all black clothing to make it difficult to identify specific people.
Shortly after I arrived, the crowd had began marching north.
They decided to take the sidewalk instead of the street
to due to their low numbers. In a matter of minutes,
the crowd arrived at their apparent destination, the Portland German
American Society, which features a large statue of George Washington
(03:39):
out in front of the building. Activists started by draping
an American flag over the face of the statue and
lighting it ablaze. People spray painted the base and statue itself,
writing genocidal colonist slave owner and six nineteen, the year
the first enslaved Africans were brought to America. Slowly more
people arrived as calls for support were made out over
(04:01):
social media. The few dozen people in attendance started attaching
nylon straps to the head of the statue and began
pulling back and forth. By eleven PM, the statue of
George Washington had been completely torn down. The crowd quickly left,
(04:26):
calling the Night of success, and police arrived a little
over half an hour later. At the time, no one
could have known that this small action would trigger a
series of events that would turn Portland's BLM protests into
the biggest story in the entire country. We pro hey
(04:51):
leath the listeners take here. Last season on Lethal Lit,
you might remember I came to Hollow Falls on a
mission clearing my aunt best name and making sure justice
was finally served. But I hadn't counted on a rash
of new murders tearing apart the town. My mission put
myself and my friends in danger. Though it wasn't all bad,
(05:15):
I'm going to be a reality tig I like you,
But now all signs point to a new serial killer
in Hollow Falls. If this game is just starting. You
better believe I'm gonna win. I'm tig Torres and this
is Lethal Lit. Catch up on season one of the
hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit, a tig Tara's mystery
(05:38):
out now, and then tune in for all new thrills
in season two, dropping weekly starting February nine. Subscribe now
to never miss an episode. Listen to Leave a Lit
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. I'm Colleen with joined me the
host of Eating Wall Broke podcast. While I eat a
meal created by self made entrepreneur's influence, There's and celebrities
(06:01):
over a meal they once eight when they were broke.
Today I have the lovely aj Crimson, the official Princess
of comfin Asia, Kidding and Asia. This is the professor.
We're here on Eating While Broke and today I'm gonna
break down my meal that got me through a time
when I was broken. Listen to Eating Will Broke on
the I Heart Radio app, on Apple podcast or wherever
(06:21):
you get your podcasts. This is Roxanne Gay, host of
the Roxanne Gay Agenda, The Bad Room, and this podcast
of Your Dreams. Now, what is The Roxanne Gay Agenda.
You might ask, well, it's a podcast where I'm going
to speak my mind about what's on my mind, and
that could be anything. Every week I will be in
(06:42):
conversation with an interesting person who has something to say.
We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books,
and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. I started
show with a recommendation, Really, I'm just going to share
with you a movie or a book, or maybe some
music or a comedy set, something that I really want
(07:03):
you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well.
Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda,
The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams, every Tuesday on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcast. Right wing media reacted to the toppling
(07:32):
of the George Washington statue as expected. A narrative was
spun that police were letting a violent mob of Antifa
rioters go around town destroying property without consequence. Pundits criticized
protesters for erasing history. The Portland police defended their failure
to stop the toppling of the statue by complaining that
they had been occupied with a concurrent protest at the
Justice Center fence. They stated the group blocked the street
(07:55):
for several hours, throwing projectiles such as hot dogs at
the Justice Centered doors. By this point, three weeks into
the protests, dozens of Portland's had been arrested at actions,
and yet a narrative had begun to spread on right
wing media that there had been no consequences for protesters
engaging in destructive activity. The toppling of George Washington flipped
a switch in national far right media, and suddenly Portland
(08:18):
was a symbol of everything wrong with the left. Here's
President Trump on the campaign trail two days ago. Left
as radicals in Portland, Oregon ripped down a statue of
George Washington and wrapped it in an American flag and
(08:39):
set the American flag on fire. Democrat A Democrats. Everything
I tell you is Democrat. And you know we ought
to do something. Mr Senators, we have two great senators.
We ought to come up with legislation that if you
burned the American flag, you go to jail for one year.
(09:02):
There are a lot of things wrong with that statement.
First off, some of the folks who took down that
statue would find being called a Democrat insulting. Also, the
Supreme Court has ruled that burning an American flag is
a constitutionally protected form of free speech. Portland protesters toppling
at George Washington statue seems to have inspired the President
to suggest legislation that would ban not just the toppling
(09:23):
of statues, which was already illegal, but flag burning and
similar acts of protest. As it turned out, Donald Trump
would follow through on the idea of criminalizing that sort
of behavior. But why would protesters go through all the
trouble of tumbling down statues in the first place. We
talked with some members of the y LF, the Youth
Liberation Front to get their perspective. Since the President of
(09:44):
the United States has threatened these again literal children repeatedly,
We've redubbed the audio in order to protect their identities
because they represent monuments to people who are white supremacist,
in genocidal and as an anarchist, I think every statue
to a women should be torn down because they don't
believe in idolizing anyone, but especially like people who led
(10:06):
the way for colonization and just awful atrocities in their lifetime.
President Trump's fury over the George Washington action through the
Youth Liberation Front into the national spotlight. But that statue
was not actually the first to fall in Portland, and
it would not be the last, though the wire Left
would become synonymous with a more radical, militant segment of
the protests, acting under the cover of night. The first
(10:27):
statue to come down in Portland was actually at Thomas
Jefferson High School, one of the only remaining majority black
schools in the state, on the afternoon of June fourteenth,
as a large peaceful march led by Rose City Justice
departed from Jefferson, the statue of the school's namesake was
torn from its pedestal by a small enthusiastic group in
broad daylight. Picking up the rest of the story is
(10:48):
my colleague and partner in getting horribly tear gassed A
Laine Kinchen. Toppling statues of historical slaveholders became a nationwide
trend during the first three weeks of the George Floyd protests.
By the time the George Washington and statue at the
Portland German American Association came down, eighteen other statues had
fallen to crowds across the country. In the weeks that followed,
at least seventeen more statues would meet the same fate,
(11:11):
and many more would be quietly relocated for their own protection.
Just as the wire left vandalism of the Washington statue
fits into a larger context of statue toppling. The wile
of themselves are only one part of Portland's activist ecosystem,
originally emerging from a loose coalition of anti racist and
anti Trump high school groups. Here are two while of
members talking about the genesis of the group in nineteen
(11:35):
the comrades who started it made a lot of connections
with the Occupy Ice and started running things, running the
social media. I think it was really born. It came
out of like really sporadic school protests, just like whatever
was happening, and it was something that people felt was
really important. Back then. The group slowly moved towards like
anti fascism and you liberation, trying to interest ageism as
(11:56):
well in those spaces, and I think it definitely went
that direction completely. Gunto nine. Yeah, that was like a
big anti fascist and fascist rally in Portland, and I
definitely think that kind of sparked a turning point where
I think like the organization really blossomed from there. Yeah.
We started off as like a very liberal group, like
one of those many boring student activist groups that just
like participated in walkouts. But then we started to take
(12:19):
a more radical turn. Like our first protest that I
was involved with was for gun control rally and that's yeah,
that's really cringe looking back, because now we're all like
insurrectionary anarchists. Oh. I think it definitely moved from that
into a more radical stance after June twenty nine, and
then came on the seventeenth, which was another big rally
in Portland that um where he I mean like a
(12:41):
good amount of focus was placed on us all of
a sudden, Yeah, and I think it kind of just
continued after that. Jacob bu Eros, the founder of Direct
Action Alliance, says he first encountered what would eventually become
the while Left in March of seventeen, while organizing to
counter a far right demonstration in the wealthy suburb of
Lake Oswego. It would be you know, Rose City and TIFA,
Direct Action Alliance tm w Y, a left which I
(13:03):
think had back then it was still called Oregonians Against
Trump or something like that, but um, that's when we
first started organizing together to confront the right wing. Was
during that time in March of seventeen through May of seventeen,
and then after that it was discoordinated effort. Jacob says
(13:23):
the Direct Action Alliance was formed out of a sense
of desperation in late yeah, after the election. I just
didn't want to keep wasting my time in politics, and
I felt this really big sense of urgency. And around
that time was when they started attacking people. Um at
Standing Rock and both of my kids are our citizens
(13:46):
of the Cherokee Nation. My partners the citizen of the
Cherokee Nation, and they were they were all really upset
about it, and I was really upset about it. Jacob
had been an activist for a while previous to this point,
and he was already familiar with Portland organized There's who
had risen to prominence with the first Black Lives Matter
protests in these include Danielle James and the founder of
Don't Shoot Portland, Teresa Rayford. We each have our own
(14:09):
individual thing that we really focus on, except for in
the Direct Action Alliance, we kind of just do everything.
But most groups have their own thing that they focus on,
but we're all the same people helping each other behind
the scene. So when Wild Left is working focusing on
something that's anti anti police right, it's the same people
who organized the large peaceful blm rallies who are working
(14:32):
with them to support them. And so that's where the
intersection is. We're all one big family here in Portland.
It's not a it's not like in other cities where
we actually have to build alliance. As people have been
active in the city for so long and have been
seeing the same faces for so long. I'd say it
all goes back to Terresta Raeford. She's the one. She's
the one who took it fromleven when the when the
(14:55):
occupy movement happened, and kind of molded that energy into
something where Portland became an activist scene again. This this
city wasn't wasn't very active. It kind of lost its
edge until Tersta Rayford came along and started pushing people
to come out to show up to fight back. When
Quantis Hayes was killed, she was out there calling everyone
(15:17):
to come out do something about it, and I'd say
that she was I'd say she's at the core of it.
I mean most of the people who I've met, who
I've coordinated with, who I've worked with, all of those
groups that I just mentioned to you, I met all
of them that Don't Shoot Portland rallies. Way back before
Trump was president, Rayford had originally formed Don't Shoot PDX
in response to the killing of Michael Brown and Ferguson,
(15:39):
but the failed PPB shooting of teenager Quantie Hayes in
February seventeen gave a new local urgency to calls for
police accountability and came in the midst of an upswing
of far right mobilizations targeting Portland. Every city has certain
defining moments, traumas which galvanized the community, spur the creation
of new coalitions and of rise to new organizing strategies.
(16:02):
One of those defining moments for Portland came in May
of seventeen, when a white supremacist named Jeremy Christian murdered
two people on a max light rail train. The day
before the killings, Christian assaulted another Portlander, Dmitria Hester. Here
she recounts her experience. Okay, so three years ago, UM
(16:23):
Jeremy Joseph Christian UM attacked me he's a white known
supremacist that here in organists that the police knew about, everybody,
the the mayor knew about. I mean, everybody just knew
about him, because he had set the tone at every
march and saying and stating how much he hates, you know,
(16:46):
the races, anyone that wasn't black, and wasn't that wasn't white,
and wanted to harm or kill anyone that wasn't you know,
those descents of that descent of being white and Christian
so um. He verbally attacked me for three stops on
the MAX in May two thousand, two thousands, seven teen,
(17:13):
front and center, often with a bullhorn in hand. Dimitria
became one of the most recognizable voices of Portland's protests.
The man she's describing, Jeremy Christian, was a regular attendee
of far right rallies in the Portland area. That night,
Dimitria fended off Christian with pepper spray. Police responded, but
Christian was not detained and he got away to kill
(17:35):
the people. The next day on that same Green Line.
He was looking for me because I mased him the
night before. He encountered to um. One African American lady
and one lady who had to have Geva bevon and
UM she wasn't thought she was Muslimed, so he verbally
(17:58):
started a technic d little girls under eighteen and three
men came into their rescuing. Was defending them and tried
to de escalate the problem. But he stabbed two of
them and killed them, and uh stabbed the third and
tried to kill him. So the police um got the
(18:19):
call not to even use uh force when they were
got the call that he did this on the MAX.
This just shows you how the police play a part
and um everything he did and the reason why he
got away with what he did. And then so when
they actually um caught him, he was still wielding the
(18:40):
knife that he killed people with. UM he threatened four
people on his way to when they detained him. And
the only reason they detained him again was because the
public was following him. And UM they didn't even shoot
him with rubber bullis or cheered asthma or anything. With
(19:01):
a knife in his hand and threatening the police, he
was able to throw the knife on the police cars.
You'll drink in his wine that he had in anothergatory bottle. UM,
and they detain him and after they detain him, he
bragged about what he did. Ricky John Best and Talisia
(19:23):
Namcamchi died in the attack. The third man, Micah Fletcher, survived.
A Few weeks before the murders, Christian had attended a
right wing free speech event in the Montevilla neighborhood of Portland.
The rally aimed to build on the momentum of the
Lake Oswego event in March. Micah Fletcher, the only survivor
of the stabbings, had been in Montevilla as well, counter
(19:45):
protesting alongside Direct Action, Alliance, Rose City, ANTIFA and what
would eventually become the YLF. In some ways, Portland is
a very small town. After the murders, far right rallies
in Portland continued. Anti fascist counter protests were large and
spirited at first, but as Effie Bound describes, that didn't last.
And in the year since that we had seen um
(20:08):
the counter demonstrations dwindle to just basically a small um
Black Blocks that was based that was showing up to
counter them, and on June it had turned into a
really really violent um events where a lot of folks
on our side got pretty seriously hurt and um some
of them had to go to the hospital and sustained
(20:30):
school fractures. And there was that video of um, you know,
Etan Noordine or Rufio, um you know, knocking out somebody
and UM that kind of you know, became the viral
proud Boy sensation. It did and and really kind of
um you know, did a lot for recruitment for them. UM.
(20:53):
And so we decided that what we needed in Portland
was um uh straw organizing effort to get as many
people as possible to show up to oppose them when
they have these rallies. Effie is part of a group
called pop mop, short for Popular Mobilization. Their goal is
to use innovative and community friendly organizing tactics to foster
(21:13):
a big tent approach to anti fascism. We planned pretty
closely with Rosity, Antifa and d s a UM. Pretty
much all of our events that we've had have been
in partnership with at least those two organizations, and then
for various events, we've had coalitions of up to thirty
you know, plus organizations at various times have signed onto
different actions that we've had involving groups like Jobs with Justice,
(21:35):
and UM like the Buddhist Piece Fellowship and UH Queerliberation Front, UH,
UH Symbiosis and UH Portland's Assembly. There's a lot of
different organization since pop Mob has countered far right events
with online fundraisers, hundreds of free vegan milkshakes and anti
(21:55):
fascist dance parties. When the George Floyd protests began, they
took on a front role. So one thing is that
we've always had a very very narrow mission as an organization,
and we've been really intentional about UM trying to stick
within the scope of that mission, which is inspiring people
to show up and oppose the far right and UM.
(22:17):
So UM, we didn't feel like we were in a
position UM where we should be leading anything. So we
instead UM agreed as a group that we wanted to
operate in a support role only. And UM. One of
the things that we've done over the last a couple
of years is kind of really built up on a
social media presence and UM have you know, had a
(22:38):
lot of UM but like enough, there's some really talented
people within our group that do a lot of great
media work and UM, and so we had basically just
wanted to use our platform to boost the organizing. The
other groups for doing on the ground Don't Shoot would
organize rallies throughout the summer. Marches called by the Direct
Action Alliance would repeatedly target police infrastructure. But as new
(23:01):
groups sprung up and led marches of thousands, Portland also
had a robust support network of activist groups looking for
ways to help. Longtime Portland activist Gregory McKelvey describes the
transition to new leadership and groups springing up in there
were people who were new brand, knew that we're called
to the moment because of the murder of George Floyd.
(23:23):
And I think that it is really imperative that those
people become the leaders. Also think it's imperative that the
people who were previous leaders take a step back and
allow those people to be the new leaders. Right. Um,
And but I think that we cannot keep reinventing the
wheel every time that protest movement comes up. So what
needs to happen is the previous leaders of every protest
(23:46):
movement that happens need to mentor and try and um
teach the lessons that they learned to the new generation
that is called to a current moment. The stabbing would
put all eyes on Portland, though no outlets reporting on
the inside knew about Demitria's encounter the day before. Months later,
she would link with activist group Don't Shoot Portland and
other organizations to tell her story. Thank you for much
(24:10):
for get any hope in being or story. I would
praying every night they good would prevail over evil. For
three years, we our community, the victims have been waking up,
hoping to seem so closer to the end of the
senseless travesty. Today it's finally here would they quill unanimous
(24:37):
votes from the people of our community. Thank you for
the beautiful, amazing, resilient support group. We have changed the narrative.
(24:57):
They came hard and strong towards our community. Creaky intellation
will forever everyone like Jeremy Christian, if all the street
(25:20):
is they are not welcome here. We love until we
are creative. She'd continue to work with Don't Shoot, which
had grown to become the largest Black Lives Matter organization
in the state, throughout the litigation of her case. In June,
(25:41):
well into the Portland uprisings, Jeremy Christian was sentenced to
two consecutive life sentences without parole at the sentencing hearing,
Demitria offered her own indictment of not only Christian, but
the entire law enforcement system for facilitating people like him,
before offering some searing last words for her attacker. Need
(26:01):
people of color. That's for our community, can't office. We
need our community and office to do what is best
for our community, not people that are looking out for popularity.
And these notes. We're going to stop these from using
our debts to capitalize and make a profit out of
(26:22):
We will not let you get these people in office.
You are not welcome here. And to the miss Derevian Christian,
your mom should have followed you. You are a waste
up brand. And if can you die, you go to hill.
I hope you run. See there, Hey, you cant Water's
(26:54):
fine nets off the exchange would become fuel for Demetrius
Chance in the streets. Next is my colleague Beatrix. Beatrix
is a reporter who worked in me on the ground
in Portland. One time I watched to get shot in
the head with a grenade by a federal agent. She's fine,
she had a good helmet. She's going to take you
(27:15):
through what happened next, starting with the story of Portland's
largest new activist group. As thousands of newly activated Portlanders
looked for meaningful ways to latch onto the movement, butting
in their own backyard, one organization quickly sprung up as
one of the loudest in the crowd, Rose City Justice.
Almost overnight, Rose City Justice or r c J, was
(27:38):
leading marches throughout the city educating about Portland's past, its
black community, gentrification, and police brutality. Led by a black
truck an enthusiastic chance, these marches amassed upwards of ten
thousand people at times. Jedi was part of another organization
that formed in the wake of Floyd's death. His group,
Portland's Civil Rights Collective, began informally through a chance meet
(27:59):
up on the first night of the Portland uprisings. Their
goal at first making cops hate their jobs. Every night,
he and the PCRC team would take to the streets,
warring with cops downtown in an attempt to drain police resources.
Their fight would unknowingly lead them to r c J.
So the first um me and Kinsey, you know, Kinzie Smith.
(28:21):
Um I met her that night and we had just
like linked up and just so happened to just find
ourselves leading. I mean, like eight random people that were
down to just around battling the cops all night. We
just kind of fell into that role because I mean
there's very few black people to begin with, even downtown anyway,
(28:43):
So um, we were like the only ones that we
could really see in our vicinity that we're able to
like um, I hate the word leader, but just like
lead the the allies around um and trying to keep
them safe. And so at night we got we exchanged
numbers with like eighty different people that we had in
(29:05):
that group. Well really I took everybody's number and put
it all on a signal group chat, and we just
kept going out every single night. And then eventually, uh,
maybe like five or six days, maybe a week passes
in a Kinsey had came up with a name, and
she named it Portland Civil Rights Collective, And so we
(29:27):
did our things for like a week or two, and
then we linked up with ros City Justice. Once the
merge happened, they began taking to the streets in a
very different way. No longer were they standing toe to
toe with cops every night. Now they were marching in
the streets. Sometimes. Jedi said it felt like they were
going nowhere. Man. It's that's a It's interesting because it's
(29:51):
not how I would have probably imagined it because Rosity
Justice at the time was not they we're really going
out at night. I feel like they were doing like
the the early date or late evening but still daytime
marches because it's still light out, um. And then things
were like calmed down, like you know once it got
dark uh PCRC we were like out out on the
(30:15):
ground every night all night, uh, just battling the police basically. Um.
And so when we linked up with r c J,
because they they had like a much larger following at
the at the time, and they also had a larger
social media presence that was like twice as high as
of ours. In a way, seems like we defaulted to
(30:35):
their style of of resistance basically, which was just like
doing these now when I think about, people called them
the long marches to nowhere, which is really true in retrospect,
that's kind of what what's happening. I'd like to think
that we still made an impact on uh A lot
(30:56):
of the community that we would roll around, uh, A
lot of the neighborhoods that we we'd roll around like
it was nice to see like families come out of
their houses and like actually joined the marches sometimes, or
you know, just seeing their kids on the porch with
holding up their signs and stuff and that kind of stuff.
But when I think about how I literally never ever
(31:19):
saw the police and any of these marches, it it
makes me wonder like just the effectiveness of it all.
If the police didn't give a funk about what we're doing,
then was it really helping? But I don't I don't
think that's a fair assessment of exactly like how we
(31:41):
impacted the community. Nonetheless, like it kind of just it
evolved into basically us doing marches every day trying to
basically trying to activate people to come out. It's kind
of I guess how I look at it, um, but
(32:02):
that's kind of what it turned into. It It went
from us going out every night, bat on the police too,
gathering like hundreds and thousands of people actually to go
on these long marches while our c J led massive actions.
The so called peaceful protests favored by the likes of Wheeler.
Events at the Sacred Fence continued to draw the ire
(32:24):
of City Hall and the police. Some protesters even started
to wonder if there was really any point in getting
tear gassed at the same location every night. Divisions began
to mount between our CJ's education leaning resistance during the
day and the more lively and more volatile standoffs with
cops at the fence at night. Rifts formed between the
(32:45):
peaceful crowd and what you might call the direct action crowd.
Activist and live streamer Max Smith said he's purposefully not
tied to any one organization, but as the so called
fence wars raged on, he too found himself questioning how
this was furthering the cause for Black lives A fight
and fence that wasn't what we were here for, you know.
(33:06):
I and the fence was like some ship that kind
of it was like I used to call it the
Grand Theft autos aside mission, like this is, this has
nothing to do with what we're supposed to be doing
right now, but we have to complete this to get
back in the game, you know. And it was really weird,
and I think at that moment I really realized that
the distraction was intentional and that this was all getting
(33:30):
just diverted to become like a like a Trump a
campaign At you know, he's gonna come through and support
these police unions and this is his big commercial for it.
So it was a very uh. I felt like it
was a frustrating part of the protest because a it
was really a dangerous and people were really getting hurt
and kidnapped and all that kind of weird stuff. And
(33:52):
then on top of that, it wasn't the fight that
I wanted to, you know, to be fighting, but it was.
But it's the fight that brings out a lot of people.
So a very contrasting and confusing time for sure. Gregory
also found frustration with some of the unclear goals of
the protests as they developed. I think this is a
big part of the story that I think is not
(34:14):
being told, or that the hard or further left UM
has failed to really reckon with UM in an effective way.
So UM one, I'm still unsure if any of the
protests have an incredibly coherent goal. UM. For some it's
abolish the police, for some it's defund the police. For
(34:34):
some of those things mean the same thing. And then
I also think there are a ton of Portlanders, actually
most Portlanders, after working in politics for so long, who
don't support either of those things. I mean, we hold
all of those things. Um, they're not popular. Um, they're
incredibly popular on the left. And if you were at
the protest, you would think that these are unanimous things.
They're not. Um. So I think there was an incredible
(34:57):
opportunity for us when those massive protests. We're happening to
get a lot of change, not just the common sense
reforms that I think would make you know, people on
my hard left just call me a liberal. As divisions grew,
trouble loomed for our c J. In addition to the
sometimes fierce arguments over tactics, many Portlanders criticized our CJ
(35:18):
leadership for including a former military police officer. There were
also claims of financial mismanagement, particularly once leaders from our
CJ posted about attending a luxurious three day retreat. As
tensions rose, activists drew lines in the sand and began
retreating to their respective corners. From it, people started, I
(35:41):
guess people weren't really moving on principle, and people weren't
moving slow enough because a lot of people were really
new to to like organizing and protesting. People just wanted
to like get their way in. They wanted things to
go their way basically, and when you have too many
(36:01):
cooks in the kitchen, you know the recipe is gonna
get fucked up eventually, especially when everybody wants their recipe
to work. I mean I personally left because I was
with PCRC, and the split was basically all the original
r c J members and all the original PCRC members
(36:22):
are splitting down the middle, and we're going our separate
ways because we had initially combined forces. R c J
didn't formally disband after the falling out, but things got
noticeably quieter for the group after June. During the height
of the r c J days, their marches had drawn
thousands multiple times a week, but by late June they
(36:43):
were mostly boosting other groups actions via Instagram. Many of
the organizers involved with the group went on to form
their own organizations that continue to play key roles in
the movement today. Youth let orcs like Friday's for Freedom
and Black Youth Movement immediately began staging community focused neighborhood
events throughout the city. Another group, calling itself Justice Unity, Integrity,
(37:08):
Community Equality or JUICE PDX, would go on to host
several rallies later in the summer. Despite the split organizers
remember parts of the r C J days fondly. Jedi
says the mass marches of June helped feed an undeniable
sense of momentum, the amount of people that will come out,
and also like just some of the education that we're
(37:31):
giving to the crowd was I think really amazing man,
and it'smissed um because during those marches, like I would
create like little speeches to give to the crowd, and
so would Chrissy um, and so would see be like
some of the other organizers, we get on the mic
and like have like oh, we'd also like give the
(37:52):
crowd homework sometimes, so like we'd be like, all right,
we want you all to read like the Willie Lynch letters.
And then like two days march, like literally the next
day or the day where we like asked the crowd,
all right, so raise your hand if you read that,
you know. So um, those were really nice moments because
like you'd see some people literally raise their hand and
(38:12):
obviously you know some people probably have him, but like
some people literally did their homework. So it was nice
to see that. And also just like I'd say, like
a high point is just we've never seen mass mobilization
like that ever happened important, I will I've never seen
that before. Uh, for for an extended period of time,
like seeing thousands of people come out every single day,
(38:35):
um to basically wake up their neighborhoods. That seemed like
that was really powerful for for all of us too,
to feel like we were kind of shifting the you know,
the we're causing, like a paradigm shift in our community.
With Rose City Justice no longer organizing large scale marches
(38:57):
on a regular basis, and the nightly crowd at the
Justice Center and getting smaller each night, some activists decided
a change was needed. On June, people again attempted a
temporary autonomous zone, this time in North Portland in front
of the Portland Police Bureaus North Precinct. Barricades were put
up along the streets the precincts. Doors facing the occupied
(39:19):
area were boarded shut, and the main exit an entrance
facing the other direction were left open so that police
could vacate the premises. Police responded to this occupation faster
than the one at Wheeler's apartment. For one, it was
at a police precinct, so there was a police presence,
and two it had the same problem as the first
(39:39):
attempted autonomous zone, not enough people were present to hold
down the area. After only a few hours, police came
charging from around the corner, ripping apart barricades and firing
off stun grenades and pepper balls. The crowd moved to
(40:01):
block north and then quickly started a dumpster fire in
the middle of the road. The police, you are to
dispersed now, ran control agents and impact nunicians will be
you and again there bailed to the blind. There was
also a second, much smaller trash can fire beside building
(40:22):
adjacent to the police precinct. The flames from inside the
trash can caught on fire some of the plywood boards
covering a window. Protesters noticed and people began yelling, this
is a black owned business. Put the fire out. People
scrambled to put out the small flames on the plywood,
and at the same time police started shooting off tear
gas and flash bangs. The next day, the police, mayor
(40:45):
and local news companies spread the narrative that protesters locked
and barricaded officers inside their precinct and then lit the
precinct on fire. But what happened here last night with
door being nailed shut, barred, shut with fires being set
to the outside of the building with people inside. That
(41:10):
is not transformation. What happened here isn't helping to bring
about any meaningful change, reform or an end to the
historic races, and that all of us are joined together
and seeking to eliminate. Last night it was plainly and
simply about arson. It was about destruction, it was about
(41:32):
endangering lives. It's blatant criminal violence, violence that is totally unacceptable. That,
of course, is not what happened, But once a narrative
gets spread enough through mainstream outlets, it's very difficult to correct.
Throughout the next few months, Portland police would put out
(41:52):
misleading statements and flat out lies regarding the protests, which
news outlets would signal boost and treat as absolute fact.
We get the art world. It is essentially a money
laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging off people's walls.
(42:15):
You know they don't even know or suspect that they're fakes.
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception,
greed and forgery in the art world. You knew the
painting was fake. Um listen to art fraud starting February one,
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(42:38):
you get your podcasts. Conquer your New year's resolution to
be more productive with the Before Breakfast podcast. In each
bite sized daily episode, time management and productivity expert Laura
vander Camp teaches you how to make the most of
(42:59):
your time mote, at work and at home. These are
the practical suggestions you need to get more done with
your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our body strong
as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent
of pumping iron. Listen to Before Breakfast wherever you get
your podcasts. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back the hit
(43:21):
podcast How Men Think. And that's good news for anyone
that is confused by men, which is basically everyone get
an inside look at what goes on in the mind
of men from the men themselves. It's real talk, straight
from the source. How Men Think podcast is exactly what
we need to figure them out. It's going to be
fun and formative and probably a bit scary at times
(43:45):
because we're literally going inside the minds of men. As
much as we like to think all men are the same,
they're actually very different. Each week, a celebrity guest host
provides honest advice in his area of expertise. When I
agreed to do this reboot, I had a few conditions.
No sugarcoating, no mind games, and absolutely no man splaining.
(44:07):
Men are hard enough to understand without the mind games.
Listen to how Men Think on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. After the
protest at the North Precinct, people still wanted to get
away from the nightly dread at the Justice Center and
(44:29):
Fence Direct Action Alliance, the Youth Liberation Front and some
of the BIPOD activists who started the initial Justice Center
protest organized another protest in North Portland, this time at
the Police Union Building. So for a month we were
just targeting downtown, right, We were just straight downtown every
single day, and we we figured that we needed to
(44:50):
diversify a little bit and start hitting other targets around town.
Um going and protesting in areas like that, in neighborhood
letting people participate in come out into the streets with us.
So that's when we decided to start marching through neighborhoods.
So we did another events in Peninsula Park on June,
and this time we wanted to make it a lot
more community oriented, so we invited a lot of artists
(45:13):
to come perform. Mike Crenshaw was there, um Emiliana Desapato
was there, um uh C three, the Guru, all these people.
It was like a concert slash rally and it was great.
And we and that was the first night we targeted
the Portland Police Association building and so we went out
there and that's when they gassed us, and they gassed
(45:35):
the whole neighborhood. That was the first night that they
guessed an entire fucking neighborhood. When hundreds of Portlanders arrived
at the Police Union building to protest, the building was
already surrounded by Portland police and Oregon State troopers in
riot gere. Within minutes, an unlawful assembly was declared, and
soon after coffs began pushing people east away from the
(45:57):
p p A building. Do not stop now, talking late,
get you get back. All cops shoved and hit people
(46:23):
with their batons while walking east for a few blocks,
and then began to bull rush the crowd. In a bulrush,
a line of officers sprints towards the massive people, knocking
over as many as possible, and then officers in the
back typically come to tackle and arrest anyone on the ground.
That night, officers initially used smoke grenades, flash bangs, pepper balls,
(46:44):
and rubber bullets as well. This event has been deed
and unlawful. Assimbly. You need to disperse it the east
to subject future arrest and forced to include crowd control
of munitions move to the east. After multiple bulrushes and
constant volleys of munitions, protesters began throwing munitions back at
(47:08):
the armored police, along with plastic water bottles. Police responded
by declaring a riot and blanketing the neighborhood and tear gas.
First users on the area dispersed the area. Now, tear
(47:30):
gas had been banned in Portland since June nine. On
in Jackman Square, Mayor Wheeler had addressed an unfriendly crowd
of activists who had spent the last two weeks getting
repeatedly tear gassed by Portland police. He promised to ban
the use of tear gas the next day. Soon after
he left, officers gas the crowd. The next day, Wheeler
(47:55):
kept his word, sort of. The band came with a
lot of holes gas was allowed in situations where quote
lives or safety of the public or the police are
at risk, which was too vague to mean much. But
Portland police did take longer than usual to use tear
gas on the night of June. The reason why was
(48:18):
that earlier that day, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into
law a bill that banned the use of tear gas.
The exception was if Portland police declared a riot and
announced out loud that tear gas was about to be used. So,
of course, the police switched tactics and made sure to
declare a riot when they wanted to use tear gas
(48:40):
on the thirty The main justifications seemed to be the
protesters were near the Union building and some of them
had hucked plastic water bottles at riot lines of armored cups.
The Portland police declared a riot and started gassing. In
the end, neither the state nor local bands on tear
gas helped the Portlanders who lived in houses and apartments
(49:01):
along North Lombard Street. It was a balmy summer night
and many of them had their windows open in the
fresh air. When that air turned to poison gas, multiple
residents were assaulted and even arrested. While trying to flee
their gas filled homes outside of Oregon. On the federal level,
other events in late June would contribute to Portland becoming
the most heavily tear gas city in the United States.
(49:24):
On June, President Trump had signed Executive Order one three
nine three three protecting American Monuments, memorials and statues, and
federal property. As we've already explained, toppling statues had become
a viral sensation at the time, but the toppling of
a George Washington statue by teenage Portlanders seemed to have
(49:45):
been the most direct inspiration for this executive order. President
even referenced Portland in his press release on the matter.
The order also presents its own timeline of the nationwide
protests of June, saying quote, over the past five weeks,
there have been sustained assaults on the life and property
of civilians, law enforcement officers, government property, and revered American
(50:09):
monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial. Many of the rioters, arsonists,
and left wing extremists who have carried out and supported
these acts have explicitly identified themselves with ideologies such as
Marxism that call for the destruction of the United States
system of government. Anarchists and left wing extremists have sought
(50:29):
to advance a fringe ideology that paints the United States
of America as fundamentally unjust, and have sought to impose
that ideology on Americans through violence and mob intimidation. The
order describes a massive, overwhelmingly peaceful nationwide protest movement throughout
May and June is five nightmarish weeks of rampant violence
(50:51):
and murder, but its solutions focus confusingly on the prevention
of vandalism to statues. It states that quote United States
law authors is a penalty of up to ten years
imprisonment for the wilful injury of federal property end quote,
and goes on to say state and local law enforcement
(51:12):
agencies that failed to protect monuments, memorials, and statues will
be subject to withholding of federal support, and the federal
government will ensure personnel are available across the nation to
assist with the protection of federal monuments, memorials, statues, and property.
Feorder is unclear on how broadly federal jurisdiction extends in
(51:33):
the protection of statues. All in all, dozens of statues
were vandalized and destroyed throughout the country in the first
five weeks of the George Floyd uprisings. The vast majority
of these statues were Confederate monuments in the American South.
As of June, only two statues had been targeted by
Portland's protests, one on the steps of a high school
(51:54):
and the other on the private property of the Portland
German American Society. Both of these were miles from any
federal property. However, under the president's new executive order, Portland
would become the first city to see the large scale
deployment of federal troops. The Multnoma County Justice Center, the
epicenter of Portland's ongoing protests, is flanked on both sides
by federal buildings, the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse and the
(52:17):
Edith Greenwindell Wyatt Federal Building. A few blocks away. The
federal landmark of Pioneer Courthouse overlooks Courthouse Square, the site
of many of June's large daytime rallies, as well as
many tear gas choked showdowns between nighttime protesters and PPB
riot lines. When Feds were sent in, they would be
deploying into the center of Portland's ongoing protests. On July one,
(52:39):
Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolfe,
put out a statement answering the President's call, referring to
the executive order he had made. The end of that
statement read, as we approached the July fourth holiday, I
have directed the deployment and prepositioning of rapid response teams
across the country to respond to potential threats to facilities
and property. Well. The Department respects every American's right to
(53:02):
protest peacefully. Violence and civil unrest will not be tolerated.
In the next episode, we'll hear how Portland protesters and
those rapid deployment teams met in Portland for the very
first time on July four. Uh Where the grandpops who
couldn't fathom the obamasis, I don't hate America, just to me,
(53:24):
and she keeps some promises teens looking like the sixties.
It's crazy, a nationwide deja p What my people post
to do go to schools named after the clan founder
were around town? Is I don't see why we're frowning
Native American students forced to learn about when o'para Sarah?
How is that fair bro some euros unsung in some months,
(53:45):
that's get monuments built for them. But ain't be all
a little bit of monster. We crook you once the
last time you took a time out. I'm Ev Rodsky,
author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and
(54:07):
Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender division of labor,
attorney and family mediator. And I'm doctor Addina Rukar, a
Harvard physician and medical correspondent with an expertise in the
science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. We're so
excited to share our podcast, Time Out, a production of
I Heart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine, repealing back the layers
(54:29):
around why society makes it so easy to guard men's
time like it's diamonds and treat women's time like it's
infinite like sand. And So, whether you're partnered with or
without children, or in a career where you want more boundaries,
this is the place for you, for people of all
family structures. So take this time out with us to learn,
get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim your time. Listen to
(54:54):
Time Out, a fair Play podcast on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Look for your children's eyes, and you will discover the
true magic of a forest. Find a forest near you
and start exploring it. Discover the Forest dot org brought
(55:15):
to you by the United States Forest Service and the
AD Council. What girls in the forest, our imagination, and
our family bonds. The forest is closer than you think.
Find a forest near you and discover the forest dot
org brought to you by the United States Forest Service
and the AD Council.
I'm John Gonzalez, the host of s i s new podcast,
Sports Illustrated Weekly. Sports Illustrated has delivered some of the
best storytelling in sports for seventy years and now that continues.
On our show. Each week will dive deep into the
best stories from around the sports world. Sports Illustrated Weekly
is available every Wednesday on the I Heart radio app,
(00:22):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now.
The art world, it is essentially a money laundering business.
The best fakes are still hanging on people's walls. You know,
they don't even know or suspect that their fakes. I'm
(00:42):
atle like Baldwin, and this is a podcast about deception, greed,
and forgery in the art world. I just walked in
and saw this great red painting presuming to be a Rothko.
Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to
be made, a lot of money. I'm listening to what
(01:03):
they're paid for each thing. It was an incredible, mandsome money.
You knew the painting was fake. Um Listen to Art
Fraud starting February one on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Conquer your
(01:29):
New Year's resolutions with the Before Breakfast podcast. In each
bite sized daily episode, you'll learn how to make the
most of your time with practical tools to help you
feel less busy and get more done. Listen to Before
Breakfast on the I Heart Radio app four wherever you
get your podcasts. We started the series by asking why
(01:53):
Portland's and the most accurate answer to that question is
the history lesson. We gave an episode one, but the
most direct and to why the city of Portland became
the nexus of an uprising starts with a bunch of
teenagers in a statue of George Washington. Our own Garrison
Davis was there. Here's what he experienced. On Thursday, June eighth,
(02:13):
I set out for a park in East Portland. The
teenage activist group Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front or just
the Wire Left posted on their Twitter account that something
was planned for eight pm, so I made my way
expecting something interesting to happen. The previous night, the Wire
Left and some New Black organizers had set up an
(02:35):
autonomous zone style occupation in front of the Mayor's apartment
in the upscale Pearl district. Inspired by Seattle's Capitol Hill
occupied protest slash Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone coome morning. Not
enough bodies were present at the attempted autonomous zone to
resist the riot police who arrived to clear the area.
(02:55):
After the very short lived autonomous zone, I had wondered
what the wire left had planned next. As eight pm
approached on that Thursday, only a little over a dozen
people gathered at the original meeting spot. The small group
were mostly in black block. Black block is a tactic
that originated with German anti globalization protesters. It involves wearing
(03:17):
all black clothing to make it difficult to identify specific people.
Shortly after I arrived, the crowd had began marching north.
They decided to take the sidewalk instead of the street
to due to their low numbers. In a matter of minutes,
the crowd arrived at their apparent destination, the Portland German
American Society, which features a large statue of George Washington
(03:39):
out in front of the building. Activists started by draping
an American flag over the face of the statue and
lighting it ablaze. People spray painted the base and statue itself,
writing genocidal colonist slave owner and six nineteen, the year
the first enslaved Africans were brought to America. Slowly more
people arrived as calls for support were made out over
(04:01):
social media. The few dozen people in attendance started attaching
nylon straps to the head of the statue and began
pulling back and forth. By eleven PM, the statue of
George Washington had been completely torn down. The crowd quickly left,
(04:26):
calling the Night of success, and police arrived a little
over half an hour later. At the time, no one
could have known that this small action would trigger a
series of events that would turn Portland's BLM protests into
the biggest story in the entire country. We pro hey
(04:51):
leath the listeners take here. Last season on Lethal Lit,
you might remember I came to Hollow Falls on a
mission clearing my aunt best name and making sure justice
was finally served. But I hadn't counted on a rash
of new murders tearing apart the town. My mission put
myself and my friends in danger. Though it wasn't all bad,
(05:15):
I'm going to be a reality tig I like you,
But now all signs point to a new serial killer
in Hollow Falls. If this game is just starting. You
better believe I'm gonna win. I'm tig Torres and this
is Lethal Lit. Catch up on season one of the
hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit, a tig Tara's mystery
(05:38):
out now, and then tune in for all new thrills
in season two, dropping weekly starting February nine. Subscribe now
to never miss an episode. Listen to Leave a Lit
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. I'm Colleen with joined me the
host of Eating Wall Broke podcast. While I eat a
meal created by self made entrepreneur's influence, There's and celebrities
(06:01):
over a meal they once eight when they were broke.
Today I have the lovely aj Crimson, the official Princess
of comfin Asia, Kidding and Asia. This is the professor.
We're here on Eating While Broke and today I'm gonna
break down my meal that got me through a time
when I was broken. Listen to Eating Will Broke on
the I Heart Radio app, on Apple podcast or wherever
(06:21):
you get your podcasts. This is Roxanne Gay, host of
the Roxanne Gay Agenda, The Bad Room, and this podcast
of Your Dreams. Now, what is The Roxanne Gay Agenda.
You might ask, well, it's a podcast where I'm going
to speak my mind about what's on my mind, and
that could be anything. Every week I will be in
(06:42):
conversation with an interesting person who has something to say.
We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books,
and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. I started
show with a recommendation, Really, I'm just going to share
with you a movie or a book, or maybe some
music or a comedy set, something that I really want
(07:03):
you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well.
Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda,
The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams, every Tuesday on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcast. Right wing media reacted to the toppling
(07:32):
of the George Washington statue as expected. A narrative was
spun that police were letting a violent mob of Antifa
rioters go around town destroying property without consequence. Pundits criticized
protesters for erasing history. The Portland police defended their failure
to stop the toppling of the statue by complaining that
they had been occupied with a concurrent protest at the
Justice Center fence. They stated the group blocked the street
(07:55):
for several hours, throwing projectiles such as hot dogs at
the Justice Centered doors. By this point, three weeks into
the protests, dozens of Portland's had been arrested at actions,
and yet a narrative had begun to spread on right
wing media that there had been no consequences for protesters
engaging in destructive activity. The toppling of George Washington flipped
a switch in national far right media, and suddenly Portland
(08:18):
was a symbol of everything wrong with the left. Here's
President Trump on the campaign trail two days ago. Left
as radicals in Portland, Oregon ripped down a statue of
George Washington and wrapped it in an American flag and
(08:39):
set the American flag on fire. Democrat A Democrats. Everything
I tell you is Democrat. And you know we ought
to do something. Mr Senators, we have two great senators.
We ought to come up with legislation that if you
burned the American flag, you go to jail for one year.
(09:02):
There are a lot of things wrong with that statement.
First off, some of the folks who took down that
statue would find being called a Democrat insulting. Also, the
Supreme Court has ruled that burning an American flag is
a constitutionally protected form of free speech. Portland protesters toppling
at George Washington statue seems to have inspired the President
to suggest legislation that would ban not just the toppling
(09:23):
of statues, which was already illegal, but flag burning and
similar acts of protest. As it turned out, Donald Trump
would follow through on the idea of criminalizing that sort
of behavior. But why would protesters go through all the
trouble of tumbling down statues in the first place. We
talked with some members of the y LF, the Youth
Liberation Front to get their perspective. Since the President of
(09:44):
the United States has threatened these again literal children repeatedly,
We've redubbed the audio in order to protect their identities
because they represent monuments to people who are white supremacist,
in genocidal and as an anarchist, I think every statue
to a women should be torn down because they don't
believe in idolizing anyone, but especially like people who led
(10:06):
the way for colonization and just awful atrocities in their lifetime.
President Trump's fury over the George Washington action through the
Youth Liberation Front into the national spotlight. But that statue
was not actually the first to fall in Portland, and
it would not be the last, though the wire Left
would become synonymous with a more radical, militant segment of
the protests, acting under the cover of night. The first
(10:27):
statue to come down in Portland was actually at Thomas
Jefferson High School, one of the only remaining majority black
schools in the state, on the afternoon of June fourteenth,
as a large peaceful march led by Rose City Justice
departed from Jefferson, the statue of the school's namesake was
torn from its pedestal by a small enthusiastic group in
broad daylight. Picking up the rest of the story is
(10:48):
my colleague and partner in getting horribly tear gassed A
Laine Kinchen. Toppling statues of historical slaveholders became a nationwide
trend during the first three weeks of the George Floyd protests.
By the time the George Washington and statue at the
Portland German American Association came down, eighteen other statues had
fallen to crowds across the country. In the weeks that followed,
at least seventeen more statues would meet the same fate,
(11:11):
and many more would be quietly relocated for their own protection.
Just as the wire left vandalism of the Washington statue
fits into a larger context of statue toppling. The wile
of themselves are only one part of Portland's activist ecosystem,
originally emerging from a loose coalition of anti racist and
anti Trump high school groups. Here are two while of
members talking about the genesis of the group in nineteen
(11:35):
the comrades who started it made a lot of connections
with the Occupy Ice and started running things, running the
social media. I think it was really born. It came
out of like really sporadic school protests, just like whatever
was happening, and it was something that people felt was
really important. Back then. The group slowly moved towards like
anti fascism and you liberation, trying to interest ageism as
(11:56):
well in those spaces, and I think it definitely went
that direction completely. Gunto nine. Yeah, that was like a
big anti fascist and fascist rally in Portland, and I
definitely think that kind of sparked a turning point where
I think like the organization really blossomed from there. Yeah.
We started off as like a very liberal group, like
one of those many boring student activist groups that just
like participated in walkouts. But then we started to take
(12:19):
a more radical turn. Like our first protest that I
was involved with was for gun control rally and that's yeah,
that's really cringe looking back, because now we're all like
insurrectionary anarchists. Oh. I think it definitely moved from that
into a more radical stance after June twenty nine, and
then came on the seventeenth, which was another big rally
in Portland that um where he I mean like a
(12:41):
good amount of focus was placed on us all of
a sudden, Yeah, and I think it kind of just
continued after that. Jacob bu Eros, the founder of Direct
Action Alliance, says he first encountered what would eventually become
the while Left in March of seventeen, while organizing to
counter a far right demonstration in the wealthy suburb of
Lake Oswego. It would be you know, Rose City and TIFA,
Direct Action Alliance tm w Y, a left which I
(13:03):
think had back then it was still called Oregonians Against
Trump or something like that, but um, that's when we
first started organizing together to confront the right wing. Was
during that time in March of seventeen through May of seventeen,
and then after that it was discoordinated effort. Jacob says
(13:23):
the Direct Action Alliance was formed out of a sense
of desperation in late yeah, after the election. I just
didn't want to keep wasting my time in politics, and
I felt this really big sense of urgency. And around
that time was when they started attacking people. Um at
Standing Rock and both of my kids are our citizens
(13:46):
of the Cherokee Nation. My partners the citizen of the
Cherokee Nation, and they were they were all really upset
about it, and I was really upset about it. Jacob
had been an activist for a while previous to this point,
and he was already familiar with Portland organized There's who
had risen to prominence with the first Black Lives Matter
protests in these include Danielle James and the founder of
Don't Shoot Portland, Teresa Rayford. We each have our own
(14:09):
individual thing that we really focus on, except for in
the Direct Action Alliance, we kind of just do everything.
But most groups have their own thing that they focus on,
but we're all the same people helping each other behind
the scene. So when Wild Left is working focusing on
something that's anti anti police right, it's the same people
who organized the large peaceful blm rallies who are working
(14:32):
with them to support them. And so that's where the
intersection is. We're all one big family here in Portland.
It's not a it's not like in other cities where
we actually have to build alliance. As people have been
active in the city for so long and have been
seeing the same faces for so long. I'd say it
all goes back to Terresta Raeford. She's the one. She's
the one who took it fromleven when the when the
(14:55):
occupy movement happened, and kind of molded that energy into
something where Portland became an activist scene again. This this
city wasn't wasn't very active. It kind of lost its
edge until Tersta Rayford came along and started pushing people
to come out to show up to fight back. When
Quantis Hayes was killed, she was out there calling everyone
(15:17):
to come out do something about it, and I'd say
that she was I'd say she's at the core of it.
I mean most of the people who I've met, who
I've coordinated with, who I've worked with, all of those
groups that I just mentioned to you, I met all
of them that Don't Shoot Portland rallies. Way back before
Trump was president, Rayford had originally formed Don't Shoot PDX
in response to the killing of Michael Brown and Ferguson,
(15:39):
but the failed PPB shooting of teenager Quantie Hayes in
February seventeen gave a new local urgency to calls for
police accountability and came in the midst of an upswing
of far right mobilizations targeting Portland. Every city has certain
defining moments, traumas which galvanized the community, spur the creation
of new coalitions and of rise to new organizing strategies.
(16:02):
One of those defining moments for Portland came in May
of seventeen, when a white supremacist named Jeremy Christian murdered
two people on a max light rail train. The day
before the killings, Christian assaulted another Portlander, Dmitria Hester. Here
she recounts her experience. Okay, so three years ago, UM
(16:23):
Jeremy Joseph Christian UM attacked me he's a white known
supremacist that here in organists that the police knew about, everybody,
the the mayor knew about. I mean, everybody just knew
about him, because he had set the tone at every
march and saying and stating how much he hates, you know,
(16:46):
the races, anyone that wasn't black, and wasn't that wasn't white,
and wanted to harm or kill anyone that wasn't you know,
those descents of that descent of being white and Christian
so um. He verbally attacked me for three stops on
the MAX in May two thousand, two thousands, seven teen,
(17:13):
front and center, often with a bullhorn in hand. Dimitria
became one of the most recognizable voices of Portland's protests.
The man she's describing, Jeremy Christian, was a regular attendee
of far right rallies in the Portland area. That night,
Dimitria fended off Christian with pepper spray. Police responded, but
Christian was not detained and he got away to kill
(17:35):
the people. The next day on that same Green Line.
He was looking for me because I mased him the
night before. He encountered to um. One African American lady
and one lady who had to have Geva bevon and
UM she wasn't thought she was Muslimed, so he verbally
(17:58):
started a technic d little girls under eighteen and three
men came into their rescuing. Was defending them and tried
to de escalate the problem. But he stabbed two of
them and killed them, and uh stabbed the third and
tried to kill him. So the police um got the
(18:19):
call not to even use uh force when they were
got the call that he did this on the MAX.
This just shows you how the police play a part
and um everything he did and the reason why he
got away with what he did. And then so when
they actually um caught him, he was still wielding the
(18:40):
knife that he killed people with. UM he threatened four
people on his way to when they detained him. And
the only reason they detained him again was because the
public was following him. And UM they didn't even shoot
him with rubber bullis or cheered asthma or anything. With
(19:01):
a knife in his hand and threatening the police, he
was able to throw the knife on the police cars.
You'll drink in his wine that he had in anothergatory bottle. UM,
and they detain him and after they detain him, he
bragged about what he did. Ricky John Best and Talisia
(19:23):
Namcamchi died in the attack. The third man, Micah Fletcher, survived.
A Few weeks before the murders, Christian had attended a
right wing free speech event in the Montevilla neighborhood of Portland.
The rally aimed to build on the momentum of the
Lake Oswego event in March. Micah Fletcher, the only survivor
of the stabbings, had been in Montevilla as well, counter
(19:45):
protesting alongside Direct Action, Alliance, Rose City, ANTIFA and what
would eventually become the YLF. In some ways, Portland is
a very small town. After the murders, far right rallies
in Portland continued. Anti fascist counter protests were large and
spirited at first, but as Effie Bound describes, that didn't last.
And in the year since that we had seen um
(20:08):
the counter demonstrations dwindle to just basically a small um
Black Blocks that was based that was showing up to
counter them, and on June it had turned into a
really really violent um events where a lot of folks
on our side got pretty seriously hurt and um some
of them had to go to the hospital and sustained
(20:30):
school fractures. And there was that video of um, you know,
Etan Noordine or Rufio, um you know, knocking out somebody
and UM that kind of you know, became the viral
proud Boy sensation. It did and and really kind of
um you know, did a lot for recruitment for them. UM.
(20:53):
And so we decided that what we needed in Portland
was um uh straw organizing effort to get as many
people as possible to show up to oppose them when
they have these rallies. Effie is part of a group
called pop mop, short for Popular Mobilization. Their goal is
to use innovative and community friendly organizing tactics to foster
(21:13):
a big tent approach to anti fascism. We planned pretty
closely with Rosity, Antifa and d s a UM. Pretty
much all of our events that we've had have been
in partnership with at least those two organizations, and then
for various events, we've had coalitions of up to thirty
you know, plus organizations at various times have signed onto
different actions that we've had involving groups like Jobs with Justice,
(21:35):
and UM like the Buddhist Piece Fellowship and UH Queerliberation Front, UH,
UH Symbiosis and UH Portland's Assembly. There's a lot of
different organization since pop Mob has countered far right events
with online fundraisers, hundreds of free vegan milkshakes and anti
(21:55):
fascist dance parties. When the George Floyd protests began, they
took on a front role. So one thing is that
we've always had a very very narrow mission as an organization,
and we've been really intentional about UM trying to stick
within the scope of that mission, which is inspiring people
to show up and oppose the far right and UM.
(22:17):
So UM, we didn't feel like we were in a
position UM where we should be leading anything. So we
instead UM agreed as a group that we wanted to
operate in a support role only. And UM. One of
the things that we've done over the last a couple
of years is kind of really built up on a
social media presence and UM have you know, had a
(22:38):
lot of UM but like enough, there's some really talented
people within our group that do a lot of great
media work and UM, and so we had basically just
wanted to use our platform to boost the organizing. The
other groups for doing on the ground Don't Shoot would
organize rallies throughout the summer. Marches called by the Direct
Action Alliance would repeatedly target police infrastructure. But as new
(23:01):
groups sprung up and led marches of thousands, Portland also
had a robust support network of activist groups looking for
ways to help. Longtime Portland activist Gregory McKelvey describes the
transition to new leadership and groups springing up in there
were people who were new brand, knew that we're called
to the moment because of the murder of George Floyd.
(23:23):
And I think that it is really imperative that those
people become the leaders. Also think it's imperative that the
people who were previous leaders take a step back and
allow those people to be the new leaders. Right. Um,
And but I think that we cannot keep reinventing the
wheel every time that protest movement comes up. So what
needs to happen is the previous leaders of every protest
(23:46):
movement that happens need to mentor and try and um
teach the lessons that they learned to the new generation
that is called to a current moment. The stabbing would
put all eyes on Portland, though no outlets reporting on
the inside knew about Demitria's encounter the day before. Months later,
she would link with activist group Don't Shoot Portland and
other organizations to tell her story. Thank you for much
(24:10):
for get any hope in being or story. I would
praying every night they good would prevail over evil. For
three years, we our community, the victims have been waking up,
hoping to seem so closer to the end of the
senseless travesty. Today it's finally here would they quill unanimous
(24:37):
votes from the people of our community. Thank you for
the beautiful, amazing, resilient support group. We have changed the narrative.
(24:57):
They came hard and strong towards our community. Creaky intellation
will forever everyone like Jeremy Christian, if all the street
(25:20):
is they are not welcome here. We love until we
are creative. She'd continue to work with Don't Shoot, which
had grown to become the largest Black Lives Matter organization
in the state, throughout the litigation of her case. In June,
(25:41):
well into the Portland uprisings, Jeremy Christian was sentenced to
two consecutive life sentences without parole at the sentencing hearing,
Demitria offered her own indictment of not only Christian, but
the entire law enforcement system for facilitating people like him,
before offering some searing last words for her attacker. Need
(26:01):
people of color. That's for our community, can't office. We
need our community and office to do what is best
for our community, not people that are looking out for popularity.
And these notes. We're going to stop these from using
our debts to capitalize and make a profit out of
(26:22):
We will not let you get these people in office.
You are not welcome here. And to the miss Derevian Christian,
your mom should have followed you. You are a waste
up brand. And if can you die, you go to hill.
I hope you run. See there, Hey, you cant Water's
(26:54):
fine nets off the exchange would become fuel for Demetrius
Chance in the streets. Next is my colleague Beatrix. Beatrix
is a reporter who worked in me on the ground
in Portland. One time I watched to get shot in
the head with a grenade by a federal agent. She's fine,
she had a good helmet. She's going to take you
(27:15):
through what happened next, starting with the story of Portland's
largest new activist group. As thousands of newly activated Portlanders
looked for meaningful ways to latch onto the movement, butting
in their own backyard, one organization quickly sprung up as
one of the loudest in the crowd, Rose City Justice.
Almost overnight, Rose City Justice or r c J, was
(27:38):
leading marches throughout the city educating about Portland's past, its
black community, gentrification, and police brutality. Led by a black
truck an enthusiastic chance, these marches amassed upwards of ten
thousand people at times. Jedi was part of another organization
that formed in the wake of Floyd's death. His group,
Portland's Civil Rights Collective, began informally through a chance meet
(27:59):
up on the first night of the Portland uprisings. Their
goal at first making cops hate their jobs. Every night,
he and the PCRC team would take to the streets,
warring with cops downtown in an attempt to drain police resources.
Their fight would unknowingly lead them to r c J.
So the first um me and Kinsey, you know, Kinzie Smith.
(28:21):
Um I met her that night and we had just
like linked up and just so happened to just find
ourselves leading. I mean, like eight random people that were
down to just around battling the cops all night. We
just kind of fell into that role because I mean
there's very few black people to begin with, even downtown anyway,
(28:43):
So um, we were like the only ones that we
could really see in our vicinity that we're able to
like um, I hate the word leader, but just like
lead the the allies around um and trying to keep
them safe. And so at night we got we exchanged
numbers with like eighty different people that we had in
(29:05):
that group. Well really I took everybody's number and put
it all on a signal group chat, and we just
kept going out every single night. And then eventually, uh,
maybe like five or six days, maybe a week passes
in a Kinsey had came up with a name, and
she named it Portland Civil Rights Collective, And so we
(29:27):
did our things for like a week or two, and
then we linked up with ros City Justice. Once the
merge happened, they began taking to the streets in a
very different way. No longer were they standing toe to
toe with cops every night. Now they were marching in
the streets. Sometimes. Jedi said it felt like they were
going nowhere. Man. It's that's a It's interesting because it's
(29:51):
not how I would have probably imagined it because Rosity
Justice at the time was not they we're really going
out at night. I feel like they were doing like
the the early date or late evening but still daytime
marches because it's still light out, um. And then things
were like calmed down, like you know once it got
dark uh PCRC we were like out out on the
(30:15):
ground every night all night, uh, just battling the police basically. Um.
And so when we linked up with r c J,
because they they had like a much larger following at
the at the time, and they also had a larger
social media presence that was like twice as high as
of ours. In a way, seems like we defaulted to
(30:35):
their style of of resistance basically, which was just like
doing these now when I think about, people called them
the long marches to nowhere, which is really true in retrospect,
that's kind of what what's happening. I'd like to think
that we still made an impact on uh A lot
(30:56):
of the community that we would roll around, uh, A
lot of the neighborhoods that we we'd roll around like
it was nice to see like families come out of
their houses and like actually joined the marches sometimes, or
you know, just seeing their kids on the porch with
holding up their signs and stuff and that kind of stuff.
But when I think about how I literally never ever
(31:19):
saw the police and any of these marches, it it
makes me wonder like just the effectiveness of it all.
If the police didn't give a funk about what we're doing,
then was it really helping? But I don't I don't
think that's a fair assessment of exactly like how we
(31:41):
impacted the community. Nonetheless, like it kind of just it
evolved into basically us doing marches every day trying to
basically trying to activate people to come out. It's kind
of I guess how I look at it, um, but
(32:02):
that's kind of what it turned into. It It went
from us going out every night, bat on the police too,
gathering like hundreds and thousands of people actually to go
on these long marches while our c J led massive actions.
The so called peaceful protests favored by the likes of Wheeler.
Events at the Sacred Fence continued to draw the ire
(32:24):
of City Hall and the police. Some protesters even started
to wonder if there was really any point in getting
tear gassed at the same location every night. Divisions began
to mount between our CJ's education leaning resistance during the
day and the more lively and more volatile standoffs with
cops at the fence at night. Rifts formed between the
(32:45):
peaceful crowd and what you might call the direct action crowd.
Activist and live streamer Max Smith said he's purposefully not
tied to any one organization, but as the so called
fence wars raged on, he too found himself questioning how
this was furthering the cause for Black lives A fight
and fence that wasn't what we were here for, you know.
(33:06):
I and the fence was like some ship that kind
of it was like I used to call it the
Grand Theft autos aside mission, like this is, this has
nothing to do with what we're supposed to be doing
right now, but we have to complete this to get
back in the game, you know. And it was really weird,
and I think at that moment I really realized that
the distraction was intentional and that this was all getting
(33:30):
just diverted to become like a like a Trump a
campaign At you know, he's gonna come through and support
these police unions and this is his big commercial for it.
So it was a very uh. I felt like it
was a frustrating part of the protest because a it
was really a dangerous and people were really getting hurt
and kidnapped and all that kind of weird stuff. And
(33:52):
then on top of that, it wasn't the fight that
I wanted to, you know, to be fighting, but it was.
But it's the fight that brings out a lot of people.
So a very contrasting and confusing time for sure. Gregory
also found frustration with some of the unclear goals of
the protests as they developed. I think this is a
big part of the story that I think is not
(34:14):
being told, or that the hard or further left UM
has failed to really reckon with UM in an effective way.
So UM one, I'm still unsure if any of the
protests have an incredibly coherent goal. UM. For some it's
abolish the police, for some it's defund the police. For
(34:34):
some of those things mean the same thing. And then
I also think there are a ton of Portlanders, actually
most Portlanders, after working in politics for so long, who
don't support either of those things. I mean, we hold
all of those things. Um, they're not popular. Um, they're
incredibly popular on the left. And if you were at
the protest, you would think that these are unanimous things.
They're not. Um. So I think there was an incredible
(34:57):
opportunity for us when those massive protests. We're happening to
get a lot of change, not just the common sense
reforms that I think would make you know, people on
my hard left just call me a liberal. As divisions grew,
trouble loomed for our c J. In addition to the
sometimes fierce arguments over tactics, many Portlanders criticized our CJ
(35:18):
leadership for including a former military police officer. There were
also claims of financial mismanagement, particularly once leaders from our
CJ posted about attending a luxurious three day retreat. As
tensions rose, activists drew lines in the sand and began
retreating to their respective corners. From it, people started, I
(35:41):
guess people weren't really moving on principle, and people weren't
moving slow enough because a lot of people were really
new to to like organizing and protesting. People just wanted
to like get their way in. They wanted things to
go their way basically, and when you have too many
(36:01):
cooks in the kitchen, you know the recipe is gonna
get fucked up eventually, especially when everybody wants their recipe
to work. I mean I personally left because I was
with PCRC, and the split was basically all the original
r c J members and all the original PCRC members
(36:22):
are splitting down the middle, and we're going our separate
ways because we had initially combined forces. R c J
didn't formally disband after the falling out, but things got
noticeably quieter for the group after June. During the height
of the r c J days, their marches had drawn
thousands multiple times a week, but by late June they
(36:43):
were mostly boosting other groups actions via Instagram. Many of
the organizers involved with the group went on to form
their own organizations that continue to play key roles in
the movement today. Youth let orcs like Friday's for Freedom
and Black Youth Movement immediately began staging community focused neighborhood
events throughout the city. Another group, calling itself Justice Unity, Integrity,
(37:08):
Community Equality or JUICE PDX, would go on to host
several rallies later in the summer. Despite the split organizers
remember parts of the r C J days fondly. Jedi
says the mass marches of June helped feed an undeniable
sense of momentum, the amount of people that will come out,
and also like just some of the education that we're
(37:31):
giving to the crowd was I think really amazing man,
and it'smissed um because during those marches, like I would
create like little speeches to give to the crowd, and
so would Chrissy um, and so would see be like
some of the other organizers, we get on the mic
and like have like oh, we'd also like give the
(37:52):
crowd homework sometimes, so like we'd be like, all right,
we want you all to read like the Willie Lynch letters.
And then like two days march, like literally the next
day or the day where we like asked the crowd,
all right, so raise your hand if you read that,
you know. So um, those were really nice moments because
like you'd see some people literally raise their hand and
(38:12):
obviously you know some people probably have him, but like
some people literally did their homework. So it was nice
to see that. And also just like I'd say, like
a high point is just we've never seen mass mobilization
like that ever happened important, I will I've never seen
that before. Uh, for for an extended period of time,
like seeing thousands of people come out every single day,
(38:35):
um to basically wake up their neighborhoods. That seemed like
that was really powerful for for all of us too,
to feel like we were kind of shifting the you know,
the we're causing, like a paradigm shift in our community.
With Rose City Justice no longer organizing large scale marches
(38:57):
on a regular basis, and the nightly crowd at the
Justice Center and getting smaller each night, some activists decided
a change was needed. On June, people again attempted a
temporary autonomous zone, this time in North Portland in front
of the Portland Police Bureaus North Precinct. Barricades were put
up along the streets the precincts. Doors facing the occupied
(39:19):
area were boarded shut, and the main exit an entrance
facing the other direction were left open so that police
could vacate the premises. Police responded to this occupation faster
than the one at Wheeler's apartment. For one, it was
at a police precinct, so there was a police presence,
and two it had the same problem as the first
(39:39):
attempted autonomous zone, not enough people were present to hold
down the area. After only a few hours, police came
charging from around the corner, ripping apart barricades and firing
off stun grenades and pepper balls. The crowd moved to
(40:01):
block north and then quickly started a dumpster fire in
the middle of the road. The police, you are to
dispersed now, ran control agents and impact nunicians will be
you and again there bailed to the blind. There was
also a second, much smaller trash can fire beside building
(40:22):
adjacent to the police precinct. The flames from inside the
trash can caught on fire some of the plywood boards
covering a window. Protesters noticed and people began yelling, this
is a black owned business. Put the fire out. People
scrambled to put out the small flames on the plywood,
and at the same time police started shooting off tear
gas and flash bangs. The next day, the police, mayor
(40:45):
and local news companies spread the narrative that protesters locked
and barricaded officers inside their precinct and then lit the
precinct on fire. But what happened here last night with
door being nailed shut, barred, shut with fires being set
to the outside of the building with people inside. That
(41:10):
is not transformation. What happened here isn't helping to bring
about any meaningful change, reform or an end to the
historic races, and that all of us are joined together
and seeking to eliminate. Last night it was plainly and
simply about arson. It was about destruction, it was about
(41:32):
endangering lives. It's blatant criminal violence, violence that is totally unacceptable. That,
of course, is not what happened, But once a narrative
gets spread enough through mainstream outlets, it's very difficult to correct.
Throughout the next few months, Portland police would put out
(41:52):
misleading statements and flat out lies regarding the protests, which
news outlets would signal boost and treat as absolute fact.
We get the art world. It is essentially a money
laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging off people's walls.
(42:15):
You know they don't even know or suspect that they're fakes.
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception,
greed and forgery in the art world. You knew the
painting was fake. Um listen to art fraud starting February one,
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(42:38):
you get your podcasts. Conquer your New year's resolution to
be more productive with the Before Breakfast podcast. In each
bite sized daily episode, time management and productivity expert Laura
vander Camp teaches you how to make the most of
(42:59):
your time mote, at work and at home. These are
the practical suggestions you need to get more done with
your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our body strong
as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent
of pumping iron. Listen to Before Breakfast wherever you get
your podcasts. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back the hit
(43:21):
podcast How Men Think. And that's good news for anyone
that is confused by men, which is basically everyone get
an inside look at what goes on in the mind
of men from the men themselves. It's real talk, straight
from the source. How Men Think podcast is exactly what
we need to figure them out. It's going to be
fun and formative and probably a bit scary at times
(43:45):
because we're literally going inside the minds of men. As
much as we like to think all men are the same,
they're actually very different. Each week, a celebrity guest host
provides honest advice in his area of expertise. When I
agreed to do this reboot, I had a few conditions.
No sugarcoating, no mind games, and absolutely no man splaining.
(44:07):
Men are hard enough to understand without the mind games.
Listen to how Men Think on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. After the
protest at the North Precinct, people still wanted to get
away from the nightly dread at the Justice Center and
(44:29):
Fence Direct Action Alliance, the Youth Liberation Front and some
of the BIPOD activists who started the initial Justice Center
protest organized another protest in North Portland, this time at
the Police Union Building. So for a month we were
just targeting downtown, right, We were just straight downtown every
single day, and we we figured that we needed to
(44:50):
diversify a little bit and start hitting other targets around town.
Um going and protesting in areas like that, in neighborhood
letting people participate in come out into the streets with us.
So that's when we decided to start marching through neighborhoods.
So we did another events in Peninsula Park on June,
and this time we wanted to make it a lot
more community oriented, so we invited a lot of artists
(45:13):
to come perform. Mike Crenshaw was there, um Emiliana Desapato
was there, um uh C three, the Guru, all these people.
It was like a concert slash rally and it was great.
And we and that was the first night we targeted
the Portland Police Association building and so we went out
there and that's when they gassed us, and they gassed
(45:35):
the whole neighborhood. That was the first night that they
guessed an entire fucking neighborhood. When hundreds of Portlanders arrived
at the Police Union building to protest, the building was
already surrounded by Portland police and Oregon State troopers in
riot gere. Within minutes, an unlawful assembly was declared, and
soon after coffs began pushing people east away from the
(45:57):
p p A building. Do not stop now, talking late,
get you get back. All cops shoved and hit people
(46:23):
with their batons while walking east for a few blocks,
and then began to bull rush the crowd. In a bulrush,
a line of officers sprints towards the massive people, knocking
over as many as possible, and then officers in the
back typically come to tackle and arrest anyone on the ground.
That night, officers initially used smoke grenades, flash bangs, pepper balls,
(46:44):
and rubber bullets as well. This event has been deed
and unlawful. Assimbly. You need to disperse it the east
to subject future arrest and forced to include crowd control
of munitions move to the east. After multiple bulrushes and
constant volleys of munitions, protesters began throwing munitions back at
(47:08):
the armored police, along with plastic water bottles. Police responded
by declaring a riot and blanketing the neighborhood and tear gas.
First users on the area dispersed the area. Now, tear
(47:30):
gas had been banned in Portland since June nine. On
in Jackman Square, Mayor Wheeler had addressed an unfriendly crowd
of activists who had spent the last two weeks getting
repeatedly tear gassed by Portland police. He promised to ban
the use of tear gas the next day. Soon after
he left, officers gas the crowd. The next day, Wheeler
(47:55):
kept his word, sort of. The band came with a
lot of holes gas was allowed in situations where quote
lives or safety of the public or the police are
at risk, which was too vague to mean much. But
Portland police did take longer than usual to use tear
gas on the night of June. The reason why was
(48:18):
that earlier that day, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into
law a bill that banned the use of tear gas.
The exception was if Portland police declared a riot and
announced out loud that tear gas was about to be used. So,
of course, the police switched tactics and made sure to
declare a riot when they wanted to use tear gas
(48:40):
on the thirty The main justifications seemed to be the
protesters were near the Union building and some of them
had hucked plastic water bottles at riot lines of armored cups.
The Portland police declared a riot and started gassing. In
the end, neither the state nor local bands on tear
gas helped the Portlanders who lived in houses and apartments
(49:01):
along North Lombard Street. It was a balmy summer night
and many of them had their windows open in the
fresh air. When that air turned to poison gas, multiple
residents were assaulted and even arrested. While trying to flee
their gas filled homes outside of Oregon. On the federal level,
other events in late June would contribute to Portland becoming
the most heavily tear gas city in the United States.
(49:24):
On June, President Trump had signed Executive Order one three
nine three three protecting American Monuments, memorials and statues, and
federal property. As we've already explained, toppling statues had become
a viral sensation at the time, but the toppling of
a George Washington statue by teenage Portlanders seemed to have
(49:45):
been the most direct inspiration for this executive order. President
even referenced Portland in his press release on the matter.
The order also presents its own timeline of the nationwide
protests of June, saying quote, over the past five weeks,
there have been sustained assaults on the life and property
of civilians, law enforcement officers, government property, and revered American
(50:09):
monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial. Many of the rioters, arsonists,
and left wing extremists who have carried out and supported
these acts have explicitly identified themselves with ideologies such as
Marxism that call for the destruction of the United States
system of government. Anarchists and left wing extremists have sought
(50:29):
to advance a fringe ideology that paints the United States
of America as fundamentally unjust, and have sought to impose
that ideology on Americans through violence and mob intimidation. The
order describes a massive, overwhelmingly peaceful nationwide protest movement throughout
May and June is five nightmarish weeks of rampant violence
(50:51):
and murder, but its solutions focus confusingly on the prevention
of vandalism to statues. It states that quote United States
law authors is a penalty of up to ten years
imprisonment for the wilful injury of federal property end quote,
and goes on to say state and local law enforcement
(51:12):
agencies that failed to protect monuments, memorials, and statues will
be subject to withholding of federal support, and the federal
government will ensure personnel are available across the nation to
assist with the protection of federal monuments, memorials, statues, and property.
Feorder is unclear on how broadly federal jurisdiction extends in
(51:33):
the protection of statues. All in all, dozens of statues
were vandalized and destroyed throughout the country in the first
five weeks of the George Floyd uprisings. The vast majority
of these statues were Confederate monuments in the American South.
As of June, only two statues had been targeted by
Portland's protests, one on the steps of a high school
(51:54):
and the other on the private property of the Portland
German American Society. Both of these were miles from any
federal property. However, under the president's new executive order, Portland
would become the first city to see the large scale
deployment of federal troops. The Multnoma County Justice Center, the
epicenter of Portland's ongoing protests, is flanked on both sides
by federal buildings, the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse and the
(52:17):
Edith Greenwindell Wyatt Federal Building. A few blocks away. The
federal landmark of Pioneer Courthouse overlooks Courthouse Square, the site
of many of June's large daytime rallies, as well as
many tear gas choked showdowns between nighttime protesters and PPB
riot lines. When Feds were sent in, they would be
deploying into the center of Portland's ongoing protests. On July one,
(52:39):
Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolfe,
put out a statement answering the President's call, referring to
the executive order he had made. The end of that
statement read, as we approached the July fourth holiday, I
have directed the deployment and prepositioning of rapid response teams
across the country to respond to potential threats to facilities
and property. Well. The Department respects every American's right to
(53:02):
protest peacefully. Violence and civil unrest will not be tolerated.
In the next episode, we'll hear how Portland protesters and
those rapid deployment teams met in Portland for the very
first time on July four. Uh Where the grandpops who
couldn't fathom the obamasis, I don't hate America, just to me,
(53:24):
and she keeps some promises teens looking like the sixties.
It's crazy, a nationwide deja p What my people post
to do go to schools named after the clan founder
were around town? Is I don't see why we're frowning
Native American students forced to learn about when o'para Sarah?
How is that fair bro some euros unsung in some months,
(53:45):
that's get monuments built for them. But ain't be all
a little bit of monster. We crook you once the
last time you took a time out. I'm Ev Rodsky,
author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and
(54:07):
Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender division of labor,
attorney and family mediator. And I'm doctor Addina Rukar, a
Harvard physician and medical correspondent with an expertise in the
science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. We're so
excited to share our podcast, Time Out, a production of
I Heart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine, repealing back the layers
(54:29):
around why society makes it so easy to guard men's
time like it's diamonds and treat women's time like it's
infinite like sand. And So, whether you're partnered with or
without children, or in a career where you want more boundaries,
this is the place for you, for people of all
family structures. So take this time out with us to learn,
get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim your time. Listen to
(54:54):
Time Out, a fair Play podcast on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Look for your children's eyes, and you will discover the
true magic of a forest. Find a forest near you
and start exploring it. Discover the Forest dot org brought
(55:15):
to you by the United States Forest Service and the
AD Council. What girls in the forest, our imagination, and
our family bonds. The forest is closer than you think.
Find a forest near you and discover the forest dot
org brought to you by the United States Forest Service
and the AD Council.
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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