December 21, 2020 • 53 mins
In this episode we discuss how Portland's confrontation with the feds mushroomed from the Battle of July 4th into a massive, nationwide spectacle.
Host: Robert Evans
Executive Producer: Sophie Lichterman
Writers: Bea Lake, Donovan Smith, Elaine Kinchen, Garrison Davis, Robert Evans
Narration: Bea Lake, Donovan Smith, Elaine Kinchen, Garrison Davis, Robert Evans
Editor: Chris Szczech
Music: Crooked Ways by Propaganda
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
After thirty years, it's time to return to the halls
of West Beverly High and hang out at the peach pit.
On the podcast nine O two one o MG, visit
Jenny Garth and Tory Spelling for a rewatch of the
hit series Beverly Hills nine O two one oh. From
the very beginning, we get to tell the fans all
of the behind the scenes stories to actually happen, so
they know what happened on camera obviously, but we can
(00:22):
tell them all the good stuff that happened off camera.
Listen to nine O two one o MG on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. Hi, I'm Robert sex Reese, host of The
Doctor Sex re Show, and every episode I listen to
people talk about their sex and intimacy issues, and yes,
I despise every minute of it. And she she made
(00:43):
mistakes too kill everyone at her wedding. But hell is real.
We're all trapped here and there's nothing any of us
can do about it. So join me, won't you? Listen
to The Doctor Sex re Show every Tuesday on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get
your cast. The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a weekly conversation
(01:05):
that revolves around the underworld and criminals and entertainers to victims,
crime and law enforcement. We cover all facets of the game.
Gainst The Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify promotilicit activities. We just
discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities because at
the wall she played Gainst games. You are ultimately rewarded
with Gainster Prizes. Our Heart Radios number one for podcasts,
(01:27):
but don't take our award for it. Find Against the
Chronicles podcast and my Heart Radio app or wherever you
get your podcast. Damage cron EFTs around the Federal Courthouse
around Up up until July, there was relatively little on
(01:57):
a national level that separated Portland's bill and cotests from
the ones happening everywhere else. A few shots of tear
gas walls had gone viral in the mainstream media, and
live streams of Portland protests were popular among a certain set,
but as far as the big networks were concerned, Portland
was just another city convulsed with riots in the summer
of That all changed in July. It started with the
(02:20):
siege of the Federal Courthouse on July fourth. While that
was going on in the streets of the Rose City
up north in Seattle, an activist named Summer Taylor died
that night after a car plowed through a b l
in March. On the eighth, activists in Portland staged a
memorial vigil for Taylor. This was disrupted by a small
squad of federal agents who hit the crowd with flash
bangs and impact rounds as they lit candles. Feelings were raw,
(02:43):
but the crowd gathered near the Justice Center that night
numbered less than a hundred. You could be forgiven for
thinking that the battle of July four had been the
last gasp of a dying movement. Outside of the attack
on the vigil, the rest of the week followed the
same pattern established in June, tiny groups of rag activists
being horribly beaten by riot lines of cops. It was
(03:03):
exactly one week later, on July eleven, that everything changed.
That night, a twenty six year old protester named Donovan
Labella was shot in the head at close range by
a U. S. Marshal armed with an impact weapon. His
skull was shattered. Donovan nearly died. Video of the unprovoked
attack went viral nationwide. Our own Garrison Davis was standing
(03:24):
just a few feet behind Donovan when he was shot.
Here's how Garrison recalls that night. So I got downtown
around nine pm, kind of just a regular time to
arrive usually that's like a bit before action starts. But
when I got there, the streets around the courthouse and
Justice Center were already filled with here gas, Um, there's
(03:45):
already Feds out in the streets. Um. It was unclear
what got them out. Um. It turns out it's just
because people were on the were on like the courtyard.
So there's already already people in the streets and stuff
and Feds in the streets by the time I arrived.
And then the Feds got pushed back into, uh into
like the courtyard by a small group of activists UM
(04:07):
on like Fourth Avenue. And then they started when when
the Feds were on the courtyard, they just started shooting
like canisters from their grenade launcher. So yeah, this is like,
I don't know, I've only been there like ten minutes
at this point. All this is happening very very quickly. Um,
and the Feds shoot off like five canisters in a
(04:28):
row that are all like duds. They don't actually do anything. Um,
and one of them lands underneath the car, and a
young man holding a boombox kind of like kicks it
out from under the car because it was like sparking,
but it wasn't like doing anything. It wasn't like exploding
or shooting off any gas. And then after he after
he get kicked it out of the out of under
the car, he picked up just to boombox and was
(04:50):
standing in the standing on the sidewalk across the street
from the courthouse. I was like five feet was right,
and then he just got shot in the head. Um.
After yeah, it was just just standing there with a
boom box, and he collapsed, collapse from the ground. I
remember hearing. I mean I heard that the shot and
(05:10):
I heard the fall. I didn't see him fall, and
but by the time I looked over, um, he was
on the ground, bleeding out of his head. And you know,
very quickly people came over and grabbed him. The thing,
the thing that sticks out most is when when they
when they grabbed him and pulled him away, just how
limp his body was like it was a very lifeless body.
(05:32):
His head was like bobbing everywhere, which probably wasn't you know,
it wasn't great. Um. You should, you know, when you're
picking someone up like that, you should try to make
sure that doesn't happen. Um. But yeah, it was, it was.
It was. He was just so lifeless, um in that
in that moment um they took him into the into
the park, se medics started, you know, people, people yelled,
(05:55):
medic medic. Medics came over, started to um, you know,
try to stop the bleeding, and an ambliance came about
like ten fifteen minutes later. But like it, it felt
it felt a lot longer. You know, it felt like
they were taking forever to arrive. Um. But there's a
lot a lot of blood on the sidewalk, a lot
of a lot of blood in the park. The grass
(06:15):
was like soaked. Donovan very nearly died from his injuries.
As we write this episode in December, he's just recently
been released from the hospital following another round of treatment
for the infections caused by his injuries. He has suffered
permanent cognitive damage. The brutality with which Donovan was assaulted
enraged Portlanders, even those who had not previously been active
(06:36):
in the streets. Rage was further stoked by poor coverage
by local mainstream sources like The Oregonian, who responded to
this brutal attack on a young man wielding a boom
box by grenade launcher wielding Feds with an article full
of expert analysis on why it had happened. Those experts
included a retired commander with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department
who insisted the shot, which was taken from about thirty
(06:59):
feet away, had to have been an accident. Quote. Nobody
anywhere in the world that I am aware of, is
taught to aim for the head unless deadly force is
also authorized. In this particular case, there is no rational
way to say that deadly force was authorized. Overall, the
article was crafted to leave the reader with the opinion
that Labella's injuries must have been a tragic accident in
(07:20):
the heat of the moment, rather than an angry and
undisciplined federal agent choosing to permanently injure a twenty six
year old armed with speakers. The good news is that
no one bought it. Portland News were outraged by what
happened to Donovan. More protesters began to trickle into the
nightly demonstrations outside the Justice Center, which switched their attention
to the adjacent Federal courthouse. Connor O'shay had gotten his
(07:41):
start attending Rose City justice marches. He switched over to
attending the nightly confrontations against the police after he got
bored of marches that seemed to go nowhere. I'd be like, wait,
what's going down by the Justice Center? What's happening over there?
I want to go over there. Why is everybody going
back home? Uh? Like the sun's still out, like this
is I want to go see what's happening over there.
(08:04):
And then started doing that and then was like, yeah,
this feels right. This feels like you know, like not
not to say like that, um, you know, having march
during the day with like speeches like like you know,
all the protesting is valid, But I was definitely attracted
(08:26):
to like showing up at the sources like the biggest,
the gnarliest symbols of what what people are protesting against.
Connor watched as the protest dwindled, and he saw how
the introduction of heavily armed federal agents and the outrage
over Donovan's injury started drawing more people out into the
streets before the FED showed up, Um, it really felt
(08:51):
like they were losing a lot of not necessarily momentum,
but just like people showing up, numbers were kind of
coming down a little bit, which is to be expected.
But yeah, when they did make an appearance, like aggressive appearances,
it totally it was it totally served as a catalyst
(09:13):
for further like like when when they shouldn't know by now,
like when they show up, uh, you know, cops and feds, um,
when they when they show their face, it's like almost
always worst um, like in terms of like a crowd response, um,
(09:38):
which I kind of love. UM. So so when they
showed up, it was like like almost immediately everyone was
should like turning turning back up um in in huge numbers.
So that was it was just so funny to me
that they that they kind of kept doing what they
were doing, um, when the crowd response was just getting
(10:00):
amplified by their presence. Many in the movement were rejuvenated
by the fact that protest numbers were growing again. After
so many nights of watching Tinier and Tinier groups get
brutalized by the Portland police. It was stirring to feel
like people cared again. Mark Pettibone's first night out had
been June one, and like Connor, he'd been dismayed as
numbers fell off throughout that month. He kept coming out though,
(10:23):
and he was out protesting near the Federal Courthouse with
Connor when the night of July fourteenth turned into the
early morning of July. It was actually a relatively uneventful
night in terms of clashes between protesters in the cops. UM.
The PPV showed up, I think once to kind of
(10:45):
remove some barricades that people had set up in the
street in front of the UM the courthouse, and the
Feds made a really kind of quick uh they came
out of building to UM if you're facing the Justice Center,
that came out of the building to the right briefly
(11:06):
and then retreated back in. And so honestly, that night
I spent what I remember from early in the night
was I was playing frisbee with people in the park.
We were just hanging out. UM. There wasn't much too
kind of be angry at UM, at least visibly. The
(11:26):
Feds weren't out and about. Uh So Mark and I
were like, all right, this has been good. It's been fine.
I guess, um, not much going on. Let's get out
of here. We've got to work tomorrow. We just we
had just gotten out of work a couple hours before, so,
like midnight or one clock rolls around and we're leaving,
(11:47):
and as we're walking back to his car, we kind
of get stopped by some protesters on the corner of
the street there just a couple of blocks away, and
and uh they warned us that they had seen or
that people have seen and Mark vans kidnapping people. Um.
(12:08):
And so we're looking around and sure enough, right then
a van pulls up right in front of us, seemingly
out of nowhere. Um, and a bunch of guys in
military fatigues jump out. I look in it. I'm like, oh,
they're probably FEDS. I don't know. It's a it's a
fucking minivan full of guys and fatigues, cameo fatigues. Uh.
(12:32):
They opened the doors. Everybody but the driver gets out.
They start they start just walking straight towards us. Uh,
and we're like, what what the what? What what the fuck?
And there's you know, there's traffic behind us. Um. I
remember Mark and I like almost getting hit by a
(12:52):
car that had to stop because we're like, oh, I
think we need to run. So we all take off
in different directions. You know, there's no no identification um
visually and also audibly. You know, they didn't say stop,
we are you know so and so it was just
immediate and uh so we we kind of you know,
(13:16):
we ran for our lives and they ended up the
people and the fatigues who ended up being the Feds.
They chased me down one one chased me down on foot.
Um So I ran, I'll see west and made it
a few blocks, took a turn and heard the van
(13:37):
kind of accelerating up the hill cut me off, and
uh so I dropped to my knees and I asked
why um several times. That was all I could form. Honestly,
I wasn't like why, why is this happening and I
being detained? It was just why? And uh so they
they lifted me up, UM, off my knees, put me
(13:57):
in the van, um, pulled my knee over my head,
patted me down. UM asked if I had weapons, and
you know, I said no. Uh And at this point
I I it was kind of this weird. You know,
people always talking about these out of body experiences, and I,
(14:18):
you know, I had no experience with any of that
until this happened. Mark booked it. Um west, I went south.
I was kind of running next to somebody for a minute, uh,
like you know, maybe fifteen ten seconds, and then I
cut up another kind of a block west. After I
got one block south, I think the FED that was
(14:40):
the FED or FEDS that were after me and this person. Like,
I think they either went after that person or like
they forgot about me or something. Maybe it was just
because I was able to run faster. I hucked my
sign that I've been carrying. Got it back the next morning.
That was cool. UM huck my sign that I was carrying,
(15:02):
and UM running up another block uh, fucking like scared
for my life, I was able to be like, I
just don't talk to these people. UM. At this point,
I was pretty sure that it was the FEDS, UM,
and it wasn't some kind of rogue, you know, militia group.
And I figured the best thing for me to do
(15:22):
at that point was just to shut up and um
and get through and asked for a lawyer when the
time comes. UM. At that point, I hit a dark
street and I see what is either that same van
or a different van cut across in front of me
going north. I think that was they were trying to
find Mark. And at that point I looked looked over
(15:46):
and saw I forget what the name of the it
was another courthouse, of course, because there's like a d
down there. Um. I I look at this like concrete,
um ailing whatever you wanna call that, um, out front
of this courthouse. And I'm like there and okay, yeah,
(16:07):
they're I'm going to jump this. I sprint across once
the van gets out of sight, because they started to
loop back around the block. Yeah, sprint, jump over it,
jump over the little barricade. And UM. At this point
I didn't I was sure they were going to get me. Um.
The only thing I could think to do was to
(16:28):
shut my phone off, which I now no can still
be traced, which is also horrific. But I have a
Faraday bag for that now, so that's great. UM. But
I shut my phone off. I hear more like another
van or to assume, UM driving by like very kind
(16:50):
of erratically, like gunning it and then slowing down. UM.
I heard like that. I think that was them. I'm
not positive I heard someone in a in like boots
with some jingling going on walk past. Um. I just
like tucked up against this barricade. Um. And it was
(17:11):
just like as quiet as I could be for I
don't know how long, half hour, an hour, until I
was able to get in touch with a friend. They
booked it across the river. They showed up I they
opened the back door of this car, jumped in, stayed
(17:31):
laying on my back like I don't I don't think
we covered me up with anything. But it was like, yeah,
it was terrifying enough to be like, I don't know
why why they targeted at us. So yeah, I got
out of there and then get a call from Mark
relatively quickly after I got to the other side of
(17:51):
the river. I was like, like, because we we friends
were texting, I think like Emily and and another friend
of ours. Like we were like they were like, OK,
we can't get in touch with Mark. We think they
got them. They did have Mark, but thankfully he'd broken
absolutely no law. The agents who had snatched him had
probably hoped that he'd be rattled enough by the whole
experience to answer whatever questions they asked When he refused
(18:15):
to talk without a lawyer present, they had no choice
but to let him go. The whole thing took about
two hours, maybe even less. And uh so I was
released with one other person, and I believe it was
one of the protesters that I had been standing next
to um in the street when the vans first pulled up. UM.
(18:35):
I think they ended up picking them up as well.
So they released the two of us at the same time.
And you know, this is after they read me my
rights once I was shackled and in a cell um
and asked if I wanted to waive them UM, and
I said no, I want to talk to the lawyer. UM.
So after that they came by again and said, okay,
you're free to go. That same night, a local activist
(18:56):
filmed federal agents and camouflage and military gear snatching another
black clad protester and dragging him into an unmarked rental van.
The video was horrifying, the kind of blatantly dystopian police
state ship that couldn't not provoke a national response, and
it did. Within a day, the video had been viewed
millions and millions of times. The story broke nationwide in
(19:16):
the seventeen when The Washington Post BuzzFeed and basically every
major news source reported on Portland's federal snatch vans. Now
we have some video that was posted to Twitter from
last night. The post says that federal officers rushed up
and arrested someone for no reason. Unmarked police vehicles. They're
not even they're not police vehicles, They're just vehicles. They're
(19:37):
rentable vans. They're like consumer rentable vans filled with guys
in paramilitary gear who are supposedly federal policeman. Unmarked vans
of unleashed tear gas into crowds, rounded up and detained protesters,
and even shot one man in the head with a
non lethal round, causing serious injury. Their presence and their tactics,
(20:00):
and raised questions about the use of federal agencies to
police cities even when local authorities don't want them there.
Raffie is the voice of some of the happiest songs
of our generation, Babyga So who is the man behind
(20:23):
Baby Beluga? Every human being wants to feel respected. When
we start with all good things can grow from there.
I'm Chris Garcia, comedian, New Dad and host of Finding Raffie,
a new podcast from My Heart Radio and Fatherly Listen.
Every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app or wherever
you get your podcasts. Hey Leeth the listeners take here.
(20:47):
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.
(21:07):
Though it wasn't all bad, I'm going to be real
Ify 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
(21:28):
on season one of the hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit,
a tig Tara's mystery out now, and then tune in
for all new thrills in the season two, dropping weekly
starting February nine. Subscribe now to never miss an episode.
Listen to leathal Lit on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From Cavalry
Audio comes the new true crime podcast The Shadow Girls.
(21:51):
I always somebody and he started laughing. Prosecutors described him
as a serial killer survant, kicking up these girls, getting
him in a position of vulnerability. When he got hold
of their neck, that was it. I'm Caroline Asia, a
journalist and lifelong resident at the Pacific Northwest. I grew
up near the banks of the Green River and in
(22:12):
the shadow of the killer that bears its name. How
many times did you bring the camera? Wonder of time?
Just one? He started fantasizing about having sex with his mother,
then he fantasized about killing her. But this podcast isn't
only about tracking down the killer. It's about the victims.
We stayed in the woods. He always liked to go
into the woods to the kind of strange you know
(22:36):
how it feels about prostitutes. Listen to The Shadow Girls
on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts. Ddovan LaBelle Is shooting had
enraged people, but it was the federal snatch fans that
would finally radicalize thousands of Portland's liberal majority to take
(22:58):
to the streets. It was on the night of Ight
that the first group of what would become the Wall
of Moms showed up to protest the Feds. We'll talk
about them in a second, but first, here's Garrison to
explain another important action that occurred the same night. The
militarized FEDS had captured Portland's imagination. But as the Quote
fed war started to ramp up, protesters who had been
(23:20):
fighting the police for weeks didn't want people to forget
the reason all of this had happened in the first place.
They organized a rally simply titled Quote Abolished the Police
for June eighteenth at Peninsula Park in North Portland. The
event was boosted by groups such as the YLF and
Direct Action Alliance, people who were generally trusted within the
(23:40):
community of veteran activists. The last time a protest had
been held at Peninsula Park was June. The crowd had
marched to the Portland Police Association building, which had been
surrounded by dozens of armed cops. Police quickly pushed the
crowd away using Truncheon's grenade launchers and tear gas. It
shouldn't be surprised, seeing then, that the crowd of several
(24:01):
hundred who showed up on the eighteenth came expecting a fight.
Banners at the front of the march included quote Chad
Wolfe listens to Nickelback mocking the acting DHS director, who
had just visited Portland a few days prior and also
spoke with the p p A. Other banners read de
colonize and mourned the dead, fight like hell for the living.
(24:25):
One banner read Quantas. Hayes was only seventeen years old.
In February seen Portland police shot and killed Kawanas Hayes,
an unarmed teenage Black Portlander. When they shot Kawanas, he
was on his knees ten to fifteen feet away from officers,
(24:46):
aiming guns and shouting contradictorary commands. Officer Andrew Hurst, who
was providing quote long cover with his Air fifteen, fired
three shots at the teen when Kwanas reportedly moved his
hands from a of his head. At the same time
Kanas was shot from moving his hands, other officers were
ordering him to get face down on the ground with
(25:07):
his hands by his sides. The Portland Police use of
force investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of Officer
Andrew Hurst. He still walks around with a badge and
a gun today. The lead use of force investigator on
that case was Detective Eric Camemer, but Portland protesters might
know him better as the notorious Officer sixties seven. Speaking
(25:30):
as a journalist who has watched the Portland Police riot
team and action officer Camemra is quite possibly the most
violent man I have ever met. All of this was
on the mind of the press in attendance. When the
crowd departed Peninsula Park at around eight pm, we suspected
they would head straight for the Police Union building, but
that's not what happened. The people at the front of
(25:52):
the march headed in that direction at first, but as
the crowd got close to the union building, they made
a sudden turn, confusing the police, probably some protesters. The
march went on southward for about half an hour, chanting
along the way. Soon enough, the crowd arrived at the
(26:14):
surprise destination, the Portland Police North Precinct. Only a handful
of officers were present when the group of marchers approached
the building, and said officers quickly moved inside. As they did,
hundreds of people chanted quit your Job. Protesters hung out
(26:34):
in the precinct parking lot for almost an hour. Officers
had been so surprised by their arrival that a police
car was left sitting unattended in the middle of the crowd.
It was tagged with graffiti and a bananappeal was placed
on its hood, but nothing else. As was inevitable, The
police el Red eventually arrived and ordered the crowd to
leave under threat of arrest and tear gas. On previous evenings,
(26:57):
the crowd would have just stood around, defiant and eating
to get all beaten up and gassed, but tonight was different.
As the el Rad blared threats, people in the crowd
yelled b water, echoing a Hong Kong slogan, and the
crowd began to move once again back to north mL
(27:17):
cable of art fether to follow this direction based offic
you to arrest, citation or used of mores, including crowd
control munitions. The tactical decision to move after the el
rad's warning apparently bamboozled the police, as the nearly five
hundred protesters were able to swiftly march north to the
completely unguarded p p A building. Dumpsters were overturned to
(27:39):
block the street, and protesters in black block assembled a
makeshift battering ram out of random materials. Nearby. No one
said anything, but the crowd knew what was about to happen.
People were going to enter the Police Union building. Dumpster
fires were started to block the police from seeing what
was happening. In due time, the el rad arrived and
(27:59):
an audibly nervous l RAT operator ordered people not to
enter the p p A police here visit the residential area.
We noticed criminal activity occurring in this crowd. At the office.
You'll be study to arrest up to include crowd control munitions.
But for the Portland police it was too little, too late.
(28:21):
People had already broken through the front door of the
police Union building and lit a small fire inside. As
soon as the riot police arrived, the crowd began dispersing.
People had no desire to fight the cops this night.
They'd achieved their goal and now it was time to run.
Like how, police chase the crowd for a few blocks,
shooting off tear gas, tackling and arresting anyone they could
(28:43):
get their hands on during bullrushes. As the dwindling group
of protesters entered residential side streets, it was more difficult
for the police to follow and easier for small affinity
groups to break off and disperse. It was in these
residential streets that the vast majority of protesters six TESSI
really lost not only the cops but also the small
(29:03):
group of journalists who are jogging to keep up. When
we interviewed some folks with the y LS, the Youth
Liberation Front, they mentioned this night as a sort of
turning point for some protesters. Newer people realized what could
be done by a crowd that was cunning and disciplined
and committed to not getting the pists beaten out of
them by the police. Here's the y LS as a reminder.
(29:25):
We redumped the audio due to the constant death threats
against these literal children. I think eventually people just got
burnt out and realized like something had to change, and
we did start like making Twitter threads suggesting some changes,
and so maybe that push things in that direction. And
I think people have started to have been sizing up
the opponents more realistically and finding cops may have worked
(29:47):
in like the first few days of the uprising, but
we honestly like in the protests that are happening now,
they don't have enough resources to like effectively push them back,
and the cops have a bunch of experience with crowd controls.
So yeah, and I think I think now like since
all this time has passed. There's enough points that you
can point to and see this was an effective tactic
in reference to being water, like the first time p
(30:09):
PA was set on fire, the way people were able
to move in and out. And I don't remember how
many people got arrested that night, but it was it
was definitely, I mean, it was definitely less than the
normal amount. And I think that was the big first
instance of people being able to point this tactic used
in Portland and be like, see effectiveness. This worked. That's
got people home safe to an extent. We mentioned quote
(30:29):
being water a few times now. This was a term
for a tactic used during the Hong Kong uprising. It
derives its name from a famous Bruce Lee quote that
Hong Kong activists repurposed as a guide for how to
move in situations where police are chasing you. The quote
reads like this, be like water making its way through
(30:50):
the cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object,
and you shall find your way around it or through it.
If nothing within you stays rigid outward, things will disclose themselves, empty.
Your mind be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put
water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put
(31:12):
water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You
put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now
water can flow or can crash? Be water, my friend.
Here's how the Wire Left describes Portland's process of learning
to be water. To some extent, it was being exposed
to the tactics of the Hong Kong protest, but a
(31:34):
lot of doctrines weren't really adopted. But I think also
there has been a lot of trial and air because
people have tried a lot of stuff that didn't work
and they got their ship fucked, and I just think
that has been the best way to learn what works,
especially in our unique conditions. I think a big part
of people embracing becoming water that as a tactic was
getting fed up with getting her kicked out of them.
(31:56):
Well like like I mean, okay, I mean staying and
fighting the police is usually not the right tactical decision
because in Portland we have an extremely militarized police force
and they're always going to be better equipped than us.
That's how it's going to be. And so you have
to think about, like what am I what is the
risk versus the reward of staying and fighting this cop
versus just disappearing in the night to fight another day.
(32:17):
And I think that goes hand in hand with the
decentralization of the movement. When, like you know, when it
had like when there were marches with people leading with
megaphones walking around and then suddenly the police show up
and you have your conflict. People didn't have the agency
or their own agency to really disappear into the night
and move on from that. Like people felt obligated to
follow somebody. So I definitely think that played a role
(32:37):
in Portland moving towards decentralization also played a role in that. Now,
my colleague Beatrix is going to explain what happened in
downtown Portland in front of the Justice Center in the
Federal Courthouse at the same time as the rally at
the Portland Police Association. While about five people had gathered
in North Portland, don Ju, around a thousand had gathered
(32:59):
downtown at the Justice Center and the adjacent Federal Courthouse.
Signs reading Unquelled referenced the statement by President Trump days
earlier that Portland had been out of control and that
federal presence had very much quelled it on the sixte
Homeland Security Director Chad Wolfe had made national headlines when
(33:20):
he visited Portland and referred to protesters there as violent
anarchists sixty times. In a single press statement discussing the
use of fireworks by protesters on July four, Wolfe declared,
perhaps prophetically, a federal courthouse is a symbol of justice.
(33:40):
To attack it is to attack America. Quick historical footnote
here in September of a federal judge rule that Chad
Wolfe was likely unlawfully serving as acting director of Homeland
Security during the entirety of his tenure in that position.
Wet I'm Colleen with joined me the host of Eating
(34:09):
Wall Broke podcast while I eat a meal created by
self made entrepreneurs, influencers, and celebrities over a meal they
once ate when they were broke. Today I have the
lovely aj Crimson, the official Princess of comfin Asia Kidding
and Assia. This is the professor. We're here on Eating
While Broke and today I'm gonna break down my meal
(34:29):
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 you get your podcasts.
I'm Evrodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller Affair
Play and Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender
division of labor, attorney and family mediator. And I'm Dr
ad eating A Rutcar, a Harvard physician and medical correspondent
(34:52):
with an expertise and 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. We're
uncovering why society makes it so hard for women to
treat their time with the value it deserves. So take
this time out with us. Listen to Time Out, a
(35:13):
fair Play Podcasts on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Adoption of teams from
foster care is a topic not enough people know about,
and we're here to change that. I'm April Dinuity, host
of the new podcast Navigating Adoption, presented by adopt us Kids.
Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told
(35:35):
by the families that lived them, with commentary from experts.
Visit adopt us Kids dot org, slash podcast, or subscribe
to Navigating adoption presented by adopt Us Kids, brought to
you by the U. S Department of Health, the Human
Services Administration for Children and Families, and the Act Council.
During Wolf's visit, Mayor Wheeler had said that he and
(35:57):
all city officials would refer used to meet with the
DHS head if invited. However, the day after wolves visit,
the Portland Mercury reported that Darryl Turner, the head of
the Portland Police Association, had met Chad Wolf without approval
from either the mayor or the Police chief. Chief level
(36:19):
would not say definitively whether any officers had met with DHS,
but photos showed uniformed PPB officers speaking to Chad Wolf
during his visit. The action targeting the Portland Police Association's
union headquarters in North Portland was one response to these events.
(36:40):
The protests downtown, likewise, were driven by anger over Donovan Labella,
federal overreach and the federal snatch fans. While the North
Portland crowd was made up of mostly experienced activists, the
folks of the Justice Center represented a broader cross section
of Portlanders. Several images from the eighteenth went viral, both
niche and wide, and locally and would bring more of
(37:02):
the city's liberal majority out into the streets. One such
video showed a fifty three year old Christopher David, surrounded
by tear gas approaching armored federal agents. According to Mr David,
a Navy veteran, he wanted to ask the men how
they felt about violating their constitutional oath. Instead, the video
(37:24):
shows one of the agents gripping his baton two handed
like a baseball bat, and smashing it into David's arms
and legs five times. Another agent then steps forward and
maces David in the face as he stands motionless. He
walks away after the attack, middle fingers raised on his
(37:47):
broken hands. As of this recording, video of the assault
has been viewed more than fifteen million times. Another viral
moment came when a group of about forty people calling
themselves Moms against police brutality and dressed in white, were
horribly tear gassed by federal agents. Videos of the attack
(38:09):
incensed thousands of Portlanders and led to the creation of
the famous Wall of Moms. Courtney is an indigenous Hawaiian Portlander.
She's one of the moms who came out on July eighteenth.
Here's what she recalls, it was like a smaller It
wasn't as big as like the after when it started
to really take off. It was probably like twenty left
(38:29):
at that point, and definitely didn't know what I Like,
I had no idea what to walk into what I
was walking into. I mean, I've been protesting before, especially
for like land rights and things like that and what,
but not like anything against police brutality and things like that.
So I'm like, just, you know, we roll up and
(38:51):
then not even not probably like two or three hours later,
but like the said, come out and just start shooting
at us. And that was and I was like the
frontline then because I didn't know what I was walking into.
I just didn't know like what. I had no idea
what was going to happen. I had seen the videos
the night before, but like I you know, I just
(39:14):
didn't know what to expect. I didn't think it was
going to be as violent as it was. Um. So, yeah,
that night, like they guessed the ship out of everyone
as always, but that they actually got hit by like
rubber bullets that night. I still have a scar from
like a pepper ball like on my shoulder from the
(39:35):
first night that I want to now and um oh, yeah,
that was my that was my first night out. Courtney
recalls being struck by the extremity of the violence, how
sudden and overwhelming it all was. I honestly, like I
just didn't expect. Um, I didn't expect the close range
(39:56):
shooting first of all. I didn't expect like the amount
gas that they were using on people. Um. I just
you know, it's different when you're like watching it on
like a stream versus like actually being there in person,
especially if there was like the line that we were
standing in the first night that I was there, there
(40:17):
was probably like seven of us, and they there were
like ten Feds just shooting at all of us, just
standing there like trying to like guard yourselves behind an umbrella.
And they clearly knew that there were like mombs out there,
because that was the night where we're all like wearing
yellow and like we were standing out and it was
(40:40):
majority of us were just females standing there, and they
just did not get like if they just they just
did not care. It didn't matter, it didn't matter. And um,
so that was shocking, definitely, Like I don't think that
I've processed really anything that's gone on, um and just
(41:02):
like check it away for another day. But uh yeah,
it's I just I didn't expect the like the extremity
of it. Within hours of the first major gassing by
federal troops, DHS memo was leaked to The New York
Times revealing that the Feds in the courthouse had not
been properly trained with any of the riot control munitions
(41:23):
they were using. Instead, the DHS officers had been responding
to unarmed protesters with military tactics rather than mere dispersal.
The goal was shock and awe, to shatter all resistance
with a display of overwhelming violence that would leave its
targets frightened and broken. Instead, as Costco describes, Portland took
(41:49):
away a very different message. I felt it felt disgusting
to me. It felt they I mean, even though I
knew they worked a military, they felt like the military
because they all looked like the military. They're all to
me all looked really young too, and they were very
uh they're very aggressive and very quick to act in violence.
(42:14):
To me, they seem more afraid of us than like
Portland police were you ever seemed afraid of us? And
so like they I don't know if that made them
react and fear more, but they were definitely more aggressive,
and I knew it was going to turn into a circus.
The following night, July, well over one thousand people filled
(42:36):
Chapman in Loundsdale, the two parks in front of the
Federal Courthouse and the Justice Center. The group of moms,
now in matching yellow t shirts and helmets, numbered in
the hundreds. It was easily the largest crowd since the
end of the Rose City Justice daytime marches. Medics came through,
handing out tear gas wipes and eye flash bottles, and
(42:59):
the moms linked arms before moving to form a living
wall facing the fence recently erected around the mark O.
Hatfield's Courthouse. Many of the people who came out that
night were new to the confrontation downtown. As Dmitria Hester
describes it, they were greeted as welcome reinforcements because we
knew all was coming. As black people, we know the
(43:23):
torture and the abused that the police give us, so
we were very prepared. We had respirators, we had maths,
we had helmets. We made sure that all the mom
had equipment and everything they needed. To get through the night.
From the open doors of the courthouse, agents and battle
dress could be seen moving into position in the darkened
(43:46):
lobby as the Fed's very own el rad warned against
attempts to damage the fence behind the wall of moms
in yellow. The rest of the crowd was also getting
into position, and a chant of Feds go home was
taken up by hundreds of voices. Unlike the enormous daytime
rallies from June, this crowd had not come to march.
(44:10):
After more than an hour of chanting and singing, answered
by scattered pepper balls and flashbangs from the Feds, a
few sections of the fence were removed by protesters, and
soon the whole fence came down. That night, the crowd
fell back under the ensuing tear gas barrage. Federal agents
advanced through the park and protesters retreated, but slowly and
(44:35):
with a smattering of shields and umbrellas blocking some of
the Federal munitions. The night of Lounsdale and Chapman were
an unbroken sea of thousands. People worked their way across
the park with buckets of rubber, squeaky pigs. Speeches echoed
(44:59):
over the p a from the steps of the boarded
up Justice Center under the words fed goons out of PDX,
projected in letters five ft high. The wall of moms
was joined by a self described wall of Dad's, wearing
safety orange and equipped with leaf blowers to disperse tear gas.
(45:21):
Here's Demetria again. The das came with the leaf blowers.
I mean they came with protection. They guarded us and
pain disprotecting each other. The shields, too, had multiplied, made
out of plywood, foam and fifty gallon plastic drums. The
boards over the courthouse doors and windows had been fitted
with small hatches, in an echo of the PPB strategy
(45:44):
from the days of the Justice Center fence. This time,
when the first tear gas grenades came through the hatches,
the crowd surged forward. This rush of activity was followed
by a long, tense slow for two hours. The crowd
sang and danced, yellow clad moms, forming a kick line
(46:06):
where the fence had stood only a day earlier. The
mood was celebratory and fierce. Using sections of chain link, fence, lumber,
(46:31):
and other debris, members of the crowd wedged shut some
of the doors and hatches covering the front of the
Federal courthouse. Some people tore at the plywood covering the
courthouse door with their bare hands. There was no coherent
strategy to this, but the sentiment was unmistakable. Portlanders were
(46:51):
no longer on the defensive against the federal occupation. When
federal agents finally emerged from the building, it was less
a clean charge and more a series of shoves. After
a scuffle with protesters, one agent responded by drawing his
side arm and pointing it at eye level into the crowd.
Protesters backed up, but few people actually left. Instead, they
(47:25):
fell back slowly. Images of that night are surreal men
in camouflage and plate carriers playing rifles at the chests
of teenagers and tank tops and respirators as smoke bombs
from the crowd mixed with clouds of tear gas and
HC smoke. The Feds never formed a coherent line, and
(47:47):
many people remained in the park throughout the first push.
As the bulk of the crowd waded back into the
gas and smoke blanketing Loundsdale Park, a shield wall formed
up in the middle of Southwest Main Street and held
Elaine remembers it this way, and then the first time
actually seeing that on the ground, um federal l eos
(48:10):
coming into shoot at people and the shield wall forming
up and just holding ground. And it was amazing to
see how the federal forces didn't seem to know how
to what to do with people just standing their ground
and protecting themselves, and so they just were shooting and
(48:32):
shooting and shooting. And there was this incredible moment where
suddenly I heard this like it was the farting sounds
of their peat ball guns that they were shooting pepper
balls and rubber balls at the protesters with just running
out of air because the shield wall was holding and
people were keeping it together and protecting the people behind them.
(48:54):
Despite the fact that many of the federal agents on
the line were armed within four rifles, those holding the
shield wall along Southwest Main Street lobbed back gas canisters
and glass bottles at the officers. Then the shield walls
started moving forward to the repeated lines fuck you, I
won't do what you tell me from Rage against the Machines,
killing in the name. Shockingly, almost miraculously, the Feds started
(49:18):
falling back. After about ten minutes, the shield line advanced
to the end of the block and the FEDS withdrew
to the steps of the court house. On July seventeenth,
Chad Wolf had declared via tweet, we will never surrender
to violent extremists on my watch. Now. At about one am,
after one of the most intense nights of federal violence
thus far, Lonsdale Park was full of people and Chad
(49:40):
Wolf's Federal agents had scrambled back inside their fortress, low
on ammunition and clearly rattled. Several DHS agents tried to
prop close a door that had been shattered by enraged
mombs and teenagers with skateboards. Others attempted to fire out
of murder holes, only to be stymied in this by
teenagers hucking dozens of bottles at their in hands. The
(50:01):
Feds would push out again that night, but federal charges
no longer provoked protesters into automatic retreat. Portland had gotten
a taste of what it felt like to face down
the violence of federal agents, and they even seem to
like it. For the next several weeks, the city would
begin to treat fighting the Feds as a citywide pastime.
In our next episode, we'll talk about how this dystopian
(50:23):
side mission became the setting for a national media spectacle,
how an armed coup took over a rib restaurant and
so much more. Uh where the grand pops who couldn't
fathom the obamasist I don't hate America, just to me,
And she keeps a promisess looking like the sixties. It's crazy,
a nationwide deja p What my people post to do
(50:46):
go to schools named after the clan founder were around town?
Is I don't see why we frown in Native American
students forced to learn about when o'para Sarah? How is
that fair? Bro? Some Euros unsung in some months? That's
getting mon It's built for them. But ain't be all
a little bit of monthster we pruke you. The art
(51:15):
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 faces. I'm atle
Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed and
forgery in the art world. I just walked in and
saw this gright red painting presuming to be a Rothko.
(51:40):
Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to
be made. A lot of money. I'm listening to how
what they're paying for these things. It was an incredible
mands of money. You knew the painting was fake. Um
Listen to Art Fraud starting February one on the I
(52:00):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, guys. I'm a Shop Aloud and I am
Troy Millions and we are the host of the Earn
Your Leisure podcast where we break down business models and
examine the latest trends and finance. We hold court and
(52:22):
have exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names of business, sport,
and entertainment, from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross
and Shaquille O'Neil. I mean our alumni list is expansive.
Listen to as our guests reveal their business models, hardships
and triumphs and their respective fields. The knowledge is in
death and the questions are always delivered from your standpoint.
We want to know what you want to know. We
talked to the legends of business, sports and entertainment about
(52:43):
how they got their start and most importantly, how they
make their money. Earn Your Leisia is a college business
class mixed with pop culture. I want to learn about
the real estate game, unclears, how the stock market works.
We got you. Interested in starting a trucking company or
vending machine business. Not really sure about how taxes or
credit work. We got it all covered. The Arnie Leisure
podcast is available now. Listen to Ernie Leisure on the
(53:04):
Black Effect podcast Network, I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast
or wherever you get your podcasts. After thirty years, it's
time to return to the halls of West Beverly High
and hang out at the peach pit on the podcast
nine O two one o MG. Visit Jenny Garth and
Tori Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly
(53:27):
Hills nine O two one oh. From the very beginning,
we get to tell the fans all of the behind
the scenes stories to actually happen, so they know what
happened on camera obviously, but we can tell them all
the good stuff that happen off camera. Listen to nine
O two one o MG on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
After thirty years, it's time to return to the halls
of West Beverly High and hang out at the peach pit.
On the podcast nine O two one o MG, visit
Jenny Garth and Tory Spelling for a rewatch of the
hit series Beverly Hills nine O two one oh. From
the very beginning, we get to tell the fans all
of the behind the scenes stories to actually happen, so
they know what happened on camera obviously, but we can
(00:22):
tell them all the good stuff that happened off camera.
Listen to nine O two one o MG on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. Hi, I'm Robert sex Reese, host of The
Doctor Sex re Show, and every episode I listen to
people talk about their sex and intimacy issues, and yes,
I despise every minute of it. And she she made
(00:43):
mistakes too kill everyone at her wedding. But hell is real.
We're all trapped here and there's nothing any of us
can do about it. So join me, won't you? Listen
to The Doctor Sex re Show every Tuesday on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get
your cast. The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a weekly conversation
(01:05):
that revolves around the underworld and criminals and entertainers to victims,
crime and law enforcement. We cover all facets of the game.
Gainst The Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify promotilicit activities. We just
discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities because at
the wall she played Gainst games. You are ultimately rewarded
with Gainster Prizes. Our Heart Radios number one for podcasts,
(01:27):
but don't take our award for it. Find Against the
Chronicles podcast and my Heart Radio app or wherever you
get your podcast. Damage cron EFTs around the Federal Courthouse
around Up up until July, there was relatively little on
(01:57):
a national level that separated Portland's bill and cotests from
the ones happening everywhere else. A few shots of tear
gas walls had gone viral in the mainstream media, and
live streams of Portland protests were popular among a certain set,
but as far as the big networks were concerned, Portland
was just another city convulsed with riots in the summer
of That all changed in July. It started with the
(02:20):
siege of the Federal Courthouse on July fourth. While that
was going on in the streets of the Rose City
up north in Seattle, an activist named Summer Taylor died
that night after a car plowed through a b l
in March. On the eighth, activists in Portland staged a
memorial vigil for Taylor. This was disrupted by a small
squad of federal agents who hit the crowd with flash
bangs and impact rounds as they lit candles. Feelings were raw,
(02:43):
but the crowd gathered near the Justice Center that night
numbered less than a hundred. You could be forgiven for
thinking that the battle of July four had been the
last gasp of a dying movement. Outside of the attack
on the vigil, the rest of the week followed the
same pattern established in June, tiny groups of rag activists
being horribly beaten by riot lines of cops. It was
(03:03):
exactly one week later, on July eleven, that everything changed.
That night, a twenty six year old protester named Donovan
Labella was shot in the head at close range by
a U. S. Marshal armed with an impact weapon. His
skull was shattered. Donovan nearly died. Video of the unprovoked
attack went viral nationwide. Our own Garrison Davis was standing
(03:24):
just a few feet behind Donovan when he was shot.
Here's how Garrison recalls that night. So I got downtown
around nine pm, kind of just a regular time to
arrive usually that's like a bit before action starts. But
when I got there, the streets around the courthouse and
Justice Center were already filled with here gas, Um, there's
(03:45):
already Feds out in the streets. Um. It was unclear
what got them out. Um. It turns out it's just
because people were on the were on like the courtyard.
So there's already already people in the streets and stuff
and Feds in the streets by the time I arrived.
And then the Feds got pushed back into, uh into
like the courtyard by a small group of activists UM
(04:07):
on like Fourth Avenue. And then they started when when
the Feds were on the courtyard, they just started shooting
like canisters from their grenade launcher. So yeah, this is like,
I don't know, I've only been there like ten minutes
at this point. All this is happening very very quickly. Um,
and the Feds shoot off like five canisters in a
(04:28):
row that are all like duds. They don't actually do anything. Um,
and one of them lands underneath the car, and a
young man holding a boombox kind of like kicks it
out from under the car because it was like sparking,
but it wasn't like doing anything. It wasn't like exploding
or shooting off any gas. And then after he after
he get kicked it out of the out of under
the car, he picked up just to boombox and was
(04:50):
standing in the standing on the sidewalk across the street
from the courthouse. I was like five feet was right,
and then he just got shot in the head. Um.
After yeah, it was just just standing there with a
boom box, and he collapsed, collapse from the ground. I
remember hearing. I mean I heard that the shot and
(05:10):
I heard the fall. I didn't see him fall, and
but by the time I looked over, um, he was
on the ground, bleeding out of his head. And you know,
very quickly people came over and grabbed him. The thing,
the thing that sticks out most is when when they
when they grabbed him and pulled him away, just how
limp his body was like it was a very lifeless body.
(05:32):
His head was like bobbing everywhere, which probably wasn't you know,
it wasn't great. Um. You should, you know, when you're
picking someone up like that, you should try to make
sure that doesn't happen. Um. But yeah, it was, it was.
It was. He was just so lifeless, um in that
in that moment um they took him into the into
the park, se medics started, you know, people, people yelled,
(05:55):
medic medic. Medics came over, started to um, you know,
try to stop the bleeding, and an ambliance came about
like ten fifteen minutes later. But like it, it felt
it felt a lot longer. You know, it felt like
they were taking forever to arrive. Um. But there's a
lot a lot of blood on the sidewalk, a lot
of a lot of blood in the park. The grass
(06:15):
was like soaked. Donovan very nearly died from his injuries.
As we write this episode in December, he's just recently
been released from the hospital following another round of treatment
for the infections caused by his injuries. He has suffered
permanent cognitive damage. The brutality with which Donovan was assaulted
enraged Portlanders, even those who had not previously been active
(06:36):
in the streets. Rage was further stoked by poor coverage
by local mainstream sources like The Oregonian, who responded to
this brutal attack on a young man wielding a boom
box by grenade launcher wielding Feds with an article full
of expert analysis on why it had happened. Those experts
included a retired commander with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department
who insisted the shot, which was taken from about thirty
(06:59):
feet away, had to have been an accident. Quote. Nobody
anywhere in the world that I am aware of, is
taught to aim for the head unless deadly force is
also authorized. In this particular case, there is no rational
way to say that deadly force was authorized. Overall, the
article was crafted to leave the reader with the opinion
that Labella's injuries must have been a tragic accident in
(07:20):
the heat of the moment, rather than an angry and
undisciplined federal agent choosing to permanently injure a twenty six
year old armed with speakers. The good news is that
no one bought it. Portland News were outraged by what
happened to Donovan. More protesters began to trickle into the
nightly demonstrations outside the Justice Center, which switched their attention
to the adjacent Federal courthouse. Connor O'shay had gotten his
(07:41):
start attending Rose City justice marches. He switched over to
attending the nightly confrontations against the police after he got
bored of marches that seemed to go nowhere. I'd be like, wait,
what's going down by the Justice Center? What's happening over there?
I want to go over there. Why is everybody going
back home? Uh? Like the sun's still out, like this
is I want to go see what's happening over there.
(08:04):
And then started doing that and then was like, yeah,
this feels right. This feels like you know, like not
not to say like that, um, you know, having march
during the day with like speeches like like you know,
all the protesting is valid, But I was definitely attracted
(08:26):
to like showing up at the sources like the biggest,
the gnarliest symbols of what what people are protesting against.
Connor watched as the protest dwindled, and he saw how
the introduction of heavily armed federal agents and the outrage
over Donovan's injury started drawing more people out into the
streets before the FED showed up, Um, it really felt
(08:51):
like they were losing a lot of not necessarily momentum,
but just like people showing up, numbers were kind of
coming down a little bit, which is to be expected.
But yeah, when they did make an appearance, like aggressive appearances,
it totally it was it totally served as a catalyst
(09:13):
for further like like when when they shouldn't know by now,
like when they show up, uh, you know, cops and feds, um,
when they when they show their face, it's like almost
always worst um, like in terms of like a crowd response, um,
(09:38):
which I kind of love. UM. So so when they
showed up, it was like like almost immediately everyone was
should like turning turning back up um in in huge numbers.
So that was it was just so funny to me
that they that they kind of kept doing what they
were doing, um, when the crowd response was just getting
(10:00):
amplified by their presence. Many in the movement were rejuvenated
by the fact that protest numbers were growing again. After
so many nights of watching Tinier and Tinier groups get
brutalized by the Portland police. It was stirring to feel
like people cared again. Mark Pettibone's first night out had
been June one, and like Connor, he'd been dismayed as
numbers fell off throughout that month. He kept coming out though,
(10:23):
and he was out protesting near the Federal Courthouse with
Connor when the night of July fourteenth turned into the
early morning of July. It was actually a relatively uneventful
night in terms of clashes between protesters in the cops. UM.
The PPV showed up, I think once to kind of
(10:45):
remove some barricades that people had set up in the
street in front of the UM the courthouse, and the
Feds made a really kind of quick uh they came
out of building to UM if you're facing the Justice Center,
that came out of the building to the right briefly
(11:06):
and then retreated back in. And so honestly, that night
I spent what I remember from early in the night
was I was playing frisbee with people in the park.
We were just hanging out. UM. There wasn't much too
kind of be angry at UM, at least visibly. The
(11:26):
Feds weren't out and about. Uh So Mark and I
were like, all right, this has been good. It's been fine.
I guess, um, not much going on. Let's get out
of here. We've got to work tomorrow. We just we
had just gotten out of work a couple hours before, so,
like midnight or one clock rolls around and we're leaving,
(11:47):
and as we're walking back to his car, we kind
of get stopped by some protesters on the corner of
the street there just a couple of blocks away, and
and uh they warned us that they had seen or
that people have seen and Mark vans kidnapping people. Um.
(12:08):
And so we're looking around and sure enough, right then
a van pulls up right in front of us, seemingly
out of nowhere. Um, and a bunch of guys in
military fatigues jump out. I look in it. I'm like, oh,
they're probably FEDS. I don't know. It's a it's a
fucking minivan full of guys and fatigues, cameo fatigues. Uh.
(12:32):
They opened the doors. Everybody but the driver gets out.
They start they start just walking straight towards us. Uh,
and we're like, what what the what? What what the fuck?
And there's you know, there's traffic behind us. Um. I
remember Mark and I like almost getting hit by a
(12:52):
car that had to stop because we're like, oh, I
think we need to run. So we all take off
in different directions. You know, there's no no identification um
visually and also audibly. You know, they didn't say stop,
we are you know so and so it was just
immediate and uh so we we kind of you know,
(13:16):
we ran for our lives and they ended up the
people and the fatigues who ended up being the Feds.
They chased me down one one chased me down on foot.
Um So I ran, I'll see west and made it
a few blocks, took a turn and heard the van
(13:37):
kind of accelerating up the hill cut me off, and
uh so I dropped to my knees and I asked
why um several times. That was all I could form. Honestly,
I wasn't like why, why is this happening and I
being detained? It was just why? And uh so they
they lifted me up, UM, off my knees, put me
(13:57):
in the van, um, pulled my knee over my head,
patted me down. UM asked if I had weapons, and
you know, I said no. Uh And at this point
I I it was kind of this weird. You know,
people always talking about these out of body experiences, and I,
(14:18):
you know, I had no experience with any of that
until this happened. Mark booked it. Um west, I went south.
I was kind of running next to somebody for a minute, uh,
like you know, maybe fifteen ten seconds, and then I
cut up another kind of a block west. After I
got one block south, I think the FED that was
(14:40):
the FED or FEDS that were after me and this person. Like,
I think they either went after that person or like
they forgot about me or something. Maybe it was just
because I was able to run faster. I hucked my
sign that I've been carrying. Got it back the next morning.
That was cool. UM huck my sign that I was carrying,
(15:02):
and UM running up another block uh, fucking like scared
for my life, I was able to be like, I
just don't talk to these people. UM. At this point,
I was pretty sure that it was the FEDS, UM,
and it wasn't some kind of rogue, you know, militia group.
And I figured the best thing for me to do
(15:22):
at that point was just to shut up and um
and get through and asked for a lawyer when the
time comes. UM. At that point, I hit a dark
street and I see what is either that same van
or a different van cut across in front of me
going north. I think that was they were trying to
find Mark. And at that point I looked looked over
(15:46):
and saw I forget what the name of the it
was another courthouse, of course, because there's like a d
down there. Um. I I look at this like concrete,
um ailing whatever you wanna call that, um, out front
of this courthouse. And I'm like there and okay, yeah,
(16:07):
they're I'm going to jump this. I sprint across once
the van gets out of sight, because they started to
loop back around the block. Yeah, sprint, jump over it,
jump over the little barricade. And UM. At this point
I didn't I was sure they were going to get me. Um.
The only thing I could think to do was to
(16:28):
shut my phone off, which I now no can still
be traced, which is also horrific. But I have a
Faraday bag for that now, so that's great. UM. But
I shut my phone off. I hear more like another
van or to assume, UM driving by like very kind
(16:50):
of erratically, like gunning it and then slowing down. UM.
I heard like that. I think that was them. I'm
not positive I heard someone in a in like boots
with some jingling going on walk past. Um. I just
like tucked up against this barricade. Um. And it was
(17:11):
just like as quiet as I could be for I
don't know how long, half hour, an hour, until I
was able to get in touch with a friend. They
booked it across the river. They showed up I they
opened the back door of this car, jumped in, stayed
(17:31):
laying on my back like I don't I don't think
we covered me up with anything. But it was like, yeah,
it was terrifying enough to be like, I don't know
why why they targeted at us. So yeah, I got
out of there and then get a call from Mark
relatively quickly after I got to the other side of
(17:51):
the river. I was like, like, because we we friends
were texting, I think like Emily and and another friend
of ours. Like we were like they were like, OK,
we can't get in touch with Mark. We think they
got them. They did have Mark, but thankfully he'd broken
absolutely no law. The agents who had snatched him had
probably hoped that he'd be rattled enough by the whole
experience to answer whatever questions they asked When he refused
(18:15):
to talk without a lawyer present, they had no choice
but to let him go. The whole thing took about
two hours, maybe even less. And uh so I was
released with one other person, and I believe it was
one of the protesters that I had been standing next
to um in the street when the vans first pulled up. UM.
(18:35):
I think they ended up picking them up as well.
So they released the two of us at the same time.
And you know, this is after they read me my
rights once I was shackled and in a cell um
and asked if I wanted to waive them UM, and
I said no, I want to talk to the lawyer. UM.
So after that they came by again and said, okay,
you're free to go. That same night, a local activist
(18:56):
filmed federal agents and camouflage and military gear snatching another
black clad protester and dragging him into an unmarked rental van.
The video was horrifying, the kind of blatantly dystopian police
state ship that couldn't not provoke a national response, and
it did. Within a day, the video had been viewed
millions and millions of times. The story broke nationwide in
(19:16):
the seventeen when The Washington Post BuzzFeed and basically every
major news source reported on Portland's federal snatch vans. Now
we have some video that was posted to Twitter from
last night. The post says that federal officers rushed up
and arrested someone for no reason. Unmarked police vehicles. They're
not even they're not police vehicles, They're just vehicles. They're
(19:37):
rentable vans. They're like consumer rentable vans filled with guys
in paramilitary gear who are supposedly federal policeman. Unmarked vans
of unleashed tear gas into crowds, rounded up and detained protesters,
and even shot one man in the head with a
non lethal round, causing serious injury. Their presence and their tactics,
(20:00):
and raised questions about the use of federal agencies to
police cities even when local authorities don't want them there.
Raffie is the voice of some of the happiest songs
of our generation, Babyga So who is the man behind
(20:23):
Baby Beluga? Every human being wants to feel respected. When
we start with all good things can grow from there.
I'm Chris Garcia, comedian, New Dad and host of Finding Raffie,
a new podcast from My Heart Radio and Fatherly Listen.
Every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app or wherever
you get your podcasts. Hey Leeth the listeners take here.
(20:47):
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.
(21:07):
Though it wasn't all bad, I'm going to be real
Ify 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
(21:28):
on season one of the hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit,
a tig Tara's mystery out now, and then tune in
for all new thrills in the season two, dropping weekly
starting February nine. Subscribe now to never miss an episode.
Listen to leathal Lit on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From Cavalry
Audio comes the new true crime podcast The Shadow Girls.
(21:51):
I always somebody and he started laughing. Prosecutors described him
as a serial killer survant, kicking up these girls, getting
him in a position of vulnerability. When he got hold
of their neck, that was it. I'm Caroline Asia, a
journalist and lifelong resident at the Pacific Northwest. I grew
up near the banks of the Green River and in
(22:12):
the shadow of the killer that bears its name. How
many times did you bring the camera? Wonder of time?
Just one? He started fantasizing about having sex with his mother,
then he fantasized about killing her. But this podcast isn't
only about tracking down the killer. It's about the victims.
We stayed in the woods. He always liked to go
into the woods to the kind of strange you know
(22:36):
how it feels about prostitutes. Listen to The Shadow Girls
on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts. Ddovan LaBelle Is shooting had
enraged people, but it was the federal snatch fans that
would finally radicalize thousands of Portland's liberal majority to take
(22:58):
to the streets. It was on the night of Ight
that the first group of what would become the Wall
of Moms showed up to protest the Feds. We'll talk
about them in a second, but first, here's Garrison to
explain another important action that occurred the same night. The
militarized FEDS had captured Portland's imagination. But as the Quote
fed war started to ramp up, protesters who had been
(23:20):
fighting the police for weeks didn't want people to forget
the reason all of this had happened in the first place.
They organized a rally simply titled Quote Abolished the Police
for June eighteenth at Peninsula Park in North Portland. The
event was boosted by groups such as the YLF and
Direct Action Alliance, people who were generally trusted within the
(23:40):
community of veteran activists. The last time a protest had
been held at Peninsula Park was June. The crowd had
marched to the Portland Police Association building, which had been
surrounded by dozens of armed cops. Police quickly pushed the
crowd away using Truncheon's grenade launchers and tear gas. It
shouldn't be surprised, seeing then, that the crowd of several
(24:01):
hundred who showed up on the eighteenth came expecting a fight.
Banners at the front of the march included quote Chad
Wolfe listens to Nickelback mocking the acting DHS director, who
had just visited Portland a few days prior and also
spoke with the p p A. Other banners read de
colonize and mourned the dead, fight like hell for the living.
(24:25):
One banner read Quantas. Hayes was only seventeen years old.
In February seen Portland police shot and killed Kawanas Hayes,
an unarmed teenage Black Portlander. When they shot Kawanas, he
was on his knees ten to fifteen feet away from officers,
(24:46):
aiming guns and shouting contradictorary commands. Officer Andrew Hurst, who
was providing quote long cover with his Air fifteen, fired
three shots at the teen when Kwanas reportedly moved his
hands from a of his head. At the same time
Kanas was shot from moving his hands, other officers were
ordering him to get face down on the ground with
(25:07):
his hands by his sides. The Portland Police use of
force investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of Officer
Andrew Hurst. He still walks around with a badge and
a gun today. The lead use of force investigator on
that case was Detective Eric Camemer, but Portland protesters might
know him better as the notorious Officer sixties seven. Speaking
(25:30):
as a journalist who has watched the Portland Police riot
team and action officer Camemra is quite possibly the most
violent man I have ever met. All of this was
on the mind of the press in attendance. When the
crowd departed Peninsula Park at around eight pm, we suspected
they would head straight for the Police Union building, but
that's not what happened. The people at the front of
(25:52):
the march headed in that direction at first, but as
the crowd got close to the union building, they made
a sudden turn, confusing the police, probably some protesters. The
march went on southward for about half an hour, chanting
along the way. Soon enough, the crowd arrived at the
(26:14):
surprise destination, the Portland Police North Precinct. Only a handful
of officers were present when the group of marchers approached
the building, and said officers quickly moved inside. As they did,
hundreds of people chanted quit your Job. Protesters hung out
(26:34):
in the precinct parking lot for almost an hour. Officers
had been so surprised by their arrival that a police
car was left sitting unattended in the middle of the crowd.
It was tagged with graffiti and a bananappeal was placed
on its hood, but nothing else. As was inevitable, The
police el Red eventually arrived and ordered the crowd to
leave under threat of arrest and tear gas. On previous evenings,
(26:57):
the crowd would have just stood around, defiant and eating
to get all beaten up and gassed, but tonight was different.
As the el Rad blared threats, people in the crowd
yelled b water, echoing a Hong Kong slogan, and the
crowd began to move once again back to north mL
(27:17):
cable of art fether to follow this direction based offic
you to arrest, citation or used of mores, including crowd
control munitions. The tactical decision to move after the el
rad's warning apparently bamboozled the police, as the nearly five
hundred protesters were able to swiftly march north to the
completely unguarded p p A building. Dumpsters were overturned to
(27:39):
block the street, and protesters in black block assembled a
makeshift battering ram out of random materials. Nearby. No one
said anything, but the crowd knew what was about to happen.
People were going to enter the Police Union building. Dumpster
fires were started to block the police from seeing what
was happening. In due time, the el rad arrived and
(27:59):
an audibly nervous l RAT operator ordered people not to
enter the p p A police here visit the residential area.
We noticed criminal activity occurring in this crowd. At the office.
You'll be study to arrest up to include crowd control munitions.
But for the Portland police it was too little, too late.
(28:21):
People had already broken through the front door of the
police Union building and lit a small fire inside. As
soon as the riot police arrived, the crowd began dispersing.
People had no desire to fight the cops this night.
They'd achieved their goal and now it was time to run.
Like how, police chase the crowd for a few blocks,
shooting off tear gas, tackling and arresting anyone they could
(28:43):
get their hands on during bullrushes. As the dwindling group
of protesters entered residential side streets, it was more difficult
for the police to follow and easier for small affinity
groups to break off and disperse. It was in these
residential streets that the vast majority of protesters six TESSI
really lost not only the cops but also the small
(29:03):
group of journalists who are jogging to keep up. When
we interviewed some folks with the y LS, the Youth
Liberation Front, they mentioned this night as a sort of
turning point for some protesters. Newer people realized what could
be done by a crowd that was cunning and disciplined
and committed to not getting the pists beaten out of
them by the police. Here's the y LS as a reminder.
(29:25):
We redumped the audio due to the constant death threats
against these literal children. I think eventually people just got
burnt out and realized like something had to change, and
we did start like making Twitter threads suggesting some changes,
and so maybe that push things in that direction. And
I think people have started to have been sizing up
the opponents more realistically and finding cops may have worked
(29:47):
in like the first few days of the uprising, but
we honestly like in the protests that are happening now,
they don't have enough resources to like effectively push them back,
and the cops have a bunch of experience with crowd controls.
So yeah, and I think I think now like since
all this time has passed. There's enough points that you
can point to and see this was an effective tactic
in reference to being water, like the first time p
(30:09):
PA was set on fire, the way people were able
to move in and out. And I don't remember how
many people got arrested that night, but it was it
was definitely, I mean, it was definitely less than the
normal amount. And I think that was the big first
instance of people being able to point this tactic used
in Portland and be like, see effectiveness. This worked. That's
got people home safe to an extent. We mentioned quote
(30:29):
being water a few times now. This was a term
for a tactic used during the Hong Kong uprising. It
derives its name from a famous Bruce Lee quote that
Hong Kong activists repurposed as a guide for how to
move in situations where police are chasing you. The quote
reads like this, be like water making its way through
(30:50):
the cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object,
and you shall find your way around it or through it.
If nothing within you stays rigid outward, things will disclose themselves, empty.
Your mind be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put
water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put
(31:12):
water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You
put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now
water can flow or can crash? Be water, my friend.
Here's how the Wire Left describes Portland's process of learning
to be water. To some extent, it was being exposed
to the tactics of the Hong Kong protest, but a
(31:34):
lot of doctrines weren't really adopted. But I think also
there has been a lot of trial and air because
people have tried a lot of stuff that didn't work
and they got their ship fucked, and I just think
that has been the best way to learn what works,
especially in our unique conditions. I think a big part
of people embracing becoming water that as a tactic was
getting fed up with getting her kicked out of them.
(31:56):
Well like like I mean, okay, I mean staying and
fighting the police is usually not the right tactical decision
because in Portland we have an extremely militarized police force
and they're always going to be better equipped than us.
That's how it's going to be. And so you have
to think about, like what am I what is the
risk versus the reward of staying and fighting this cop
versus just disappearing in the night to fight another day.
(32:17):
And I think that goes hand in hand with the
decentralization of the movement. When, like you know, when it
had like when there were marches with people leading with
megaphones walking around and then suddenly the police show up
and you have your conflict. People didn't have the agency
or their own agency to really disappear into the night
and move on from that. Like people felt obligated to
follow somebody. So I definitely think that played a role
(32:37):
in Portland moving towards decentralization also played a role in that. Now,
my colleague Beatrix is going to explain what happened in
downtown Portland in front of the Justice Center in the
Federal Courthouse at the same time as the rally at
the Portland Police Association. While about five people had gathered
in North Portland, don Ju, around a thousand had gathered
(32:59):
downtown at the Justice Center and the adjacent Federal Courthouse.
Signs reading Unquelled referenced the statement by President Trump days
earlier that Portland had been out of control and that
federal presence had very much quelled it on the sixte
Homeland Security Director Chad Wolfe had made national headlines when
(33:20):
he visited Portland and referred to protesters there as violent
anarchists sixty times. In a single press statement discussing the
use of fireworks by protesters on July four, Wolfe declared,
perhaps prophetically, a federal courthouse is a symbol of justice.
(33:40):
To attack it is to attack America. Quick historical footnote
here in September of a federal judge rule that Chad
Wolfe was likely unlawfully serving as acting director of Homeland
Security during the entirety of his tenure in that position.
Wet I'm Colleen with joined me the host of Eating
(34:09):
Wall Broke podcast while I eat a meal created by
self made entrepreneurs, influencers, and celebrities over a meal they
once ate when they were broke. Today I have the
lovely aj Crimson, the official Princess of comfin Asia Kidding
and Assia. This is the professor. We're here on Eating
While Broke and today I'm gonna break down my meal
(34:29):
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 you get your podcasts.
I'm Evrodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller Affair
Play and Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender
division of labor, attorney and family mediator. And I'm Dr
ad eating A Rutcar, a Harvard physician and medical correspondent
(34:52):
with an expertise and 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. We're
uncovering why society makes it so hard for women to
treat their time with the value it deserves. So take
this time out with us. Listen to Time Out, a
(35:13):
fair Play Podcasts on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Adoption of teams from
foster care is a topic not enough people know about,
and we're here to change that. I'm April Dinuity, host
of the new podcast Navigating Adoption, presented by adopt us Kids.
Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told
(35:35):
by the families that lived them, with commentary from experts.
Visit adopt us Kids dot org, slash podcast, or subscribe
to Navigating adoption presented by adopt Us Kids, brought to
you by the U. S Department of Health, the Human
Services Administration for Children and Families, and the Act Council.
During Wolf's visit, Mayor Wheeler had said that he and
(35:57):
all city officials would refer used to meet with the
DHS head if invited. However, the day after wolves visit,
the Portland Mercury reported that Darryl Turner, the head of
the Portland Police Association, had met Chad Wolf without approval
from either the mayor or the Police chief. Chief level
(36:19):
would not say definitively whether any officers had met with DHS,
but photos showed uniformed PPB officers speaking to Chad Wolf
during his visit. The action targeting the Portland Police Association's
union headquarters in North Portland was one response to these events.
(36:40):
The protests downtown, likewise, were driven by anger over Donovan Labella,
federal overreach and the federal snatch fans. While the North
Portland crowd was made up of mostly experienced activists, the
folks of the Justice Center represented a broader cross section
of Portlanders. Several images from the eighteenth went viral, both
niche and wide, and locally and would bring more of
(37:02):
the city's liberal majority out into the streets. One such
video showed a fifty three year old Christopher David, surrounded
by tear gas approaching armored federal agents. According to Mr David,
a Navy veteran, he wanted to ask the men how
they felt about violating their constitutional oath. Instead, the video
(37:24):
shows one of the agents gripping his baton two handed
like a baseball bat, and smashing it into David's arms
and legs five times. Another agent then steps forward and
maces David in the face as he stands motionless. He
walks away after the attack, middle fingers raised on his
(37:47):
broken hands. As of this recording, video of the assault
has been viewed more than fifteen million times. Another viral
moment came when a group of about forty people calling
themselves Moms against police brutality and dressed in white, were
horribly tear gassed by federal agents. Videos of the attack
(38:09):
incensed thousands of Portlanders and led to the creation of
the famous Wall of Moms. Courtney is an indigenous Hawaiian Portlander.
She's one of the moms who came out on July eighteenth.
Here's what she recalls, it was like a smaller It
wasn't as big as like the after when it started
to really take off. It was probably like twenty left
(38:29):
at that point, and definitely didn't know what I Like,
I had no idea what to walk into what I
was walking into. I mean, I've been protesting before, especially
for like land rights and things like that and what,
but not like anything against police brutality and things like that.
So I'm like, just, you know, we roll up and
(38:51):
then not even not probably like two or three hours later,
but like the said, come out and just start shooting
at us. And that was and I was like the
frontline then because I didn't know what I was walking into.
I just didn't know like what. I had no idea
what was going to happen. I had seen the videos
the night before, but like I you know, I just
(39:14):
didn't know what to expect. I didn't think it was
going to be as violent as it was. Um. So, yeah,
that night, like they guessed the ship out of everyone
as always, but that they actually got hit by like
rubber bullets that night. I still have a scar from
like a pepper ball like on my shoulder from the
(39:35):
first night that I want to now and um oh, yeah,
that was my that was my first night out. Courtney
recalls being struck by the extremity of the violence, how
sudden and overwhelming it all was. I honestly, like I
just didn't expect. Um, I didn't expect the close range
(39:56):
shooting first of all. I didn't expect like the amount
gas that they were using on people. Um. I just
you know, it's different when you're like watching it on
like a stream versus like actually being there in person,
especially if there was like the line that we were
standing in the first night that I was there, there
(40:17):
was probably like seven of us, and they there were
like ten Feds just shooting at all of us, just
standing there like trying to like guard yourselves behind an umbrella.
And they clearly knew that there were like mombs out there,
because that was the night where we're all like wearing
yellow and like we were standing out and it was
(40:40):
majority of us were just females standing there, and they
just did not get like if they just they just
did not care. It didn't matter, it didn't matter. And um,
so that was shocking, definitely, Like I don't think that
I've processed really anything that's gone on, um and just
(41:02):
like check it away for another day. But uh yeah,
it's I just I didn't expect the like the extremity
of it. Within hours of the first major gassing by
federal troops, DHS memo was leaked to The New York
Times revealing that the Feds in the courthouse had not
been properly trained with any of the riot control munitions
(41:23):
they were using. Instead, the DHS officers had been responding
to unarmed protesters with military tactics rather than mere dispersal.
The goal was shock and awe, to shatter all resistance
with a display of overwhelming violence that would leave its
targets frightened and broken. Instead, as Costco describes, Portland took
(41:49):
away a very different message. I felt it felt disgusting
to me. It felt they I mean, even though I
knew they worked a military, they felt like the military
because they all looked like the military. They're all to
me all looked really young too, and they were very
uh they're very aggressive and very quick to act in violence.
(42:14):
To me, they seem more afraid of us than like
Portland police were you ever seemed afraid of us? And
so like they I don't know if that made them
react and fear more, but they were definitely more aggressive,
and I knew it was going to turn into a circus.
The following night, July, well over one thousand people filled
(42:36):
Chapman in Loundsdale, the two parks in front of the
Federal Courthouse and the Justice Center. The group of moms,
now in matching yellow t shirts and helmets, numbered in
the hundreds. It was easily the largest crowd since the
end of the Rose City Justice daytime marches. Medics came through,
handing out tear gas wipes and eye flash bottles, and
(42:59):
the moms linked arms before moving to form a living
wall facing the fence recently erected around the mark O.
Hatfield's Courthouse. Many of the people who came out that
night were new to the confrontation downtown. As Dmitria Hester
describes it, they were greeted as welcome reinforcements because we
knew all was coming. As black people, we know the
(43:23):
torture and the abused that the police give us, so
we were very prepared. We had respirators, we had maths,
we had helmets. We made sure that all the mom
had equipment and everything they needed. To get through the night.
From the open doors of the courthouse, agents and battle
dress could be seen moving into position in the darkened
(43:46):
lobby as the Fed's very own el rad warned against
attempts to damage the fence behind the wall of moms
in yellow. The rest of the crowd was also getting
into position, and a chant of Feds go home was
taken up by hundreds of voices. Unlike the enormous daytime
rallies from June, this crowd had not come to march.
(44:10):
After more than an hour of chanting and singing, answered
by scattered pepper balls and flashbangs from the Feds, a
few sections of the fence were removed by protesters, and
soon the whole fence came down. That night, the crowd
fell back under the ensuing tear gas barrage. Federal agents
advanced through the park and protesters retreated, but slowly and
(44:35):
with a smattering of shields and umbrellas blocking some of
the Federal munitions. The night of Lounsdale and Chapman were
an unbroken sea of thousands. People worked their way across
the park with buckets of rubber, squeaky pigs. Speeches echoed
(44:59):
over the p a from the steps of the boarded
up Justice Center under the words fed goons out of PDX,
projected in letters five ft high. The wall of moms
was joined by a self described wall of Dad's, wearing
safety orange and equipped with leaf blowers to disperse tear gas.
(45:21):
Here's Demetria again. The das came with the leaf blowers.
I mean they came with protection. They guarded us and
pain disprotecting each other. The shields, too, had multiplied, made
out of plywood, foam and fifty gallon plastic drums. The
boards over the courthouse doors and windows had been fitted
with small hatches, in an echo of the PPB strategy
(45:44):
from the days of the Justice Center fence. This time,
when the first tear gas grenades came through the hatches,
the crowd surged forward. This rush of activity was followed
by a long, tense slow for two hours. The crowd
sang and danced, yellow clad moms, forming a kick line
(46:06):
where the fence had stood only a day earlier. The
mood was celebratory and fierce. Using sections of chain link, fence, lumber,
(46:31):
and other debris, members of the crowd wedged shut some
of the doors and hatches covering the front of the
Federal courthouse. Some people tore at the plywood covering the
courthouse door with their bare hands. There was no coherent
strategy to this, but the sentiment was unmistakable. Portlanders were
(46:51):
no longer on the defensive against the federal occupation. When
federal agents finally emerged from the building, it was less
a clean charge and more a series of shoves. After
a scuffle with protesters, one agent responded by drawing his
side arm and pointing it at eye level into the crowd.
Protesters backed up, but few people actually left. Instead, they
(47:25):
fell back slowly. Images of that night are surreal men
in camouflage and plate carriers playing rifles at the chests
of teenagers and tank tops and respirators as smoke bombs
from the crowd mixed with clouds of tear gas and
HC smoke. The Feds never formed a coherent line, and
(47:47):
many people remained in the park throughout the first push.
As the bulk of the crowd waded back into the
gas and smoke blanketing Loundsdale Park, a shield wall formed
up in the middle of Southwest Main Street and held
Elaine remembers it this way, and then the first time
actually seeing that on the ground, um federal l eos
(48:10):
coming into shoot at people and the shield wall forming
up and just holding ground. And it was amazing to
see how the federal forces didn't seem to know how
to what to do with people just standing their ground
and protecting themselves, and so they just were shooting and
(48:32):
shooting and shooting. And there was this incredible moment where
suddenly I heard this like it was the farting sounds
of their peat ball guns that they were shooting pepper
balls and rubber balls at the protesters with just running
out of air because the shield wall was holding and
people were keeping it together and protecting the people behind them.
(48:54):
Despite the fact that many of the federal agents on
the line were armed within four rifles, those holding the
shield wall along Southwest Main Street lobbed back gas canisters
and glass bottles at the officers. Then the shield walls
started moving forward to the repeated lines fuck you, I
won't do what you tell me from Rage against the Machines,
killing in the name. Shockingly, almost miraculously, the Feds started
(49:18):
falling back. After about ten minutes, the shield line advanced
to the end of the block and the FEDS withdrew
to the steps of the court house. On July seventeenth,
Chad Wolf had declared via tweet, we will never surrender
to violent extremists on my watch. Now. At about one am,
after one of the most intense nights of federal violence
thus far, Lonsdale Park was full of people and Chad
(49:40):
Wolf's Federal agents had scrambled back inside their fortress, low
on ammunition and clearly rattled. Several DHS agents tried to
prop close a door that had been shattered by enraged
mombs and teenagers with skateboards. Others attempted to fire out
of murder holes, only to be stymied in this by
teenagers hucking dozens of bottles at their in hands. The
(50:01):
Feds would push out again that night, but federal charges
no longer provoked protesters into automatic retreat. Portland had gotten
a taste of what it felt like to face down
the violence of federal agents, and they even seem to
like it. For the next several weeks, the city would
begin to treat fighting the Feds as a citywide pastime.
In our next episode, we'll talk about how this dystopian
(50:23):
side mission became the setting for a national media spectacle,
how an armed coup took over a rib restaurant and
so much more. Uh where the grand pops who couldn't
fathom the obamasist I don't hate America, just to me,
And she keeps a promisess looking like the sixties. It's crazy,
a nationwide deja p What my people post to do
(50:46):
go to schools named after the clan founder were around town?
Is I don't see why we frown in Native American
students forced to learn about when o'para Sarah? How is
that fair? Bro? Some Euros unsung in some months? That's
getting mon It's built for them. But ain't be all
a little bit of monthster we pruke you. The art
(51:15):
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 faces. I'm atle
Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed and
forgery in the art world. I just walked in and
saw this gright red painting presuming to be a Rothko.
(51:40):
Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to
be made. A lot of money. I'm listening to how
what they're paying for these things. It was an incredible
mands of money. You knew the painting was fake. Um
Listen to Art Fraud starting February one on the I
(52:00):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, guys. I'm a Shop Aloud and I am
Troy Millions and we are the host of the Earn
Your Leisure podcast where we break down business models and
examine the latest trends and finance. We hold court and
(52:22):
have exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names of business, sport,
and entertainment, from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross
and Shaquille O'Neil. I mean our alumni list is expansive.
Listen to as our guests reveal their business models, hardships
and triumphs and their respective fields. The knowledge is in
death and the questions are always delivered from your standpoint.
We want to know what you want to know. We
talked to the legends of business, sports and entertainment about
(52:43):
how they got their start and most importantly, how they
make their money. Earn Your Leisia is a college business
class mixed with pop culture. I want to learn about
the real estate game, unclears, how the stock market works.
We got you. Interested in starting a trucking company or
vending machine business. Not really sure about how taxes or
credit work. We got it all covered. The Arnie Leisure
podcast is available now. Listen to Ernie Leisure on the
(53:04):
Black Effect podcast Network, I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast
or wherever you get your podcasts. After thirty years, it's
time to return to the halls of West Beverly High
and hang out at the peach pit on the podcast
nine O two one o MG. Visit Jenny Garth and
Tori Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly
(53:27):
Hills nine O two one oh. From the very beginning,
we get to tell the fans all of the behind
the scenes stories to actually happen, so they know what
happened on camera obviously, but we can tell them all
the good stuff that happen off camera. Listen to nine
O two one o MG on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.