January 25, 2021 • 45 mins
For decades, Portland has been one of the USA's most violent battlegrounds between the white supremacist right and the anti racist left. In 2020, after months of anti police demonstrations, American fascists again took to the streets of Portland for what would be one of the bloodiest brawls in its history.
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 (00:18):
For most of the last decade, the city of Portland's
national reputation was largely informed by the sketch TV series Portlandia.
The show began airing in two thousand eleven, right at
the start of the relevance of the word hipster, and
portrayed Portland as something of a stereotypically loony liberal paradise,
a place where people know the names of the chicken
(00:38):
served in their restaurants. This image dogged the city until
two thousand seventeen, in the beginning of the Trump Years.
For millions of Americans, the first time they heard about
Antifa or saw images of people in black block was
from news footage of the street fights that grew increasingly
endemic to Portland as the Trump Years wore on. But
anti fascism has a long history in the City of Roses,
(01:01):
one that goes back further than the reign of Donald Trump.
Rose City Antifa is the oldest organization in the United
States with Antifa actually in its name. It formed in
two thousand seven as part of a local effort to
stop a music festival from the neo Nazi Hammerskin Nation.
The festival was supposed to be coming to Portland, and
our Cier was successful in stopping it. The organization has
(01:23):
continued up to the modern day. While its members do
take place in street actions to counter fascist demonstrations, the
bulk of their organization's work happens online, revealing and doxing
white supremacists and other fascists. The history of anti fascist
organizing an Oregon goes back a lot further than even
our Cier, though, as we discussed an episode one, Oregon
(01:45):
is the only state that was founded to be whites only.
The Clan had an overwhelming presence here in the nineteen twenties.
In the early twenties, virtually every member of the Portland
Police Bureau was a member. The first president of the
Portland Police Association was a former member of German American Bund,
an organization established by the Nazi Party. Oregon in particular,
(02:05):
and the Pacific Northwest in general, has held a special
place in the hearts of white supremacists for more than
a century. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, the clan
saw another surge, and Nazi terrorist groups like the Order
carried out a string of successful attacks. White supremacist ideologus
began floating the idea that the Pacific Northwest might be
the perfect place for a white homeland. The idea was
(02:27):
that since the PNW was already one of the whitest
parts of the country, Nazis would have an easy time
moving here and forcing non whites out through violence. This
idea was most directly pushed by a man named Harold
Covington with a now defunct Oregon based organization, Volksfront. Covington
coined the term Northwest Imperative to describe the white supremacist
(02:48):
drive to conquer the Pacific Northwest. As the Nazis flooded
into Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, anti racists started organizing to
oppose them. The group Anti Racist Action was formed in
port in nineteen seven, and it's probably the most direct
ancestor to Rose City Antifa and contemporary anti fascist groups.
For years, the men and women of Anti Racist Action
(03:10):
or a r A battled fascists in the streets. People
were sometimes killed and often grievously wounded. Mike Crenshaw grew
up in Illinois, but moved to Portland in nine He
quickly got involved in anti racist organizing. At one of
the high points for fascist violence in Portland, history, however,
from not really seeing white folks at all unless they
were in sec of authority to move into white communities
(03:33):
where white people were definitely the majority. Um and not
just in authority but also everywhere. So there were there
were experiences I had when we lived in smaller towns
in Illinois where we me and my brother would be
like the only black kids in certain schools, you know, UM,
and then Minnesota often being in a public ghost restore,
(03:58):
are being in downtown, you know, you're one of very
two black folks. So being by the time I was
a teenager, you know, I remember going down tough like
to visit people in Alabama and Mississippi and being afraid
that that the clan was gonna get us, you know,
being afraid that if we were out in the woods
at night, that the clan was gonna get us, because
(04:19):
that the racial terror that was a reality for our
people in America was something that we had learned about,
you know, and we had seen pictures of it in magazines, UM,
and we or we might have even known some people
directly are indirectly who've been killed, you know, as a
result of racism and mob violence or or police rutality
(04:40):
or something. So you know, there's always a sense of
fear associated with this existing here, you know. And that said,
being a teenager on the streets in Minneapolis, I understood
that the clan, you know, since early childhood and being
scared in the night and stuff like that. I understood
a violent, racist, racist terror organs. So when I was
(05:03):
in the hardcore punk scene, you know, as a black
kid again one of the only people in that social scene,
in that subculture that was black. UM, when I heard
that neo Nazis were coming around, I had a very
visceral reaction to it. I was like, wait a minute,
these people that hide behind mask and and where she
(05:27):
you know, to consider there, I just see that have
been lynching us for hundreds of years. These people feel
comfortable being part of the community and being out front
about it. So when I heard that I was I
had a very like I had almost immediately, I had
a militant reaction. I was like, oh, hell no, that's
not that's not acceptable. And you know, being a young
(05:50):
man um and hanging out on the streets, having already
dealt with physical violence and being ostracized and lead and
lead up, this is part of being growing up in Chicago.
That's you know, um having the fight all the time
and stuff I was. There was no way I was
letting it go out. Mike had moved to town just
(06:12):
a few years after probably the single most defining moment
of the modern struggle against white supremacy in Portland, the
nine eight murder of Mudlghetta Sara. Sara was a twenty
eight year old Ethiopian immigrant who lived in an apartment
complex at the intersection of Southeast thirty first Avenue in
Pine Street. His building was adjacent to the building where
(06:33):
Nick Heis, a member of the racist skinhead group east
Side White Pride, also lived. On the night of November
Sara returned from a party Nick Heis, Kenneth Miski, and
a crew of other racist skinheads rolled into the same
parking lot. They were drunk and their blood was up
from a night of distributing white supremacist propaganda. The propaganda
Miski and his friends had put up all night belonged
(06:55):
to a group called White Ariyan Resistance or War, which
was led by the recently deceased Nazi Tom Metzker. At
this point, Tom lived in southern California, but over the
last few years his organization had increasingly propagandized two disaffected
young white men in Oregon. The goal of Metzger's propaganda
was to promote racial violence, and on the night of
(07:16):
November he succeeded. According to eyewitnesses, Miski and two other
Nazis pulled their vehicle up in front of Sara's parked car.
The nazis girlfriends were also in the vehicle, and they
egged their partners on with cries of let's kill him,
let's kill him, and that's exactly what they did. Miski
hit Mulugetta from behind with a baseball bat and kept
(07:36):
beating him after he dropped, while his fellow Nazis kicked
the prone man with steel toed boots. Mulugetta Sara died
of his injuries. His killers were convicted of murder. They
pled guilty and never faced trial. Morris D's, head of
the Southern Poverty Law Center, sued Tom Metzker in civil
court and won a landmark judgment against him. The lawsuit
(07:57):
established the legal precedent that someone like me Skar head
what's called vicarious responsibility for Sara's death because Metzker had
good reason to know that his actions and the propaganda
he put out would lead to violence. The murder of
Mula get A Sara was a galvanizing moment for the
Portland anti racist community. By the time Mike Crenshaw showed up,
everyone knew what the stakes were. I had a group
(08:20):
of friends that I was hanging with, you know, and
we were all firing with the anti racist skinheads element,
as that's who we wanted to be. And so when
we heard these neo Nazis had organized themselves with the
leadership of the Plans women, into a gang called the
White Knights, we decided that we were going to confront them,
and we did it. We confronted him. We gave him
(08:41):
an opportunity to their abuse. We said, are you guys
white power? And they said yeah, And we said, look,
the next time we see you, we're gonna ask you again,
and if you are still white powers, then we're gonna
suck you up. You know. That's what happened. Some of
them change, some of them, some of them denounced it.
A four of them actually detected. But before the one
(09:03):
that getting of a long subtect speriod of violence, you know,
a few years went byve where we were little fighting
baily Um and it was it was, it was, it
was heavy man. In addition to anti racist action, the
group's Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice also confronted Nazis in the
streets of Portland. The podcast series It Did Happen Here,
(09:25):
not to be confused with my own podcast series It
Could Happen Here, documents the story in more detail than
we can afford to do here. But it's fair to
say that the murder of mulugettas Sarah informs the tactics
of many anti fascists in Portland to this day. The
basic idea is that if you allow these people to
organize and gather unopposed, they will commit murder. It's just
a matter of time. In two seventeen, after a solid
(09:49):
year of patriot prayer and proud boy gatherings in the
attendant street fights they provoked, Jeremy Christian murdered two men
on a Portland max Light rail train. This had an
equally galvanizing effect down the city's anti racists. Things, of course,
escalated further after Charlottesville, and the year two thousand eighteen
in the city of Portland was one of the bloodiest
years of fascist violence faced by any city in the
(10:11):
United States. My colleague Garrison is going to take over
here to give you an overview of how the street
battles between fascists and anti fascists evolved from two thousand
(10:33):
seventeen on. As Trump ushered conservative nationalism into the mainstream,
the vast mega movement brought street battles with their political
enemies back into vogue. The most prominent of the far
right groups that gathered in Portland was Patriot Prayer, led
by self described street preacher Joey Gibson. Patriot Prayer formed
(10:53):
alongside numerous other far right and neo fascist groups in
to support the candidacy of Donald Trump. Throughout ten Patriot
Prayer put on dozens and dozens of rallies throughout the
Pacific Northwest, and especially Portland. While Patriot Prayer rarely numbered
more than a few dozen members, they were capable in
(11:14):
drawing in hundreds of people By allying with militias like
the Three per Centers and street games like the Proud Boys,
and also explicit white nationalist groups like Identity Europa. These
street demos regularly escalated into violent brawls with police almost
always taking this side of the far right and carrying
out attacks on anti fascist demonstrators. Here's I was someone
(11:37):
with the Youth Liberation Front explained their entry into activism
and anti fascism. Reminder, we've redubbed the audio with a
voice actor because these children are regularly threatened with murder. Yeah.
I think for me, it was definitely what was going
on in my everyday life that kind of pushed me
to get more involved in politics. I was, I was
(11:57):
working in school, and then I heard about Jeremy Christian
killing people on the Max I ride home and fucking
then not like really consumed me and it was integral
and to me, becoming like anti fascist and any racist
and not just kind of pushed my growth into anarchism
and ecology. So I think things happening in my world
around me was the first thing that definitely pushed me here.
Jeremy Christian attended multiple Patriot prayer rallies before he stabbed
(12:20):
three people and killed two in a racially motivated attack
on Portland's Max rail on. While Christian was eventually kicked
out of a Patriot prayer rally for openly sig hiling
the fact that Joey Gibson chose to hold a rally
immediately after the murders suggests that many of their members
(12:40):
may not have disavowed him as much as they claimed.
The far right rallies that immediately followed Christian's stabbing spree
grew ever more violent. Gibson and company used their new
found notoriety to hold events in cities throughout the West Coast,
many of which ended in brawls. Through it all, Gibson
maintained a close relationship with the Portland Police Bureau, specifically
(13:04):
Lieutenant Jeff Naia, the previous commander of ppb's Rapid Response Team,
the very same team of quote riot police who would
be responsible for suppressing BLM rallies. In in text messages
from Lieutenant Naia to Gibson found via public records requests,
Lieutenant Naia was showcased giving Gibson information about Antifa during
(13:27):
rallies and instructing Gibson and other Patriot Prayer members on
how to avoid being arrested themselves. At one point, Naia
went so far as to tell Gibson that he and
other officers were trying specifically not to arrest a violent
right wing straight brawler Tiny Toast, who had outstanding arrest
warrants at the time. Naia told Gibson, quote, just make
(13:49):
sure he doesn't do anything which may draw our attention
if he still has the warrant in our system. I
don't run you guys, so I don't personally know the
officers could arrest him. I don't see a need to
arrest on the warrant unless there is a reason unquote.
The texts were from seventeen to eighteen, but only released
(14:09):
in February of twenty nineteen. Back in June, a rally
that was originally planned to protest police violence turned into
an anti fascist rally after Patriot Prayer announced they would
show up to counter the original protest. After some brawling
in the streets, the Portland Police Bureau arrested multiple anti fascists,
but failed to arrest anyone on the right. This appears
(14:32):
to have been done under orders from Lieutenant Naia. In
live stream footage, officers are seen walking up to and
telling Gimpson, quote, I just talked to Jeff Naia, and
he asked me to tell you that he has probably
cause to arrest a couple of the guys here. They've
arrested the other side. So it's not singling you guys out,
but it's time to go. If you guys can go home,
(14:54):
there won't be any arrests. Two months later, at another
opposing anti fascist patriot Prayer Slash Proud Boy rally, Portland
police shot munitions at anti fascists as they ordered them
to disperse. One of these munitions, a flash bang grenade,
was launched at the head of a self described anti fascist,
Aaron Anthony can To. The grenade split his skull open
(15:17):
and embedded all the way through his bike helmet. Kento
was treated at the scene by several volunteer street medics
and eventually was taken to the hospital. He suffered a
traumatic brain injury with severe hemorrhaging. Had he not been
wearing that bike helmet, he would have most certainly died.
Fast forward to the start of For the first two
months of BLM protests in Portland, the far right was
(15:40):
oddly absent. This was seen as strange by everyone on
the ground. For years, far right demonstrators had shown up
at every possible event to do violence, but as soon
as tear gas and beatings started in May, those familiar
fascist faces were nowhere to be seen. There were, however,
constant rumors of quote Proud Boys circling the area unquote,
(16:04):
and every once in a while a random local fascist
would show up briefly. Also during the day, some would
wave Blue Lives Matter flags in front of the j C,
but for the most part, the right wing was mostly
absent until August. August sixteenth start out like any normal
day in Portland during the summer of By this point,
the fed War was over, and there were small gatherings
(16:26):
of protesters throughout the city at a different location each night.
On the sixteenth, people were back at the Justice Center.
During the afternoon, there were the standard speeches about police abolition,
and as the afternoon turned into the evening, people started
meandering around. At around ten pm, a small group who
had appointed themselves as quote protest security attempted to aggressively
(16:48):
escort out someone from the parks around the j C.
For unknown reasons. Quote security led this person over to
the nearby seven eleven, where they were more or less
randomly jumped by someone else. We should say a bit
here about the seven eleven near the Justice Center. Early
in the summer, it had earned the nickname Comrade seven
eleven because the workers inside repeatedly pulled in protesters to
(17:11):
rescue them from police bull rushes and clouds of tear gas. Unfortunately,
as the summer wore on, the seven eleven became a
gathering place for less savory individuals who coalesced at the
fringes of the movement. Street fights, some involving people tangentially
involved in the protests and others involving drunk people who
just wanted to fight, became an almost nightly occurrence. It
(17:33):
was not uncommon to see puddles of blood in the
intersection leading to the seven eleven, so it was not
super surprising that the person Quote Security pulled out of
the protest got jumped near the seven eleven. After getting punched, chased,
and tackled, he ran away, but Quote Security stayed out
in front of the seven eleven. A woman nearby approached
(17:54):
them and asked what was going on. The Quote Security
then got aggressive with her. Other people near the seven eleven,
whose affiliation is unclear, began stealing her stuff, a backpack
and skateboard. She then chased people around and tried to
pepper spray the people stealing from her. Videos filmed at
the time suggests that most of the people involved in
this fracas were very inebriated. While all this was going on,
(18:18):
another person arrived at the seven eleven. He parked his
truck outside and attempted to de escalate this tricky situation.
A small crowd of around twenty people formed around the
woman who had been attacked. Upon hearing this woman had
quote maced people, the small group got aggressive, a few
people through water bottles. Someone who had been caught in
the pepper spray crossfire ran up and began punching this woman.
(18:41):
Violence waxed and waned for several minutes, and then the
man with the truck repeatedly tried to de escalate the situation. Eventually,
he gave up and got into his truck again, which
made a weird sound and lurched forward after he turned
it on. One of the self appointed security people then
walked up to the driver and began to hit him
through the open window. A couple of people also began
(19:01):
hitting the truck driver's girlfriend, who had walked around the
truck toward the small crowd. While all this was going on,
a much larger BLM demonstration was occurring a few blocks away.
I was there at the time, and I didn't even
know any of this was going on. But some BLM
protesters noticed the commotion and wandered over to the seven
eleven and tried to stop people from attacking the truck
(19:23):
driver and his girlfriend. The driver, still under attack from
his window, reft his engine a few times, and when
the road was completely clear, he drove away, but he
crashed about three blocks away from the seven eleven. The
self appointed security people chased after on foot, and when
they arrived at the crash site, one of the quote
security people pushed the truck driver onto the ground and
(19:45):
stopped him from leaving or walking around. The truck driver
explained that he wasn't trying to hurt anybody, and this
angered one of these so called security people, who then
began punching and kicking the truck driver, who was already
on the ground. The two other self appointed secure he
tried to restrain this one security guy who was repeatedly
hitting the truck driver, but this agitated security dude was
(20:07):
able to break free and brutally kicked the truck driver
in the back of the head, briefly knocking him out.
Volunteer street medics rushed the scene from the protest a
few blocks away to provide aid. This was a terrible, confusing,
and profoundly avoidable series of events. It had very little
to do with Portland's BLN movement, save that a small
(20:27):
number of self appointed security had been present at the
protest before this brawl started. This is not how it
was presented in right wing media, which portrayed the whole
situation as a mass BLM gang assault on a white
man for no other reason than his skin color. Much
of the disinformation came courtesy of the far right blogger
and social media personality Andy No. No had gained popularity
(20:52):
among the right in the past few years by writing
about the dangers of Muslim immigrants and fear mongering about Antifa.
In the past, No had also selectively live streamed and
filmed Antifa and Patriot Prayer slashed prowdboy rallies. At one
of these rallies, he was assaulted with milkshakes and punched
and shoved several times. This was a little after no
(21:14):
had been present to selectively film a right wing assault
at a local left wing hangout that left a woman
hospitalized with severe injuries. No had presented the scene to
look like right wingers were defending themselves, but in actuality,
they initiated this brutal attack, and it was later found
out that No was actually at the planning of this
(21:34):
violent assault. In some footage secretly filmed, No was seen
laughing as Patriot Prayer members discussed beating up left wing
activists and so called communists. After he was beat up,
No raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and mostly stopped
going to protests himself. Instead, he either embedded footage from
actual on the ground journalists or used stolen footage from
(21:56):
various far right accounts that download, edit, and repos most
footage from protests. All the footage Andy No shares about
this head kicking incident is heavily edited to make it
unclear to his followers what is actually happening and to
make nose twisted narrative more believable. No started posting about
the truck driver assault by describing Portland as being quote
(22:17):
occupied with BLM and Antifa rioters unquote, further saying that
the man had simply crashed his car and that quote
the mob had pulled him out of his vehicle and
quote beat him senseless with No, there are always attempts
to paint Portland as being full of quote Antifa mobs
(22:38):
roaming the streets looking for anyone to beat up, with
the police never actually showing up to stop these dangerous Antifa,
which this is, of course, far from the truth. The
police themselves quickly showed up to this very incident after
the head kick and arrested the perpetrator as soon as
they identified him. No continued to post other people's clips
while describing quote rioters and quote the mob attacking this man.
(23:02):
But in the videos he shares, it's almost entirely one
person doing all of the violence, and other members of
this quote mob trying to physically restrain this main person
from hitting the truck driver. In a clip of people
trying to provide first aid, and he describes quote rioters
when no riot was actually declared that night, standing over
(23:22):
the truck driver's unscious body after quote they beat him up.
No also writes quote they pour water on him, as
if people are just doing for fun. Now, water isn't
actually poured on the person in the video No captions
that on but in other videos you can see water
being poured on his head to both clean out the
wounds and to attempt to wake him up, and he
(23:44):
then posts about the altercation that took place prior to
the crash, saying that quote, the BLM mob is beating
a blonde woman, referencing the truck driver's girlfriend. And just
as before, the video actually shows two people from the
crowd and from the seven eleven trying to hit the
older woman as many of the people from the actual
protesting crowd tried to protect her. No makes the post
(24:06):
talking about the man that kicked the truck driver in
the head, saying, quote, he's part of the marauding BLM
security at the protests in Portland. These are the people
protesters want to replace the police with. Now, this is
simply an unverified and false claim. No one in Portland
has ever talked about replacing the police with the random
dudes that elected themselves as quote security during protests. In fact,
(24:31):
many people at protests speak out against these self proclaimed
security people, both before and after this incident. And of
course no failed to mention that all this happened some
distance away from the actual BLM protests that night. Like
I said, I was there and I knew nothing about
this until I got home. And checked Twitter. But no,
(24:51):
what have you think that this is the BLM movement itself,
not a mixture of random men who la past security
and drunk people at seven eleven. When interviewed by local media,
the truck driver's girlfriend is said that the people who
attacked her and her boyfriend were not real protesters. For
(25:22):
months leading up to this incident, the far right had
seemed almost afraid to get involved in Portland's protests. Some
of this was likely due to the terrifying police violence,
but we suspect the larger factor was that over the weeks,
Portland's BLM protesters had been hardened by that violence and
grown skilled at standing up to it as a unit.
Prior to the sixteenth, there had only been two truly
(25:43):
noteworthy far right attacks on protests. One came courtesy of
a former Navy seal who allegedly through an improvised explosive
device at a small crowd of activists after a demonstration,
and on August fifteen, a group of right wing protesters,
including many former Patriot Prayer members, held a flag wave
outside the Justice Center. Numerous attendees assaulted and maced left
(26:04):
wing counter protesters. One attendee longtime far right rally or
Skyler Journegan fired his handgun into the crowd. He failed
to hit anyone and was arrested a few days later,
but the incident presaged rising tensions that would break out
into mass violence just a week later. Online rage over
the assault outside of the seven eleven and long simmering
anger over the BLM movement, which had seemed to capture
(26:26):
the city's entire interest, inspired a coalition of different patriot
groups to plan a rally for the twenty second. The
attendees would turn out to be a serried milange of
far right and outright fascist demonstrators. Members of the Proud
Boys made up the backbone of the force that showed
up in front of the j C on the twenty,
but there were also Neo Nazis and militiamen. The individuals
(26:47):
who showed up were only bound by two things performative
support for police who assaulted leftists and a desire to
do similar violence themselves. These men and women showed up
ready to fight the war. Armor carried paintball guns with
frozen paintballs, cans of bear mace, telescoping batons, knives, and firearms.
(27:07):
The start of the demonstration was set for twelve noon.
By the time Garrison and I arrived on scene, several
dozen right wingers were already present. Standing across the street
were less than half that number of anti fascists. The
vibe was immediately tense, but not immediately violent. A pro
BLM bicycle protests drove through the street in between both groups,
followed by a crowd of several dozen bikers for Trump
(27:30):
and men in trucks waving Trump and backed the Blue flags.
While all this happened, more fascists and far right demonstrators
continued to arrive. Their numbers hit a hundred than two hundred,
while the forces countering them remained relatively small. At around
twelve ten PM, a massive street fight broke out, as
best I could tell, and started when a local activist
(27:50):
in a wheelchair pulled up in front of one pro
Trump biker. People surrounded both of them. Both sides collided,
and then there were fist fights, mace and shoving. I
can't even tell you who started it. David Willis, a
local anti Semitic protester, threatened me in a number of
(28:11):
other protesters with an a R fifteen style paintball gun.
Loaded with paintballs that he had frozen in order to
cause more damage. Willis had evidently spent quite some time
listening to Portland protest live streams. He repeatedly threatened people,
using a tone that I think was a deliberate imitation
of the police. There was a brief low in the
action after this initial explosion, but it did not last long.
(28:34):
A violence commenced soon again. Right wing demonstrators pulled out
tasers and beat sticks. Several of them formed up into
a shield wall organized by a neo Nazi with a
baton who attempted to lead them in the battle, and
around twelve p m. The fighting waned again. Anti fascist
reinforcement showed up and the two groups neared parody, with
(28:56):
two or three hundred people on each side. There was
a pause in the viol lens, but everyone in attendance
knew it would not last. The police opted to stay away,
although in the distance you could hear the l rat
asking everyone to please stay nice. For a little over
(29:24):
a half hour, relative peace reigned. More left wing demonstrators
continued to show up, including Demitria Hester, who led the crowd,
and chance of Black Lives Matter. Right wingers responded with
less cohesive chance of their own, like hey, hey, ho ho,
these violent rioters have got to go. Finally, a bit
after one ten pm, a right wing demonstrator hupped a
(29:45):
jug of o J over his shield wall and into
the anti fascist ranks. This was followed by improvised flash bangs,
and soon another general melee broke out. Things got incredibly ugly.
Much of the violence centered around the BLM snack van,
a common sight at local protests that did exactly what
it sounds like. In this video, you can hear a
(30:05):
crowd of several dozen charge a single man standing in
front of the van. They mace him repeatedly and beat
his arms and legs with batons. Brawls continued to break out,
and a little after one twenty pm, as I rushed
over to where a crowd of Proud Boys and other
bright wingers were assaulting a person on the ground, beating
them with sticks, a proud boy swung a baton at
(30:27):
my camera hand, breaking it in two places. Numerous other
people had bones broken by violent fascists that day. Most
of these individuals will never make their names public. They
showed up in black block to confront dangerous Nazis and
other extremists who intended to harm people. Violence occurred throughout
the next hour, with mass shield charges from the right
(30:48):
wing that were repulsed only after significant injuries. The whole
ugly event culminated around two pm, when an anti fascist
old wall finally squared off with a fascist shield wall.
This was the first time that both groups had confronted
each other in a mass, unified way, as opposed to
the dozens of scattered brawls and to be fair conversations
(31:11):
that had characterized the early part of the day. The
right hooped fireworks and insults at their opponents. Both groups
kept their distance, throwing things and opposing each other with
lines of shields. This stalemate lasted for a few minutes
and was broken when a group of unarmed and unmasked
BIPOC activists marched up to the right wing shield wall.
(31:35):
Despite being unarmed, they were assaulted en masked by the
crowd and repeatedly maced. Anti fascists had to run up
and pull them back into the line in order to
protect them. The sheer volume of mace deployed by the
right wing worked against them, though unlike their opponents, who
(31:56):
had spent the summer getting tear gassed. The right wing
had very you gas masks your respirators. They blinded themselves
with their own poisoned. Then one anti fascist hucked a
firework into the middle of the half blind shield wall,
and the entire line panicked and eventually broke and fled.
They briefly ran to the nearby I. R. S Building,
(32:16):
begging the federal agents inside for help. When they were
denied help, the right wing crowd retreated and gradually dissipated.
August would mark the largest confrontation between right and left
in Portland during the summer, but it was not the deadliest.
That title would be earned the next weekend, when a
Trump cruise, which consisted of several thousand pickup trucks and
(32:37):
other vehicles flying Trump and thin Blue line flags, rolled
through the city of Portland and eventually through downtown Portland.
There was violence at this event, but it was much
less cohesive. Several groups of Trump supporters fired paintball guns
and mason to crowds from moving vehicles. The crowd this day, however,
was less extreme than the smaller crowd on the Some
(32:58):
Trump supporters even went to the aid of people who
were injured by other Trump supporters, and in general the
overall group was much less ready to fight, at least
in an organized way. But the site of thousands of
pickup trucks blaring flags, and of course the assaults from
a number of members of the Trump crews meant that
anxiety was extremely high among Portland protesters, and of course
(33:20):
contributing to this was the fact that the previous two
weekends had involved heavy violence and gunfire. One individual had
fired a handgun in warning during the protest on the
twenty swod in addition to Skyler Journegan's shots into a
crowd the week before. So understandably everyone was very amped up,
and while the train of mounted Trump supporters eventually passed
(33:41):
through town without serious life threatening violence, events at the
periphery of the caravan would shortly lead to the first
fatality of Portland's protests. The conflict occurred as two right
wing demonstrators, both of whom had been present at the
two were walking home. J Danielson and Chandler Pappas were
regular Patriot marchers. Both carried handguns, batons, and mace. The
(34:04):
exact sequence of events is unclear, but as best we
can tell. From since released surveillance footage, Pappas and Danielson
seemed to have attacked a pro BLM and anti fascist
demonstrator named Michael Reinhold. Reinhold responded to their mace with gunfire,
killing Danielson in nearly hitting Pappas. Renald ran and fled
the scene, immediately disappearing into the city. For several days,
(34:27):
his identity was unknown, and details around the shooting were
completely obscured. This did not stop the right wing media
and President Trump himself from turning Danielson into a martyr.
Calls to brand Antifa a terrorist group reached a fever
pitch when Reinold's identity was revealed. Much was made of
the fact that he identified with both BLM and Antifa.
(34:48):
The right wing disinformation ecosystem took this as evidence that
Antifa and b l M were both part of some shadowy,
organized plot to overthrow the United States government. The reality
is that anti fascist act is UM and the goals
of Black Lives Matter have always been deeply tied. As
Max Smith attests, does that mean I'm part of an
Antifa group? No? Am I an anti THI fascist? Absolutely,
(35:10):
because how how can you not be right, that the
only that only makes sense, um, And so I think
it's it's it's again one of those things that gets
like thrown into the media as a buzzword that doesn't
actually mean anything, and that's only doubled down on by
like our president and people like that who just continue
to use words they don't understand because they think that
(35:32):
they're explosive what in reality. In reality, the Antifa guys,
you know, the Antifa, the Rose the City Antifa or whatever,
are really like a bunch of like guys that do
like research and stuff for the most part, against information.
I've long used contacts to get like information like who
is this gang? Who you know? What is this tattoo
(35:54):
on this white supremacis I've been seeing over here. That's
really what I've used them for. Um, you know the
people that I know that identify as Antifa. But other
than that, I mean, it's it's it's just an ideology.
So it's it's weird to see people ask questions like
are you Antifa? And I'm like, what does that mean?
Or is BLM has been taken over by Antifa? And
(36:15):
BLM even is one of those statements that again kind
of like Antifa, it doesn't actually mean anything. You know,
there's no a Black Lives Matter a chapter here, like
like national chapter here that I'm aware of. And people
always say, you know, like this stuff takes away from
the spirit of a Black Lives Matter. But then they
also turn around and say a Black Lives Matter as
(36:36):
a Marxist organization run by you know, the g B
t Q so and say that it's itself is you know,
is a swoop. So there seems like there's like a
lot of things that people have their ideas about these
factions or groups or whatever, but in reality, these people
aren't a part of any of that. We I mean,
most of us are not a part of any actual
(36:58):
a group of anything. We're just out here, you know,
fighting for our rights and for the rights of our
of our friends and neighbors. So all those labels are
are kind of funny, like, you know, we're not in
a gang. We aren't the proud Boys of the Patriot Prayers.
They all have their names and clicks and groups and
(37:19):
and and and and and nonprofits and all that that's
not really our thing. So I think that they have
a hard time. I think that people have a hard
time of processing that in general, that's not the way
that we're trained to think. We're kind of a train
to think in the in the in the way of
of clicks and groups and brands. You know, it's all
(37:40):
about branding and how are you branding? And do you
wear matching outfits and that kind of stuff. So people
just see black block and they see a brand, and
then they hear Antifa and they think of a brand,
and then they just put it all together and they
have this idea in their heads, but it's it's just
not based in reality. Also had some complicated thoughts on
the intersection of the anti fascism in the Black Lives
(38:01):
Matter movement. Um. It's complicated in the source of a
lot of tension, uh, for sure in the city right
now and kind of throughout this entire thing, um because
you do have you know, marches and actions that claims
(38:21):
to be you know, black Lives Matter, when a lot
of the people there um are there for like quote
unquote anti fascists, for purely anti copias ands. Um. And
it's hard because you need bodies. But I don't know,
because that's like that's some like person to days thinking,
(38:44):
I feel like I know um, I feel like there's
a lot you've learned about that and about I think
direct action in general and protests in general. I think
it actually is extremely important. Now It's always make really important,
but now all I think it's really important, and a
lot of people are more aware of that. Disrect action
(39:05):
or the protest or like the mutual aid UH reach out.
I don't know has a defined like role or defines
like this is you know, anti Baptist marks, this is
Black Lives Matter d A, this is you know, anti
cop sweep or whatever. I don't think it has to
(39:27):
be you know that always spelled out, but it needs
to be clear and it needs to be you know,
leadership in position that knows that role. And you know,
like I said earlier, kind of that like thinking we
need numbers of the person presented as and it kind
of is that there's yeah, as you kind of learned,
(39:50):
bigger d A and bigger actions. When she gets out
of the tay wire, it's it's gonna be chaotic because
there are so many people there who maybe they're there
for the right reasons, but they're not like on the
same age. And when everyone's not on the same age,
it's really hard for an action or evidentially easy people.
(40:12):
So like yeah, smaller, more concides, more focused. Now just
talking about strategy, Um, but with the h the focus
is important and you know all these all these things,
I guess in terms of the relationship between I guess
those two things. My perspective is black liberations, liberation for everybody.
(40:36):
And I guess from my perspective the goal I don't
know if it's gold, but the the through line from
me personally is black lives matter, at least, like from
looking at it linearly standpoint, if if we really are
(41:01):
considering black lives matter, if we get to the point
in our country where black lives are mattering, then there
will probably be less fascists or we will have done something,
you know what I mean. If the entire country is
like that black, that's a country where at least fascists
aren't in government. And that's a country where at least, um,
(41:23):
there's probably if not abolish police, less police presidents or
police starts spects black people and police sent their respect
black people. Clearly at least if there are steck black
people their respect everybody. So for me throughline and like
that's also an evidence, But that's what started all this.
Um is black livesn't matter. And I don't know. I'm
(41:46):
not happy. There's like sub factions or there's kind of
these multiple ideas existing within a movement about the goals.
But that is the reality of the we live in
and I can only work together because we do all
have common rules. Um. Yeah. The actual nuance in the
(42:09):
discussion was lost in the national reaction to Jay Danielson's death.
As soon as Michael Ryanal admitted to the shooting, claiming
self defense and a Vice video, a man hunt ensued
to bring him down. The U. S. Marshals caught him
in early September, and Michael was gunned down near where
he'd been hiding in Washington. Initial reports spoke of an
exchange of gunfire, but later evidence revealed that Michael had
(42:31):
not fired while officers shot dozens of times at the
vehicle he was in. In mid October, at a campaign
rally ahead of the November election, President Trump bragged that
he had used the U. S. Marshals as more or
less a death squad, saying we sent in the U. S.
Marshals the fifteen minutes it was over fifteen minutes it
(42:51):
was over. We got him. I knew who he was
and didn't want to arrest him. In fifteen minutes. That
ended at all, But then they called themselves peaceful product
right wing rallies and violence would continue throughout the remainder
of the year. It was, however, notably lower key than
it had been before. Several hundred Proud Boys rallied on
(43:12):
the weekend of September twenty six, but both sides were
kept largely apart. Less than a week before the event,
Eugene ANTIFA had released a set of leaked chat logs
from a group called Patriot Coalition who would help plan
events on August as well. The chats, which I reported
on alongside Jason Wilson for Bellancat and the UK Guardian,
included threats to shoot members of the a c l
(43:34):
U and legal observers, as well as embryonic plans to
kidnap the governor of Oregon over the state's COVID nineteen lockdown.
The governor convened a press conference after these reports and
threatened to use the state's long dormant anti paramilitary laws
if there was mass violence by the Proud Boys on September.
Police kept anti fascists and fascists apart. A number of
(43:55):
Proud Boys did do violence, assaulting several members of the
press who came to cover their event, but no mass
thousand person street fight ensued this time. In fact, after
the six far right street activities seemed to ebb for
several months. There were small back the Blue rallies which
often involved right wingers masonencounter protesters and threatening them with firearms,
(44:15):
and of course involved anti fascists doing things like breaking
the windows on their cars, but mass violence failed to ensue.
It seemed for a while as if the far right
had spent itself in August of This would turn out
to be untrue. Of course, we're recording this episode just
two weeks after the capital of the United States was
sieged and occupied briefly by hundreds of far right, fascist,
(44:37):
and white nationalist demonstrators on January six. This event was
signposted by an attack by far right insurrectionists on the
city of Salem, Oregon's capital, just a few days earlier.
The whole chain of events further reinforced Oregan's reputation as
something of a national bell weather for far right violence,
with the anti fascists of the Rose City endured in
(44:59):
the late summer, came home to the capital of the
entire country just a few months later. Uh where the
grandpops and couldn't fathom the obamasis, I don't hate America,
just to me, And she keeps the promises tens looking
like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide deja pu. What
my people post to do? Go to schools named after
(45:22):
the clan founder. We're around town, isa, I don't see
why we're frowning Native American students forced to learn about
when o'pella Sarah, How is that fair? Bro? Some Euros
unsung in some monster's getting monuments built for them. But
it ain't be all a little bit of monster. We
crooking him
For most of the last decade, the city of Portland's
national reputation was largely informed by the sketch TV series Portlandia.
The show began airing in two thousand eleven, right at
the start of the relevance of the word hipster, and
portrayed Portland as something of a stereotypically loony liberal paradise,
a place where people know the names of the chicken
(00:38):
served in their restaurants. This image dogged the city until
two thousand seventeen, in the beginning of the Trump Years.
For millions of Americans, the first time they heard about
Antifa or saw images of people in black block was
from news footage of the street fights that grew increasingly
endemic to Portland as the Trump Years wore on. But
anti fascism has a long history in the City of Roses,
(01:01):
one that goes back further than the reign of Donald Trump.
Rose City Antifa is the oldest organization in the United
States with Antifa actually in its name. It formed in
two thousand seven as part of a local effort to
stop a music festival from the neo Nazi Hammerskin Nation.
The festival was supposed to be coming to Portland, and
our Cier was successful in stopping it. The organization has
(01:23):
continued up to the modern day. While its members do
take place in street actions to counter fascist demonstrations, the
bulk of their organization's work happens online, revealing and doxing
white supremacists and other fascists. The history of anti fascist
organizing an Oregon goes back a lot further than even
our Cier, though, as we discussed an episode one, Oregon
(01:45):
is the only state that was founded to be whites only.
The Clan had an overwhelming presence here in the nineteen twenties.
In the early twenties, virtually every member of the Portland
Police Bureau was a member. The first president of the
Portland Police Association was a former member of German American Bund,
an organization established by the Nazi Party. Oregon in particular,
(02:05):
and the Pacific Northwest in general, has held a special
place in the hearts of white supremacists for more than
a century. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, the clan
saw another surge, and Nazi terrorist groups like the Order
carried out a string of successful attacks. White supremacist ideologus
began floating the idea that the Pacific Northwest might be
the perfect place for a white homeland. The idea was
(02:27):
that since the PNW was already one of the whitest
parts of the country, Nazis would have an easy time
moving here and forcing non whites out through violence. This
idea was most directly pushed by a man named Harold
Covington with a now defunct Oregon based organization, Volksfront. Covington
coined the term Northwest Imperative to describe the white supremacist
(02:48):
drive to conquer the Pacific Northwest. As the Nazis flooded
into Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, anti racists started organizing to
oppose them. The group Anti Racist Action was formed in
port in nineteen seven, and it's probably the most direct
ancestor to Rose City Antifa and contemporary anti fascist groups.
For years, the men and women of Anti Racist Action
(03:10):
or a r A battled fascists in the streets. People
were sometimes killed and often grievously wounded. Mike Crenshaw grew
up in Illinois, but moved to Portland in nine He
quickly got involved in anti racist organizing. At one of
the high points for fascist violence in Portland, history, however,
from not really seeing white folks at all unless they
were in sec of authority to move into white communities
(03:33):
where white people were definitely the majority. Um and not
just in authority but also everywhere. So there were there
were experiences I had when we lived in smaller towns
in Illinois where we me and my brother would be
like the only black kids in certain schools, you know, UM,
and then Minnesota often being in a public ghost restore,
(03:58):
are being in downtown, you know, you're one of very
two black folks. So being by the time I was
a teenager, you know, I remember going down tough like
to visit people in Alabama and Mississippi and being afraid
that that the clan was gonna get us, you know,
being afraid that if we were out in the woods
at night, that the clan was gonna get us, because
(04:19):
that the racial terror that was a reality for our
people in America was something that we had learned about,
you know, and we had seen pictures of it in magazines, UM,
and we or we might have even known some people
directly are indirectly who've been killed, you know, as a
result of racism and mob violence or or police rutality
(04:40):
or something. So you know, there's always a sense of
fear associated with this existing here, you know. And that said,
being a teenager on the streets in Minneapolis, I understood
that the clan, you know, since early childhood and being
scared in the night and stuff like that. I understood
a violent, racist, racist terror organs. So when I was
(05:03):
in the hardcore punk scene, you know, as a black
kid again one of the only people in that social scene,
in that subculture that was black. UM, when I heard
that neo Nazis were coming around, I had a very
visceral reaction to it. I was like, wait a minute,
these people that hide behind mask and and where she
(05:27):
you know, to consider there, I just see that have
been lynching us for hundreds of years. These people feel
comfortable being part of the community and being out front
about it. So when I heard that I was I
had a very like I had almost immediately, I had
a militant reaction. I was like, oh, hell no, that's
not that's not acceptable. And you know, being a young
(05:50):
man um and hanging out on the streets, having already
dealt with physical violence and being ostracized and lead and
lead up, this is part of being growing up in Chicago.
That's you know, um having the fight all the time
and stuff I was. There was no way I was
letting it go out. Mike had moved to town just
(06:12):
a few years after probably the single most defining moment
of the modern struggle against white supremacy in Portland, the
nine eight murder of Mudlghetta Sara. Sara was a twenty
eight year old Ethiopian immigrant who lived in an apartment
complex at the intersection of Southeast thirty first Avenue in
Pine Street. His building was adjacent to the building where
(06:33):
Nick Heis, a member of the racist skinhead group east
Side White Pride, also lived. On the night of November
Sara returned from a party Nick Heis, Kenneth Miski, and
a crew of other racist skinheads rolled into the same
parking lot. They were drunk and their blood was up
from a night of distributing white supremacist propaganda. The propaganda
Miski and his friends had put up all night belonged
(06:55):
to a group called White Ariyan Resistance or War, which
was led by the recently deceased Nazi Tom Metzker. At
this point, Tom lived in southern California, but over the
last few years his organization had increasingly propagandized two disaffected
young white men in Oregon. The goal of Metzger's propaganda
was to promote racial violence, and on the night of
(07:16):
November he succeeded. According to eyewitnesses, Miski and two other
Nazis pulled their vehicle up in front of Sara's parked car.
The nazis girlfriends were also in the vehicle, and they
egged their partners on with cries of let's kill him,
let's kill him, and that's exactly what they did. Miski
hit Mulugetta from behind with a baseball bat and kept
(07:36):
beating him after he dropped, while his fellow Nazis kicked
the prone man with steel toed boots. Mulugetta Sara died
of his injuries. His killers were convicted of murder. They
pled guilty and never faced trial. Morris D's, head of
the Southern Poverty Law Center, sued Tom Metzker in civil
court and won a landmark judgment against him. The lawsuit
(07:57):
established the legal precedent that someone like me Skar head
what's called vicarious responsibility for Sara's death because Metzker had
good reason to know that his actions and the propaganda
he put out would lead to violence. The murder of
Mula get A Sara was a galvanizing moment for the
Portland anti racist community. By the time Mike Crenshaw showed up,
everyone knew what the stakes were. I had a group
(08:20):
of friends that I was hanging with, you know, and
we were all firing with the anti racist skinheads element,
as that's who we wanted to be. And so when
we heard these neo Nazis had organized themselves with the
leadership of the Plans women, into a gang called the
White Knights, we decided that we were going to confront them,
and we did it. We confronted him. We gave him
(08:41):
an opportunity to their abuse. We said, are you guys
white power? And they said yeah, And we said, look,
the next time we see you, we're gonna ask you again,
and if you are still white powers, then we're gonna
suck you up. You know. That's what happened. Some of
them change, some of them, some of them denounced it.
A four of them actually detected. But before the one
(09:03):
that getting of a long subtect speriod of violence, you know,
a few years went byve where we were little fighting
baily Um and it was it was, it was, it
was heavy man. In addition to anti racist action, the
group's Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice also confronted Nazis in the
streets of Portland. The podcast series It Did Happen Here,
(09:25):
not to be confused with my own podcast series It
Could Happen Here, documents the story in more detail than
we can afford to do here. But it's fair to
say that the murder of mulugettas Sarah informs the tactics
of many anti fascists in Portland to this day. The
basic idea is that if you allow these people to
organize and gather unopposed, they will commit murder. It's just
a matter of time. In two seventeen, after a solid
(09:49):
year of patriot prayer and proud boy gatherings in the
attendant street fights they provoked, Jeremy Christian murdered two men
on a Portland max Light rail train. This had an
equally galvanizing effect down the city's anti racists. Things, of course,
escalated further after Charlottesville, and the year two thousand eighteen
in the city of Portland was one of the bloodiest
years of fascist violence faced by any city in the
(10:11):
United States. My colleague Garrison is going to take over
here to give you an overview of how the street
battles between fascists and anti fascists evolved from two thousand
(10:33):
seventeen on. As Trump ushered conservative nationalism into the mainstream,
the vast mega movement brought street battles with their political
enemies back into vogue. The most prominent of the far
right groups that gathered in Portland was Patriot Prayer, led
by self described street preacher Joey Gibson. Patriot Prayer formed
(10:53):
alongside numerous other far right and neo fascist groups in
to support the candidacy of Donald Trump. Throughout ten Patriot
Prayer put on dozens and dozens of rallies throughout the
Pacific Northwest, and especially Portland. While Patriot Prayer rarely numbered
more than a few dozen members, they were capable in
(11:14):
drawing in hundreds of people By allying with militias like
the Three per Centers and street games like the Proud Boys,
and also explicit white nationalist groups like Identity Europa. These
street demos regularly escalated into violent brawls with police almost
always taking this side of the far right and carrying
out attacks on anti fascist demonstrators. Here's I was someone
(11:37):
with the Youth Liberation Front explained their entry into activism
and anti fascism. Reminder, we've redubbed the audio with a
voice actor because these children are regularly threatened with murder. Yeah.
I think for me, it was definitely what was going
on in my everyday life that kind of pushed me
to get more involved in politics. I was, I was
(11:57):
working in school, and then I heard about Jeremy Christian
killing people on the Max I ride home and fucking
then not like really consumed me and it was integral
and to me, becoming like anti fascist and any racist
and not just kind of pushed my growth into anarchism
and ecology. So I think things happening in my world
around me was the first thing that definitely pushed me here.
Jeremy Christian attended multiple Patriot prayer rallies before he stabbed
(12:20):
three people and killed two in a racially motivated attack
on Portland's Max rail on. While Christian was eventually kicked
out of a Patriot prayer rally for openly sig hiling
the fact that Joey Gibson chose to hold a rally
immediately after the murders suggests that many of their members
(12:40):
may not have disavowed him as much as they claimed.
The far right rallies that immediately followed Christian's stabbing spree
grew ever more violent. Gibson and company used their new
found notoriety to hold events in cities throughout the West Coast,
many of which ended in brawls. Through it all, Gibson
maintained a close relationship with the Portland Police Bureau, specifically
(13:04):
Lieutenant Jeff Naia, the previous commander of ppb's Rapid Response Team,
the very same team of quote riot police who would
be responsible for suppressing BLM rallies. In in text messages
from Lieutenant Naia to Gibson found via public records requests,
Lieutenant Naia was showcased giving Gibson information about Antifa during
(13:27):
rallies and instructing Gibson and other Patriot Prayer members on
how to avoid being arrested themselves. At one point, Naia
went so far as to tell Gibson that he and
other officers were trying specifically not to arrest a violent
right wing straight brawler Tiny Toast, who had outstanding arrest
warrants at the time. Naia told Gibson, quote, just make
(13:49):
sure he doesn't do anything which may draw our attention
if he still has the warrant in our system. I
don't run you guys, so I don't personally know the
officers could arrest him. I don't see a need to
arrest on the warrant unless there is a reason unquote.
The texts were from seventeen to eighteen, but only released
(14:09):
in February of twenty nineteen. Back in June, a rally
that was originally planned to protest police violence turned into
an anti fascist rally after Patriot Prayer announced they would
show up to counter the original protest. After some brawling
in the streets, the Portland Police Bureau arrested multiple anti fascists,
but failed to arrest anyone on the right. This appears
(14:32):
to have been done under orders from Lieutenant Naia. In
live stream footage, officers are seen walking up to and
telling Gimpson, quote, I just talked to Jeff Naia, and
he asked me to tell you that he has probably
cause to arrest a couple of the guys here. They've
arrested the other side. So it's not singling you guys out,
but it's time to go. If you guys can go home,
(14:54):
there won't be any arrests. Two months later, at another
opposing anti fascist patriot Prayer Slash Proud Boy rally, Portland
police shot munitions at anti fascists as they ordered them
to disperse. One of these munitions, a flash bang grenade,
was launched at the head of a self described anti fascist,
Aaron Anthony can To. The grenade split his skull open
(15:17):
and embedded all the way through his bike helmet. Kento
was treated at the scene by several volunteer street medics
and eventually was taken to the hospital. He suffered a
traumatic brain injury with severe hemorrhaging. Had he not been
wearing that bike helmet, he would have most certainly died.
Fast forward to the start of For the first two
months of BLM protests in Portland, the far right was
(15:40):
oddly absent. This was seen as strange by everyone on
the ground. For years, far right demonstrators had shown up
at every possible event to do violence, but as soon
as tear gas and beatings started in May, those familiar
fascist faces were nowhere to be seen. There were, however,
constant rumors of quote Proud Boys circling the area unquote,
(16:04):
and every once in a while a random local fascist
would show up briefly. Also during the day, some would
wave Blue Lives Matter flags in front of the j C,
but for the most part, the right wing was mostly
absent until August. August sixteenth start out like any normal
day in Portland during the summer of By this point,
the fed War was over, and there were small gatherings
(16:26):
of protesters throughout the city at a different location each night.
On the sixteenth, people were back at the Justice Center.
During the afternoon, there were the standard speeches about police abolition,
and as the afternoon turned into the evening, people started
meandering around. At around ten pm, a small group who
had appointed themselves as quote protest security attempted to aggressively
(16:48):
escort out someone from the parks around the j C.
For unknown reasons. Quote security led this person over to
the nearby seven eleven, where they were more or less
randomly jumped by someone else. We should say a bit
here about the seven eleven near the Justice Center. Early
in the summer, it had earned the nickname Comrade seven
eleven because the workers inside repeatedly pulled in protesters to
(17:11):
rescue them from police bull rushes and clouds of tear gas. Unfortunately,
as the summer wore on, the seven eleven became a
gathering place for less savory individuals who coalesced at the
fringes of the movement. Street fights, some involving people tangentially
involved in the protests and others involving drunk people who
just wanted to fight, became an almost nightly occurrence. It
(17:33):
was not uncommon to see puddles of blood in the
intersection leading to the seven eleven, so it was not
super surprising that the person Quote Security pulled out of
the protest got jumped near the seven eleven. After getting punched, chased,
and tackled, he ran away, but Quote Security stayed out
in front of the seven eleven. A woman nearby approached
(17:54):
them and asked what was going on. The Quote Security
then got aggressive with her. Other people near the seven eleven,
whose affiliation is unclear, began stealing her stuff, a backpack
and skateboard. She then chased people around and tried to
pepper spray the people stealing from her. Videos filmed at
the time suggests that most of the people involved in
this fracas were very inebriated. While all this was going on,
(18:18):
another person arrived at the seven eleven. He parked his
truck outside and attempted to de escalate this tricky situation.
A small crowd of around twenty people formed around the
woman who had been attacked. Upon hearing this woman had
quote maced people, the small group got aggressive, a few
people through water bottles. Someone who had been caught in
the pepper spray crossfire ran up and began punching this woman.
(18:41):
Violence waxed and waned for several minutes, and then the
man with the truck repeatedly tried to de escalate the situation. Eventually,
he gave up and got into his truck again, which
made a weird sound and lurched forward after he turned
it on. One of the self appointed security people then
walked up to the driver and began to hit him
through the open window. A couple of people also began
(19:01):
hitting the truck driver's girlfriend, who had walked around the
truck toward the small crowd. While all this was going on,
a much larger BLM demonstration was occurring a few blocks away.
I was there at the time, and I didn't even
know any of this was going on. But some BLM
protesters noticed the commotion and wandered over to the seven
eleven and tried to stop people from attacking the truck
(19:23):
driver and his girlfriend. The driver, still under attack from
his window, reft his engine a few times, and when
the road was completely clear, he drove away, but he
crashed about three blocks away from the seven eleven. The
self appointed security people chased after on foot, and when
they arrived at the crash site, one of the quote
security people pushed the truck driver onto the ground and
(19:45):
stopped him from leaving or walking around. The truck driver
explained that he wasn't trying to hurt anybody, and this
angered one of these so called security people, who then
began punching and kicking the truck driver, who was already
on the ground. The two other self appointed secure he
tried to restrain this one security guy who was repeatedly
hitting the truck driver, but this agitated security dude was
(20:07):
able to break free and brutally kicked the truck driver
in the back of the head, briefly knocking him out.
Volunteer street medics rushed the scene from the protest a
few blocks away to provide aid. This was a terrible, confusing,
and profoundly avoidable series of events. It had very little
to do with Portland's BLN movement, save that a small
(20:27):
number of self appointed security had been present at the
protest before this brawl started. This is not how it
was presented in right wing media, which portrayed the whole
situation as a mass BLM gang assault on a white
man for no other reason than his skin color. Much
of the disinformation came courtesy of the far right blogger
and social media personality Andy No. No had gained popularity
(20:52):
among the right in the past few years by writing
about the dangers of Muslim immigrants and fear mongering about Antifa.
In the past, No had also selectively live streamed and
filmed Antifa and Patriot Prayer slashed prowdboy rallies. At one
of these rallies, he was assaulted with milkshakes and punched
and shoved several times. This was a little after no
(21:14):
had been present to selectively film a right wing assault
at a local left wing hangout that left a woman
hospitalized with severe injuries. No had presented the scene to
look like right wingers were defending themselves, but in actuality,
they initiated this brutal attack, and it was later found
out that No was actually at the planning of this
(21:34):
violent assault. In some footage secretly filmed, No was seen
laughing as Patriot Prayer members discussed beating up left wing
activists and so called communists. After he was beat up,
No raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and mostly stopped
going to protests himself. Instead, he either embedded footage from
actual on the ground journalists or used stolen footage from
(21:56):
various far right accounts that download, edit, and repos most
footage from protests. All the footage Andy No shares about
this head kicking incident is heavily edited to make it
unclear to his followers what is actually happening and to
make nose twisted narrative more believable. No started posting about
the truck driver assault by describing Portland as being quote
(22:17):
occupied with BLM and Antifa rioters unquote, further saying that
the man had simply crashed his car and that quote
the mob had pulled him out of his vehicle and
quote beat him senseless with No, there are always attempts
to paint Portland as being full of quote Antifa mobs
(22:38):
roaming the streets looking for anyone to beat up, with
the police never actually showing up to stop these dangerous Antifa,
which this is, of course, far from the truth. The
police themselves quickly showed up to this very incident after
the head kick and arrested the perpetrator as soon as
they identified him. No continued to post other people's clips
while describing quote rioters and quote the mob attacking this man.
(23:02):
But in the videos he shares, it's almost entirely one
person doing all of the violence, and other members of
this quote mob trying to physically restrain this main person
from hitting the truck driver. In a clip of people
trying to provide first aid, and he describes quote rioters
when no riot was actually declared that night, standing over
(23:22):
the truck driver's unscious body after quote they beat him up.
No also writes quote they pour water on him, as
if people are just doing for fun. Now, water isn't
actually poured on the person in the video No captions
that on but in other videos you can see water
being poured on his head to both clean out the
wounds and to attempt to wake him up, and he
(23:44):
then posts about the altercation that took place prior to
the crash, saying that quote, the BLM mob is beating
a blonde woman, referencing the truck driver's girlfriend. And just
as before, the video actually shows two people from the
crowd and from the seven eleven trying to hit the
older woman as many of the people from the actual
protesting crowd tried to protect her. No makes the post
(24:06):
talking about the man that kicked the truck driver in
the head, saying, quote, he's part of the marauding BLM
security at the protests in Portland. These are the people
protesters want to replace the police with. Now, this is
simply an unverified and false claim. No one in Portland
has ever talked about replacing the police with the random
dudes that elected themselves as quote security during protests. In fact,
(24:31):
many people at protests speak out against these self proclaimed
security people, both before and after this incident. And of
course no failed to mention that all this happened some
distance away from the actual BLM protests that night. Like
I said, I was there and I knew nothing about
this until I got home. And checked Twitter. But no,
(24:51):
what have you think that this is the BLM movement itself,
not a mixture of random men who la past security
and drunk people at seven eleven. When interviewed by local media,
the truck driver's girlfriend is said that the people who
attacked her and her boyfriend were not real protesters. For
(25:22):
months leading up to this incident, the far right had
seemed almost afraid to get involved in Portland's protests. Some
of this was likely due to the terrifying police violence,
but we suspect the larger factor was that over the weeks,
Portland's BLM protesters had been hardened by that violence and
grown skilled at standing up to it as a unit.
Prior to the sixteenth, there had only been two truly
(25:43):
noteworthy far right attacks on protests. One came courtesy of
a former Navy seal who allegedly through an improvised explosive
device at a small crowd of activists after a demonstration,
and on August fifteen, a group of right wing protesters,
including many former Patriot Prayer members, held a flag wave
outside the Justice Center. Numerous attendees assaulted and maced left
(26:04):
wing counter protesters. One attendee longtime far right rally or
Skyler Journegan fired his handgun into the crowd. He failed
to hit anyone and was arrested a few days later,
but the incident presaged rising tensions that would break out
into mass violence just a week later. Online rage over
the assault outside of the seven eleven and long simmering
anger over the BLM movement, which had seemed to capture
(26:26):
the city's entire interest, inspired a coalition of different patriot
groups to plan a rally for the twenty second. The
attendees would turn out to be a serried milange of
far right and outright fascist demonstrators. Members of the Proud
Boys made up the backbone of the force that showed
up in front of the j C on the twenty,
but there were also Neo Nazis and militiamen. The individuals
(26:47):
who showed up were only bound by two things performative
support for police who assaulted leftists and a desire to
do similar violence themselves. These men and women showed up
ready to fight the war. Armor carried paintball guns with
frozen paintballs, cans of bear mace, telescoping batons, knives, and firearms.
(27:07):
The start of the demonstration was set for twelve noon.
By the time Garrison and I arrived on scene, several
dozen right wingers were already present. Standing across the street
were less than half that number of anti fascists. The
vibe was immediately tense, but not immediately violent. A pro
BLM bicycle protests drove through the street in between both groups,
followed by a crowd of several dozen bikers for Trump
(27:30):
and men in trucks waving Trump and backed the Blue flags.
While all this happened, more fascists and far right demonstrators
continued to arrive. Their numbers hit a hundred than two hundred,
while the forces countering them remained relatively small. At around
twelve ten PM, a massive street fight broke out, as
best I could tell, and started when a local activist
(27:50):
in a wheelchair pulled up in front of one pro
Trump biker. People surrounded both of them. Both sides collided,
and then there were fist fights, mace and shoving. I
can't even tell you who started it. David Willis, a
local anti Semitic protester, threatened me in a number of
(28:11):
other protesters with an a R fifteen style paintball gun.
Loaded with paintballs that he had frozen in order to
cause more damage. Willis had evidently spent quite some time
listening to Portland protest live streams. He repeatedly threatened people,
using a tone that I think was a deliberate imitation
of the police. There was a brief low in the
action after this initial explosion, but it did not last long.
(28:34):
A violence commenced soon again. Right wing demonstrators pulled out
tasers and beat sticks. Several of them formed up into
a shield wall organized by a neo Nazi with a
baton who attempted to lead them in the battle, and
around twelve p m. The fighting waned again. Anti fascist
reinforcement showed up and the two groups neared parody, with
(28:56):
two or three hundred people on each side. There was
a pause in the viol lens, but everyone in attendance
knew it would not last. The police opted to stay away,
although in the distance you could hear the l rat
asking everyone to please stay nice. For a little over
(29:24):
a half hour, relative peace reigned. More left wing demonstrators
continued to show up, including Demitria Hester, who led the crowd,
and chance of Black Lives Matter. Right wingers responded with
less cohesive chance of their own, like hey, hey, ho ho,
these violent rioters have got to go. Finally, a bit
after one ten pm, a right wing demonstrator hupped a
(29:45):
jug of o J over his shield wall and into
the anti fascist ranks. This was followed by improvised flash bangs,
and soon another general melee broke out. Things got incredibly ugly.
Much of the violence centered around the BLM snack van,
a common sight at local protests that did exactly what
it sounds like. In this video, you can hear a
(30:05):
crowd of several dozen charge a single man standing in
front of the van. They mace him repeatedly and beat
his arms and legs with batons. Brawls continued to break out,
and a little after one twenty pm, as I rushed
over to where a crowd of Proud Boys and other
bright wingers were assaulting a person on the ground, beating
them with sticks, a proud boy swung a baton at
(30:27):
my camera hand, breaking it in two places. Numerous other
people had bones broken by violent fascists that day. Most
of these individuals will never make their names public. They
showed up in black block to confront dangerous Nazis and
other extremists who intended to harm people. Violence occurred throughout
the next hour, with mass shield charges from the right
(30:48):
wing that were repulsed only after significant injuries. The whole
ugly event culminated around two pm, when an anti fascist
old wall finally squared off with a fascist shield wall.
This was the first time that both groups had confronted
each other in a mass, unified way, as opposed to
the dozens of scattered brawls and to be fair conversations
(31:11):
that had characterized the early part of the day. The
right hooped fireworks and insults at their opponents. Both groups
kept their distance, throwing things and opposing each other with
lines of shields. This stalemate lasted for a few minutes
and was broken when a group of unarmed and unmasked
BIPOC activists marched up to the right wing shield wall.
(31:35):
Despite being unarmed, they were assaulted en masked by the
crowd and repeatedly maced. Anti fascists had to run up
and pull them back into the line in order to
protect them. The sheer volume of mace deployed by the
right wing worked against them, though unlike their opponents, who
(31:56):
had spent the summer getting tear gassed. The right wing
had very you gas masks your respirators. They blinded themselves
with their own poisoned. Then one anti fascist hucked a
firework into the middle of the half blind shield wall,
and the entire line panicked and eventually broke and fled.
They briefly ran to the nearby I. R. S Building,
(32:16):
begging the federal agents inside for help. When they were
denied help, the right wing crowd retreated and gradually dissipated.
August would mark the largest confrontation between right and left
in Portland during the summer, but it was not the deadliest.
That title would be earned the next weekend, when a
Trump cruise, which consisted of several thousand pickup trucks and
(32:37):
other vehicles flying Trump and thin Blue line flags, rolled
through the city of Portland and eventually through downtown Portland.
There was violence at this event, but it was much
less cohesive. Several groups of Trump supporters fired paintball guns
and mason to crowds from moving vehicles. The crowd this day, however,
was less extreme than the smaller crowd on the Some
(32:58):
Trump supporters even went to the aid of people who
were injured by other Trump supporters, and in general the
overall group was much less ready to fight, at least
in an organized way. But the site of thousands of
pickup trucks blaring flags, and of course the assaults from
a number of members of the Trump crews meant that
anxiety was extremely high among Portland protesters, and of course
(33:20):
contributing to this was the fact that the previous two
weekends had involved heavy violence and gunfire. One individual had
fired a handgun in warning during the protest on the
twenty swod in addition to Skyler Journegan's shots into a
crowd the week before. So understandably everyone was very amped up,
and while the train of mounted Trump supporters eventually passed
(33:41):
through town without serious life threatening violence, events at the
periphery of the caravan would shortly lead to the first
fatality of Portland's protests. The conflict occurred as two right
wing demonstrators, both of whom had been present at the
two were walking home. J Danielson and Chandler Pappas were
regular Patriot marchers. Both carried handguns, batons, and mace. The
(34:04):
exact sequence of events is unclear, but as best we
can tell. From since released surveillance footage, Pappas and Danielson
seemed to have attacked a pro BLM and anti fascist
demonstrator named Michael Reinhold. Reinhold responded to their mace with gunfire,
killing Danielson in nearly hitting Pappas. Renald ran and fled
the scene, immediately disappearing into the city. For several days,
(34:27):
his identity was unknown, and details around the shooting were
completely obscured. This did not stop the right wing media
and President Trump himself from turning Danielson into a martyr.
Calls to brand Antifa a terrorist group reached a fever
pitch when Reinold's identity was revealed. Much was made of
the fact that he identified with both BLM and Antifa.
(34:48):
The right wing disinformation ecosystem took this as evidence that
Antifa and b l M were both part of some shadowy,
organized plot to overthrow the United States government. The reality
is that anti fascist act is UM and the goals
of Black Lives Matter have always been deeply tied. As
Max Smith attests, does that mean I'm part of an
Antifa group? No? Am I an anti THI fascist? Absolutely,
(35:10):
because how how can you not be right, that the
only that only makes sense, um, And so I think
it's it's it's again one of those things that gets
like thrown into the media as a buzzword that doesn't
actually mean anything, and that's only doubled down on by
like our president and people like that who just continue
to use words they don't understand because they think that
(35:32):
they're explosive what in reality. In reality, the Antifa guys,
you know, the Antifa, the Rose the City Antifa or whatever,
are really like a bunch of like guys that do
like research and stuff for the most part, against information.
I've long used contacts to get like information like who
is this gang? Who you know? What is this tattoo
(35:54):
on this white supremacis I've been seeing over here. That's
really what I've used them for. Um, you know the
people that I know that identify as Antifa. But other
than that, I mean, it's it's it's just an ideology.
So it's it's weird to see people ask questions like
are you Antifa? And I'm like, what does that mean?
Or is BLM has been taken over by Antifa? And
(36:15):
BLM even is one of those statements that again kind
of like Antifa, it doesn't actually mean anything. You know,
there's no a Black Lives Matter a chapter here, like
like national chapter here that I'm aware of. And people
always say, you know, like this stuff takes away from
the spirit of a Black Lives Matter. But then they
also turn around and say a Black Lives Matter as
(36:36):
a Marxist organization run by you know, the g B
t Q so and say that it's itself is you know,
is a swoop. So there seems like there's like a
lot of things that people have their ideas about these
factions or groups or whatever, but in reality, these people
aren't a part of any of that. We I mean,
most of us are not a part of any actual
(36:58):
a group of anything. We're just out here, you know,
fighting for our rights and for the rights of our
of our friends and neighbors. So all those labels are
are kind of funny, like, you know, we're not in
a gang. We aren't the proud Boys of the Patriot Prayers.
They all have their names and clicks and groups and
(37:19):
and and and and and nonprofits and all that that's
not really our thing. So I think that they have
a hard time. I think that people have a hard
time of processing that in general, that's not the way
that we're trained to think. We're kind of a train
to think in the in the in the way of
of clicks and groups and brands. You know, it's all
(37:40):
about branding and how are you branding? And do you
wear matching outfits and that kind of stuff. So people
just see black block and they see a brand, and
then they hear Antifa and they think of a brand,
and then they just put it all together and they
have this idea in their heads, but it's it's just
not based in reality. Also had some complicated thoughts on
the intersection of the anti fascism in the Black Lives
(38:01):
Matter movement. Um. It's complicated in the source of a
lot of tension, uh, for sure in the city right
now and kind of throughout this entire thing, um because
you do have you know, marches and actions that claims
(38:21):
to be you know, black Lives Matter, when a lot
of the people there um are there for like quote
unquote anti fascists, for purely anti copias ands. Um. And
it's hard because you need bodies. But I don't know,
because that's like that's some like person to days thinking,
(38:44):
I feel like I know um, I feel like there's
a lot you've learned about that and about I think
direct action in general and protests in general. I think
it actually is extremely important. Now It's always make really important,
but now all I think it's really important, and a
lot of people are more aware of that. Disrect action
(39:05):
or the protest or like the mutual aid UH reach out.
I don't know has a defined like role or defines
like this is you know, anti Baptist marks, this is
Black Lives Matter d A, this is you know, anti
cop sweep or whatever. I don't think it has to
(39:27):
be you know that always spelled out, but it needs
to be clear and it needs to be you know,
leadership in position that knows that role. And you know,
like I said earlier, kind of that like thinking we
need numbers of the person presented as and it kind
of is that there's yeah, as you kind of learned,
(39:50):
bigger d A and bigger actions. When she gets out
of the tay wire, it's it's gonna be chaotic because
there are so many people there who maybe they're there
for the right reasons, but they're not like on the
same age. And when everyone's not on the same age,
it's really hard for an action or evidentially easy people.
(40:12):
So like yeah, smaller, more concides, more focused. Now just
talking about strategy, Um, but with the h the focus
is important and you know all these all these things,
I guess in terms of the relationship between I guess
those two things. My perspective is black liberations, liberation for everybody.
(40:36):
And I guess from my perspective the goal I don't
know if it's gold, but the the through line from
me personally is black lives matter, at least, like from
looking at it linearly standpoint, if if we really are
(41:01):
considering black lives matter, if we get to the point
in our country where black lives are mattering, then there
will probably be less fascists or we will have done something,
you know what I mean. If the entire country is
like that black, that's a country where at least fascists
aren't in government. And that's a country where at least, um,
(41:23):
there's probably if not abolish police, less police presidents or
police starts spects black people and police sent their respect
black people. Clearly at least if there are steck black
people their respect everybody. So for me throughline and like
that's also an evidence, But that's what started all this.
Um is black livesn't matter. And I don't know. I'm
(41:46):
not happy. There's like sub factions or there's kind of
these multiple ideas existing within a movement about the goals.
But that is the reality of the we live in
and I can only work together because we do all
have common rules. Um. Yeah. The actual nuance in the
(42:09):
discussion was lost in the national reaction to Jay Danielson's death.
As soon as Michael Ryanal admitted to the shooting, claiming
self defense and a Vice video, a man hunt ensued
to bring him down. The U. S. Marshals caught him
in early September, and Michael was gunned down near where
he'd been hiding in Washington. Initial reports spoke of an
exchange of gunfire, but later evidence revealed that Michael had
(42:31):
not fired while officers shot dozens of times at the
vehicle he was in. In mid October, at a campaign
rally ahead of the November election, President Trump bragged that
he had used the U. S. Marshals as more or
less a death squad, saying we sent in the U. S.
Marshals the fifteen minutes it was over fifteen minutes it
(42:51):
was over. We got him. I knew who he was
and didn't want to arrest him. In fifteen minutes. That
ended at all, But then they called themselves peaceful product
right wing rallies and violence would continue throughout the remainder
of the year. It was, however, notably lower key than
it had been before. Several hundred Proud Boys rallied on
(43:12):
the weekend of September twenty six, but both sides were
kept largely apart. Less than a week before the event,
Eugene ANTIFA had released a set of leaked chat logs
from a group called Patriot Coalition who would help plan
events on August as well. The chats, which I reported
on alongside Jason Wilson for Bellancat and the UK Guardian,
included threats to shoot members of the a c l
(43:34):
U and legal observers, as well as embryonic plans to
kidnap the governor of Oregon over the state's COVID nineteen lockdown.
The governor convened a press conference after these reports and
threatened to use the state's long dormant anti paramilitary laws
if there was mass violence by the Proud Boys on September.
Police kept anti fascists and fascists apart. A number of
(43:55):
Proud Boys did do violence, assaulting several members of the
press who came to cover their event, but no mass
thousand person street fight ensued this time. In fact, after
the six far right street activities seemed to ebb for
several months. There were small back the Blue rallies which
often involved right wingers masonencounter protesters and threatening them with firearms,
(44:15):
and of course involved anti fascists doing things like breaking
the windows on their cars, but mass violence failed to ensue.
It seemed for a while as if the far right
had spent itself in August of This would turn out
to be untrue. Of course, we're recording this episode just
two weeks after the capital of the United States was
sieged and occupied briefly by hundreds of far right, fascist,
(44:37):
and white nationalist demonstrators on January six. This event was
signposted by an attack by far right insurrectionists on the
city of Salem, Oregon's capital, just a few days earlier.
The whole chain of events further reinforced Oregan's reputation as
something of a national bell weather for far right violence,
with the anti fascists of the Rose City endured in
(44:59):
the late summer, came home to the capital of the
entire country just a few months later. Uh where the
grandpops and couldn't fathom the obamasis, I don't hate America,
just to me, And she keeps the promises tens looking
like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide deja pu. What
my people post to do? Go to schools named after
(45:22):
the clan founder. We're around town, isa, I don't see
why we're frowning Native American students forced to learn about
when o'pella Sarah, How is that fair? Bro? Some Euros
unsung in some monster's getting monuments built for them. But
it ain't be all a little bit of monster. We
crooking him
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.