December 21, 2020 • 45 mins
In this episode we discuss how Portland's confrontation with the feds mushroomed from the Battle of July 4th into a massive, nationwide spectacle.
Host: Robert Evans
Executive Producer: Sophie Lichterman
Writers: Bea Lake, Donovan Smith, Elaine Kinchen, Garrison Davis, Robert Evans
Narration: Bea Lake, Donovan Smith, Elaine Kinchen, Garrison Davis, Robert Evans
Editor: Chris Szczech
Music: Crooked Ways by Propaganda
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Damage around the courthouse. Up up until July, there was
relatively little on a national level that separated Portland's b
(00:23):
l M protests from the ones happening everywhere else. A
few shots of tear gas walls had gone viral in
the mainstream media, and live streams of Portland protests were
popular among a certain set, but as far as the
big networks were concerned, Portland was just another city convulsed
with riots in the summer of That all changed in July.
It started with the siege of the Federal Courthouse on
(00:45):
July four. While that was going on in the streets
of the Rose City up north in Seattle, an activist
named Summer Taylor died that night after a car plowed
through a b l M march. On the eighth. Activists
in Portland staged a memorial vigil for Taylor. This was
disrupted by a small squad of federal agents who hit
the crowd with flash bangs and impact rounds as they
lit candles. Feelings were raw, but the crowd gathered near
(01:08):
the Justice Center that night numbered less than a hundred.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the Battle of
July four had been the last gasp of a dying movement.
Outside of the attack on the vigil, the rest of
the week followed the same pattern established in June, tiny
groups of ragged activists being horribly beaten by riot lines
of cops. It was exactly one week later, on July eleven,
(01:30):
that everything changed. That night, a twenty six year old
protester named Donovan Labella was shot in the head at
close range by a U S marshal armed with an
impact weapon. His skull was shattered. Donovan nearly died. Video
of the unprovoked attack went viral nationwide. Our own Garrison Davis,
was standing just a few feet behind Donovan when he
(01:50):
was shot. Here's how Garrison recalls that night. So I
got downtown around nine pm, kind of just a regular
time to arrive Usually that's like a bit before action starts.
But when I got there, the streets around the courthouse
and Justice Center were already filled with tear gas. Um,
there was already feds out in the streets. Um, it
(02:12):
was unclear what got them out. Um it turns out
it's just because people were on the were on like
the courtyard. So there's already already people in the streets
and stuff and Feds in the streets by the time
I arrived. And then the Feds got pushed back into
uh into like the courtyard by a small group of
activists UM on like fourth Avenue. And then they started
(02:35):
when when the Feds were on the courtyard, they just
started shooting like canisters from their grenade launcher. So, yeah,
this is like I don't know, I've only been there
like ten minutes at this point. All this is happening
very very quickly. UM, and the Feds shoot off like
five canisters in a row that are all like duds,
they don't actually do anything. UM. And one of them
(02:58):
lands underneath the car, and a young man holding a
boombox kind of like kicks it out from under the
car because it was like sparking, but it wasn't like
doing anything. It wasn't like exploding or shooting off any gas.
And then after he after he get kicked it out
of the out of under the car, he picked up
just to boombox and was standing in the standing on
the sidewalk across the street from the courthouse. I was
(03:19):
like five feet was right, and then he just got
shot in the head. Um. After Yeah, it was just
just standing there with the boom box and he collapsed
claps on the ground. I remember hearing. I mean I
heard that the shot, and I heard the fall. I
didn't see him fall, and but by the time I
looked over, um, she was on the ground, bleating out
(03:41):
of his head. And you know, very quickly people came
over and grabbed him. The thing, the thing that sticks
out most is when when they when they grabbed him
and pulled him away, just how limp his body was like,
it was a very lifeless body. His head was like
bobbing everywhere, which probably wasn't you know, it wasn't great. Um.
You should you know, when you're picking someone up like that,
(04:02):
you should try to make sure that doesn't happen. Um.
But yeah, it was, it was, it was. He was
just so lifeless. Um in that in that moment um
they took him into the into the park, semitics started,
you know, people, people yelled, medic medic. Medics came over
started to you know, try to stop the bleeding, and
(04:25):
an ambiliance came about like ten fifteen minutes later. But
like it, it felt it felt a lot longer. You know,
it felt like they were taking forever to arrive. Um,
but there's a lot, a lot of blood on the sidewalk,
a lot of a lot of blood in the park.
The grass was like soaked. Donovan very nearly died from
his injuries. As we write this episode in December, he's
(04:46):
just recently been released from the hospital following another round
of treatment for the infections caused by his injuries. He
has suffered permanent cognitive damage. The brutality with which Donovan
was assaulted enraged Portlanders, even those would not previous e
been active in the streets. Rage was further stoked by
poor coverage by local mainstream sources like The Oregonian, who
(05:06):
responded to this brutal attack on a young man wielding
a boom box by grenade launcher wielding FEDS with an
article full of expert analysis on why it had happened.
Those experts included a retired commander with the Los Angeles
Sheriff's Department who insisted the shot, which was taken from
about thirty feet away, had to have been an accident. Quote.
Nobody anywhere in the world that I am aware of,
(05:28):
is taught to aim for the head unless deadly forces
also authorized in this particular case, there was no rational
way to say that deadly force was authorized. Overall, the
article was crafted to leave the reader with the opinion
that Labella's injuries must have been a tragic accident in
the heat of the moment, rather than an angry and
undisciplined federal agent choosing to permanently injure a twenty six
(05:50):
year old armed with speakers. The good news is that
no one bought it. Portlanders were outraged by what happened
to Donovan. More protesters began to trickle into the nightly
demonstrations out side the Justice Center, which switched their attention
to the adjacent Federal courthouse. Conor O'sha had gotten his
start attending Rose City justice marches. He switched over to
attending the nightly confrontations against the police after he got
(06:12):
bored of marches that seemed to go nowhere. They'd be like, wait,
what's going down by the Justice Center and what's happening
over there? I want to go over there? Why is
everybody going back home? Like the sun is still out?
Like this is I want to go see what's happening
over there, And then started doing that and then was like, yeah,
(06:33):
this feels right this feels like you know, like not
not to say like that, um, you know, having h
march during the day with like speeches like like you know,
all the protesting is valid, but I was definitely attracted
to like showing up at the sources like the biggest,
(06:56):
the gnarliest symbols of what what people are protesting against.
Connor watched as the protest dwindled, and he saw how
the introduction of heavily armed federal agents and the outrage
over Donovan's injury started drawing more people out into the streets.
Before the Feds showed up, Um, it really felt like
we were losing a lot of not necessarily momentum. But
(07:20):
just like people showing up, numbers were kind of coming
down a little bit is to be expected. But yeah,
when they did make an appearance, like aggressive appearances, it
totally it was it totally served as a catalyst for
further like like when when they shouldn't know by now,
(07:43):
like when they show up, uh you know, cops and feds. Um,
when they when they show their face, it's like almost
always worst um like in terms of like a crowd response, um,
which I kind of love. UM. So so when they
(08:06):
showed up. It was like like almost immediately everyone was
like turning turning back up UM in huge numbers. So
that was it was just so funny to me that
they that they kind of kept doing what they were
doing UM when the crowd response was just getting amplified
by their presence. Many in the movement were rejuvenated by
(08:29):
the fact that protest numbers were growing again. After so
many nights of watching Tinier and Tinier groups get brutalized
by the Portland police, it was stirring to feel like
people cared again. Mark Pettibone's first night out had been
June one, and like Connor, he'd been dismayed as numbers
fell off throughout that month. He kept coming out though,
and he was out protesting near the Federal Courthouse with
(08:49):
Connor when the night of July fourteenth turned into the
early morning of July. It was actually a relatively uneventful
night in terms of sho between protesters and the cops. UM.
The uh PPB showed up i think once to kind
of remove some barricades that people have set up in
(09:12):
the street in front of the UM the courthouse, and
the Feds made a really kind of quick uh they
came out of the building to um, if you're facing
the Justice Center, that came out the building to the
right briefly and then retreated back in. And so honestly,
(09:34):
that night I spent what I remember from uh early
in the night was I was playing frisbee with people
in the park. We were just hanging out. Um. There
wasn't much too kind of be angry at um, at
least visibly, the Feds weren't out and about. Uh So
Mark and I were like, all right, this has been good.
(09:57):
It's been fine, I guess, um, not much going on.
Let's get out of here. We've got to work tomorrow.
We just we had just gotten out of work a
couple hours before, so, like midnight or one clock rolls
around and we're leaving, and as we're walking back to
his car, we kind of get stopped by some protesters
(10:18):
on the corner of the street there just a couple
of blocks away, and uh they warned us that they
had seen or that people had seen unmarked vans kidnapping people. Um.
And so we're we're looking around, and sure enough, right
then a van pulls up right in front of us,
(10:39):
seemingly out of nowhere. Um, and a bunch of guys
in military fatigues jump out. I look in it. I'm like, oh,
they're probably FEDS. I don't know. It's a it's a
fucking minivan full of guys and fatigues. Cameo fatigues. Uh.
They opened the doors. Everybody but the driver it's out.
(11:00):
They start they start just walking straight towards us. Uh,
and we're like, what what the what? What? What the fuck?
And there's you know, there's traffic behind us. UM. I
remember Mark and I like almost getting hit by a
car that had to stop because we're like, oh, I
(11:21):
think we need to run. So we all take off
in different directions. You know, there's no no identification, um
visually and also audibly. You know, they didn't say stop,
we are you know so and so it was just
immediate and uh so we we kind of you know,
we ran for our lives. And they ended up the
(11:45):
people and the fatigues who ended up being the FEDS.
They chased me down, one one chased me down on foot. UM.
So I ran, I'll see west and made it a
few blocks, took a turn and heard the van kind
of accelerating up the hill cut me off. And so
I dropped to my knees and I asked why, UM
(12:08):
several times. That was all I could form. Honestly, I
wasn't like why, why is this happening? And am I
being detained? It was just why? And uh So they
lifted me up, UM, off my knees, put me in
the van, UM, pulled my beanie over my head, patted
me down. UM asked if I had weapons, and you know,
(12:29):
I said no. Uh. And at this point, I I
it was kind of this weird you know, people always
talking about these out of body experiences and I, you know,
I had no experience with any of that until this happened.
Mark booked it. Um west, I went south. I was
kind of running next to somebody for a minute, uh,
(12:52):
like you know, maybe fifteen ten seconds, and then I
cut up another kind of a block web. After I
got one block south. I think the FED that was
the FED or FEDS that were after me and this person,
Like I think they either went after that person or
like they forgot about me or something. Maybe it was
(13:14):
just because I was able to run faster. I huck
my sign that I've been carrying, got it back the
next morning. That was cool. UM hucked my sign that
I was carrying, and UM running up another block. UH,
fucking like scared for my life, I was able to
be like, I just don't talk to these people. UM.
(13:38):
At this point I was pretty sure that it was
the FEDS, UM, and it wasn't some kind of rogue,
you know, militia group. And I figured the best thing
for me to do at that point it was just
to shut up and um and get through and asked
for a lawyer when the time comes. UM. At that point,
I hit a dark street and I see what is
(13:58):
either that same van or a different van cut across
in front of me going north. I think that was
they were trying to find Mark. And at that point
I looked looked over and saw I forget what the
name of the it was another courthouse, of course, because
there's like a d down there. UM. I I look
(14:20):
at this like concrete um railing whatever you wanna call that,
um out front of this courthouse. And I'm like there
and okay, yeah there, I'm going to jump this. I
sprint across once the van gets out of sight, because
they started to loop back around the block. Yeah, sprint
jump over it, jump over the little barricade and UM.
(14:46):
At this point I didn't I was sure they were
going to get me. UM. The only thing I could
think to do was to shut my phone off, which
I now no can still be traced, which is also horrific.
But I have a Faraday bag for that now, so
that's great. UM. But I shut my phone off. I
(15:07):
hear more like another banner to assume, UM driving by
like very kind of erratically, like gunning it and then
slowing down. I heard like that. I think that was them.
I'm not positive. I heard someone in in like boots
with some jingling going on walk past. UM. I just
(15:30):
like tucked up against this barricade, UM and was just
like as quiet as I could be for I don't
know how long, half hour, an hour, until I was
able to get in touch with a friend. They booked
it across the river. They showed up. I they opened
(15:51):
the back door of this car, jumped in, stayed laying
on my back like I don't I don't think we
covered me up with anything, but it was like, yeah,
it was terrifying enough to be like, I don't know
why why they targeted at us, So yeah, I got
out of there and then get a call from Mark
(16:12):
relatively quickly after I got to the other side of
the river. I was like, like, because we we friends
were texting, I think like Emily and and another friend
of ours. Like we were like, they were like, we can't,
we can't get in touch with Mark. We think they
got him. They did have Mark, but thankfully he'd broken
absolutely no law. The agents who had snatched him had
(16:33):
probably hoped that he'd be rattled enough by the whole
experience to answer whatever questions they asked. When he refused
to talk without a lawyer present, they had no choice
but to let him go. The whole thing took about
two hours, maybe even less. And uh so I was
released with one other person, and I believe it was
one of the protesters that I had been standing next
(16:55):
to um in the street when the vans first pulled up. Um.
I think they ended up picking them up as well.
So they released the two of us at the same time.
And you know this is after they read me my
rights once I was shackled and in a cell um
and asked if I wanted to waive them UM, and
I said no, I want to talk to the lawyer. UM.
So after that they came by again and said, okay,
(17:17):
you're free to go. That same night, a local activist
filmed federal agents and camouflage and military gear snatching another
black clad protester and dragging him into an unmarked rental van.
The video was horrifying, the kind of blatantly dystopian police
state ship that couldn't not provoke a national response, and
it did. Within a day, the video had been viewed
millions and millions of times. The story broke nationwide in
(17:40):
the seventeen when The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and basically every
major news source reported on Portland's federal snatch fans. Now
we have some video that was posted to Twitter from
last night. The Post says that federal officers rushed up
and arrested someone for no reason. Unmarked police vehicles they're
not even they're not police vehicles, they're just vehicles. They're
(18:01):
rentable vans. They're like consumer rentable vans filled with guys
in paramilitary gear who are supposedly federal policemen. Unmarked vans
of unleashed tear gas into crowds, rounded up and detained protesters,
and even shot one man in the head with a
non lethal round, causing serious injury. Their presence and their
(18:24):
tactics have raised questions about the use of federal agencies
to police cities, even when local authorities don't want them there.
We Ddovan LaBelle Is shooting had enraged people, but it
(18:46):
was the federal snatch fans that would finally radicalize thousands
of Portland's liberal majority to take to the streets. It
was on the night of the first group of what
would become the Wall of Moms showed up to protest
the Feds. We'll talk about them in a second, but
first here's Garrison to explain another important action that occurred
the same night. The militarized FEDS had captured Portland's imagination.
(19:08):
But as the Quote fed war started to ramp up,
protesters who had been fighting the police for weeks didn't
want people to forget the reason all of this had
happened in the first place. They organized a rally simply
titled Quote Abolished the Police for June eighteenth at Peninsula
Park in North Portland. The event was boosted by groups
such as the YLF and Direct Action Alliance, people who
(19:31):
were generally trusted within the community of veteran activists. The
last time a protest had been held at Peninsula Park
was June. The crowd had marched to the Portland Police
Association building, which had been surrounded by dozens of armed cops.
Police quickly pushed the crowd away using Truncheon's, grenade launchers
and tear gas. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that the
(19:53):
crowd of several hundred who showed up on the eighteenth
came expecting a fight. Banners at the front of the
march included quote, Chad Wolfe listens to Nickelback, mocking the
acting DHS director, who had just visited Portland a few
days prior and also spoke with the p p A.
Other banners read de colonize and mourned the dead fight
(20:16):
like hell for the living. One banner read Quantas Hayes
was only seventeen years old. In February seen Portland police
shot and killed Quantas Hayes, an unarmed, teenage black Portlander.
When they shot Kawanas, he was on his knees ten
(20:37):
to fifteen feet away from officers, aiming guns and shouting
contradictorary commands. Officer Andrew Hurst, who was providing quote long
cover with his air fifteen fired three shots at the
teen when Kuanas reportedly moved his hands from above his head.
At the same time Kuanas was shot from moving his hands,
other officers were ordering him to get face down on
(20:59):
the ground with his hands by his sides. The Portland
Police use of force investigation found no wrongdoing on the
part of Officer Andrew Hurst. He still walks around with
a badge and a gun today. The lead use of
force investigator on that case was Detective Eric camemer but
Portland protesters might know him better as the notorious Officer
(21:20):
sixties seven. Speaking as a journalist who has watched the
Portland Police riot team and action, officer Camemra is quite
possibly the most violent man I have ever met. All
of this was on the mind of the press in attendance.
When the crowd departed Peninsula Park at around eight pm,
we suspected they would head straight for the Police Union building,
(21:41):
but that's not what happened. The people at the front
of the march headed in that direction at first, but
as the crowd got close to the union building, they
made a sudden turn, confusing the police and probably some protesters.
The march went on southward for about half an hour,
chanting along the way. Soon enough, the crowd arrived at
(22:07):
the surprise destination, the Portland Police North Precinct. Only a
handful of officers were present when the group of marchers
approached the building, and said officers quickly moved inside. As
they did, hundreds of people chanted quit Your Job protesters
hung out in the precinct parking lot for almost an hour.
(22:30):
Officers had been so surprised by their arrival that a
police car was left sitting unattended in the middle of
the crowd. It was tagged with graffiti and a bananappeal
was placed on its hood, but nothing else. As was inevitable,
The police el red eventually arrived and ordered the crowd
to leave under threat of arrest and tear gas. On
previous evenings, the crowd would have just stood around, defiant
(22:52):
and waiting to get all beaten up and gassed, But
tonight was different. As the el rad blared threats, people
in the crowd yelled b water, echoing a Hong Kong slogan,
and the crowd began to move once again back to
North mL. Cable of art fether to follow this direction,
(23:13):
based up a que to arrest. The citation are used
of more, including crowd control munitions. The tactical decision to
move after the el Rad's warning apparently bamboozled the police,
as the nearly five hundred protesters were able to swiftly
march north to the completely unguarded p p A building.
Dumpsters were overturned to block the street, and protesters in
(23:34):
black block assembled a makeshift battering ram out of random
materials nearby. No one said anything, but the crowd knew
what was about to happen. People were going to enter
the Police Union building. Dumpster fires were started to block
the police from seeing what was happening. In due time,
the el Red arrived and an audibly nervous El Red
(23:54):
operator ordered people not to enter the p p A
police He visit the redial area. We noticed criminal activity
occurring in this crowd at the office. You'll be study
to arrest or support them, to include crowd control munitions.
But for the Portland police it was too little, too late.
People had already broken through the front door of the
(24:16):
Police Union building and lit a small fire inside. As
soon as the riot police arrived, the crowd began dispersing.
People had no desire to fight the cops. This night,
they'd achieved their goal and now it was time to run.
Like how police chase the crowd for a few blocks,
shooting off tear gas, tackling and arresting anyone they could
get their hands on during bullrushes. As the dwindling group
(24:39):
of protesters entered residential side streets, it was more difficult
for the police to follow and easier for small affinity
groups to break off and disperse. It was in these
residential streets that the vast majority of protesters successfully lost
not only the cops, but also the small group of
journalists who were jogging to keep up. When we interviewed
some folks with the y LS, the Youth Liberation Front,
(25:02):
they mentioned this night as a sort of turning point
for some protesters. Newer people realized what could be done
by a crowd that was cunning and disciplined and committed
to not getting the pists beaten out of them by
the police. Here's the y LS as a reminder, we
redubbed the audio due to the constant death threats against
these literal children. I think eventually people just got burnt
(25:24):
out and realized like something had to change. And we
did start like making Twitter threads suggesting some changes, and
so maybe that push things in that direction. And I
think people have started to have been sizing up the
opponents more realistically and finding cops may have worked in
like the first few days of the uprising, but we
honestly like in the protests that are happening now, they
(25:45):
don't have enough resources to like effectively push them back,
and the cops have a bunch of experience with crowd controls.
So yeah, and I think I think now, like since
all this time has passed, there's enough points that you
can point to and see this was an effective tactic
in reference to being water, like the first time p
PA was set on fire, the way people were able
to move in and out, and I don't remember how
(26:06):
many people got arrested that night, but it was it
was definitely, I mean, it was definitely less than the
normal amount. And I think that was the big first
instance of people being able to point this tactic used
in Portland and be like see effectiveness this worked. That's
got people home safe to an extent. We mentioned quote
being water a few times now. This was a term
for a tactic used during the Hong Kong uprising. It
(26:30):
derives its name from a famous Bruce Lee quote that
Hong Kong activists repurposed as a guide for how to
move in situations where police are chasing you. The quote
reads like this, be like water making its way through
the cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object,
and you shall find your way around it or through it.
(26:51):
If nothing within you stays rigid outward, things will disclose
themselves empty. Your mind be formless, shapeless, like water. If
you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.
You put water into a bottle, and it becomes the bottle.
You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow or can crash? Be water, my friend.
(27:17):
Here's how the Wire Left describes Portland's process of learning
to be water. To some extent, it was being exposed
to the tactics of the Hong Kong protest, but a
lot of doctrines weren't really adopted. But I think also
there has been a lot of trial and air because
people have tried a lot of stuff that didn't work
and they got their ship fucked. And I just think
(27:37):
that has been the best way to learn what works,
especially in our unique conditions. I think a big part
of people embracing becoming water that as a tactic was
getting fed up with getting her kicked out of them
well like like I mean, okay, I mean staying and
fighting the police is usually not the right tactical decision
because in Portland we have an extremely militarized police force
and they're always going to be better equipped than us.
(28:00):
That's is how it's going to be. And so you
have to think about, like what am I What is
the risk versus the reward of staying and fighting this
cop versus just disappearing in the night to fight another day.
And I think that goes hand in hand with the
decentralization of the movement when like you know, when it
had like when there were marches with people leading with
megaphones walking around and then suddenly the police show up
(28:20):
and you have your conflict. People didn't have the agency
or their own agency to really disappear into the night
and move on from that, like people felt obligated to
follow somebody. So I definitely think that played a role
in Portland moving towards decentralization also played a role in that.
Now my colleague, Beatrix is going to explain what happened
in downtown Portland in front of the Justice Center in
the Federal Courthouse at the same time as the rally
(28:42):
at the Portland Police Association. While about five hundred people
had gathered in North Portland don ight, around a thousand
had gathered downtown at the Justice Center and the adjacent
Federal Courthouse. Signs reading Unquelled referenced the statement by President
Ump days earlier that Portland had been out of control
(29:03):
and that federal presence had very much quelled it. On
the six, Homeland Security Director Chad Wolfe had made national
headlines when he visited Portland and referred to protesters there
as violent anarchists sixty times. In a single press statement
discussing the use of fireworks by protesters on ly four,
(29:27):
Wolfe declared, perhaps prophetically, a federal courthouse is a symbol
of justice. To attack it is to attack America. Quick
historical footnote here in September of federal judge rule that
Chad Wolfe was likely unlawfully serving as acting Director of
Homeland Security during the entirety of his tenure in that position.
(29:50):
We during Wolf's visit Mayor Wheeler had said that he
and all city officials would refuse to meet with the
DHS head if invited. However, the day after Wolf's visit,
(30:14):
the Portland Mercury reported that Darryl Turner, the head of
the Portland Police Association, had met Chad Wolf without approval
from either the mayor or the police chief. Chief level
would not say definitively whether any officers had met with DHS,
but photos showed uniformed PPB officers speaking to Chad Wolf
(30:39):
during his visit. The action targeting the Portland Police Association's
union headquarters in North Portland was one response to these events.
The protests downtown, likewise, were driven by anger over Donovan Labella,
federal overreach, and the federal snatch fans. While the North
Portland crowd was made up of mostly experienced activists, the
(31:00):
folks of the Justice Center represented a broader cross section
of Portlanders. Several images from the eighteenth went viral, both
nationwide and locally, and would bring more of the city's
liberal majority out into the streets. One such video showed
a fifty three year old Christopher David surrounded by tear
gas approaching armored federal agents. According to mister David, a
(31:24):
Navy veteran, he wanted to ask the men how they
felt about violating their constitutional oath. Instead, the video shows
one of the agents gripping his baton two handed like
a baseball bat, and smashing it into David's arms and
legs five times. Another agent then steps forward and maces
(31:47):
David in the face as he stands motionless. He walks
away after the attack, middle fingers raised on his broken hands.
As of this recording, video of the assault has been
viewed more than fifteen million times. Another viral moment came
when a group of about forty people calling themselves Moms
(32:09):
against police brutality and dressed in white or horribly tear
gassed by federal agents. Videos of the attack incensed thousands
of Portlanders and led to the creation of the famous
Wall of Moms. Courtney is an indigenous Hawaiian Portlander. She's
one of the moms who came out on July eighteenth.
Here's what she recalls. It was like a smaller It
(32:30):
wasn't as big as like the after when it started
to really take off. It was probably like twenty left
at that point, and definitely didn't know what I like
I had no idea what to walk into. What I
was walking into. I mean, I've been protesting before, especially
for like land rights and things like that and what,
(32:51):
but not like anything against police brutality and things like that.
So I'm like, just, you know, we roll up and
then not even not probably like two or three hours later,
but like the fads come out and just start shooting
at us. And that was and I was like the
frontline then because I didn't know what I was walking into.
(33:14):
I just didn't know like what, I had no idea
what was going to happen. I had seen the videos
the night before, but like I you know, I just
didn't know what to expect. I didn't think it was
going to be as violent as it was. Um So, yeah,
that night, like they guessed the ship out of everyone
as always, but that they actually got hit by like
(33:38):
rubber bullets that night. I still have a scar from
like a pepper ball like on my shoulder from the
first night that I want to out and oh yeah
that was my that was my first night out. Corney
recalls being struck by the extremity of the violence, how
sudden and overwhelming it all was. I honestly like just
(33:59):
did expect. Um. I didn't expect the close range shooting.
First of all, I didn't expect like the amount of
gas that they were using on people. Um. I just
you know, it's different when you're like watching it on
like a stream versus like actually being there in person,
(34:21):
especially if there was like the line that we were
standing in the first night that I was there, there
was probably like seven of us, and they there were
like ten Feds just shooting at all of us just
standing there like trying to like guard yourselves behind an umbrella.
And they clearly knew that there were like moms out
(34:42):
there because that was the night where we're all like
wearing yellow and like we were standing out and it
was majority of us were just females standing there, and
they just did not get like if they just they
just did not care. It didn't matter, it didn't matter,
and um, so that was shocking. I definitely, like I
(35:05):
don't think that I've processed really anything that's gone on,
um and just like check it away for another day.
But yeah, it's I just I didn't expect the like
the extremity of it. Within hours of the first major
gassing by federal troops, a DHS memo was leaked to
The New York Times revealing that the Feds in the
(35:26):
courthouse had not been properly trained with any of the
riot control munitions they were using. Instead, the DHS officers
had been responding to unarmed protesters with military tactics rather
than mere dispersal. The goal was shock and awe, to
shatter all resistance with a display of overwhelming violence that
(35:50):
would leave its targets frightened and broken. Instead, as Costco describes,
Portland took away a very different message. I felt it
felt disgusting to me. It felt they mean, even though
I knew they worked at military, they felt like the military,
because they all looked like the military. They're all to
(36:11):
me all looked really young too, and they were very uh,
They're very aggressive and very quick to act in violence.
To me, they seem more afraid about us than like
Portland police were you ever seemed afraid of us? And
so I think I don't know if that made them
react and fear more, but they were definitely more aggressive,
(36:35):
and I knew it was going to turn into a circus.
The following night, July, well over one thousand people filled
Chapman in Loundesdale the two parks in front of the
Federal Courthouse and the Justice Center. The group of moms,
now in matching yellow t shirts and helmets, numbered in
(36:55):
the hundreds. It was easily the largest crowd since the
end of the Rose City Justice daytime marches. Medics came through,
handing out tear gas wipes and eye flash bottles and
the mom's linked arms before moving to form a living
wall facing the fence recently erected around the mark O.
Hatfield's Courthouse. Many of the people who came out that
(37:18):
night were new to the confrontation downtown. As Dmitria Hester
describes it, they were greeted as welcome reinforcements because we
knew all was coming. As black people, we know the
torture and the abused that the police give us, so
we were very prepared. We had respirators, we had math,
(37:39):
we had helmets. We made sure that all the mom
had equipment and everything they needed to get through the night.
From the open doors of the courthouse, agents and battle
dress could be seen moving into position in the darkened
lobby as the Feds very own el rad warned against
attempts to damage then behind the wall of moms in yellow.
(38:04):
The rest of the crowd was also getting into position,
and a chant of Feds go home was taken up
by hundreds of voices. Unlike the enormous daytime rallies from June,
this crowd had not come to march. After more than
an hour of chanting and singing, answered by scattered pepper
balls and flashbangs from the Feds, a few sections of
(38:26):
the fence were removed by protesters, and soon the whole
fence came down. That night, the crowd fell back under
the ensuing tear gas barrage. Federal agents advanced through the
park and protesters retreated, but slowly and with a smattering
of shields and umbrellas blocking some of the federal munitions.
(38:48):
The night of Lounsdale and Chapman were an unbroken sea
of thousands. People worked their way across the park with
buckets of rubbers, squeaky pigs. Speeches echoed over the p
(39:08):
a from the steps of the boarded up Justice Center
under the words fed goons out of PDX, projected in
letters five ft high. The wall of Moms was joined
by a self described wall of Dad's, wearing safety orange
and equipped with leafblowers to disperse tear gas. Here's Demetria again.
(39:31):
The das came with the leaf blowers. I mean they
came with protection. They guarded us and disprotecting each other.
The shields, too had multiplied, made out of plywood, foam,
and fifty gallon plastic drums. The boards over the courthouse
doors and windows had been fitted with small hatches, in
an echo of the PPB strategy from the days of
(39:53):
the Justice Center fence. This time, when the first tear
gas grenades came through the hatches, the crowds surged forward.
This rush of activity was followed by a long, tense
slow for two hours. The crowd sang and danced, yellow
clad moms forming a kick line where the fence had
(40:15):
stood only a day earlier. The mood was celebratory and fierce.
(40:37):
Using sections of chain link, fence, lumber, and other debris,
members of the crowd wedged shut some of the doors
and hatches covering the front of the Federal Courthouse. Some
people tore at the plywood covering the courthouse door with
their bare hands. There was no coherent strategy to this,
but the sentiment was unmistakable. Portlanders were no longer on
(41:00):
the defensive against the federal occupation. When federal agents finally
emerged from the building, it was less a clean charge
and more a series of shoves. After a scuffle with protesters,
one agent responded by drawing his side arm and pointing
it at eye level into the crowd. Protesters backed up,
(41:21):
but few people actually left. Instead, they fell back slowly.
Images of that night are surreal men in camouflage and
plate carriers pointing rifles at the chest of teenagers and
(41:44):
tank tops and respirators as smoke bombs from the crowd
mixed with clouds of tear gas and HC smoke. The
Feds never formed a coherent line and many people remained
in the park throughout the first push. I the bulk
of the crowd waded back into the gas and smoke
blanketing Loundsdale Park. A shield wall formed up in the
(42:08):
middle of Southwest Main Street and held Elaine remembers it
this way and then the first time actually seeing that
on the ground um federal l eos coming into shoot
at people and the shield wall forming up and just
holding ground, And it was amazing to see how the
(42:32):
federal forces didn't seem to know how to what to
do with people just standing their ground and protecting themselves,
and so they just were shooting and shooting and shooting,
and there was this incredible moment where suddenly I heard
this like it was the farting sounds of their peat
ball guns that they were shooting pepper balls and rubber
balls at the protesters. Was just running out of air
(42:54):
because the shield wall was holding and people were keeping
it together and protecting the people behind them. Despite the
fact that many of the federal agents on the line
were armed within four rifles. Those holding the shield wall
along Southwest Main Street lobbed back gas canisters and glass
bottles at the officers. Then the shield walls started moving
(43:15):
forward to the repeated lines fuck you, I won't do
what you tell me from Rage against the Machines, Killing
in the name. Shockingly, almost miraculously, the Feds started falling back.
After about ten minutes, the shield line advanced to the
end of the block and the Feds withdrew to the
steps of the court House. On July seventeenth, Chad Wolf
(43:36):
had declared via tweet, we will never surrender to violent
extremists on my watch now. At about one am, after
one of the most intense nights of federal violence thus far.
Lonsdale Park was full of people and Chad Wolf's Federal
agents had scrambled back inside their fortress, low on ammunition
and clearly rattled. Several DHS agents tried to prop close
(43:58):
a door that had been shattered by enraged moms and
teenagers with skateboards. Others attempted to fire out of murder holes,
only to be stymied in this by teenagers hucking dozens
of bottles at their gun hands. The fedgs would push
out again that night, but federal charges no longer provoked
protesters into automatic retreat. Portland had gotten a taste of
what it felt like to face down the violence of
(44:19):
federal agents, and they even seemed to like it. For
the next several weeks, the city would begin to treat
fighting the Feds as a citywide pastime. In our next episode,
we'll talk about how this dystopian side mission became the
setting for a national media spectacle, how an armed coup
took over a rib restaurant, and so much more. Uh
(44:42):
where the grand pops who couldn't fathom the obamacist I
don't hate America, just to me and she keeps the
promises looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide deja
what my people post to do go to schools named
after the clan founder were around town? Is I don't
see why we frown in etive American students forced to
learn about wind o'parah Sarah. How is that fair? Bro?
(45:05):
Some heroes unsung in some monsters get monuments built for them.
But it ain't be all a little bit of monster.
We crook it
Damage around the courthouse. Up up until July, there was
relatively little on a national level that separated Portland's b
(00:23):
l M protests from the ones happening everywhere else. A
few shots of tear gas walls had gone viral in
the mainstream media, and live streams of Portland protests were
popular among a certain set, but as far as the
big networks were concerned, Portland was just another city convulsed
with riots in the summer of That all changed in July.
It started with the siege of the Federal Courthouse on
(00:45):
July four. While that was going on in the streets
of the Rose City up north in Seattle, an activist
named Summer Taylor died that night after a car plowed
through a b l M march. On the eighth. Activists
in Portland staged a memorial vigil for Taylor. This was
disrupted by a small squad of federal agents who hit
the crowd with flash bangs and impact rounds as they
lit candles. Feelings were raw, but the crowd gathered near
(01:08):
the Justice Center that night numbered less than a hundred.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the Battle of
July four had been the last gasp of a dying movement.
Outside of the attack on the vigil, the rest of
the week followed the same pattern established in June, tiny
groups of ragged activists being horribly beaten by riot lines
of cops. It was exactly one week later, on July eleven,
(01:30):
that everything changed. That night, a twenty six year old
protester named Donovan Labella was shot in the head at
close range by a U S marshal armed with an
impact weapon. His skull was shattered. Donovan nearly died. Video
of the unprovoked attack went viral nationwide. Our own Garrison Davis,
was standing just a few feet behind Donovan when he
(01:50):
was shot. Here's how Garrison recalls that night. So I
got downtown around nine pm, kind of just a regular
time to arrive Usually that's like a bit before action starts.
But when I got there, the streets around the courthouse
and Justice Center were already filled with tear gas. Um,
there was already feds out in the streets. Um, it
(02:12):
was unclear what got them out. Um it turns out
it's just because people were on the were on like
the courtyard. So there's already already people in the streets
and stuff and Feds in the streets by the time
I arrived. And then the Feds got pushed back into
uh into like the courtyard by a small group of
activists UM on like fourth Avenue. And then they started
(02:35):
when when the Feds were on the courtyard, they just
started shooting like canisters from their grenade launcher. So, yeah,
this is like I don't know, I've only been there
like ten minutes at this point. All this is happening
very very quickly. UM, and the Feds shoot off like
five canisters in a row that are all like duds,
they don't actually do anything. UM. And one of them
(02:58):
lands underneath the car, and a young man holding a
boombox kind of like kicks it out from under the
car because it was like sparking, but it wasn't like
doing anything. It wasn't like exploding or shooting off any gas.
And then after he after he get kicked it out
of the out of under the car, he picked up
just to boombox and was standing in the standing on
the sidewalk across the street from the courthouse. I was
(03:19):
like five feet was right, and then he just got
shot in the head. Um. After Yeah, it was just
just standing there with the boom box and he collapsed
claps on the ground. I remember hearing. I mean I
heard that the shot, and I heard the fall. I
didn't see him fall, and but by the time I
looked over, um, she was on the ground, bleating out
(03:41):
of his head. And you know, very quickly people came
over and grabbed him. The thing, the thing that sticks
out most is when when they when they grabbed him
and pulled him away, just how limp his body was like,
it was a very lifeless body. His head was like
bobbing everywhere, which probably wasn't you know, it wasn't great. Um.
You should you know, when you're picking someone up like that,
(04:02):
you should try to make sure that doesn't happen. Um.
But yeah, it was, it was, it was. He was
just so lifeless. Um in that in that moment um
they took him into the into the park, semitics started,
you know, people, people yelled, medic medic. Medics came over
started to you know, try to stop the bleeding, and
(04:25):
an ambiliance came about like ten fifteen minutes later. But
like it, it felt it felt a lot longer. You know,
it felt like they were taking forever to arrive. Um,
but there's a lot, a lot of blood on the sidewalk,
a lot of a lot of blood in the park.
The grass was like soaked. Donovan very nearly died from
his injuries. As we write this episode in December, he's
(04:46):
just recently been released from the hospital following another round
of treatment for the infections caused by his injuries. He
has suffered permanent cognitive damage. The brutality with which Donovan
was assaulted enraged Portlanders, even those would not previous e
been active in the streets. Rage was further stoked by
poor coverage by local mainstream sources like The Oregonian, who
(05:06):
responded to this brutal attack on a young man wielding
a boom box by grenade launcher wielding FEDS with an
article full of expert analysis on why it had happened.
Those experts included a retired commander with the Los Angeles
Sheriff's Department who insisted the shot, which was taken from
about thirty feet away, had to have been an accident. Quote.
Nobody anywhere in the world that I am aware of,
(05:28):
is taught to aim for the head unless deadly forces
also authorized in this particular case, there was no rational
way to say that deadly force was authorized. Overall, the
article was crafted to leave the reader with the opinion
that Labella's injuries must have been a tragic accident in
the heat of the moment, rather than an angry and
undisciplined federal agent choosing to permanently injure a twenty six
(05:50):
year old armed with speakers. The good news is that
no one bought it. Portlanders were outraged by what happened
to Donovan. More protesters began to trickle into the nightly
demonstrations out side the Justice Center, which switched their attention
to the adjacent Federal courthouse. Conor O'sha had gotten his
start attending Rose City justice marches. He switched over to
attending the nightly confrontations against the police after he got
(06:12):
bored of marches that seemed to go nowhere. They'd be like, wait,
what's going down by the Justice Center and what's happening
over there? I want to go over there? Why is
everybody going back home? Like the sun is still out?
Like this is I want to go see what's happening
over there, And then started doing that and then was like, yeah,
(06:33):
this feels right this feels like you know, like not
not to say like that, um, you know, having h
march during the day with like speeches like like you know,
all the protesting is valid, but I was definitely attracted
to like showing up at the sources like the biggest,
(06:56):
the gnarliest symbols of what what people are protesting against.
Connor watched as the protest dwindled, and he saw how
the introduction of heavily armed federal agents and the outrage
over Donovan's injury started drawing more people out into the streets.
Before the Feds showed up, Um, it really felt like
we were losing a lot of not necessarily momentum. But
(07:20):
just like people showing up, numbers were kind of coming
down a little bit is to be expected. But yeah,
when they did make an appearance, like aggressive appearances, it
totally it was it totally served as a catalyst for
further like like when when they shouldn't know by now,
(07:43):
like when they show up, uh you know, cops and feds. Um,
when they when they show their face, it's like almost
always worst um like in terms of like a crowd response, um,
which I kind of love. UM. So so when they
(08:06):
showed up. It was like like almost immediately everyone was
like turning turning back up UM in huge numbers. So
that was it was just so funny to me that
they that they kind of kept doing what they were
doing UM when the crowd response was just getting amplified
by their presence. Many in the movement were rejuvenated by
(08:29):
the fact that protest numbers were growing again. After so
many nights of watching Tinier and Tinier groups get brutalized
by the Portland police, it was stirring to feel like
people cared again. Mark Pettibone's first night out had been
June one, and like Connor, he'd been dismayed as numbers
fell off throughout that month. He kept coming out though,
and he was out protesting near the Federal Courthouse with
(08:49):
Connor when the night of July fourteenth turned into the
early morning of July. It was actually a relatively uneventful
night in terms of sho between protesters and the cops. UM.
The uh PPB showed up i think once to kind
of remove some barricades that people have set up in
(09:12):
the street in front of the UM the courthouse, and
the Feds made a really kind of quick uh they
came out of the building to um, if you're facing
the Justice Center, that came out the building to the
right briefly and then retreated back in. And so honestly,
(09:34):
that night I spent what I remember from uh early
in the night was I was playing frisbee with people
in the park. We were just hanging out. Um. There
wasn't much too kind of be angry at um, at
least visibly, the Feds weren't out and about. Uh So
Mark and I were like, all right, this has been good.
(09:57):
It's been fine, I guess, um, not much going on.
Let's get out of here. We've got to work tomorrow.
We just we had just gotten out of work a
couple hours before, so, like midnight or one clock rolls
around and we're leaving, and as we're walking back to
his car, we kind of get stopped by some protesters
(10:18):
on the corner of the street there just a couple
of blocks away, and uh they warned us that they
had seen or that people had seen unmarked vans kidnapping people. Um.
And so we're we're looking around, and sure enough, right
then a van pulls up right in front of us,
(10:39):
seemingly out of nowhere. Um, and a bunch of guys
in military fatigues jump out. I look in it. I'm like, oh,
they're probably FEDS. I don't know. It's a it's a
fucking minivan full of guys and fatigues. Cameo fatigues. Uh.
They opened the doors. Everybody but the driver it's out.
(11:00):
They start they start just walking straight towards us. Uh,
and we're like, what what the what? What? What the fuck?
And there's you know, there's traffic behind us. UM. I
remember Mark and I like almost getting hit by a
car that had to stop because we're like, oh, I
(11:21):
think we need to run. So we all take off
in different directions. You know, there's no no identification, um
visually and also audibly. You know, they didn't say stop,
we are you know so and so it was just
immediate and uh so we we kind of you know,
we ran for our lives. And they ended up the
(11:45):
people and the fatigues who ended up being the FEDS.
They chased me down, one one chased me down on foot. UM.
So I ran, I'll see west and made it a
few blocks, took a turn and heard the van kind
of accelerating up the hill cut me off. And so
I dropped to my knees and I asked why, UM
(12:08):
several times. That was all I could form. Honestly, I
wasn't like why, why is this happening? And am I
being detained? It was just why? And uh So they
lifted me up, UM, off my knees, put me in
the van, UM, pulled my beanie over my head, patted
me down. UM asked if I had weapons, and you know,
(12:29):
I said no. Uh. And at this point, I I
it was kind of this weird you know, people always
talking about these out of body experiences and I, you know,
I had no experience with any of that until this happened.
Mark booked it. Um west, I went south. I was
kind of running next to somebody for a minute, uh,
(12:52):
like you know, maybe fifteen ten seconds, and then I
cut up another kind of a block web. After I
got one block south. I think the FED that was
the FED or FEDS that were after me and this person,
Like I think they either went after that person or
like they forgot about me or something. Maybe it was
(13:14):
just because I was able to run faster. I huck
my sign that I've been carrying, got it back the
next morning. That was cool. UM hucked my sign that
I was carrying, and UM running up another block. UH,
fucking like scared for my life, I was able to
be like, I just don't talk to these people. UM.
(13:38):
At this point I was pretty sure that it was
the FEDS, UM, and it wasn't some kind of rogue,
you know, militia group. And I figured the best thing
for me to do at that point it was just
to shut up and um and get through and asked
for a lawyer when the time comes. UM. At that point,
I hit a dark street and I see what is
(13:58):
either that same van or a different van cut across
in front of me going north. I think that was
they were trying to find Mark. And at that point
I looked looked over and saw I forget what the
name of the it was another courthouse, of course, because
there's like a d down there. UM. I I look
(14:20):
at this like concrete um railing whatever you wanna call that,
um out front of this courthouse. And I'm like there
and okay, yeah there, I'm going to jump this. I
sprint across once the van gets out of sight, because
they started to loop back around the block. Yeah, sprint
jump over it, jump over the little barricade and UM.
(14:46):
At this point I didn't I was sure they were
going to get me. UM. The only thing I could
think to do was to shut my phone off, which
I now no can still be traced, which is also horrific.
But I have a Faraday bag for that now, so
that's great. UM. But I shut my phone off. I
(15:07):
hear more like another banner to assume, UM driving by
like very kind of erratically, like gunning it and then
slowing down. I heard like that. I think that was them.
I'm not positive. I heard someone in in like boots
with some jingling going on walk past. UM. I just
(15:30):
like tucked up against this barricade, UM and was just
like as quiet as I could be for I don't
know how long, half hour, an hour, until I was
able to get in touch with a friend. They booked
it across the river. They showed up. I they opened
(15:51):
the back door of this car, jumped in, stayed laying
on my back like I don't I don't think we
covered me up with anything, but it was like, yeah,
it was terrifying enough to be like, I don't know
why why they targeted at us, So yeah, I got
out of there and then get a call from Mark
(16:12):
relatively quickly after I got to the other side of
the river. I was like, like, because we we friends
were texting, I think like Emily and and another friend
of ours. Like we were like, they were like, we can't,
we can't get in touch with Mark. We think they
got him. They did have Mark, but thankfully he'd broken
absolutely no law. The agents who had snatched him had
(16:33):
probably hoped that he'd be rattled enough by the whole
experience to answer whatever questions they asked. When he refused
to talk without a lawyer present, they had no choice
but to let him go. The whole thing took about
two hours, maybe even less. And uh so I was
released with one other person, and I believe it was
one of the protesters that I had been standing next
(16:55):
to um in the street when the vans first pulled up. Um.
I think they ended up picking them up as well.
So they released the two of us at the same time.
And you know this is after they read me my
rights once I was shackled and in a cell um
and asked if I wanted to waive them UM, and
I said no, I want to talk to the lawyer. UM.
So after that they came by again and said, okay,
(17:17):
you're free to go. That same night, a local activist
filmed federal agents and camouflage and military gear snatching another
black clad protester and dragging him into an unmarked rental van.
The video was horrifying, the kind of blatantly dystopian police
state ship that couldn't not provoke a national response, and
it did. Within a day, the video had been viewed
millions and millions of times. The story broke nationwide in
(17:40):
the seventeen when The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and basically every
major news source reported on Portland's federal snatch fans. Now
we have some video that was posted to Twitter from
last night. The Post says that federal officers rushed up
and arrested someone for no reason. Unmarked police vehicles they're
not even they're not police vehicles, they're just vehicles. They're
(18:01):
rentable vans. They're like consumer rentable vans filled with guys
in paramilitary gear who are supposedly federal policemen. Unmarked vans
of unleashed tear gas into crowds, rounded up and detained protesters,
and even shot one man in the head with a
non lethal round, causing serious injury. Their presence and their
(18:24):
tactics have raised questions about the use of federal agencies
to police cities, even when local authorities don't want them there.
We Ddovan LaBelle Is shooting had enraged people, but it
(18:46):
was the federal snatch fans that would finally radicalize thousands
of Portland's liberal majority to take to the streets. It
was on the night of the first group of what
would become the Wall of Moms showed up to protest
the Feds. We'll talk about them in a second, but
first here's Garrison to explain another important action that occurred
the same night. The militarized FEDS had captured Portland's imagination.
(19:08):
But as the Quote fed war started to ramp up,
protesters who had been fighting the police for weeks didn't
want people to forget the reason all of this had
happened in the first place. They organized a rally simply
titled Quote Abolished the Police for June eighteenth at Peninsula
Park in North Portland. The event was boosted by groups
such as the YLF and Direct Action Alliance, people who
(19:31):
were generally trusted within the community of veteran activists. The
last time a protest had been held at Peninsula Park
was June. The crowd had marched to the Portland Police
Association building, which had been surrounded by dozens of armed cops.
Police quickly pushed the crowd away using Truncheon's, grenade launchers
and tear gas. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that the
(19:53):
crowd of several hundred who showed up on the eighteenth
came expecting a fight. Banners at the front of the
march included quote, Chad Wolfe listens to Nickelback, mocking the
acting DHS director, who had just visited Portland a few
days prior and also spoke with the p p A.
Other banners read de colonize and mourned the dead fight
(20:16):
like hell for the living. One banner read Quantas Hayes
was only seventeen years old. In February seen Portland police
shot and killed Quantas Hayes, an unarmed, teenage black Portlander.
When they shot Kawanas, he was on his knees ten
(20:37):
to fifteen feet away from officers, aiming guns and shouting
contradictorary commands. Officer Andrew Hurst, who was providing quote long
cover with his air fifteen fired three shots at the
teen when Kuanas reportedly moved his hands from above his head.
At the same time Kuanas was shot from moving his hands,
other officers were ordering him to get face down on
(20:59):
the ground with his hands by his sides. The Portland
Police use of force investigation found no wrongdoing on the
part of Officer Andrew Hurst. He still walks around with
a badge and a gun today. The lead use of
force investigator on that case was Detective Eric camemer but
Portland protesters might know him better as the notorious Officer
(21:20):
sixties seven. Speaking as a journalist who has watched the
Portland Police riot team and action, officer Camemra is quite
possibly the most violent man I have ever met. All
of this was on the mind of the press in attendance.
When the crowd departed Peninsula Park at around eight pm,
we suspected they would head straight for the Police Union building,
(21:41):
but that's not what happened. The people at the front
of the march headed in that direction at first, but
as the crowd got close to the union building, they
made a sudden turn, confusing the police and probably some protesters.
The march went on southward for about half an hour,
chanting along the way. Soon enough, the crowd arrived at
(22:07):
the surprise destination, the Portland Police North Precinct. Only a
handful of officers were present when the group of marchers
approached the building, and said officers quickly moved inside. As
they did, hundreds of people chanted quit Your Job protesters
hung out in the precinct parking lot for almost an hour.
(22:30):
Officers had been so surprised by their arrival that a
police car was left sitting unattended in the middle of
the crowd. It was tagged with graffiti and a bananappeal
was placed on its hood, but nothing else. As was inevitable,
The police el red eventually arrived and ordered the crowd
to leave under threat of arrest and tear gas. On
previous evenings, the crowd would have just stood around, defiant
(22:52):
and waiting to get all beaten up and gassed, But
tonight was different. As the el rad blared threats, people
in the crowd yelled b water, echoing a Hong Kong slogan,
and the crowd began to move once again back to
North mL. Cable of art fether to follow this direction,
(23:13):
based up a que to arrest. The citation are used
of more, including crowd control munitions. The tactical decision to
move after the el Rad's warning apparently bamboozled the police,
as the nearly five hundred protesters were able to swiftly
march north to the completely unguarded p p A building.
Dumpsters were overturned to block the street, and protesters in
(23:34):
black block assembled a makeshift battering ram out of random
materials nearby. No one said anything, but the crowd knew
what was about to happen. People were going to enter
the Police Union building. Dumpster fires were started to block
the police from seeing what was happening. In due time,
the el Red arrived and an audibly nervous El Red
(23:54):
operator ordered people not to enter the p p A
police He visit the redial area. We noticed criminal activity
occurring in this crowd at the office. You'll be study
to arrest or support them, to include crowd control munitions.
But for the Portland police it was too little, too late.
People had already broken through the front door of the
(24:16):
Police Union building and lit a small fire inside. As
soon as the riot police arrived, the crowd began dispersing.
People had no desire to fight the cops. This night,
they'd achieved their goal and now it was time to run.
Like how police chase the crowd for a few blocks,
shooting off tear gas, tackling and arresting anyone they could
get their hands on during bullrushes. As the dwindling group
(24:39):
of protesters entered residential side streets, it was more difficult
for the police to follow and easier for small affinity
groups to break off and disperse. It was in these
residential streets that the vast majority of protesters successfully lost
not only the cops, but also the small group of
journalists who were jogging to keep up. When we interviewed
some folks with the y LS, the Youth Liberation Front,
(25:02):
they mentioned this night as a sort of turning point
for some protesters. Newer people realized what could be done
by a crowd that was cunning and disciplined and committed
to not getting the pists beaten out of them by
the police. Here's the y LS as a reminder, we
redubbed the audio due to the constant death threats against
these literal children. I think eventually people just got burnt
(25:24):
out and realized like something had to change. And we
did start like making Twitter threads suggesting some changes, and
so maybe that push things in that direction. And I
think people have started to have been sizing up the
opponents more realistically and finding cops may have worked in
like the first few days of the uprising, but we
honestly like in the protests that are happening now, they
(25:45):
don't have enough resources to like effectively push them back,
and the cops have a bunch of experience with crowd controls.
So yeah, and I think I think now, like since
all this time has passed, there's enough points that you
can point to and see this was an effective tactic
in reference to being water, like the first time p
PA was set on fire, the way people were able
to move in and out, and I don't remember how
(26:06):
many people got arrested that night, but it was it
was definitely, I mean, it was definitely less than the
normal amount. And I think that was the big first
instance of people being able to point this tactic used
in Portland and be like see effectiveness this worked. That's
got people home safe to an extent. We mentioned quote
being water a few times now. This was a term
for a tactic used during the Hong Kong uprising. It
(26:30):
derives its name from a famous Bruce Lee quote that
Hong Kong activists repurposed as a guide for how to
move in situations where police are chasing you. The quote
reads like this, be like water making its way through
the cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object,
and you shall find your way around it or through it.
(26:51):
If nothing within you stays rigid outward, things will disclose
themselves empty. Your mind be formless, shapeless, like water. If
you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.
You put water into a bottle, and it becomes the bottle.
You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow or can crash? Be water, my friend.
(27:17):
Here's how the Wire Left describes Portland's process of learning
to be water. To some extent, it was being exposed
to the tactics of the Hong Kong protest, but a
lot of doctrines weren't really adopted. But I think also
there has been a lot of trial and air because
people have tried a lot of stuff that didn't work
and they got their ship fucked. And I just think
(27:37):
that has been the best way to learn what works,
especially in our unique conditions. I think a big part
of people embracing becoming water that as a tactic was
getting fed up with getting her kicked out of them
well like like I mean, okay, I mean staying and
fighting the police is usually not the right tactical decision
because in Portland we have an extremely militarized police force
and they're always going to be better equipped than us.
(28:00):
That's is how it's going to be. And so you
have to think about, like what am I What is
the risk versus the reward of staying and fighting this
cop versus just disappearing in the night to fight another day.
And I think that goes hand in hand with the
decentralization of the movement when like you know, when it
had like when there were marches with people leading with
megaphones walking around and then suddenly the police show up
(28:20):
and you have your conflict. People didn't have the agency
or their own agency to really disappear into the night
and move on from that, like people felt obligated to
follow somebody. So I definitely think that played a role
in Portland moving towards decentralization also played a role in that.
Now my colleague, Beatrix is going to explain what happened
in downtown Portland in front of the Justice Center in
the Federal Courthouse at the same time as the rally
(28:42):
at the Portland Police Association. While about five hundred people
had gathered in North Portland don ight, around a thousand
had gathered downtown at the Justice Center and the adjacent
Federal Courthouse. Signs reading Unquelled referenced the statement by President
Ump days earlier that Portland had been out of control
(29:03):
and that federal presence had very much quelled it. On
the six, Homeland Security Director Chad Wolfe had made national
headlines when he visited Portland and referred to protesters there
as violent anarchists sixty times. In a single press statement
discussing the use of fireworks by protesters on ly four,
(29:27):
Wolfe declared, perhaps prophetically, a federal courthouse is a symbol
of justice. To attack it is to attack America. Quick
historical footnote here in September of federal judge rule that
Chad Wolfe was likely unlawfully serving as acting Director of
Homeland Security during the entirety of his tenure in that position.
(29:50):
We during Wolf's visit Mayor Wheeler had said that he
and all city officials would refuse to meet with the
DHS head if invited. However, the day after Wolf's visit,
(30:14):
the Portland Mercury reported that Darryl Turner, the head of
the Portland Police Association, had met Chad Wolf without approval
from either the mayor or the police chief. Chief level
would not say definitively whether any officers had met with DHS,
but photos showed uniformed PPB officers speaking to Chad Wolf
(30:39):
during his visit. The action targeting the Portland Police Association's
union headquarters in North Portland was one response to these events.
The protests downtown, likewise, were driven by anger over Donovan Labella,
federal overreach, and the federal snatch fans. While the North
Portland crowd was made up of mostly experienced activists, the
(31:00):
folks of the Justice Center represented a broader cross section
of Portlanders. Several images from the eighteenth went viral, both
nationwide and locally, and would bring more of the city's
liberal majority out into the streets. One such video showed
a fifty three year old Christopher David surrounded by tear
gas approaching armored federal agents. According to mister David, a
(31:24):
Navy veteran, he wanted to ask the men how they
felt about violating their constitutional oath. Instead, the video shows
one of the agents gripping his baton two handed like
a baseball bat, and smashing it into David's arms and
legs five times. Another agent then steps forward and maces
(31:47):
David in the face as he stands motionless. He walks
away after the attack, middle fingers raised on his broken hands.
As of this recording, video of the assault has been
viewed more than fifteen million times. Another viral moment came
when a group of about forty people calling themselves Moms
(32:09):
against police brutality and dressed in white or horribly tear
gassed by federal agents. Videos of the attack incensed thousands
of Portlanders and led to the creation of the famous
Wall of Moms. Courtney is an indigenous Hawaiian Portlander. She's
one of the moms who came out on July eighteenth.
Here's what she recalls. It was like a smaller It
(32:30):
wasn't as big as like the after when it started
to really take off. It was probably like twenty left
at that point, and definitely didn't know what I like
I had no idea what to walk into. What I
was walking into. I mean, I've been protesting before, especially
for like land rights and things like that and what,
(32:51):
but not like anything against police brutality and things like that.
So I'm like, just, you know, we roll up and
then not even not probably like two or three hours later,
but like the fads come out and just start shooting
at us. And that was and I was like the
frontline then because I didn't know what I was walking into.
(33:14):
I just didn't know like what, I had no idea
what was going to happen. I had seen the videos
the night before, but like I you know, I just
didn't know what to expect. I didn't think it was
going to be as violent as it was. Um So, yeah,
that night, like they guessed the ship out of everyone
as always, but that they actually got hit by like
(33:38):
rubber bullets that night. I still have a scar from
like a pepper ball like on my shoulder from the
first night that I want to out and oh yeah
that was my that was my first night out. Corney
recalls being struck by the extremity of the violence, how
sudden and overwhelming it all was. I honestly like just
(33:59):
did expect. Um. I didn't expect the close range shooting.
First of all, I didn't expect like the amount of
gas that they were using on people. Um. I just
you know, it's different when you're like watching it on
like a stream versus like actually being there in person,
(34:21):
especially if there was like the line that we were
standing in the first night that I was there, there
was probably like seven of us, and they there were
like ten Feds just shooting at all of us just
standing there like trying to like guard yourselves behind an umbrella.
And they clearly knew that there were like moms out
(34:42):
there because that was the night where we're all like
wearing yellow and like we were standing out and it
was majority of us were just females standing there, and
they just did not get like if they just they
just did not care. It didn't matter, it didn't matter,
and um, so that was shocking. I definitely, like I
(35:05):
don't think that I've processed really anything that's gone on,
um and just like check it away for another day.
But yeah, it's I just I didn't expect the like
the extremity of it. Within hours of the first major
gassing by federal troops, a DHS memo was leaked to
The New York Times revealing that the Feds in the
(35:26):
courthouse had not been properly trained with any of the
riot control munitions they were using. Instead, the DHS officers
had been responding to unarmed protesters with military tactics rather
than mere dispersal. The goal was shock and awe, to
shatter all resistance with a display of overwhelming violence that
(35:50):
would leave its targets frightened and broken. Instead, as Costco describes,
Portland took away a very different message. I felt it
felt disgusting to me. It felt they mean, even though
I knew they worked at military, they felt like the military,
because they all looked like the military. They're all to
(36:11):
me all looked really young too, and they were very uh,
They're very aggressive and very quick to act in violence.
To me, they seem more afraid about us than like
Portland police were you ever seemed afraid of us? And
so I think I don't know if that made them
react and fear more, but they were definitely more aggressive,
(36:35):
and I knew it was going to turn into a circus.
The following night, July, well over one thousand people filled
Chapman in Loundesdale the two parks in front of the
Federal Courthouse and the Justice Center. The group of moms,
now in matching yellow t shirts and helmets, numbered in
(36:55):
the hundreds. It was easily the largest crowd since the
end of the Rose City Justice daytime marches. Medics came through,
handing out tear gas wipes and eye flash bottles and
the mom's linked arms before moving to form a living
wall facing the fence recently erected around the mark O.
Hatfield's Courthouse. Many of the people who came out that
(37:18):
night were new to the confrontation downtown. As Dmitria Hester
describes it, they were greeted as welcome reinforcements because we
knew all was coming. As black people, we know the
torture and the abused that the police give us, so
we were very prepared. We had respirators, we had math,
(37:39):
we had helmets. We made sure that all the mom
had equipment and everything they needed to get through the night.
From the open doors of the courthouse, agents and battle
dress could be seen moving into position in the darkened
lobby as the Feds very own el rad warned against
attempts to damage then behind the wall of moms in yellow.
(38:04):
The rest of the crowd was also getting into position,
and a chant of Feds go home was taken up
by hundreds of voices. Unlike the enormous daytime rallies from June,
this crowd had not come to march. After more than
an hour of chanting and singing, answered by scattered pepper
balls and flashbangs from the Feds, a few sections of
(38:26):
the fence were removed by protesters, and soon the whole
fence came down. That night, the crowd fell back under
the ensuing tear gas barrage. Federal agents advanced through the
park and protesters retreated, but slowly and with a smattering
of shields and umbrellas blocking some of the federal munitions.
(38:48):
The night of Lounsdale and Chapman were an unbroken sea
of thousands. People worked their way across the park with
buckets of rubbers, squeaky pigs. Speeches echoed over the p
(39:08):
a from the steps of the boarded up Justice Center
under the words fed goons out of PDX, projected in
letters five ft high. The wall of Moms was joined
by a self described wall of Dad's, wearing safety orange
and equipped with leafblowers to disperse tear gas. Here's Demetria again.
(39:31):
The das came with the leaf blowers. I mean they
came with protection. They guarded us and disprotecting each other.
The shields, too had multiplied, made out of plywood, foam,
and fifty gallon plastic drums. The boards over the courthouse
doors and windows had been fitted with small hatches, in
an echo of the PPB strategy from the days of
(39:53):
the Justice Center fence. This time, when the first tear
gas grenades came through the hatches, the crowds surged forward.
This rush of activity was followed by a long, tense
slow for two hours. The crowd sang and danced, yellow
clad moms forming a kick line where the fence had
(40:15):
stood only a day earlier. The mood was celebratory and fierce.
(40:37):
Using sections of chain link, fence, lumber, and other debris,
members of the crowd wedged shut some of the doors
and hatches covering the front of the Federal Courthouse. Some
people tore at the plywood covering the courthouse door with
their bare hands. There was no coherent strategy to this,
but the sentiment was unmistakable. Portlanders were no longer on
(41:00):
the defensive against the federal occupation. When federal agents finally
emerged from the building, it was less a clean charge
and more a series of shoves. After a scuffle with protesters,
one agent responded by drawing his side arm and pointing
it at eye level into the crowd. Protesters backed up,
(41:21):
but few people actually left. Instead, they fell back slowly.
Images of that night are surreal men in camouflage and
plate carriers pointing rifles at the chest of teenagers and
(41:44):
tank tops and respirators as smoke bombs from the crowd
mixed with clouds of tear gas and HC smoke. The
Feds never formed a coherent line and many people remained
in the park throughout the first push. I the bulk
of the crowd waded back into the gas and smoke
blanketing Loundsdale Park. A shield wall formed up in the
(42:08):
middle of Southwest Main Street and held Elaine remembers it
this way and then the first time actually seeing that
on the ground um federal l eos coming into shoot
at people and the shield wall forming up and just
holding ground, And it was amazing to see how the
(42:32):
federal forces didn't seem to know how to what to
do with people just standing their ground and protecting themselves,
and so they just were shooting and shooting and shooting,
and there was this incredible moment where suddenly I heard
this like it was the farting sounds of their peat
ball guns that they were shooting pepper balls and rubber
balls at the protesters. Was just running out of air
(42:54):
because the shield wall was holding and people were keeping
it together and protecting the people behind them. Despite the
fact that many of the federal agents on the line
were armed within four rifles. Those holding the shield wall
along Southwest Main Street lobbed back gas canisters and glass
bottles at the officers. Then the shield walls started moving
(43:15):
forward to the repeated lines fuck you, I won't do
what you tell me from Rage against the Machines, Killing
in the name. Shockingly, almost miraculously, the Feds started falling back.
After about ten minutes, the shield line advanced to the
end of the block and the Feds withdrew to the
steps of the court House. On July seventeenth, Chad Wolf
(43:36):
had declared via tweet, we will never surrender to violent
extremists on my watch now. At about one am, after
one of the most intense nights of federal violence thus far.
Lonsdale Park was full of people and Chad Wolf's Federal
agents had scrambled back inside their fortress, low on ammunition
and clearly rattled. Several DHS agents tried to prop close
(43:58):
a door that had been shattered by enraged moms and
teenagers with skateboards. Others attempted to fire out of murder holes,
only to be stymied in this by teenagers hucking dozens
of bottles at their gun hands. The fedgs would push
out again that night, but federal charges no longer provoked
protesters into automatic retreat. Portland had gotten a taste of
what it felt like to face down the violence of
(44:19):
federal agents, and they even seemed to like it. For
the next several weeks, the city would begin to treat
fighting the Feds as a citywide pastime. In our next episode,
we'll talk about how this dystopian side mission became the
setting for a national media spectacle, how an armed coup
took over a rib restaurant, and so much more. Uh
(44:42):
where the grand pops who couldn't fathom the obamacist I
don't hate America, just to me and she keeps the
promises looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide deja
what my people post to do go to schools named
after the clan founder were around town? Is I don't
see why we frown in etive American students forced to
learn about wind o'parah Sarah. How is that fair? Bro?
(45:05):
Some heroes unsung in some monsters get monuments built for them.
But it ain't be all a little bit of monster.
We crook it
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