January 4, 2021 • 41 mins
Throughout the second half of July, Portlanders continued showing up en masse to confront federal agents downtown. As the struggle neared its conclusion, national media attention brought a strange, carnival air to the proceedings.
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):
A year before his death, and one of his most
revered speeches, Martin Luther King Jr. Named three main evils
plaguing America racism, poverty, and war. Decades later, the fight
for Black Lives unfolded into Portland streets in a fashion
few could have imagined, transforming small city blocks into daily
battle grounds. As the fed wars continued, protesters, fortified numbers
(00:21):
swelt in Portland grabbed the nation's attention. Out of state
media flew into town searching for juicy headlines. Likewise, a
network of opportunists live streamers traveled to Portland, hoping to
capture what many activists dubbed riot porn video of police gassing, snatching, rushing, beating, berating,
and arresting Portlanders. And alongside all this less obvious but
(00:43):
much more impressive, an infrastructure of resistance began to grow. Angry,
chanting signs and tearful demands were augmented by mutual aid.
More than a month then, Portlanders learned that if they
were going to last against the paramilitaries of both the
president and the mayor, they were going to have to
take better care of each other. For the cops, things
had gotten pretty routine at this point, stop criminal activity,
(01:05):
protect property, but federal escalation begged the question would Portland's
back down? Despite grievous bodily harm, unmarked federal snatch fans,
and overwhelming use of riot munitions, Portlanders continued to fill
the streets past the fiftieth straight day of protests, and
the answer to the question will Portland back down became
increasingly clear. No, here's my colleague in getting exposed to
(01:36):
chemical weapons Elaine Kinchen to continue the story. The battle
against Trump's Feds gained Portland nationwide notoriety in the summer
of but many longtime activists on the scene, like Max Smith,
considered the whole fight to be at best something of
a distraction, a fight and fence that wasn't what we
were here for. You know. The fence was like some
(01:57):
ship that kind of it was like to call at
the Grand Theft autos aside mission like this is, this
has nothing to do with what we're supposed to be
doing right now, but we have to complete this to
get back in the game, you know. And it was
really weird, and I think at that moment I really
realized that the distraction was intentional and that this was
(02:18):
all getting just diverted to become like a like a
Trump campaign at you know, he's gonna come through and
support these police unions and this is his big commercial
for it. So it was a very uh, I felt
like it was a frustrating part of the protest because
a it was really a dangerous and people were really
getting hurt and kidnapped and all that kind of weird stuff.
(02:40):
And then on top of that, it wasn't the fight
that I wanted to, you know, to be fighting, but
it was. But it's the fight that brings out a
lot of people. So a very contrasting and confusing time.
For sure. Thousands would attend each night, and the atmosphere
began to resemble a strange nightly festival, ending in the
wee hours of the morning with a halts by federal
(03:00):
officers and clouds of poison gas. A man with a
gas mask and hockey stick showed up one night to
knock canisters away. Teams of people with lacrosse sticks followed.
When lines of federal agents pushed forward, launching gas grenades,
walls of protesters would now regularly toss the rounds back
into and behind the fedlines. As protesters behind them used
(03:20):
leafblowers to direct the gas back at the courthouse, and
squads of medics and the re retreated people as they
rotated in out of the front lines. The Federal Courthouse
had many of the windows of its facade destroyed by
fireworks and projectiles, and the clouds of gas rendered the
bottom seven stories of the building uninhabitable. Assaults on the
fence were an integral part of nightly protests. Erected at
(03:42):
a cost of two hundred thousand dollars and later reinforced
with concrete barriers, it was repeatedly dismantled by protesters and
piled in front of courthouse doors. The city, too wanted
the fence gone. It was blocking a bike lane without permits.
City attorneys sent a cease and desist letter to the
federal government. Portland's City Commissioner, Chloe you Daily, stated the
(04:03):
fence is an abuse of public space and the threat
to the traveling public, and that this illegal action will
not be tolerated in our community. You Daily leveled the
fine of five hundred dollars against the federal government for
every fifteen minutes that the fence remained on city property,
or forty thousand dollars a day. By August, the fines
topped five hundred thousand dollars. Protest regular cramberly describes the
(04:27):
new turn in the protests as resembling a festival. I
think like night is what it made it go from
life this is interesting to like, this is a full
blown night, the actual spectacle um, the actual spectaclog. But
it was huge, and I don't know it was I
(04:52):
about all the stuff having much fun. It was so
much fun, honestly, the nice like it was no there
was some scary traumatic ship that happened, and I was
genuinely scary for my whole last life a couple of times.
But like I don't know, if I tell everybody felt
(05:14):
like a succestival where you also thought cops. Did that
make sense because if you were just like at the
j C, you could see the fact the j C
courtous like el right, ever is you know something? You
know what I mean? You walk by you just send
people do oh? Ship? Is that I was drugs? So
(05:38):
it really felt like a music festival and there was
a lot of fun um you know, I guess it's
also scary the energy and the tension, you know, super
high as a fence. The fence period is like early
fence days were like we're shaking the fence. That specifically
my favorite serious just because everyone which is so I
(05:59):
raid at that point, like why of a fence? And
it came back to like lawnmower or not more sleep flowers.
They came back to leaf blowers and knows what night
I saw like multiple people of circular songs and I
just really loved the enginuity of great type of shield
(06:19):
walls of a great time someone through Uh do a
cheer gap and answer back across. Yeah, Uh, it's gonna
be me talking to my kids in that fifty years.
One of the things that became clear early into the protests,
even before the Feds came, is that if you didn't
have a gas mask, you were going to need one.
COVID had already given the world a bit of a
(06:40):
post apocalyptic feel between the looming danger of the virus
and everyone being behind masks, but the growing number of
respirators that actions accentuated that the immense quantity of gas
that the federal forces used made respirators and gas masks
unnecessary piece of equipment, and as the summer dragged on,
protesters began mobilizing to get respirators into the hands of
all that needed them. Sixteen year old Ariana Moorehead says
(07:04):
that she's got her first gas mask over the summer,
I just died through mutual aid, you know, the community,
bringing everything, everybody together. Um, we probably from Freedom actually
had a couple gas masks donated to them, so that's
where I got mine from. Uh. The helmet I got
from another group by organized with which is our Streets PDX,
(07:27):
And then I forgot working on my goggles from but yeah,
just you know, the community. After a few bouts with
police and right Ring militiaman, her uniform had graduated. Now
every night she went out, she was ready from head
to toe in an outfit she never expected she would need.
The first couple of nights was really bad tear gas
and I'm like, okay, mom, mune system can't do this.
(07:47):
Like I just had milk to save my eyes from
you your gas. But now I had goggles, a helmet,
a gas mask. Uh, and a lot of people have
been wanted to get me a bullet for the but
I haven't gotten one yet, you know, just in case,
because I'm pretty known by a lot of white supremacis.
So it's kind of triggering for me. Um, Like I said,
(08:11):
I've got not sent to my house, like God, We're
not like God like still like I'm gott to be
sent to my house. But I've gotten some through my
go fund me. I've had some sent to my number.
I had to change my number and everything. I've had
some saying over email, social media. It's crazy. So I
just need to be you know, safe at all times.
(08:33):
But yeah, right, it gives like helmet goggles, face masks.
Max Smith describes needing to get better gear as the
violence from federal forces grew more intense. The first thing
was like, oh, ship, I need equipment. I got a
helmet in the face shield and got shot in the
face like a day later. So you know, I saw
(08:53):
on video I was watching a Dre's when he got
hit in the head um with a gas canister. H
at last ready to skull. So I started seeing like, oh,
people are getting hurt out here. I had actually saw
I was his name of Chris the taser face. I
had seen him the day before he got beat and
I was with the buddy of my world that that
(09:13):
guy is huge who was this guy over here? We
were like just talking about how big this guy was.
And the next day I see him on the news
getting his ass bet, you know, and I'm like, wow,
Like they're really beating everybody up out here. And there
were thousands of people out there, and people were like
just being massively, just beat in mass and that's the thing.
And people didn't have masks or anything. We were just
(09:33):
getting tear gas and going to the corner and walking
to sixth Avenue and getting our faces flushed out and
walking back down again. You know, I remember the solid
at Deity being crazy, but I also remember thinking, this
is not what the hell we're here for. Another activist
also describes the process of gearing up. The first night
that I went up to the Justice Center at you know,
(09:56):
the original fence, I had on a her jeans, boots,
a sweatshirt, and a hat. And you know, that went
from that night when it was raining, and then on
my birthday actually, which is June, um my dad texted
(10:16):
me and said that he spotted me on a live
stream because I was wearing like a plaid shirt and
a pair of light colored jeans. And then that was
kind of when it clicked for me. They're like, Okay,
this is why people are consistently wearing black down here,
Like you don't want to be recognizable, even though I've
never you know, thrown anything or let anything on fire,
tagged anything, like, you know, just not being able to
(10:39):
spot someone is you know, it has its values, um
and it went from you know, jeans and a sweatshirt
to needing a respirator and goggles, and then to needing
a vest, a bulletproof vest, helmet, you know, all the
different gear that we've needed to make sure that we
(11:00):
just protect ourselves. It's not about us weaponizing. It's not
about us buying a bunch of guns when we're you know,
to carry around when we're down at the protests. It's
not about that. It's about making sure that we don't
die and then we don't get hurt. And I was
there the night that Donovan was shot, Like I was
(11:22):
the person that ran across the park to go get
the medics. And that was a huge awakening moment, Like
I saw a brain fluid come out of his nose,
you know, like that's a that's a big moment to know, like, Okay,
we should probably make sure that that doesn't happen to
a bunch more of us. Keeping people breathing became integral
to the protesting and at the end of July, as
(11:43):
the gas intensified, Team Raccoon work to get filters to
the protesters that needed them. We got a little bit
of money from mutually donations and we were wondering what
because part cleans are pretty low cost, you know, trash bags,
trash grabbers, doesn't cost a lot of money to maintain that.
(12:05):
So we were wondering, like, what do we do with
this money that will really help our community. And we
were noticing the air quality and Loudsdale and Chapman getting
worse and worse and worse because of the tear gas
and the chemical munitions every night. Even just walking through
there during the day, you wanted to put your respirator on.
At the end of July, so we we're connected to
(12:27):
some researchers who wanted to keep a certain level of anonymity,
and we decided the best way to do that was
through us. We could accept filters from the protest community
and we could give them to the researchers. The researchers
could conduct their studies and the privacy that they want
(12:48):
and we could use mutual aid money to facilitate that.
So that's how it started. UM. We were able to
locally sourced respirators through a local company UM and to start,
I think we got about four cases of filters and
then started getting respirators after the fact to kind of
(13:10):
like both keep people safe and promote like the Filter Exchange.
If you don't have a respirator, now you do. Now
you can participate in the filter Exchange later on, and
then there's another data point for our scientists. So we
were already set up doing the respirators, doing the Filter
Exchange program. We had a lot sitting around and on
(13:33):
the hundred Days and Ventura Park. It was a big
event and I was not there that night, but I
did watch it from the live streams and it was horrifying.
As Trump's troops catapulted Portland into the national spotlight, cameras
descended on the city. For more than a month, the
(13:53):
protests had been covered by a small group of local reporters.
Suddenly the New York Times, the Washington Post, and every
major news network were crowding around the Federal courthouse on
a nightly basis. Right Around the time the Fed War started,
a federal judge passed the temporary Restraining Order banning federal
agents from attacking marked press. Whether this stopped any brutality
(14:13):
is up for debate. The press freedom trackers statistics suggests
the Portland press were assaulted more often than press in
any other city in What the restraining order did was
explode the number of people who went out with cameras
to live stream and film. The sheer number of people
with cameras became an issue for many activists. At times,
it was physically challenging just to maneuver around the courthouse,
(14:34):
so much space was being taken up by people marked press.
All this documentation also caused a problem for protesters taking
a legal direct action against federal agents and property. The
flood of cameras amounted to constant live surveillance from every
conceivable angle. Black block and umbrellas helped to shield people,
but there was no perfect solution. Direct action was hampered.
(14:55):
Midway through the Fed War, The Oragonian, a local paper,
was able to get a journalists inside the Federal courthouse.
They took a picture inside the command center, which featured
a large computer monitor showing numerous live stream feeds of
the protests. This convinced many committed activists that streamers were
their enemy, and the fact that live stream footage was
used in federal charging documents seemed to support that. However,
(15:18):
the matter was not that simple. Early live streams of
police violence had played a major role in getting thousands
of Portlander's out into the streets. Over and over again,
we heard stories from activists who first learned how to
handle tear gas or who were radicalized to start coming
out because they watched streams. Federal law enforcement clearly used
live streams for intelligence as well, but it's also very
(15:38):
possible they made certainly Oregonian took a picture of their
wall of live streams because they saw the streams as
a major avenue by which protesters recruited more numbers and
built public sympathy. Whatever the truth, that Oregonian article convinced
several members of the press to stop live streaming and
to move to more carefully posting short videos of the action.
As a result, live streaming was increasingly done by new
(16:00):
bees who had flooded into Portland's seeking easy cash. The
streamer apocalypse would continue as people brought gimbals and started
plugging their cash app every five minutes on stream. It
should be noted there were also a number of Portlanders
who slapped press onto their helmet in the hope that
they wouldn't get beat up as much, which some might
call a damning indictment of the state's use of force
(16:33):
as the FED war raged on. One local critic was
especially vocal about the optics of the protests. In double
A CP Portland's chapter president, Pastor E. D. Mondane, described
the protests as devolving into white spectacle. In a widely
circulated Washington Post op ed quote from the article what
are Antifa another leftist agitators achieving for the cause of
(16:54):
black equality? The mall of Moms, while perhaps well intentioned,
ends up redirecting attention away from the urgent issue of
murdered black bodies, he stated, before asking Portlanders to vacate
the streets and instead to begin fighting at schools, city councils,
and other governments now. While he also called for the
Feds to leave, Pastor Mondane's call for Portlanders to pull
(17:15):
out of the streets drew the ire of many organizers
on the ground. It also earned Mondane airtime on national
news outlets, which only ended when a lengthy expose later
that fall revealed that he had been alleged of engaging
in sexual, mental, and emotional abuse by nearly a dozen
members of his church. Now since the fourth of July,
one of the regular and most revered sites at the
(17:35):
protests was Riot Ribs, a free pop up barbecue food cart.
Riot Ribbs was so beloved in Portland that even local
politicians who had been negative about the protests were hard
pressed to say a single bad word about them. The
restaurant had started operations the night of July four, thanks
to a former Black panther named Lorenzo, Riot Ribbs quickly
became a large scale operation, feeding protesters and helping the
(17:57):
local homeless population. After a couple of weeks, the operation
expanded into clothing donations, a large medical tent, resume help,
and haircuts. The Ribs made local dining news, and protesters
would often wait in line through clouds of tear gas
to get them. They were pretty darn good. Volunteers cleaned
the park and supplied equipment to protesters and again to
the local house. Was Population Morgan, currently with Team Raccoon,
(18:21):
who volunteered at Riot Ribs describes some of the work
that they would do well. So the park clean itself
m for volunteers was basically just UM show up. We
have trash grabbers. You get to keep a pair of
gardening gloves, UM, so you have something to protect your hands.
We have sanitizer masks, anything that anybody would need, and
(18:42):
that would just focus on picking up litter around the park.
But myself and a couple of UM people that were
doing with Riot Ribs every day we took the the
biggest hits on the bathrooms. UM. Even at one point
UM like during cart cleans, I would have volunteers picking
(19:05):
up litter and picking up trash. But one thing I
would go and do is I would get cat litter
and put cat litter down behind the bathrooms, which is
where people were peeing usually. UM. It was getting to
be a sanitation issue. So what we were doing was
we were putting cat litter down and then scooping it
away when I got used, and then putting fresh litter down.
(19:27):
So myself in a couple of people from Riot Ribs
were really doing the majority of that dirty work UM
and volunteers were UM doing basically litter clean up and
just general maintenance beds, however, had a different view of
the operation well. The rain of tear gas and munition
(19:50):
seemed largely indiscriminate. Volunteers at Riot Ribs were regularly pelted
with rubber bullets and even arrested. An early morning sweep
at Chapman and Loundesdale Squares even saw least booting houseless
people from the respective parks, seizing all of Riot Ribbs equipment,
and arresting nine people, some of whom had helped run
the cart. During the raids, Federal forces would pepper spray
(20:10):
the grills and ruined donated equipment. In response, volunteers would
dutifully take the ruined lit grills and dump them over
the fence around the Federal Courthouse. One night, during a
federal rush, all of the donated medical supplies were sprayed
with mace, as of course, ruined them. Every time Riot
Ribbs was targeted and its crew arrested, its equipment destroyed,
(20:30):
more donations would come in, new people would come over
to volunteer, and new equipment would be you know, provided.
In just a couple of weeks, the effort, which had
started as just a one man operation, had raised more
than three hundred thousand dollars to keep going. But just
as quickly as the love came, there were new questions
about the group's operations. In fact, both Wall of Moms
(20:50):
and Riot Ribs soon faced sharp growing pains as new
money and spotlights of attentions bred creeping suspicion among some
in the activist community, and even doubts about safety. Courtney,
who had started out protesting with Mall of Moms, described
the night out with them that convinced her to quit.
So um. That night, in particular, I know that that
(21:13):
was the first night that actually mom got arrested. There
was one mom in particular that like she got arrested,
but then she also got her head Like I don't
know if they shot her directly in the head, but
that's when she had her head busted open. So throughout
that night I was like, this is just not that,
this is just not right. Like I don't understand they
(21:35):
have like this these Facebook pages and these twitters and
all this kind of stuff to like communicate things with people,
and nothing was communicated in a way for like to
mentally prepare these women when they show us UM. And
so that just throughout the night I was just so
annoyed with all of that, and I was like, you
know what, Like I'm not gonna wear out. Towards the
(21:57):
end of the night, my friends and I actually had
shirts on underneath, and we like literally took our shirts,
our yellow shirts off, and we're like, we're not doing
this anymore. Most fed war nights followed a similar pattern.
Huge crowds would gather. They would yell and throw things
over the fence or damage the fence until the Feds
came out and force and pushed the crowd back. Then
the Feds would go back inside, the crowd would reform,
(22:19):
and the cycle would repeat itself until there was no
one left. Midway through all of this, Portland Mayor Ted
Wheeler went out and stood in the tear gas with protesters.
On national media, his tear gassing was portrayed as bravely
standing with his city against federal overreach. The people actually
protesting in downtown Portland felt very different. Ted was heckled constantly,
(22:39):
his bodyguard had to keep people away from him, and
as he was leaving, horribly tear gassed activists dumped bags
of spent riot munitions that Wheeler's cops had fired at them.
Onto the ground in front of him. More than anything,
Most protesters seemed to enjoy watching Ted suffer after he
had caused such pain for all of them. Courtney continues
on about that night. So the next night was the
(23:01):
night that Ted came out, and we ended up deciding
like we weren't going to come with Wall of Months
anymore because there had been already like some in fighting
on their pages or whatever, and so um, we just
wanted nothing to do with it anymore at that point
because of the miscommunication or I mean lacks of communication
(23:22):
that there was. And so when Ted came out, that's
when like it's definitely the numbers had multiply multiplied from
Wall of Moms. And again I don't think that they've
prepared anyone for what was going on. I mean I can't,
you can't, like that's not probably as I don't know
how accurate I am with that. But I had still
(23:44):
remained on the Facebook pages and has been like looking
at things and checking to see if anybody was like
communicating what to expect. So then when they showed up,
there was like so many of them, and then Ted
was there and then throughout like the are the speeches
that were going on and things like that. They I
guess somebody that was speaking on the night had told
(24:08):
of to tell the moms to go home because they
didn't want to have a photo opportunity to or opportunity
with Ted, So it wasn't communicated enough to the hundreds
of moms that were there. And then while Ted was out,
that's when they started gassing everybody. Well, apparently they had
(24:29):
told the moms to leave, but there were like hundreds
of moms left behind, had like no nothing. They had
like things from like hydration station and the medics and
like you know, some swimming goggles and you know, paper
masks and things like that they didn't have, like they
weren't prepared obviously for like with full face like gas masks,
(24:50):
the respirators and things like that. And so she basically
had abandoned all of these moms and had posted a
video on the Facebook things saying while of momsinique to leave,
like we're not giving Ted Wheeler the opportunity to take
a photo of us. Immediately after that's when they started gassing.
(25:13):
And there were hundreds of months screening running around Chapman
Square and they're like leader Bed just left them, and
so the rest of the protesters were there like taking
care of the women that were frontlining it, while like
that had dipped out and had gone. And so that's
(25:34):
when it kind of like started. The downfall of Wall
of Moms was because later on people didn't realize because
nobody's like checking their Facebook while they're out there like
waiting to get gasped by the Feds, and like the
next when they get home, they see that like that
had told everyone to leave. Dmitria Hester started taking to
(25:55):
the streets during the FED War. She explains her perspective
on what happened with the all of moms. Um, it
was beautiful. Um it was with the um Wall of Moms.
But um, the person who created Wall of Mom she
was a white privileged um mom and she tried to
(26:16):
use black women to um to pro right on our
backs about promoting herself and for it to be some
kind of promotion and not for Black lives matter. It
was all for a photo shoots and to be popular.
And the moms were so disgusted by how she was
(26:39):
trying to create them instead of being down there to
fight for Black lives matter. And the moms saw that.
So when they saw that she was trying to capitalize
on Black lives matter. Also they were disgusted. So me,
(27:00):
being a part of who I am, I took all
the moms that we're not white supremacy moms trying to
be the saviors and made moms united for Black Lives
um because of the fact that the person betom she
(27:21):
was trying to capitalize on black lives she didn't care
about black lives or the mom. She just wanted to
do it for a photo of She thought she was
gonna come down there and save the day. So it
was beautiful um for me to see so many people
out for black lives better, But it was so disgusting
(27:42):
to see that what we've been fighting for that um
their vitam came in and try to capitalize on that.
But we had to quickly turn that around. The Wall
of Mom's founder Beth Barnum claimed to have the blessings
of the seasoned activist group Don't Shoot Portland's her early
from lings lead Don't Shoot to step in and help
guide both Wall of Moms and Riot Ribs in mid July.
(28:05):
Almost immediately, what had been purely positive stories nose dived
into something more muddled. Riot Ribbs disbanded before a full
transfer of leadership could even happen, and the story of
this is very complicated. There were allegations from of abuse
from a former member of Riot Ribs, one of the
people who helped cook there, and the whole situation left
(28:26):
a lot of people scratching their heads. The center of
the rift seems to have focused around an impostor who
started claiming to represent Riot Ribs in order to draw
donations to himself. This person reportedly threatened several members of
Riot Ribs and several other protesters with a firearm on
multiple occasions. The situation grew so messy and so violent
that the old Riot Ribs staff departed, using the money
(28:49):
that they had raised to buy several vans and go
deliver Ribs to protests around the country. The impostor Riot
Ribs continued to operate and continued to threaten people with
deadly weapons on occasion. The situation with Wall of Moms was,
if not a little more normal than at least involved
less of an armed coup. After Don't Shoot was given
control of the group, they gave Dimitria hester Admin control
(29:10):
of the organization's now massive Facebook page and Don't Shoot.
Portland's Wall of Moms even entered into a joint lawsuit
against the Department of Homeland Security for their use of
excessive force, their violations of free speech, all of the
terrible stuff that they'd been doing. Shortly after this suit
was announced, what had seemed to be a strong united
front fell apart. Wall of Mom's founder Bev Barnum began
(29:32):
filing paperwork to register the group as a nonprofit. This
move set up a series of alarms, leading Don't Shoot
to question if the move was to profit off of
the Black Lives Matter movement. Bev pushed back Her goal,
she said was to protect protesters from federal agents, not
the BLM movement. For her, while of Moms was something
of a business, a line was drawn. Don't Shoot split
(29:53):
from the two week old Wall of Moms and founded
a new black lead group called Moms United for Black Lives,
this one led by Demitria Hester. We know the whole
situation is very confusing, and trust us, no one who
was there at the time had a super great understanding
of what was actually happening with either the Wall of
Moms or with Riot Ribs. It was a confusing time,
and everything that happened there was was very muddled, not
(30:17):
just by all of the different people involved, but by
the constant clouds of tear gas and trauma that enveloped everything.
As the city tried to present a united front against
Trump's agents and the Portland Police Bureau, the growing rifts
internally among protesters threatened to derail resistance altogether. A question
began to loom above the clouds of gas. Had the
fight become more about Donald Trump and his agents than
(30:39):
the movement for Black lives? The answer would become critical
in the unfolding days of the protest. The FED War
reached its conclusion. In the closing day days of July,
(31:01):
Oregon Governor Kate Brown entered talks with the White House
to negotiate reducing the presence of federal troops on the ground.
Things had fallen into yet another pattern. In the afternoon,
a crowd would gather around the Justice Center and court
House to sing and listen to speeches. As night fell,
thousands would surround the court House waiting for the Feds
to inevitably begin shooting people. One of the last really
(31:21):
big FED Nights was July. Over a thousand people marched
all the way from North Portland to the courthouse, where
there were already thousands of people gathered. The site upon
arrival was a familiar one. Moms and yellows standing behind,
people with shields deflecting canisters and pepper balls, leafblowers pushing
gas back behind the fence, and people with heat resistant
gloves tossing canisters over the barrier like a sport. At
(31:53):
this point, Portland was getting very good at counteracting tear gas.
In fact, they'd almost perfected the art. Some Feds got
dumped with pink paint early in the night and they
retreated back into the courthouse, and with the absence of
the Feds, people were more free to tamper with the fence.
Occasionally there would be sparks from an angle grinder slowly
removing supports on the steel barricade. While the Feds were inside,
they'd shoot tear gas from the roof and pepper balls
(32:15):
out of murder holes as people shook the fence back
and forth. Fireworks were launched up at the roof, but
the Feds would not stay on the roof for the
rest of the night, with a mix of vigorous shaking
rope ties and liberal use of angle grinders. Port leaders
finally toppled over the concrete reinforced steel fence. The Feds
were not happy, as they continued to shower the streets
(32:36):
with tear gas fired from the roof. Squads of federal
agents busted out of the courthouse door, launching Stunn grenades
and taking aim within four rifles. Protesters shield walls quickly
surrounded a large portion of the fence that had been
knocked over. Fed shot more and more munitions into the crowd,
and protesters tossed back canisters of tear gas and fireworks
into the federal lines. All the while the red laser
(32:58):
sight on an automatic rifle burned through the clouds of
smoke and gas, swiveling across the chests of people in
the crowd. Eventually, the gas was too much, even for
(33:22):
more than a dozen leafblowers. Some in the crowd of
protesters around the fallen fence had to pull back or suffocate.
At this point, our old friends, the Portland Police Bureau
arrived to declare a riot and warn everyone that tear
gas was about to be used, which it had been
used for hours at that point. As thousands of people
(34:09):
started to retreat west under heavy grenade fire. The FEDS
in the Portland police took the streets to inflict violence
on the sidewalk. Medics treated people with giant gashes on
their face from metal canisters and foam tipped riot rounds.
Multiple people were shot in the face, just like Donovan
Labeland in all those weeks prior. On July twenty nine,
Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced that the White House, DHS
(34:31):
and her office had come to a deal. The next day, July,
the Feds were leaving Portland. Of course, that was something
of a lie. The same day that Kate made her announcement,
Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf contradicted her claim, saying on Twitter,
as I told the governor yesterday, federal law enforcement will
remain in Portland until the violent activity towards our federal
facilities ends. We are not removing any law enforcement while
(34:54):
our facilities and law enforcement remain under attack now. Trump
also challenged Brown's announcement, tweet that she must clear out
the anarchists and agitators and that if she doesn't, the
federal government will do it for her. We will not
be leaving until there is safety cape Brown then clarified
that the federal removal would be instead a phased withdrawal
of federal agents from the Portland downtown area. Their presence
(35:15):
would be replaced by Oregon State Police. Brown tweeted that
our local Oregon State Police officers will be downtown to
protect Oregonians right to free speech and to keep the peace.
The number of Feds were reduced, but they never actually
left Portland. Into August, there were still hundreds of additional
federal agents from Customs and Borders Patrol, the Federal Protective Service,
(35:36):
and the U S Marshals. One law enforcement official told
op B Oregon Public Broadcasting there has been a small
army in Portland, and multiple law enforcement sources told op
B that they expected additional federal forces to remain in
the city up and through the general election, with the
DHS officials saying to O p B, my guess is
that the protest climate isn't going to change much between
(35:57):
now and the election. The department is reluctant to wrought
down drastically in a way that would leave us vulnerable.
All the Feds really did was become less visible. They
did temporarily stop responding to protesters, leaving that job to
the Oregon State Police and the Portland police, but they
were still in town, and smaller groups of Portland protesters
would occasionally meet these Feds whenever a protest was held
at the local ice facility. The night of July was
(36:21):
the first night without tear gas and weeks with both
FEDS and Oregon State Police just watching from inside the courthouse.
This convinced many exhausted Portland's that the Feds had actually left,
and the following days numbers started to dwindle. The mass
of liberals that assembled to fight off Trump's Feds called
the effort of victory, putting their newly acquired gas masks
in the closet and moving on. This turn of events
(36:43):
was predictable for some of the more seasoned activists. Here's coolca.
I saw so many patterns I saw, and Sandy Rock
has been repeated not just here but in other pipeline
movements and in other other movements. And I thought the
exact same same thing happening in Portland. And so I
was telling how I kept saying that it's going to
(37:04):
turn it into burning Man in like ten more days,
and and then it kind of was a little bit
circusy for a while. But it sucks that, um that
all the you know, mainstream Americans or mainstream people in
the United States thought it was just the Feds doing
that to us, and if we just get rid of
the feeds, everything will be fine. But they didn't get
(37:25):
rid of the FITS. They only got rid of that unit.
The rest of the FITS stayed, and we're still suffering
the same amount of the same amount of violence. It's
just not covered. And and it was also disgusting to
me because, um, you know, there were all these um,
you know, hearings about it and and press about it,
(37:48):
about this extreme violence from these federal lobsters. But we were,
like Portland's police were using the exact same tactics and
violence on us. You know, for years they've in doing
that same thing. The disappearance of the liberal majority suggested
that many who showed up for the Fed War were
more interested in standing up against Trump than four black lives.
(38:10):
Olivia Cutty Smith, co chair of the Portland d s A,
gives her feelings on the subject. I mean, it's like
how we see a lot of other struggles that because
Trump is the face of it, Uh, liberals will turn
out to protest these things in ways that they wouldn't before. Um,
you know, keeping kids in cages at the border. The
(38:33):
vomited that. UM. I think that it's actually beneficial to
our movement that Trump is now so visibly violence and hateful,
because it's it takes the mask off UM and it
radicalizes a lot of people. UM. I think that. Yeah,
(38:57):
we saw an incredible amount of people. UM, Mom's dad
labor and amazing labor contingent showed up to protests against
the federal officers being here. Um because Trump sent them.
I mean Obama sent federal officers to Baltimore to fergusons
the Standing Rock. We did not see this same sort
of mobilization from liberals that we are now seeing because
(39:20):
it was Trump. The Fed War was a tremendous story
of tragedy and hope. Thousands of liberal moderates took to
the streets in a semi militant way for the first time.
Huge numbers of people were directly exposed to the concept
of mutual aid and got a glimpse of the power
that thousands of assembled human beings can hold. But most
of that power and potential disappeared when the Feds did
(39:42):
the spectacle of federal violence, the military body armor and
the tear gas clouds, the size of buildings that all
overshadowed the original purpose of the BLM movement. But it
was not all as hopeless as it might seem. For
every protester who stopped going out because the Feds left,
there was another person who had grown more commit into
the cause than ever before. Many of them were only
(40:02):
halted and continuing to show up due to physical injury
or emotional trauma. The end of the Fed war would
bring the last of Portland's truly massive twenty twenty protests,
but it did not mark the end of the uprising.
For Portland's committed activists, the fight was far from over.
Uh where the grand pops who couldn't fathom the obamasist,
(40:25):
I don't hate America just to me, and she keeps
a promisess looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide
dejah pu what my people post to do go to
schools named after the clan founder were around town? Is
I don't see why we're frowning Native American students forced
to learn about when o'para Sarah? How is that fair? Bro?
Some Euros unsung in some monster's get monuments built for them.
(40:49):
But ain't be all a little bit of monster. We
crug you
A year before his death, and one of his most
revered speeches, Martin Luther King Jr. Named three main evils
plaguing America racism, poverty, and war. Decades later, the fight
for Black Lives unfolded into Portland streets in a fashion
few could have imagined, transforming small city blocks into daily
battle grounds. As the fed wars continued, protesters, fortified numbers
(00:21):
swelt in Portland grabbed the nation's attention. Out of state
media flew into town searching for juicy headlines. Likewise, a
network of opportunists live streamers traveled to Portland, hoping to
capture what many activists dubbed riot porn video of police gassing, snatching, rushing, beating, berating,
and arresting Portlanders. And alongside all this less obvious but
(00:43):
much more impressive, an infrastructure of resistance began to grow. Angry,
chanting signs and tearful demands were augmented by mutual aid.
More than a month then, Portlanders learned that if they
were going to last against the paramilitaries of both the
president and the mayor, they were going to have to
take better care of each other. For the cops, things
had gotten pretty routine at this point, stop criminal activity,
(01:05):
protect property, but federal escalation begged the question would Portland's
back down? Despite grievous bodily harm, unmarked federal snatch fans,
and overwhelming use of riot munitions, Portlanders continued to fill
the streets past the fiftieth straight day of protests, and
the answer to the question will Portland back down became
increasingly clear. No, here's my colleague in getting exposed to
(01:36):
chemical weapons Elaine Kinchen to continue the story. The battle
against Trump's Feds gained Portland nationwide notoriety in the summer
of but many longtime activists on the scene, like Max Smith,
considered the whole fight to be at best something of
a distraction, a fight and fence that wasn't what we
were here for. You know. The fence was like some
(01:57):
ship that kind of it was like to call at
the Grand Theft autos aside mission like this is, this
has nothing to do with what we're supposed to be
doing right now, but we have to complete this to
get back in the game, you know. And it was
really weird, and I think at that moment I really
realized that the distraction was intentional and that this was
(02:18):
all getting just diverted to become like a like a
Trump campaign at you know, he's gonna come through and
support these police unions and this is his big commercial
for it. So it was a very uh, I felt
like it was a frustrating part of the protest because
a it was really a dangerous and people were really
getting hurt and kidnapped and all that kind of weird stuff.
(02:40):
And then on top of that, it wasn't the fight
that I wanted to, you know, to be fighting, but
it was. But it's the fight that brings out a
lot of people. So a very contrasting and confusing time.
For sure. Thousands would attend each night, and the atmosphere
began to resemble a strange nightly festival, ending in the
wee hours of the morning with a halts by federal
(03:00):
officers and clouds of poison gas. A man with a
gas mask and hockey stick showed up one night to
knock canisters away. Teams of people with lacrosse sticks followed.
When lines of federal agents pushed forward, launching gas grenades,
walls of protesters would now regularly toss the rounds back
into and behind the fedlines. As protesters behind them used
(03:20):
leafblowers to direct the gas back at the courthouse, and
squads of medics and the re retreated people as they
rotated in out of the front lines. The Federal Courthouse
had many of the windows of its facade destroyed by
fireworks and projectiles, and the clouds of gas rendered the
bottom seven stories of the building uninhabitable. Assaults on the
fence were an integral part of nightly protests. Erected at
(03:42):
a cost of two hundred thousand dollars and later reinforced
with concrete barriers, it was repeatedly dismantled by protesters and
piled in front of courthouse doors. The city, too wanted
the fence gone. It was blocking a bike lane without permits.
City attorneys sent a cease and desist letter to the
federal government. Portland's City Commissioner, Chloe you Daily, stated the
(04:03):
fence is an abuse of public space and the threat
to the traveling public, and that this illegal action will
not be tolerated in our community. You Daily leveled the
fine of five hundred dollars against the federal government for
every fifteen minutes that the fence remained on city property,
or forty thousand dollars a day. By August, the fines
topped five hundred thousand dollars. Protest regular cramberly describes the
(04:27):
new turn in the protests as resembling a festival. I
think like night is what it made it go from
life this is interesting to like, this is a full
blown night, the actual spectacle um, the actual spectaclog. But
it was huge, and I don't know it was I
(04:52):
about all the stuff having much fun. It was so
much fun, honestly, the nice like it was no there
was some scary traumatic ship that happened, and I was
genuinely scary for my whole last life a couple of times.
But like I don't know, if I tell everybody felt
(05:14):
like a succestival where you also thought cops. Did that
make sense because if you were just like at the
j C, you could see the fact the j C
courtous like el right, ever is you know something? You
know what I mean? You walk by you just send
people do oh? Ship? Is that I was drugs? So
(05:38):
it really felt like a music festival and there was
a lot of fun um you know, I guess it's
also scary the energy and the tension, you know, super
high as a fence. The fence period is like early
fence days were like we're shaking the fence. That specifically
my favorite serious just because everyone which is so I
(05:59):
raid at that point, like why of a fence? And
it came back to like lawnmower or not more sleep flowers.
They came back to leaf blowers and knows what night
I saw like multiple people of circular songs and I
just really loved the enginuity of great type of shield
(06:19):
walls of a great time someone through Uh do a
cheer gap and answer back across. Yeah, Uh, it's gonna
be me talking to my kids in that fifty years.
One of the things that became clear early into the protests,
even before the Feds came, is that if you didn't
have a gas mask, you were going to need one.
COVID had already given the world a bit of a
(06:40):
post apocalyptic feel between the looming danger of the virus
and everyone being behind masks, but the growing number of
respirators that actions accentuated that the immense quantity of gas
that the federal forces used made respirators and gas masks
unnecessary piece of equipment, and as the summer dragged on,
protesters began mobilizing to get respirators into the hands of
all that needed them. Sixteen year old Ariana Moorehead says
(07:04):
that she's got her first gas mask over the summer,
I just died through mutual aid, you know, the community,
bringing everything, everybody together. Um, we probably from Freedom actually
had a couple gas masks donated to them, so that's
where I got mine from. Uh. The helmet I got
from another group by organized with which is our Streets PDX,
(07:27):
And then I forgot working on my goggles from but yeah,
just you know, the community. After a few bouts with
police and right Ring militiaman, her uniform had graduated. Now
every night she went out, she was ready from head
to toe in an outfit she never expected she would need.
The first couple of nights was really bad tear gas
and I'm like, okay, mom, mune system can't do this.
(07:47):
Like I just had milk to save my eyes from
you your gas. But now I had goggles, a helmet,
a gas mask. Uh, and a lot of people have
been wanted to get me a bullet for the but
I haven't gotten one yet, you know, just in case,
because I'm pretty known by a lot of white supremacis.
So it's kind of triggering for me. Um, Like I said,
(08:11):
I've got not sent to my house, like God, We're
not like God like still like I'm gott to be
sent to my house. But I've gotten some through my
go fund me. I've had some sent to my number.
I had to change my number and everything. I've had
some saying over email, social media. It's crazy. So I
just need to be you know, safe at all times.
(08:33):
But yeah, right, it gives like helmet goggles, face masks.
Max Smith describes needing to get better gear as the
violence from federal forces grew more intense. The first thing
was like, oh, ship, I need equipment. I got a
helmet in the face shield and got shot in the
face like a day later. So you know, I saw
(08:53):
on video I was watching a Dre's when he got
hit in the head um with a gas canister. H
at last ready to skull. So I started seeing like, oh,
people are getting hurt out here. I had actually saw
I was his name of Chris the taser face. I
had seen him the day before he got beat and
I was with the buddy of my world that that
(09:13):
guy is huge who was this guy over here? We
were like just talking about how big this guy was.
And the next day I see him on the news
getting his ass bet, you know, and I'm like, wow,
Like they're really beating everybody up out here. And there
were thousands of people out there, and people were like
just being massively, just beat in mass and that's the thing.
And people didn't have masks or anything. We were just
(09:33):
getting tear gas and going to the corner and walking
to sixth Avenue and getting our faces flushed out and
walking back down again. You know, I remember the solid
at Deity being crazy, but I also remember thinking, this
is not what the hell we're here for. Another activist
also describes the process of gearing up. The first night
that I went up to the Justice Center at you know,
(09:56):
the original fence, I had on a her jeans, boots,
a sweatshirt, and a hat. And you know, that went
from that night when it was raining, and then on
my birthday actually, which is June, um my dad texted
(10:16):
me and said that he spotted me on a live
stream because I was wearing like a plaid shirt and
a pair of light colored jeans. And then that was
kind of when it clicked for me. They're like, Okay,
this is why people are consistently wearing black down here,
Like you don't want to be recognizable, even though I've
never you know, thrown anything or let anything on fire,
tagged anything, like, you know, just not being able to
(10:39):
spot someone is you know, it has its values, um
and it went from you know, jeans and a sweatshirt
to needing a respirator and goggles, and then to needing
a vest, a bulletproof vest, helmet, you know, all the
different gear that we've needed to make sure that we
(11:00):
just protect ourselves. It's not about us weaponizing. It's not
about us buying a bunch of guns when we're you know,
to carry around when we're down at the protests. It's
not about that. It's about making sure that we don't
die and then we don't get hurt. And I was
there the night that Donovan was shot, Like I was
(11:22):
the person that ran across the park to go get
the medics. And that was a huge awakening moment, Like
I saw a brain fluid come out of his nose,
you know, like that's a that's a big moment to know, like, Okay,
we should probably make sure that that doesn't happen to
a bunch more of us. Keeping people breathing became integral
to the protesting and at the end of July, as
(11:43):
the gas intensified, Team Raccoon work to get filters to
the protesters that needed them. We got a little bit
of money from mutually donations and we were wondering what
because part cleans are pretty low cost, you know, trash bags,
trash grabbers, doesn't cost a lot of money to maintain that.
(12:05):
So we were wondering, like, what do we do with
this money that will really help our community. And we
were noticing the air quality and Loudsdale and Chapman getting
worse and worse and worse because of the tear gas
and the chemical munitions every night. Even just walking through
there during the day, you wanted to put your respirator on.
At the end of July, so we we're connected to
(12:27):
some researchers who wanted to keep a certain level of anonymity,
and we decided the best way to do that was
through us. We could accept filters from the protest community
and we could give them to the researchers. The researchers
could conduct their studies and the privacy that they want
(12:48):
and we could use mutual aid money to facilitate that.
So that's how it started. UM. We were able to
locally sourced respirators through a local company UM and to start,
I think we got about four cases of filters and
then started getting respirators after the fact to kind of
(13:10):
like both keep people safe and promote like the Filter Exchange.
If you don't have a respirator, now you do. Now
you can participate in the filter Exchange later on, and
then there's another data point for our scientists. So we
were already set up doing the respirators, doing the Filter
Exchange program. We had a lot sitting around and on
(13:33):
the hundred Days and Ventura Park. It was a big
event and I was not there that night, but I
did watch it from the live streams and it was horrifying.
As Trump's troops catapulted Portland into the national spotlight, cameras
descended on the city. For more than a month, the
(13:53):
protests had been covered by a small group of local reporters.
Suddenly the New York Times, the Washington Post, and every
major news network were crowding around the Federal courthouse on
a nightly basis. Right Around the time the Fed War started,
a federal judge passed the temporary Restraining Order banning federal
agents from attacking marked press. Whether this stopped any brutality
(14:13):
is up for debate. The press freedom trackers statistics suggests
the Portland press were assaulted more often than press in
any other city in What the restraining order did was
explode the number of people who went out with cameras
to live stream and film. The sheer number of people
with cameras became an issue for many activists. At times,
it was physically challenging just to maneuver around the courthouse,
(14:34):
so much space was being taken up by people marked press.
All this documentation also caused a problem for protesters taking
a legal direct action against federal agents and property. The
flood of cameras amounted to constant live surveillance from every
conceivable angle. Black block and umbrellas helped to shield people,
but there was no perfect solution. Direct action was hampered.
(14:55):
Midway through the Fed War, The Oragonian, a local paper,
was able to get a journalists inside the Federal courthouse.
They took a picture inside the command center, which featured
a large computer monitor showing numerous live stream feeds of
the protests. This convinced many committed activists that streamers were
their enemy, and the fact that live stream footage was
used in federal charging documents seemed to support that. However,
(15:18):
the matter was not that simple. Early live streams of
police violence had played a major role in getting thousands
of Portlander's out into the streets. Over and over again,
we heard stories from activists who first learned how to
handle tear gas or who were radicalized to start coming
out because they watched streams. Federal law enforcement clearly used
live streams for intelligence as well, but it's also very
(15:38):
possible they made certainly Oregonian took a picture of their
wall of live streams because they saw the streams as
a major avenue by which protesters recruited more numbers and
built public sympathy. Whatever the truth, that Oregonian article convinced
several members of the press to stop live streaming and
to move to more carefully posting short videos of the action.
As a result, live streaming was increasingly done by new
(16:00):
bees who had flooded into Portland's seeking easy cash. The
streamer apocalypse would continue as people brought gimbals and started
plugging their cash app every five minutes on stream. It
should be noted there were also a number of Portlanders
who slapped press onto their helmet in the hope that
they wouldn't get beat up as much, which some might
call a damning indictment of the state's use of force
(16:33):
as the FED war raged on. One local critic was
especially vocal about the optics of the protests. In double
A CP Portland's chapter president, Pastor E. D. Mondane, described
the protests as devolving into white spectacle. In a widely
circulated Washington Post op ed quote from the article what
are Antifa another leftist agitators achieving for the cause of
(16:54):
black equality? The mall of Moms, while perhaps well intentioned,
ends up redirecting attention away from the urgent issue of
murdered black bodies, he stated, before asking Portlanders to vacate
the streets and instead to begin fighting at schools, city councils,
and other governments now. While he also called for the
Feds to leave, Pastor Mondane's call for Portlanders to pull
(17:15):
out of the streets drew the ire of many organizers
on the ground. It also earned Mondane airtime on national
news outlets, which only ended when a lengthy expose later
that fall revealed that he had been alleged of engaging
in sexual, mental, and emotional abuse by nearly a dozen
members of his church. Now since the fourth of July,
one of the regular and most revered sites at the
(17:35):
protests was Riot Ribs, a free pop up barbecue food cart.
Riot Ribbs was so beloved in Portland that even local
politicians who had been negative about the protests were hard
pressed to say a single bad word about them. The
restaurant had started operations the night of July four, thanks
to a former Black panther named Lorenzo, Riot Ribbs quickly
became a large scale operation, feeding protesters and helping the
(17:57):
local homeless population. After a couple of weeks, the operation
expanded into clothing donations, a large medical tent, resume help,
and haircuts. The Ribs made local dining news, and protesters
would often wait in line through clouds of tear gas
to get them. They were pretty darn good. Volunteers cleaned
the park and supplied equipment to protesters and again to
the local house. Was Population Morgan, currently with Team Raccoon,
(18:21):
who volunteered at Riot Ribs describes some of the work
that they would do well. So the park clean itself
m for volunteers was basically just UM show up. We
have trash grabbers. You get to keep a pair of
gardening gloves, UM, so you have something to protect your hands.
We have sanitizer masks, anything that anybody would need, and
(18:42):
that would just focus on picking up litter around the park.
But myself and a couple of UM people that were
doing with Riot Ribs every day we took the the
biggest hits on the bathrooms. UM. Even at one point
UM like during cart cleans, I would have volunteers picking
(19:05):
up litter and picking up trash. But one thing I
would go and do is I would get cat litter
and put cat litter down behind the bathrooms, which is
where people were peeing usually. UM. It was getting to
be a sanitation issue. So what we were doing was
we were putting cat litter down and then scooping it
away when I got used, and then putting fresh litter down.
(19:27):
So myself in a couple of people from Riot Ribs
were really doing the majority of that dirty work UM
and volunteers were UM doing basically litter clean up and
just general maintenance beds, however, had a different view of
the operation well. The rain of tear gas and munition
(19:50):
seemed largely indiscriminate. Volunteers at Riot Ribs were regularly pelted
with rubber bullets and even arrested. An early morning sweep
at Chapman and Loundesdale Squares even saw least booting houseless
people from the respective parks, seizing all of Riot Ribbs equipment,
and arresting nine people, some of whom had helped run
the cart. During the raids, Federal forces would pepper spray
(20:10):
the grills and ruined donated equipment. In response, volunteers would
dutifully take the ruined lit grills and dump them over
the fence around the Federal Courthouse. One night, during a
federal rush, all of the donated medical supplies were sprayed
with mace, as of course, ruined them. Every time Riot
Ribbs was targeted and its crew arrested, its equipment destroyed,
(20:30):
more donations would come in, new people would come over
to volunteer, and new equipment would be you know, provided.
In just a couple of weeks, the effort, which had
started as just a one man operation, had raised more
than three hundred thousand dollars to keep going. But just
as quickly as the love came, there were new questions
about the group's operations. In fact, both Wall of Moms
(20:50):
and Riot Ribs soon faced sharp growing pains as new
money and spotlights of attentions bred creeping suspicion among some
in the activist community, and even doubts about safety. Courtney,
who had started out protesting with Mall of Moms, described
the night out with them that convinced her to quit.
So um. That night, in particular, I know that that
(21:13):
was the first night that actually mom got arrested. There
was one mom in particular that like she got arrested,
but then she also got her head Like I don't
know if they shot her directly in the head, but
that's when she had her head busted open. So throughout
that night I was like, this is just not that,
this is just not right. Like I don't understand they
(21:35):
have like this these Facebook pages and these twitters and
all this kind of stuff to like communicate things with people,
and nothing was communicated in a way for like to
mentally prepare these women when they show us UM. And
so that just throughout the night I was just so
annoyed with all of that, and I was like, you
know what, Like I'm not gonna wear out. Towards the
(21:57):
end of the night, my friends and I actually had
shirts on underneath, and we like literally took our shirts,
our yellow shirts off, and we're like, we're not doing
this anymore. Most fed war nights followed a similar pattern.
Huge crowds would gather. They would yell and throw things
over the fence or damage the fence until the Feds
came out and force and pushed the crowd back. Then
the Feds would go back inside, the crowd would reform,
(22:19):
and the cycle would repeat itself until there was no
one left. Midway through all of this, Portland Mayor Ted
Wheeler went out and stood in the tear gas with protesters.
On national media, his tear gassing was portrayed as bravely
standing with his city against federal overreach. The people actually
protesting in downtown Portland felt very different. Ted was heckled constantly,
(22:39):
his bodyguard had to keep people away from him, and
as he was leaving, horribly tear gassed activists dumped bags
of spent riot munitions that Wheeler's cops had fired at them.
Onto the ground in front of him. More than anything,
Most protesters seemed to enjoy watching Ted suffer after he
had caused such pain for all of them. Courtney continues
on about that night. So the next night was the
(23:01):
night that Ted came out, and we ended up deciding
like we weren't going to come with Wall of Months
anymore because there had been already like some in fighting
on their pages or whatever, and so um, we just
wanted nothing to do with it anymore at that point
because of the miscommunication or I mean lacks of communication
(23:22):
that there was. And so when Ted came out, that's
when like it's definitely the numbers had multiply multiplied from
Wall of Moms. And again I don't think that they've
prepared anyone for what was going on. I mean I can't,
you can't, like that's not probably as I don't know
how accurate I am with that. But I had still
(23:44):
remained on the Facebook pages and has been like looking
at things and checking to see if anybody was like
communicating what to expect. So then when they showed up,
there was like so many of them, and then Ted
was there and then throughout like the are the speeches
that were going on and things like that. They I
guess somebody that was speaking on the night had told
(24:08):
of to tell the moms to go home because they
didn't want to have a photo opportunity to or opportunity
with Ted, So it wasn't communicated enough to the hundreds
of moms that were there. And then while Ted was out,
that's when they started gassing everybody. Well, apparently they had
(24:29):
told the moms to leave, but there were like hundreds
of moms left behind, had like no nothing. They had
like things from like hydration station and the medics and
like you know, some swimming goggles and you know, paper
masks and things like that they didn't have, like they
weren't prepared obviously for like with full face like gas masks,
(24:50):
the respirators and things like that. And so she basically
had abandoned all of these moms and had posted a
video on the Facebook things saying while of momsinique to leave,
like we're not giving Ted Wheeler the opportunity to take
a photo of us. Immediately after that's when they started gassing.
(25:13):
And there were hundreds of months screening running around Chapman
Square and they're like leader Bed just left them, and
so the rest of the protesters were there like taking
care of the women that were frontlining it, while like
that had dipped out and had gone. And so that's
(25:34):
when it kind of like started. The downfall of Wall
of Moms was because later on people didn't realize because
nobody's like checking their Facebook while they're out there like
waiting to get gasped by the Feds, and like the
next when they get home, they see that like that
had told everyone to leave. Dmitria Hester started taking to
(25:55):
the streets during the FED War. She explains her perspective
on what happened with the all of moms. Um, it
was beautiful. Um it was with the um Wall of Moms.
But um, the person who created Wall of Mom she
was a white privileged um mom and she tried to
(26:16):
use black women to um to pro right on our
backs about promoting herself and for it to be some
kind of promotion and not for Black lives matter. It
was all for a photo shoots and to be popular.
And the moms were so disgusted by how she was
(26:39):
trying to create them instead of being down there to
fight for Black lives matter. And the moms saw that.
So when they saw that she was trying to capitalize
on Black lives matter. Also they were disgusted. So me,
(27:00):
being a part of who I am, I took all
the moms that we're not white supremacy moms trying to
be the saviors and made moms united for Black Lives
um because of the fact that the person betom she
(27:21):
was trying to capitalize on black lives she didn't care
about black lives or the mom. She just wanted to
do it for a photo of She thought she was
gonna come down there and save the day. So it
was beautiful um for me to see so many people
out for black lives better, But it was so disgusting
(27:42):
to see that what we've been fighting for that um
their vitam came in and try to capitalize on that.
But we had to quickly turn that around. The Wall
of Mom's founder Beth Barnum claimed to have the blessings
of the seasoned activist group Don't Shoot Portland's her early
from lings lead Don't Shoot to step in and help
guide both Wall of Moms and Riot Ribs in mid July.
(28:05):
Almost immediately, what had been purely positive stories nose dived
into something more muddled. Riot Ribbs disbanded before a full
transfer of leadership could even happen, and the story of
this is very complicated. There were allegations from of abuse
from a former member of Riot Ribs, one of the
people who helped cook there, and the whole situation left
(28:26):
a lot of people scratching their heads. The center of
the rift seems to have focused around an impostor who
started claiming to represent Riot Ribs in order to draw
donations to himself. This person reportedly threatened several members of
Riot Ribs and several other protesters with a firearm on
multiple occasions. The situation grew so messy and so violent
that the old Riot Ribs staff departed, using the money
(28:49):
that they had raised to buy several vans and go
deliver Ribs to protests around the country. The impostor Riot
Ribs continued to operate and continued to threaten people with
deadly weapons on occasion. The situation with Wall of Moms was,
if not a little more normal than at least involved
less of an armed coup. After Don't Shoot was given
control of the group, they gave Dimitria hester Admin control
(29:10):
of the organization's now massive Facebook page and Don't Shoot.
Portland's Wall of Moms even entered into a joint lawsuit
against the Department of Homeland Security for their use of
excessive force, their violations of free speech, all of the
terrible stuff that they'd been doing. Shortly after this suit
was announced, what had seemed to be a strong united
front fell apart. Wall of Mom's founder Bev Barnum began
(29:32):
filing paperwork to register the group as a nonprofit. This
move set up a series of alarms, leading Don't Shoot
to question if the move was to profit off of
the Black Lives Matter movement. Bev pushed back Her goal,
she said was to protect protesters from federal agents, not
the BLM movement. For her, while of Moms was something
of a business, a line was drawn. Don't Shoot split
(29:53):
from the two week old Wall of Moms and founded
a new black lead group called Moms United for Black Lives,
this one led by Demitria Hester. We know the whole
situation is very confusing, and trust us, no one who
was there at the time had a super great understanding
of what was actually happening with either the Wall of
Moms or with Riot Ribs. It was a confusing time,
and everything that happened there was was very muddled, not
(30:17):
just by all of the different people involved, but by
the constant clouds of tear gas and trauma that enveloped everything.
As the city tried to present a united front against
Trump's agents and the Portland Police Bureau, the growing rifts
internally among protesters threatened to derail resistance altogether. A question
began to loom above the clouds of gas. Had the
fight become more about Donald Trump and his agents than
(30:39):
the movement for Black lives? The answer would become critical
in the unfolding days of the protest. The FED War
reached its conclusion. In the closing day days of July,
(31:01):
Oregon Governor Kate Brown entered talks with the White House
to negotiate reducing the presence of federal troops on the ground.
Things had fallen into yet another pattern. In the afternoon,
a crowd would gather around the Justice Center and court
House to sing and listen to speeches. As night fell,
thousands would surround the court House waiting for the Feds
to inevitably begin shooting people. One of the last really
(31:21):
big FED Nights was July. Over a thousand people marched
all the way from North Portland to the courthouse, where
there were already thousands of people gathered. The site upon
arrival was a familiar one. Moms and yellows standing behind,
people with shields deflecting canisters and pepper balls, leafblowers pushing
gas back behind the fence, and people with heat resistant
gloves tossing canisters over the barrier like a sport. At
(31:53):
this point, Portland was getting very good at counteracting tear gas.
In fact, they'd almost perfected the art. Some Feds got
dumped with pink paint early in the night and they
retreated back into the courthouse, and with the absence of
the Feds, people were more free to tamper with the fence.
Occasionally there would be sparks from an angle grinder slowly
removing supports on the steel barricade. While the Feds were inside,
they'd shoot tear gas from the roof and pepper balls
(32:15):
out of murder holes as people shook the fence back
and forth. Fireworks were launched up at the roof, but
the Feds would not stay on the roof for the
rest of the night, with a mix of vigorous shaking
rope ties and liberal use of angle grinders. Port leaders
finally toppled over the concrete reinforced steel fence. The Feds
were not happy, as they continued to shower the streets
(32:36):
with tear gas fired from the roof. Squads of federal
agents busted out of the courthouse door, launching Stunn grenades
and taking aim within four rifles. Protesters shield walls quickly
surrounded a large portion of the fence that had been
knocked over. Fed shot more and more munitions into the crowd,
and protesters tossed back canisters of tear gas and fireworks
into the federal lines. All the while the red laser
(32:58):
sight on an automatic rifle burned through the clouds of
smoke and gas, swiveling across the chests of people in
the crowd. Eventually, the gas was too much, even for
(33:22):
more than a dozen leafblowers. Some in the crowd of
protesters around the fallen fence had to pull back or suffocate.
At this point, our old friends, the Portland Police Bureau
arrived to declare a riot and warn everyone that tear
gas was about to be used, which it had been
used for hours at that point. As thousands of people
(34:09):
started to retreat west under heavy grenade fire. The FEDS
in the Portland police took the streets to inflict violence
on the sidewalk. Medics treated people with giant gashes on
their face from metal canisters and foam tipped riot rounds.
Multiple people were shot in the face, just like Donovan
Labeland in all those weeks prior. On July twenty nine,
Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced that the White House, DHS
(34:31):
and her office had come to a deal. The next day, July,
the Feds were leaving Portland. Of course, that was something
of a lie. The same day that Kate made her announcement,
Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf contradicted her claim, saying on Twitter,
as I told the governor yesterday, federal law enforcement will
remain in Portland until the violent activity towards our federal
facilities ends. We are not removing any law enforcement while
(34:54):
our facilities and law enforcement remain under attack now. Trump
also challenged Brown's announcement, tweet that she must clear out
the anarchists and agitators and that if she doesn't, the
federal government will do it for her. We will not
be leaving until there is safety cape Brown then clarified
that the federal removal would be instead a phased withdrawal
of federal agents from the Portland downtown area. Their presence
(35:15):
would be replaced by Oregon State Police. Brown tweeted that
our local Oregon State Police officers will be downtown to
protect Oregonians right to free speech and to keep the peace.
The number of Feds were reduced, but they never actually
left Portland. Into August, there were still hundreds of additional
federal agents from Customs and Borders Patrol, the Federal Protective Service,
(35:36):
and the U S Marshals. One law enforcement official told
op B Oregon Public Broadcasting there has been a small
army in Portland, and multiple law enforcement sources told op
B that they expected additional federal forces to remain in
the city up and through the general election, with the
DHS officials saying to O p B, my guess is
that the protest climate isn't going to change much between
(35:57):
now and the election. The department is reluctant to wrought
down drastically in a way that would leave us vulnerable.
All the Feds really did was become less visible. They
did temporarily stop responding to protesters, leaving that job to
the Oregon State Police and the Portland police, but they
were still in town, and smaller groups of Portland protesters
would occasionally meet these Feds whenever a protest was held
at the local ice facility. The night of July was
(36:21):
the first night without tear gas and weeks with both
FEDS and Oregon State Police just watching from inside the courthouse.
This convinced many exhausted Portland's that the Feds had actually left,
and the following days numbers started to dwindle. The mass
of liberals that assembled to fight off Trump's Feds called
the effort of victory, putting their newly acquired gas masks
in the closet and moving on. This turn of events
(36:43):
was predictable for some of the more seasoned activists. Here's coolca.
I saw so many patterns I saw, and Sandy Rock
has been repeated not just here but in other pipeline
movements and in other other movements. And I thought the
exact same same thing happening in Portland. And so I
was telling how I kept saying that it's going to
(37:04):
turn it into burning Man in like ten more days,
and and then it kind of was a little bit
circusy for a while. But it sucks that, um that
all the you know, mainstream Americans or mainstream people in
the United States thought it was just the Feds doing
that to us, and if we just get rid of
the feeds, everything will be fine. But they didn't get
(37:25):
rid of the FITS. They only got rid of that unit.
The rest of the FITS stayed, and we're still suffering
the same amount of the same amount of violence. It's
just not covered. And and it was also disgusting to
me because, um, you know, there were all these um,
you know, hearings about it and and press about it,
(37:48):
about this extreme violence from these federal lobsters. But we were,
like Portland's police were using the exact same tactics and
violence on us. You know, for years they've in doing
that same thing. The disappearance of the liberal majority suggested
that many who showed up for the Fed War were
more interested in standing up against Trump than four black lives.
(38:10):
Olivia Cutty Smith, co chair of the Portland d s A,
gives her feelings on the subject. I mean, it's like
how we see a lot of other struggles that because
Trump is the face of it, Uh, liberals will turn
out to protest these things in ways that they wouldn't before. Um,
you know, keeping kids in cages at the border. The
(38:33):
vomited that. UM. I think that it's actually beneficial to
our movement that Trump is now so visibly violence and hateful,
because it's it takes the mask off UM and it
radicalizes a lot of people. UM. I think that. Yeah,
(38:57):
we saw an incredible amount of people. UM, Mom's dad
labor and amazing labor contingent showed up to protests against
the federal officers being here. Um because Trump sent them.
I mean Obama sent federal officers to Baltimore to fergusons
the Standing Rock. We did not see this same sort
of mobilization from liberals that we are now seeing because
(39:20):
it was Trump. The Fed War was a tremendous story
of tragedy and hope. Thousands of liberal moderates took to
the streets in a semi militant way for the first time.
Huge numbers of people were directly exposed to the concept
of mutual aid and got a glimpse of the power
that thousands of assembled human beings can hold. But most
of that power and potential disappeared when the Feds did
(39:42):
the spectacle of federal violence, the military body armor and
the tear gas clouds, the size of buildings that all
overshadowed the original purpose of the BLM movement. But it
was not all as hopeless as it might seem. For
every protester who stopped going out because the Feds left,
there was another person who had grown more commit into
the cause than ever before. Many of them were only
(40:02):
halted and continuing to show up due to physical injury
or emotional trauma. The end of the Fed war would
bring the last of Portland's truly massive twenty twenty protests,
but it did not mark the end of the uprising.
For Portland's committed activists, the fight was far from over.
Uh where the grand pops who couldn't fathom the obamasist,
(40:25):
I don't hate America just to me, and she keeps
a promisess looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide
dejah pu what my people post to do go to
schools named after the clan founder were around town? Is
I don't see why we're frowning Native American students forced
to learn about when o'para Sarah? How is that fair? Bro?
Some Euros unsung in some monster's get monuments built for them.
(40:49):
But ain't be all a little bit of monster. We
crug you
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