November 30, 2020 • 54 mins
New, from Robert Evans and his team: a complete history of the Portland Uprising, aimed at preparing you for the battles ahead.
Link to Series: Uprising: A Guide From Portland
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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Episode Transcript
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I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. At around ten thirty pm on a crowd
of more than a thousand people gathered in North Portland's
(01:52):
Peninsula Park and marched downtown to the Justice Center, headquarters
of the Portland Police Bureau. The direct inspiration for the
march were the murders of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor.
Many in attendance also had a strong desire to express
solidarity with protesters in Minneapolis. That's what brought Chris Wise,
volunteer protest medic out into the streets that first night. Initially,
(02:15):
I came out because as an African American, you know,
it was that that straw that broke the Camel's back
on just like one death too many. We are murdered
by police and other law enforcement agencies at a rate
of three to one when compared to the average white American,
(02:40):
And those numbers get a little funky because you know,
obviously more white people die a year than black people
in police related shootings, but there are also you know,
six times as many white people, ah then black people. Tristan,
another Black Portlander, didn't go out that night, but he
(03:00):
watched everything that happened on the live streams. Honestly, like,
my my first um impression was that it probably wasn't
going to be much, you know what I mean. I
didn't expect it to blow up the way it did.
I kind of felt like because I've I've seen it
happen in the past where you know, there's will be
(03:21):
some kind of like something happening like nationwide or another
city in Portland will kind of like you know, show
up and solidarity for it, and it might become something,
but usually it's kind of like a one off. So
that's kind of what I was expecting, and so I
was pretty surprised to see like how quickly it grew
and then also how like how the police were responding
(03:44):
like in like a very tear guys kind of way.
Mariah is a photo journalist and a lifestyle photographer. She
was out at Peninsula Park for the very start of
the march. Was beginning to you know, something that not
a lot of us new we're going to get into,
you know, but gosh, I remember being at Peninsula Park
(04:04):
and it was really great to see everyone there, and like,
it just reminds me of some uh. I hate that
it's like a routine thing for us, because it's you know,
while we're still fighting, and while we've been fighting so strong.
But you know, when someone gets killed by you know,
via police brutality, everyone meets up. You know, maybe we
protest for a few days and like, you know, quote unquote,
we go back to like normal life. But you know,
(04:25):
we already haven't been a normal life since it's been
a pandemic this whole freaking year. But it was really
beautiful to see all the people and all the signs
and the speeches. The sidewalks bordering Peninsula Park were filled
with different slogans and exhortations written in chalk. One of
the most striking statements was make the moment count As
it turned out, the city of Portland took that to heart.
(04:48):
The crowd at Peninsula Park marched nearly five miles to
downtown Portland. There they merged with a crowd that had
gathered around the Justice Center. The moment both groups met
was powerful. You could taste to the energy in the air.
Portland Black Lives Matter protests had actually started several days
(05:11):
earlier before that mass gathering on the twenty nine, A
handful of activists of color had begun occupying the steps
of the Justice Center immediately after George Floyd's murder. One
of them was Tracy Molina, an indigenous Portland or better
known as Kloska. Well. I remember it wasn't not long
after the George Floyd's story broke. A lot of us
(05:34):
wanted to do something here, but I think most of
the regular organizers kept saying wait, you know, let's wait,
let's wait for this, let's wait for that, and then finally, um,
then Danielle James, I think she's a pretty prominent black
activist in this community and sit up against Patriot Prayer
and Proud Boys and other white supremases for years. Um.
(05:57):
It was kind of a spark for that you know.
She was said like, we shouldn't wait in the night.
Supporter I said, I don't think we should wait either.
I think we should do something now. And so we
ended up the seven ten thirty all meeting at I
and starting to protest there, and then we moved. Um,
sometime after midnight we moved over to the Justice Center
(06:20):
and slept on the steps there and planned to to
occupy it as long as we could. And so we
stayed there and then um there was only maybe like
four of us that slept on the steps, and then
the next day, like at ice, we had about thirty
or forty people. And then the next day, after we
(06:40):
stayed on those steps, I would say there was about
forty or fifty people that showed up in the afternoon
and they did a direct action or we blocked off
the streets and in front of the steps of the
Justice Center, and I think they did it also did
it die. And that night there was also impromptu direct
action or so people some young women sat on sat
(07:04):
in the doorway at the Justice Center and they brought
riot police out for that, and there was at that
time there was only about twenty of us and only
like six people participating in the sit in, but they
still brought riot police out and they were violently removed.
That made the news because one of the women, one
of the women that was hit with the tongue, was
(07:25):
she was actually pregnant, a black woman. And the only
way us the way I know that for sure is
because after she was in the ambulance, she came. I
don't know if she went to the hospital, but after
she was in the ambulance, she returned paperwork from the
and proving that she was pregnant and was, you know,
showing some of the police officers that were still standing around.
(07:46):
But yeah, that's how the first few days went. And
then um, then then we we all, um, we're going
to have a rally at UM in Insula Park. And
then I read to part of the opening and when
I was there, more and more people kipt coming, and
I was surprised. There are so many, I don't know,
(08:09):
maybe a thousand people that there was a lot, there's
a lot of people there. Was surprised, and it just
kept getting bigger and bigger. The now merged crowd, which
numbered at least a couple of thousand people, marched back
to the Justice Center for a few minutes, they stood outside,
chanting George Floyd's name. The police were nowhere to be seen.
(08:30):
While most of the crowd stood out in the street,
A hundred or so people gathered in front of the
windows of the Justice Center. They started spray painting slogans
on the glass. A few people peeed on the doorway,
someone lit a small fire out in front, and then
quite suddenly one person broke a window. The first broken
(08:52):
windows set off a frenzy, and soon people were using
their feet, rocks, and any tools they could find to
shatter every exposed piece of glass on the building. With
the windows shattered, protesters ran into the Justice Center, ransacking
police offices and setting small fires. The Portland police arrived
a little bit later and began showering the crowd with
tear gas and flash band grenades. Though no one knew
(09:18):
it at the time, events had just been set into
motion that would lead to more than a hundred consecutive
knights of protests and tear gas. The Portland Uprising had begun.
We should probably start by talking a bit about the
(09:38):
definition of a riot. Legally, anything the cops declare a
riot is a riot. May twenty nine is generally referred
to as Riot Knight, because after the crowd was dispersed
from the Justice Center, hundreds of people ran through the
streets of Portland's luxury shopping district, smashing up high end
chain stores while the police chased after them. It certainly
felt like a riot, but a number of of folks
(10:00):
that we interviewed actually disagreed. Alan Kessler, a Portland based lawyer,
pushed back on that description. I guess I disagree that
even the first night was a real riot. I mean,
there were some shops scott Burg Old there were there
were something stolen. Um, there was a fire in the
(10:23):
in the I j c um. I'm not sure that that.
I don't I don't know the intent there right Like
looking at the fire, looking at the Piddie fire as
I've seen, I don't know if anybody means to burn
the buildings down or to Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Uh,
it didn't seem like it. It doesn't seem it. If
(10:45):
I were going to burn down the building, I would
use a hell of a lot more accelerant. Then it
seems like people are using. Um. I don't know. Uh.
I was struck by even on even on that night
I was struck by uh, excuse me, Oh yeah, that
(11:09):
was a lot more context. Yeah, please don't when Kessler says, yeah,
I'm trusting you, all the freedoms in your hands straight
to Andy. So Um. Now, even that night I was
(11:30):
struck by Commissioner Fritz, who I have absolutely no love for, uh,
who seemed just horrified that that goocy got robbed and
uh and I didn't seem able to put that in
any kind of context. Um, Yeah, I don't. I don't.
I didn't. I didn't see that as a riot. I
(11:51):
didn't think that people, uh, I wanted to just break shit.
I think even then it was it was still political.
It was it was a protest and it you know,
I wouldn't recommend that people break stuff, for steal stuff,
for set stuff on fire. But I understood the upset,
and I, yeah, I just didn't see in those terms. Um,
(12:14):
it didn't seem like. I don't remember that anybody died.
I'm sure somebody was hurt, but I don't remember that
it was particularly severe that evening, Like, I don't. I
don't remember that as a as a violent knight. I
remember it as a night of property damage. Yeah, I uh, yeah,
And I wasn't making a legal distinct. There was more
(12:35):
of a moral argument, like I think people put a
moral import behind riot and it I don't think it
was that. I don't think it was I don't think
it was a breakdown in civilization. I think it was
a extremely heartfelt frustration with a system that wasn't meeting
(12:56):
people's needs. Max Smith, a Portland based act to best
in live streamer, called it a riot light. I called
like a riot light that night. I think I was like,
that seems like a little kind of a riot light.
They broke a couple of windows, you know, they sacked
the Apple Store. Of course, you know, some opera students
are gonna, you know, take that opportunity if something is,
if things are getting broken, someone's gonna rob the Apple Store.
(13:18):
It's it's it's dumb because you're gonna get caught, but
go ahead and rob the Apple Store. But you know,
that's kind of what I thought of it, Like some
stuff is gonna get broken. That's what happened. And I
actually thought the police, you know, I thought that and
actually thought there was going to be some change, which
we saw a couple of things, like they started talking
about you know, canceling the the DVRT and the cops
(13:39):
in schools and things like that, and uh and since then,
it's it's it's been fairly tame, and we haven't seen
a whole lot of progress, so, you know, I felt
like it worked a little bit. The point Mac made
is one that a lot of activists would agree with.
Property damage, they argue is not nearly in the same
moral realm is injuring your killing human beings. Mac himself
(14:02):
was not out on the twenty nine, but he was
most directly inspired to start protesting because of something else
that happened that day. Hundreds of miles south of Portland
in San Jose, California, there was a guy named Derek
Sanderland in San Jose and he was protesting before you know,
he was purchasing against the murder of George Floyd in
(14:25):
solidarity with Minneapolis. And I remember waking up and getting
on my phone and kind of just flicking through things
and seeing that this man had been shot in the
testicles with a rubber bullet and it like required like
emergency surgery and he's probably never gonna have kids. And
(14:48):
I'm looking at this dude and he's like twenty seven
years old. He's like a black dude. He's got dreads,
he wears glasses, he's got a scrappy gas beard like mine,
you know. And I'm looking at this guy like a
man that would have been me. And then I keep
reading and he was like he was like a teacher.
He taught the police about like not targeting people or whatever,
(15:11):
like you know, de escalation tactics or whatever. And I'm like,
you're telling me they shot a dude that that trains them,
Like this has got to be one of the craziest
things I've ever heard in my life. And he could
have died from this, you know, And that just made
me so mad. And I was like, it's even if
it wasn't you know, it wasn't me, It could have
(15:33):
been me, if I would have been out there, And
so I was just like, that's insane, Like this should
not be a thing at all. This shouldn't this just
this can't be really. Many protesters and some journalists will
argue that most of the riots Portland's saw this summer,
we're not cases of protesters rioting, but we're instead cop riots.
(15:54):
After all, if people breaking windows and louding an Apple
Store is a riot, then police driving into ouds, throwing
grenades at random and tear gas and hundreds of innocent
motorists probably counts as a riot, too righted riot We
crooked when P. T. Barnum's Great American Museum burned to
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the ground in eighteen sixty five, what rose from its
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you might ask, Well, it's a podcast where I'm going
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(18:30):
that could be anything. Every week I will be in
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We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books,
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(18:52):
some music or a comedy side something that I really
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as well. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The Roxanay Agenda,
The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams, every Tuesday on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcast. May was not the first night of
(19:25):
Portland's Bill and protests, but it was the night that
set the tone for the next hundred plus nights. There
was tear gas, flash bangs, armored cops fighting demonstrators who
were armed with in the beginning, cardboard signs and water bottles. Now,
we're going to cover a lot of ground in this series,
and it's probably best to kick this off by giving
everyone an overview of what exactly happened in Portland from
(19:46):
late May to the end of September, because the mainstream
media only really showed a portion of this story. Late
on the night of the twenty nine, the people of
Portland learned that their mayor, Ted Wheeler had actually been
out of town visiting his mother. His first response to
what had happened was a tweet that started with the
word enough in all caps and ended with a promise
that he was coming back now now was also in
(20:09):
all caps. City Commissioner joe Anne Hardesty, who was acting
president in the mayor's absence, declared a state of emergency
and enacted a curfew from eight pm until six am.
At this point, Portland was in the same boat as
many other American cities, including New York and Los Angeles.
In Portland, the curfew was not enough to clamp down
on unrest, quite the opposite. In fact, local activists like
(20:31):
d s A member Olivia Cutty Smith were inspired. I
just thought that it was it was not like anything
I've ever seen before. I've never seen that level of
um destruction happened at a protest before. It was exciting.
I was like, we're going to start. This is huge,
this is going to take off all across the country.
Its happening in Portland, it's having in Minneapolis, like this
(20:54):
is the start of a revolution. Um, you know, and
even knowing that that might not be true, that that's
the feeling that I had. That night, several thousand people
gathered again and on the thirty feet nearly ten thousand
Portlanders marched to the Justice Center. We actually sort of
organized the protests behind the scenes um and got like
(21:16):
ten thousand people across the bridge with this offer UM.
And yeah, it was just it felt like the sky
was a limit at that point, Like I can't believe
there are ten thousand people showing up every single night,
like this has never happened before. We have to turn
this into something. Both times police eventually dispersed the crowd
(21:38):
with indiscriminate tear gas use in liberal clubbing with truncheons.
Thousands of protesters were gassed, but so were hundreds of
motorists who happened to be out on city streets and
dozens of houseless individuals who were gassed in their tents
for no apparent reason. The curfew was rescinded in early June.
It clearly hadn't helped. Next, the city began to build
what would become a massive fence around the Justice Center.
(22:02):
The protest movement started to splinter between a large group
of demonstrators who engaged in daily marches that avoided police contact,
and a smaller group who repeatedly confronted police at the fence.
At first, Portland police would gas and grenade any group
of people that drew close to the fence, along with
any motorists who happened to be driving nearby. Protesters started
calling at the sacred fence because law enforcements seemed to
(22:24):
value it more than the physical well being of Portlanders.
The first fence war between protesters and police lasted most
of June. There were occasional protests at other police buildings
like the p p A, headquarters of the Portland Police Union,
and the North Precinct. Smaller groups of activists also engaged
in what was briefly a nationwide practice of pulling down
statues of famous white supremacists. On June eighteenth, a small
(22:48):
number of mostly teenage Portlander's toppled a statue of George Washington.
This prompted President Trump to create an executive order to
protect statues, monuments, and federal property. He sent dozens of
federal age into Portland to enforce this new order. The
first time the Feds made a large appearance was on
July four. That night was a turning point for a
number of reasons, after weeks of declining numbers. More than
(23:11):
a thousand Portlanders showed up outside the Justice Center to
shoot commercial grade fireworks at its windows. They fired a
few with the adjacent Federal courthouse as well. The police
l rad a car mounted loudspeaker started warning everyone not
to shoot the courthouse, so, of course, the entire crowd
swarmed around the building and continued shooting it with fireworks. Suddenly,
wooden hatches opened up on the front of the fortress
(23:33):
like building, and the federal agents inside began tossing out
tear gas grenades and shooting impact munitions into the crowd.
For a few minutes, the scene resembled a cross between
an acid trip in a medieval siege, with protesters bombarding
the courthouse with fireworks while the Feds inside pumped out
gas and riot munitions. Yeah, Friday night, everybody. Eventually the
(23:58):
fight spilled out into the street, and for several hours,
Portland Police and Department of Homeland Security agents engaged in
a running battle with hundreds of protesters. Fireworks provided the
activists with their first weapon that could disrupt a police
riot line, while law enforcement responded by escalating physical violence
even further. I was walking up from the j C
Up towards the park blocks, and there was a person
(24:21):
who was essentially having an asthma attack and a cloud
of tear gas, and they had one buddy with them,
and it was just such an impossible project for that
one buddy to sort of haul them out of tear
gas while they're having an asthma attack and like a
panic attack and really having her off time. Everything got
more serious after the fourth the federal agents started responding
(24:41):
to protests downtown more often than the Portland Police Bureau.
A week later, federal agents almost killed a protester named
Donovan Labella by shooting him in the forehead with a
less lethal round. Slowly, the mainstream media began to realize
that something strange and terrifying was happening. In Portland. The
national interest was ly peaked a few days later when
camo clad Feds in a rental van started kidnapping people
(25:04):
off the streets. In early July, the fourth accepted most
nightly protests only numbered a few dozen to a hundred
or so protesters, but national media and the specter of
federal snatch fans panicked Portland's liberal majority. By mid late July,
thousands upon thousands of protesters were showing up in the
street every night. The time between July thirty, dubbed the
(25:27):
Fed War, is the stuff most Americans saw from Portland
in the news. Moms and dad's, veterans, doctors, chefs, and
students gathering in front of the Federal courthouse, chanting demands,
banging on doors, setting fires, ripping off plywood covering the windows,
and repeatedly tearing down that massive fence. Whenever the federal
agents came out, a shield wall of protesters would form,
(25:48):
deflecting metal tear gas canisters and flashbags up into the air.
People armed with leafblowers directed gas back at the Feds.
In response, the Feds started using experimental new weapons, including
a pest a side sprayer, Jerry rigged di spew poison gas,
seeing the police attack people, especially the FEDS when the
Feds came, when they came started attacking people like like
(26:10):
in the smoke. After I got like a gas mask
and started going into the smoke, you know, and seeing
what was going on in there, I was pretty I
was pretty uh disturbed by seeing the way that they
were like beating people under the under the cover of
tear gas. That was, um, that was a surprise for me.
(26:31):
I'd heard people saying, I've got my ask kicked in there,
but I didn't know it was going down like that.
As July came and went, so did the visible federal
presence downtown. Most of the more liberal types packed it up,
calling the protests a success. But while the days of
walls of camouflaged Fed's head temporarily ended despite reports of
their withdrawal, federal presence in Portland lingered on for weeks.
(26:52):
Dedicated activists were not fooled by the faux withdrawal. They
knew the work was far from over. Throughout August, protesters
gathered in front of police precincts, city buildings in Portland's
ice facility. Sometimes they engaged in property damage, but more
often they just stood in the street yelling at the
cops until they were inevitably charged by riot lines. It
was in August that Portland first saw right wing counter protests,
(27:15):
generally framed as back the Blue or MAGA gatherings. Sometimes
these escalated into street brawls between Proud Boys and left
wing activists. On several occasions, Proud Boys and other right
wing vigilantes through home made explosives and shot paintball guns
into crowds. Live rounds were even fired into the air
and into crowds. The escalation continued until a Trump caravan
(27:37):
of vehicles waving flags drove through Portland in late August.
Several Trump supporters fired paintball guns and mace into the
crowds as they drove by. The whole awful day ended
with a member of the right wing street gang Patriot Prayer,
being shot and killed by a white BLM activist after
charging him with a can of mace. Throughout all this,
Portland's BLM marches occurred every single night right up an
(28:00):
till late September, when a series of devastating wildfires overwhelmed
Oregon and blanketed the city of Portland in a thick
haze of poison, the nightly marches were halted, and the
various mutual aid organizations that had started up to service
the protests turned their efforts to meeting the needs of evacuees. Meanwhile,
right wing activists blamed the fires on Antifa and spent
(28:20):
several days setting up a legal arm checkpoints and threatening
people with rifles. When the rains came in the air cleared,
the protests started up again. There were no longer nightly affairs,
but they've remained regular occurrences ever since. And all of
this begs the question why Portland, all fifty U s
States hosted Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of
(28:42):
Many cities saw mass demonstrations, and while nine of BLM
protests were considered peaceful, numerous cities saw rioting, exchanges of gunfire,
and even had buildings burnt down. But no city in
the United States had as many continuous nights of protests
as Portland. No city saw thousands of its citizens lay
a long siege of a federal courthouse, no city experienced
(29:03):
a thousand persons street fight between right and left wing demonstrators.
Perhaps most importantly, no city earned the ire of President
Donald Trump in the same way as Portland. It seems
bizarre that this all would happen in Portland, a small
city of about six hundred and fifty three thousand people.
How did it grow to become one of the most
active front lines in a national battle for black lives
(29:25):
and against white supremacy. It actually makes a lot of
sense once you scratch beneath the surface a bit. Here's
Tristan again. Oregon was kind of um I found it
as like something of like a white utopia, you know,
like a place for the the white man to really
like find his destiny right and like conquer this you know,
(29:46):
this continent. And I think that's just kind of like
it's just like baked into the culture here where even
like even like the love of the outdoors isn't like
isn't like a love of um like keep like keeping
(30:08):
the environment like healthy and like bounce. It's just like
a very like commodified like we deserve this, you know,
we deserve to live in this beautiful place, and we're
the only ones who know how to take care of it.
And obviously that's like mellowed out a little bit over
the you know, decades. But I think that's still basically
like what what like Um, it's like the undercurrent, you know,
(30:36):
that's like behind most of what cosan in Oregon. You
can learn a lot of what you need to know
about Oregon's history of racism by studying one of the
state's founders, Peter Hardman Burnett. As a young man in Tennessee,
he murdered a black person with a booby trap is
revenge for petty theft. In three he helped organize the
first great wagon train of white people that headed to
(30:58):
the Oregon Territory. He was elected to the Provisional Legislature
and served as the territory's first Supreme Court justice. In
eighteen forty four, he worked to pass what became known
as Burnett's Lash Law. This stated that all black people
were required to leave Oregon under penalty of being whipped
in public not less than twenty or more than thirty
nine stripes. This punishment was to be repeated every six
(31:20):
months until they moved. The law did include a grace
period three years for black women and two years for
black men. Burnett also pushed to ban Chinese immigration into Oregon.
While there are no documented instances of the Lash laws
being used. It's set a clear tone for the state.
Burnett's lash law reflected the values of the first white
people who moved to Oregon. They were abolitionists and that
(31:43):
they hated slavery, but they only hated slavery because they
were revolted by the thought of living near black people.
In eighteen forty eight, the Oregon Territorial government passed a
law that banned any quote negro or mulatto from living
in Oregon. In eighteen fifty, the Oregon Donation Land Act
gave whites and half breed Indians their quote, six hundred
(32:03):
and fifty acres of land from the government. All other
people of color were banned from the land grants. Oregon
was finally made a state in February eighteen fifty nine.
Under its constitution, quote, no free negro or mulatto not
residing in this state at the time of the adoption
of this Constitution shall ever come reside or be within
(32:24):
this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract,
or maintain any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall
provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers
of all such free negroes and mulatto's and for their
effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of
persons who shall bring them into the state or employer
harbor them therein. Oregon remains the only state in the
(32:47):
Union that ever banned black people from living there. Now
things have gotten better since eighteen fifty nine, but better
is a low bar. In Portland remains the whitest metropolitan
area in the United States. Seventy of the population is white,
less than six is black. Today, Portland's owns the distinction
as one of the most gentrified cities in the United States.
(33:09):
Oregon continues to report some of the worst graduation rates
for black students in the nation, and the wealth gap
between white and black oregon Ians over the last fifty
years has whitened, not shrunk. I moved to Portland like
like five and a half six years ago, I think,
and from where I definitely I did from northern California
(33:31):
Bay Area. Um, and I didn't really I didn't have
a idea of what the city was per se, Like
I've never seen an episode of port Land here, for instance.
I just kind of moved up here that would be
closed a family and and yeah, and when I when
(33:51):
I kind of first got here, it was like, you
know that hang out with a bunch of hippies, a
bunch of people who loved trees and too right bikes
and go hiking, and it's like, oh, they love the
environment and they love progressive you know politics, and you know,
and everything's just chill within. Like the longer I stayed here,
the facade started to like fall away, and and it's
(34:17):
I mean like I've been here for you know, almost
six years now, and I still I don't quite know
what to make of it still, you know, but like recently, um,
like with the passage of or like with the most
recent election, you know, like the local measures that passed
and didn't pass. It's like like Oregon loves to have
(34:43):
a black friend. That's what they like. They like to
have somebody they can point to and be like, look,
I'm not racist, but they don't. They're not interested in
actually like challenging the like white supremacists like power structures
that actually like benefit them and and if you like,
(35:05):
if you agitate them on that, they just you know,
that's that's when like the Pacific Northwest, like passive aggressiveness
like kicks in and they just like kind of like
try to ignore you, but secually they're totally fucking piste
off that you dare to like insinuate their racist um.
(35:26):
But yeah, that's like it's a really complicated thing and
I still quite haven't figured out like what makes white
people take here, but it's, you know, it's messy. Another
activist we interviewed, Courtney, is an indigenous Hawaiian person who
moved to Oregon when she was seventeen. She recalls being
stunned by how white her school was. Ended up going
(35:47):
to Oregon City High School, which was like insane. I
was the only non Hispanic person that was that that school. UM,
and nobody talked to me through really long time, and
I just was kind of like it was a culture
shock because there were so many white people that I
had never seen this many white people in my entire
(36:10):
life because everyone in hahaitis like mixed races, the majority
of them are Asian or Polynesian. So um, I definitely
was nobody really talked to me for a while, and
I kind of like found my little niche of people
to hang out with. UM. But yeah, like just even
(36:30):
living in that area, I would get a lot of
weird looks and um yeah, just not the most friendly
people to to be around. Um yeah, that's basically it's
just a culture shock to just be how white organ is.
I just I didn't expect it at all. I didn't
(36:52):
and I was like, I knew that they were going
to be like Hispanic people, but I just didn't realize that.
Um I thought maybe I would see more like black people.
And especially living in a city, you know, when you're
from what you you're like Sportland is just like a
major city in the United States, and then coming here
and not really seeing the mix of cultures was just
(37:15):
kind of shocking. Tristan described the racism in Portland as
unique in a subtle way. It's just it's very it's
very covert or you know, it tries to be very covert.
Um and it's very like like well, part part of
what it is is that for a very long time now,
there's barely been any people of co here at all. Like,
(37:39):
you know, it's one of the widest states in the country.
It's why it's major city in the country, and so like,
to a certain extent, people are I don't actually know
what like like what like a microaggression is or what
that would be like, you know, I had to experience um,
(38:02):
like just like a year, year and a half ago,
maybe I was out with this group um these like
forest offender type people. Every year they go out post
this big camp out and you know, like go out
into the woods and do like surveys and stuff like that,
try to collect data they can use to to fight
(38:23):
temper companies and ship and like someone us drop the
N word like there's five ft for me, there's like
in casual conversation, and then I had to like address
the camp like at breakfast, and I was like, okay,
so just just don't don't say that word. Like there's
(38:45):
no like like like even if you're just telling a
story that there's no appropriate context for a white person
to say that. And and that's one of the reasons
why I don't go to those fucking campouts anymo. But
like it's like that, it's like they just don't they
haven't been around black people or people of color in general,
(39:06):
and they just don't know what to do. And of course,
the racism that pervades Portland's is present in the Portland
Police Bureau. Despite black people making up again less than
six percent of the population. Portland police use force on
black people more often than people of any other race.
Portland police are five to fourteen times more likely to
(39:27):
shoot impact munitions at and to forcibly restrain black residents.
At one point in the late sixties, black Portlander's accounted
for nearly half of p PBS arrests. Portland's black community
has been fighting against this kind of racist violence for decades.
Here's Max Meth again for me. The battle with the
police began, you know, in the hip hop field. Um.
(39:50):
There was an event here in Portland that happened maybe
six or seven years ago. UM. That happened at a
venue called the Blue Monk, And it was a pretty deal.
And I was there and I had friends who were
performing at the show, and the police essentially came under
the guise of a capacity violation and brought like a
seven cars and twenty something officers and shut the whole
(40:14):
street of Belmont down And and that bar eventually actually
ended up a closing shortly after that. Um, And it
was a huge deal. They made a huge deal about
a small thing, and it went like into like national news.
And even prior to that, we had been really combating
(40:35):
the efforts of the police to kind of shut down
or stifle hip hop events in the city. Every time
we wanted to have a hip hop event, it became like,
you know, like a world war um, to the point
that it ended up actually being a protest about the
hip hop community here. And so that was a fight
that we had as far as hip hop music and clubs,
as far as hip hop events, as far as live music. Um.
(40:59):
They really just used the city's resources that the police,
the fire marshals and the o l c C To
really like shut down hip hop and and and really
any black lead events. Lawyer Allan Kessler has done a
lot of digging into the early history of the Portland police.
His research has revealed a century long history of Portland's
(41:20):
police involvement with hate groups, most particularly the Ku Klux Klan.
I think it was last Memorial that I spent the
whole weekend in the Oregonian Archives basically living through World
War two. It wasn't fun, uh and it's outrageous, Like
the clan was on there was a front page column
(41:41):
talked to a klansman every day for like a week, uh,
and then every other day they had the clan on
the front page anyway, but that you know, that was like, um,
it was, yeah, it was incredible. Um. During the war, Uh,
basically everybody, every adult white dude had a little star badge.
(42:04):
They the police would basically deputize anybody or people just
don't be badges made, so everybody in town had a badge.
There were lots of articles in that time frame about um,
fake police officer pulls over so and so and they sue.
In ninety three, a Portland Telegram article reported that the
Portland Police Bureau was quote full to the brink with klansmen.
(42:25):
The police bureau actually deputized a hundred klansmen handpicked by
the local Grand Dragon and designated them Portland Police vigilantes.
This was before the p p A existed, but the
tradition lives on. In two thousand ten, Portland police officer
Mark Krueger was suspended for erecting a memorial to five
deceased Nazi soldiers on city property. The p p A
(42:47):
successfully sued for him to be reinstated and given an apology.
When he quit in early he was the highest paid
police officer on the force. I asked Maria, a lifelong
Portland resident, her earliest memory of the police was here's
what she told me. I would say it was when
I was a child. Honestly, Um, I've had some some
(43:10):
family stuff and a family member have to go to
way to to prison. So I remember some like vaguely
stuff like remember then as far as like police brutality wise. Um,
the very first like murder I remember was Kindred James. Um,
that will happen like a mile from my house. And
I want to say I was like ten at the time.
Kindred James was a twenty one year old black mother
(43:31):
of two. She was killed under suspicious circumstances during a
traffic stop. Her killer, officer, Scott McCallister, fired a single
shot when James attempted to drive away from the traffic
stop after the motion of the vehicle caused him to fall.
A number of the statements he made in court were
inconsistent with physical evidence required from the shooting, and we
don't really know exactly what happened. Among other things, the
(43:55):
police argued in court that Portland police were trained to
quote shoot as they fall aslee f the police is
how I grew up. My dad is a huge like
Tupac fan, so like I would grow up on hearing
tupac lyrics all the time, goal threw the police and everything.
So yeah, I know, screw yeah, I know. That's how
I like grew up. Yeah, um is to like not
(44:17):
interact with them. Yeah, I've I've grown up. You know
how a lot of us, you know, people who are black,
feel like, you know, when we're being followed, profiled all that.
I mean, I got profiled to dance in a store
like it's it's still happened. It's been going on since
a kid. I don't know if I don't know when
it will stop. That you know, still goes on. Officer
McCallister was acquitted in federal court. He got to keep
(44:38):
his job, but even if he had been fired for
the shooting, the firing might not have stuck. Nationwide, of
police officers fired from his conductor reinstated because of union
mandated appeals over the years, this has included an officer
who challenged a handcuffed man to a fist fight for
his freedom, and a copper sexually assaulted a young woman
in his patrol car. In any cities, the number of
(45:01):
police reinstated by union appeals is much higher than of
fired san Antonio officers are reinstated because of union appeals.
The number is six for Philly cops and for Minneapolis cops.
This is part of why the people of Minneapolis burnt
the Third Precinct to the ground after George Floyd's murder.
(45:22):
They knew from experience that it was extremely likely Derek Chauvin,
Floyd's killer, would not just avoid prison, but would soon
be back on the street with a badge. In fact,
as soon as Derek Chauvin and the other officers responsible
for George Floyd's death were fired, police union head Bob
Kroll started fighting to have them reinstated. He was concerned
that they had been quote terminated without due process. Kroll
(45:45):
was oddly unconcerned that the same thing was true of
Mr Floyd. The fact that police officers are extremely difficult
to fire even when they commit murder or rape on
the job is a national problem. But it is a
national problem that TRACE's act to a single place where
else the city of Portland, Oregon, and more specifically to
(46:06):
the Portland Police Association. We make sure to check out
Drink Champs, your number one music podcast on the Black
Effect Podcast Network. Host n O. R. E and D
j E. F N sat down with artists and icon Yea,
(46:26):
which Vulture called one most significant interviews. I literally had
to go like Danos and I don't want to have
to be the villain. But when I went and did
the Donda thing, he returned and anybody had to sit
back and watch the real leader. Check out Drink Champs
conversation with Yea and many more legendary artists each and
every Friday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
(46:49):
or where ever you listen to your favorite shows. From
Cavalry Audio, comes the new true crime podcast The Shadow
Girls always wanted of it felt like to kill somebody
and started laughing. Prosecutors described him as a serial killer,
surt kicking up these girls, getting him in a position
of vulnerability. When he got hold of their neck, that
(47:11):
was it. I'm Caroline Asia, a journalist and lifelong resident
at the Pacific Northwest. I grew up near the banks
of the Green River and in the shadow of the
killer that bears its name. How many times did you
bring the camera? One of time? Just one time. He
started fantasizing about having sex with his mother, and he
fantasized about killing her. But this podcast isn't only about
(47:34):
tracking down the killer. It's about the victims. We stayed
in the woods. He always liked to go in the woods.
All of the kind of strange, you know how it
feels about prostitutes. Listen to The Shadow Girls on the
I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. The Black Effect Presinks features honest conversations
(47:57):
and exclusive interviews, a space for artists, everyday people and
listeners to amplify, elevate, and empower black voices with great conversations.
Make sure to listen to The Black Effect Presents podcast
on I Heart Radio, Apple podcast or wherever you get
your podcast. The Portland Police Association or p p A
(48:28):
is Portland's police union, and in a way, it's the
police union because the p p A is actually the
oldest functioning police union in the United States. Police had
attempted to unionize several times before the p PA was
established in nineteen forty two, but Portland was the first
city to get it right, and the p p A
has served as a model for the rest of the
nation's law enforcement ever since. Every other police union in
(48:52):
the United States is based off of the Portland Police Association,
and one of the many trends that pp A set
was in suing to reinstate fired officers. This story starts
on the night of March twelfth, nine, when two Portland
Police officers from the North Precinct dumped four dead possums
in the doorway of the Burger Barn, one of Portland's
(49:12):
few black owned businesses. The use of the word possum
as a derogatory term for black Americans dates back as
far as eighteen thirty. The owner of the Burger Barn,
George Powell, called the Police Commissioner to report the incident
and claimed that it was only the latest example of
police harassment his business had faced. An internal investigation was
opened and the officers responsible, Ward and Galloway, admitted their
(49:36):
guilt immediately. Their identity was initially kept hidden thanks to
a clause in the pp A contract with the city
that protected officers from having their names disclosed during disciplinary proceedings.
This is another one of the innovations that the Portland
Police Association brought to police departments nationwide. By the way,
the possum incident happened at an awkward time for the
Portland Police, several officers had just been fired and convict
(50:00):
did a faking evidence and using illegal drugs on the job.
Nearly a hundred criminal cases had to be thrown out
because of falsified evidence. Public opinion of the police bureau
was low, and when Portland or started marching and demonstrating
to demand that officers Ward and Galloway by fired, the
police commissioner was only too happy to oblige them. Enter
Stan Peters, the most powerful union president Portland has ever had.
(50:23):
Peters took to every local news show in town. He
circulated petitions. He even organized a massed protest march made
up of Portland police officers and their families. He forced
the city government into arbitration, which ended with both officers
being rehired and given back pay. There's actually a book
about the Portland Police Association, Pickets, Pistols and Politics. Alan
(50:44):
Kessler informed us of its existence. Here's what it says
about the court case that resolved the Possum incident. Quote.
The City of Portland versus Ward and Galloway case is
still the leading police discipline case in the United States
and in labor laws. Circles is the arbitration decision referred
to the most often it's legal nomenclature is simply City
(51:07):
of Portland. And so in the end, it really isn't
that odd that the City of Portland wound up as
ground zero for a battle against white supremacy and police
brutality and a battle for black lives. It's actually been
that for a very, very long time. As much as
people have just kind of started to contextualize how Antifa
has been fighting against these shuds here for years, you know,
(51:30):
it actually isn't just the last couple of years where
it's been in the news. It has been going off
for decades in Portland. There's always been a level of
especially in southeast of Portland, has always been like even
like in the eighties has been like, you know, these
white skinhead groups and the sharps, has always kind of
been like a race war between the white folks in Portland,
(51:50):
especially in the southeast. Over the course of the summer,
of Portland's wounds were exposed to the world after George
Floyd's gruesome murder accelerated long brutal unrest across the country
and even the globe. The Northwest's liberal bastion was forced
to reckon with its own deeply anti black traditions, while
also becoming an unlikely epicenter in a movement for black
(52:11):
lives that had taken the world by storm. Thousands took
to the streets in a battle that would be fought
against a corrupt police force, Trump's federal agents, right wing vigilantes,
and even at times between protesters themselves. Through it all,
people banded together to support each other and build the
infrastructure that would propel the city to a hundred plus
days of protests that even the strongest tear gas couldn't end.
(52:33):
In the next episode, we will delve into how a
disorganized crowd of angry Portlanders turned themselves into a movement
that could stand up to the worst violence the Trump
administration could throw at it. Uh or the grand Pops
who couldn't fathom the obamacist hate America just to mean
she keeps the promises looking like the sixties. It's crazy
(52:55):
a nation wide days are what my people posted, Dove
go to schools and aimed after the clan founder we're
around town is you don't see why were frowning Native
American students forced to learn about when o'pellah Sarah? How
is that fair? Bro? Some hero's unsung in Some monsters
get monuments built for them, but it ain't be all
a little bit of monster. We crook it. Man, Your
(53:17):
heroes are worthless and man can show private. Only God
gives purpose to crook it. This is Roxanne Gay, the
host of The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the bad feminist podcast
of your Dreams. Each week I talked to an interesting
(53:41):
person about feminism, race, writing in books, and art, food,
culture and yes, politics, we can't escape politics. Listen to
the luminary original podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda every Tuesday
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you could your podcasts. What Girls in the Forest, our
(54:04):
imagination and our family bonds. The forest is closer than
you think. Find a forest near you and discover the
forest dot Org brought to you by the United States
Forest Service and the AD Council. Look for your children's
eyes and you will discover the true magic of a forest.
Find a forest near you and start exploring it. Discover
(54:27):
the Forest dot Org brought to you by the United
States Forest Service and the AD Council.
The NFL is back and the NFL app has you covered.
So get ready for football all season long and just
tap into the NFL app NFL maybe if app. Just
tap in to watch your local and primetime games all
season now from Super Bowl fifty to get up to
the minute news videos, highlights, stats and more on all
your favorite teams and rookies to watch. Then downloads to
(00:23):
your mobile device today at NFL dot com, Slash Mobile
or in your app store. Certain restrictions and data rates
may apply. You can watch the NFL playoffs like a fan,
or you can prep like a scout if you listen
to the award winning Move the Sticks podcast. The show
is hosted by me, Daniel Jeremiah and my partner Bucky Brooks.
The two of us are bringing the knowledge from a
career as NFL talent scouts to the podcast world so
(00:46):
fans can watch and understand the nuances of the game
like never before. We'll break down film from the professional
and college game to get you ready for the Super Bowl,
the Draft, and kick off next fall. Subscribe now and
listen to the Move the Sticks podcast asked on the
I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back the
(01:08):
hit podcast How Men Think, and that's good news for
anyone that is confused by men, which is basically everyone.
It's real talk, straight from the source to How Men
Think podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out.
It's going to be fun and formative and probably a
bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the
minds of men. Listen to How Men Think on the
(01:30):
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. At around ten thirty pm on a crowd
of more than a thousand people gathered in North Portland's
(01:52):
Peninsula Park and marched downtown to the Justice Center, headquarters
of the Portland Police Bureau. The direct inspiration for the
march were the murders of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor.
Many in attendance also had a strong desire to express
solidarity with protesters in Minneapolis. That's what brought Chris Wise,
volunteer protest medic out into the streets that first night. Initially,
(02:15):
I came out because as an African American, you know,
it was that that straw that broke the Camel's back
on just like one death too many. We are murdered
by police and other law enforcement agencies at a rate
of three to one when compared to the average white American,
(02:40):
And those numbers get a little funky because you know,
obviously more white people die a year than black people
in police related shootings, but there are also you know,
six times as many white people, ah then black people. Tristan,
another Black Portlander, didn't go out that night, but he
(03:00):
watched everything that happened on the live streams. Honestly, like,
my my first um impression was that it probably wasn't
going to be much, you know what I mean. I
didn't expect it to blow up the way it did.
I kind of felt like because I've I've seen it
happen in the past where you know, there's will be
(03:21):
some kind of like something happening like nationwide or another
city in Portland will kind of like you know, show
up and solidarity for it, and it might become something,
but usually it's kind of like a one off. So
that's kind of what I was expecting, and so I
was pretty surprised to see like how quickly it grew
and then also how like how the police were responding
(03:44):
like in like a very tear guys kind of way.
Mariah is a photo journalist and a lifestyle photographer. She
was out at Peninsula Park for the very start of
the march. Was beginning to you know, something that not
a lot of us new we're going to get into,
you know, but gosh, I remember being at Peninsula Park
(04:04):
and it was really great to see everyone there, and like,
it just reminds me of some uh. I hate that
it's like a routine thing for us, because it's you know,
while we're still fighting, and while we've been fighting so strong.
But you know, when someone gets killed by you know,
via police brutality, everyone meets up. You know, maybe we
protest for a few days and like, you know, quote unquote,
we go back to like normal life. But you know,
(04:25):
we already haven't been a normal life since it's been
a pandemic this whole freaking year. But it was really
beautiful to see all the people and all the signs
and the speeches. The sidewalks bordering Peninsula Park were filled
with different slogans and exhortations written in chalk. One of
the most striking statements was make the moment count As
it turned out, the city of Portland took that to heart.
(04:48):
The crowd at Peninsula Park marched nearly five miles to
downtown Portland. There they merged with a crowd that had
gathered around the Justice Center. The moment both groups met
was powerful. You could taste to the energy in the air.
Portland Black Lives Matter protests had actually started several days
(05:11):
earlier before that mass gathering on the twenty nine, A
handful of activists of color had begun occupying the steps
of the Justice Center immediately after George Floyd's murder. One
of them was Tracy Molina, an indigenous Portland or better
known as Kloska. Well. I remember it wasn't not long
after the George Floyd's story broke. A lot of us
(05:34):
wanted to do something here, but I think most of
the regular organizers kept saying wait, you know, let's wait,
let's wait for this, let's wait for that, and then finally, um,
then Danielle James, I think she's a pretty prominent black
activist in this community and sit up against Patriot Prayer
and Proud Boys and other white supremases for years. Um.
(05:57):
It was kind of a spark for that you know.
She was said like, we shouldn't wait in the night.
Supporter I said, I don't think we should wait either.
I think we should do something now. And so we
ended up the seven ten thirty all meeting at I
and starting to protest there, and then we moved. Um,
sometime after midnight we moved over to the Justice Center
(06:20):
and slept on the steps there and planned to to
occupy it as long as we could. And so we
stayed there and then um there was only maybe like
four of us that slept on the steps, and then
the next day, like at ice, we had about thirty
or forty people. And then the next day, after we
(06:40):
stayed on those steps, I would say there was about
forty or fifty people that showed up in the afternoon
and they did a direct action or we blocked off
the streets and in front of the steps of the
Justice Center, and I think they did it also did
it die. And that night there was also impromptu direct
action or so people some young women sat on sat
(07:04):
in the doorway at the Justice Center and they brought
riot police out for that, and there was at that
time there was only about twenty of us and only
like six people participating in the sit in, but they
still brought riot police out and they were violently removed.
That made the news because one of the women, one
of the women that was hit with the tongue, was
(07:25):
she was actually pregnant, a black woman. And the only
way us the way I know that for sure is
because after she was in the ambulance, she came. I
don't know if she went to the hospital, but after
she was in the ambulance, she returned paperwork from the
and proving that she was pregnant and was, you know,
showing some of the police officers that were still standing around.
(07:46):
But yeah, that's how the first few days went. And
then um, then then we we all, um, we're going
to have a rally at UM in Insula Park. And
then I read to part of the opening and when
I was there, more and more people kipt coming, and
I was surprised. There are so many, I don't know,
(08:09):
maybe a thousand people that there was a lot, there's
a lot of people there. Was surprised, and it just
kept getting bigger and bigger. The now merged crowd, which
numbered at least a couple of thousand people, marched back
to the Justice Center for a few minutes, they stood outside,
chanting George Floyd's name. The police were nowhere to be seen.
(08:30):
While most of the crowd stood out in the street,
A hundred or so people gathered in front of the
windows of the Justice Center. They started spray painting slogans
on the glass. A few people peeed on the doorway,
someone lit a small fire out in front, and then
quite suddenly one person broke a window. The first broken
(08:52):
windows set off a frenzy, and soon people were using
their feet, rocks, and any tools they could find to
shatter every exposed piece of glass on the building. With
the windows shattered, protesters ran into the Justice Center, ransacking
police offices and setting small fires. The Portland police arrived
a little bit later and began showering the crowd with
tear gas and flash band grenades. Though no one knew
(09:18):
it at the time, events had just been set into
motion that would lead to more than a hundred consecutive
knights of protests and tear gas. The Portland Uprising had begun.
We should probably start by talking a bit about the
(09:38):
definition of a riot. Legally, anything the cops declare a
riot is a riot. May twenty nine is generally referred
to as Riot Knight, because after the crowd was dispersed
from the Justice Center, hundreds of people ran through the
streets of Portland's luxury shopping district, smashing up high end
chain stores while the police chased after them. It certainly
felt like a riot, but a number of of folks
(10:00):
that we interviewed actually disagreed. Alan Kessler, a Portland based lawyer,
pushed back on that description. I guess I disagree that
even the first night was a real riot. I mean,
there were some shops scott Burg Old there were there
were something stolen. Um, there was a fire in the
(10:23):
in the I j c um. I'm not sure that that.
I don't I don't know the intent there right Like
looking at the fire, looking at the Piddie fire as
I've seen, I don't know if anybody means to burn
the buildings down or to Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Uh,
it didn't seem like it. It doesn't seem it. If
(10:45):
I were going to burn down the building, I would
use a hell of a lot more accelerant. Then it
seems like people are using. Um. I don't know. Uh.
I was struck by even on even on that night
I was struck by uh, excuse me, Oh yeah, that
(11:09):
was a lot more context. Yeah, please don't when Kessler says, yeah,
I'm trusting you, all the freedoms in your hands straight
to Andy. So Um. Now, even that night I was
(11:30):
struck by Commissioner Fritz, who I have absolutely no love for, uh,
who seemed just horrified that that goocy got robbed and
uh and I didn't seem able to put that in
any kind of context. Um, Yeah, I don't. I don't.
I didn't. I didn't see that as a riot. I
(11:51):
didn't think that people, uh, I wanted to just break shit.
I think even then it was it was still political.
It was it was a protest and it you know,
I wouldn't recommend that people break stuff, for steal stuff,
for set stuff on fire. But I understood the upset,
and I, yeah, I just didn't see in those terms. Um,
(12:14):
it didn't seem like. I don't remember that anybody died.
I'm sure somebody was hurt, but I don't remember that
it was particularly severe that evening, Like, I don't. I
don't remember that as a as a violent knight. I
remember it as a night of property damage. Yeah, I uh, yeah,
And I wasn't making a legal distinct. There was more
(12:35):
of a moral argument, like I think people put a
moral import behind riot and it I don't think it
was that. I don't think it was I don't think
it was a breakdown in civilization. I think it was
a extremely heartfelt frustration with a system that wasn't meeting
(12:56):
people's needs. Max Smith, a Portland based act to best
in live streamer, called it a riot light. I called
like a riot light that night. I think I was like,
that seems like a little kind of a riot light.
They broke a couple of windows, you know, they sacked
the Apple Store. Of course, you know, some opera students
are gonna, you know, take that opportunity if something is,
if things are getting broken, someone's gonna rob the Apple Store.
(13:18):
It's it's it's dumb because you're gonna get caught, but
go ahead and rob the Apple Store. But you know,
that's kind of what I thought of it, Like some
stuff is gonna get broken. That's what happened. And I
actually thought the police, you know, I thought that and
actually thought there was going to be some change, which
we saw a couple of things, like they started talking
about you know, canceling the the DVRT and the cops
(13:39):
in schools and things like that, and uh and since then,
it's it's it's been fairly tame, and we haven't seen
a whole lot of progress, so, you know, I felt
like it worked a little bit. The point Mac made
is one that a lot of activists would agree with.
Property damage, they argue is not nearly in the same
moral realm is injuring your killing human beings. Mac himself
(14:02):
was not out on the twenty nine, but he was
most directly inspired to start protesting because of something else
that happened that day. Hundreds of miles south of Portland
in San Jose, California, there was a guy named Derek
Sanderland in San Jose and he was protesting before you know,
he was purchasing against the murder of George Floyd in
(14:25):
solidarity with Minneapolis. And I remember waking up and getting
on my phone and kind of just flicking through things
and seeing that this man had been shot in the
testicles with a rubber bullet and it like required like
emergency surgery and he's probably never gonna have kids. And
(14:48):
I'm looking at this dude and he's like twenty seven
years old. He's like a black dude. He's got dreads,
he wears glasses, he's got a scrappy gas beard like mine,
you know. And I'm looking at this guy like a
man that would have been me. And then I keep
reading and he was like he was like a teacher.
He taught the police about like not targeting people or whatever,
(15:11):
like you know, de escalation tactics or whatever. And I'm like,
you're telling me they shot a dude that that trains them,
Like this has got to be one of the craziest
things I've ever heard in my life. And he could
have died from this, you know, And that just made
me so mad. And I was like, it's even if
it wasn't you know, it wasn't me, It could have
(15:33):
been me, if I would have been out there, And
so I was just like, that's insane, Like this should
not be a thing at all. This shouldn't this just
this can't be really. Many protesters and some journalists will
argue that most of the riots Portland's saw this summer,
we're not cases of protesters rioting, but we're instead cop riots.
(15:54):
After all, if people breaking windows and louding an Apple
Store is a riot, then police driving into ouds, throwing
grenades at random and tear gas and hundreds of innocent
motorists probably counts as a riot, too righted riot We
crooked when P. T. Barnum's Great American Museum burned to
(16:22):
the ground in eighteen sixty five, what rose from its
ashes would change the world? Welcome to Grim and Mild Presents,
an ongoing journey into the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating.
For our inaugural season, we'll be giving you a backstage
tour of the always complex and often misunderstood cultural artifact
that is the American Side Show. So come along as
(16:44):
we visit the shadowy corners of the stage and learn
about the people who were at the center of it
all in a place where spectacle was king. We will
soon discover there's always more to the story than meets
the eye, So step right up and get in line.
Listen to Grim and Mile Presents now on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(17:07):
Learn more over at Grim and Mild dot com. Slash
presents What's Up, Guys, I'm a shop Bloud and I
am Troy millions and we are the host of the
Earn Your Leisure podcast, where we break down business models
and examine the latest trans and finance. We hold court
and have exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names
of business, sport, and entertainment, from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban,
(17:27):
Rick Ross and Shaquill O'Neil. I mean our alumni list
is expansive. Listen to as our guests reveal their business models,
hardships and triumphs, and their respective fields. The knowledge is
in death and the questions are always delivered from your standpoint.
We want to know what you want to know. We
talked to the legends of business, sports and entertainment about
how they got their start and most importantly, how they
make their money. Earn Your Leisia is a college business
(17:48):
class mixed with pop culture. Want to learn about the
real estate game? Uncleassed how the stock market works. We
got you interested in starting a truck and company or
vendor machine business? Not really sure about how taxes or
credit work? We got it all covered. The Earnie Leisure
podcast is available now. Listen to Ernie Leisure on the
Black Effect podcast Network, I Heart Radio, app, Apple Podcast,
(18:08):
or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Roxande Gay,
host of The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the Bad Fominist Podcast
of Your Dreams. Now what is the Roxanne Gay Agenda,
you might ask, Well, it's a podcast where I'm going
to speak my mind about what's on my mind, and
(18:30):
that could be anything. Every week I will be in
conversation with an interesting person who has something to say.
We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books,
and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. I started
each show with a recommendation, Really, I'm just going to
share with you a movie or a book, or maybe
(18:52):
some music or a comedy side something that I really
want you to be aware of and maybe engage with
as well. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The Roxanay Agenda,
The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams, every Tuesday on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcast. May was not the first night of
(19:25):
Portland's Bill and protests, but it was the night that
set the tone for the next hundred plus nights. There
was tear gas, flash bangs, armored cops fighting demonstrators who
were armed with in the beginning, cardboard signs and water bottles. Now,
we're going to cover a lot of ground in this series,
and it's probably best to kick this off by giving
everyone an overview of what exactly happened in Portland from
(19:46):
late May to the end of September, because the mainstream
media only really showed a portion of this story. Late
on the night of the twenty nine, the people of
Portland learned that their mayor, Ted Wheeler had actually been
out of town visiting his mother. His first response to
what had happened was a tweet that started with the
word enough in all caps and ended with a promise
that he was coming back now now was also in
(20:09):
all caps. City Commissioner joe Anne Hardesty, who was acting
president in the mayor's absence, declared a state of emergency
and enacted a curfew from eight pm until six am.
At this point, Portland was in the same boat as
many other American cities, including New York and Los Angeles.
In Portland, the curfew was not enough to clamp down
on unrest, quite the opposite. In fact, local activists like
(20:31):
d s A member Olivia Cutty Smith were inspired. I
just thought that it was it was not like anything
I've ever seen before. I've never seen that level of
um destruction happened at a protest before. It was exciting.
I was like, we're going to start. This is huge,
this is going to take off all across the country.
Its happening in Portland, it's having in Minneapolis, like this
(20:54):
is the start of a revolution. Um, you know, and
even knowing that that might not be true, that that's
the feeling that I had. That night, several thousand people
gathered again and on the thirty feet nearly ten thousand
Portlanders marched to the Justice Center. We actually sort of
organized the protests behind the scenes um and got like
(21:16):
ten thousand people across the bridge with this offer UM.
And yeah, it was just it felt like the sky
was a limit at that point, Like I can't believe
there are ten thousand people showing up every single night,
like this has never happened before. We have to turn
this into something. Both times police eventually dispersed the crowd
(21:38):
with indiscriminate tear gas use in liberal clubbing with truncheons.
Thousands of protesters were gassed, but so were hundreds of
motorists who happened to be out on city streets and
dozens of houseless individuals who were gassed in their tents
for no apparent reason. The curfew was rescinded in early June.
It clearly hadn't helped. Next, the city began to build
what would become a massive fence around the Justice Center.
(22:02):
The protest movement started to splinter between a large group
of demonstrators who engaged in daily marches that avoided police contact,
and a smaller group who repeatedly confronted police at the fence.
At first, Portland police would gas and grenade any group
of people that drew close to the fence, along with
any motorists who happened to be driving nearby. Protesters started
calling at the sacred fence because law enforcements seemed to
(22:24):
value it more than the physical well being of Portlanders.
The first fence war between protesters and police lasted most
of June. There were occasional protests at other police buildings
like the p p A, headquarters of the Portland Police Union,
and the North Precinct. Smaller groups of activists also engaged
in what was briefly a nationwide practice of pulling down
statues of famous white supremacists. On June eighteenth, a small
(22:48):
number of mostly teenage Portlander's toppled a statue of George Washington.
This prompted President Trump to create an executive order to
protect statues, monuments, and federal property. He sent dozens of
federal age into Portland to enforce this new order. The
first time the Feds made a large appearance was on
July four. That night was a turning point for a
number of reasons, after weeks of declining numbers. More than
(23:11):
a thousand Portlanders showed up outside the Justice Center to
shoot commercial grade fireworks at its windows. They fired a
few with the adjacent Federal courthouse as well. The police
l rad a car mounted loudspeaker started warning everyone not
to shoot the courthouse, so, of course, the entire crowd
swarmed around the building and continued shooting it with fireworks. Suddenly,
wooden hatches opened up on the front of the fortress
(23:33):
like building, and the federal agents inside began tossing out
tear gas grenades and shooting impact munitions into the crowd.
For a few minutes, the scene resembled a cross between
an acid trip in a medieval siege, with protesters bombarding
the courthouse with fireworks while the Feds inside pumped out
gas and riot munitions. Yeah, Friday night, everybody. Eventually the
(23:58):
fight spilled out into the street, and for several hours,
Portland Police and Department of Homeland Security agents engaged in
a running battle with hundreds of protesters. Fireworks provided the
activists with their first weapon that could disrupt a police
riot line, while law enforcement responded by escalating physical violence
even further. I was walking up from the j C
Up towards the park blocks, and there was a person
(24:21):
who was essentially having an asthma attack and a cloud
of tear gas, and they had one buddy with them,
and it was just such an impossible project for that
one buddy to sort of haul them out of tear
gas while they're having an asthma attack and like a
panic attack and really having her off time. Everything got
more serious after the fourth the federal agents started responding
(24:41):
to protests downtown more often than the Portland Police Bureau.
A week later, federal agents almost killed a protester named
Donovan Labella by shooting him in the forehead with a
less lethal round. Slowly, the mainstream media began to realize
that something strange and terrifying was happening. In Portland. The
national interest was ly peaked a few days later when
camo clad Feds in a rental van started kidnapping people
(25:04):
off the streets. In early July, the fourth accepted most
nightly protests only numbered a few dozen to a hundred
or so protesters, but national media and the specter of
federal snatch fans panicked Portland's liberal majority. By mid late July,
thousands upon thousands of protesters were showing up in the
street every night. The time between July thirty, dubbed the
(25:27):
Fed War, is the stuff most Americans saw from Portland
in the news. Moms and dad's, veterans, doctors, chefs, and
students gathering in front of the Federal courthouse, chanting demands,
banging on doors, setting fires, ripping off plywood covering the windows,
and repeatedly tearing down that massive fence. Whenever the federal
agents came out, a shield wall of protesters would form,
(25:48):
deflecting metal tear gas canisters and flashbags up into the air.
People armed with leafblowers directed gas back at the Feds.
In response, the Feds started using experimental new weapons, including
a pest a side sprayer, Jerry rigged di spew poison gas,
seeing the police attack people, especially the FEDS when the
Feds came, when they came started attacking people like like
(26:10):
in the smoke. After I got like a gas mask
and started going into the smoke, you know, and seeing
what was going on in there, I was pretty I
was pretty uh disturbed by seeing the way that they
were like beating people under the under the cover of
tear gas. That was, um, that was a surprise for me.
(26:31):
I'd heard people saying, I've got my ask kicked in there,
but I didn't know it was going down like that.
As July came and went, so did the visible federal
presence downtown. Most of the more liberal types packed it up,
calling the protests a success. But while the days of
walls of camouflaged Fed's head temporarily ended despite reports of
their withdrawal, federal presence in Portland lingered on for weeks.
(26:52):
Dedicated activists were not fooled by the faux withdrawal. They
knew the work was far from over. Throughout August, protesters
gathered in front of police precincts, city buildings in Portland's
ice facility. Sometimes they engaged in property damage, but more
often they just stood in the street yelling at the
cops until they were inevitably charged by riot lines. It
was in August that Portland first saw right wing counter protests,
(27:15):
generally framed as back the Blue or MAGA gatherings. Sometimes
these escalated into street brawls between Proud Boys and left
wing activists. On several occasions, Proud Boys and other right
wing vigilantes through home made explosives and shot paintball guns
into crowds. Live rounds were even fired into the air
and into crowds. The escalation continued until a Trump caravan
(27:37):
of vehicles waving flags drove through Portland in late August.
Several Trump supporters fired paintball guns and mace into the
crowds as they drove by. The whole awful day ended
with a member of the right wing street gang Patriot Prayer,
being shot and killed by a white BLM activist after
charging him with a can of mace. Throughout all this,
Portland's BLM marches occurred every single night right up an
(28:00):
till late September, when a series of devastating wildfires overwhelmed
Oregon and blanketed the city of Portland in a thick
haze of poison, the nightly marches were halted, and the
various mutual aid organizations that had started up to service
the protests turned their efforts to meeting the needs of evacuees. Meanwhile,
right wing activists blamed the fires on Antifa and spent
(28:20):
several days setting up a legal arm checkpoints and threatening
people with rifles. When the rains came in the air cleared,
the protests started up again. There were no longer nightly affairs,
but they've remained regular occurrences ever since. And all of
this begs the question why Portland, all fifty U s
States hosted Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of
(28:42):
Many cities saw mass demonstrations, and while nine of BLM
protests were considered peaceful, numerous cities saw rioting, exchanges of gunfire,
and even had buildings burnt down. But no city in
the United States had as many continuous nights of protests
as Portland. No city saw thousands of its citizens lay
a long siege of a federal courthouse, no city experienced
(29:03):
a thousand persons street fight between right and left wing demonstrators.
Perhaps most importantly, no city earned the ire of President
Donald Trump in the same way as Portland. It seems
bizarre that this all would happen in Portland, a small
city of about six hundred and fifty three thousand people.
How did it grow to become one of the most
active front lines in a national battle for black lives
(29:25):
and against white supremacy. It actually makes a lot of
sense once you scratch beneath the surface a bit. Here's
Tristan again. Oregon was kind of um I found it
as like something of like a white utopia, you know,
like a place for the the white man to really
like find his destiny right and like conquer this you know,
(29:46):
this continent. And I think that's just kind of like
it's just like baked into the culture here where even
like even like the love of the outdoors isn't like
isn't like a love of um like keep like keeping
(30:08):
the environment like healthy and like bounce. It's just like
a very like commodified like we deserve this, you know,
we deserve to live in this beautiful place, and we're
the only ones who know how to take care of it.
And obviously that's like mellowed out a little bit over
the you know, decades. But I think that's still basically
like what what like Um, it's like the undercurrent, you know,
(30:36):
that's like behind most of what cosan in Oregon. You
can learn a lot of what you need to know
about Oregon's history of racism by studying one of the
state's founders, Peter Hardman Burnett. As a young man in Tennessee,
he murdered a black person with a booby trap is
revenge for petty theft. In three he helped organize the
first great wagon train of white people that headed to
(30:58):
the Oregon Territory. He was elected to the Provisional Legislature
and served as the territory's first Supreme Court justice. In
eighteen forty four, he worked to pass what became known
as Burnett's Lash Law. This stated that all black people
were required to leave Oregon under penalty of being whipped
in public not less than twenty or more than thirty
nine stripes. This punishment was to be repeated every six
(31:20):
months until they moved. The law did include a grace
period three years for black women and two years for
black men. Burnett also pushed to ban Chinese immigration into Oregon.
While there are no documented instances of the Lash laws
being used. It's set a clear tone for the state.
Burnett's lash law reflected the values of the first white
people who moved to Oregon. They were abolitionists and that
(31:43):
they hated slavery, but they only hated slavery because they
were revolted by the thought of living near black people.
In eighteen forty eight, the Oregon Territorial government passed a
law that banned any quote negro or mulatto from living
in Oregon. In eighteen fifty, the Oregon Donation Land Act
gave whites and half breed Indians their quote, six hundred
(32:03):
and fifty acres of land from the government. All other
people of color were banned from the land grants. Oregon
was finally made a state in February eighteen fifty nine.
Under its constitution, quote, no free negro or mulatto not
residing in this state at the time of the adoption
of this Constitution shall ever come reside or be within
(32:24):
this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract,
or maintain any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall
provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers
of all such free negroes and mulatto's and for their
effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of
persons who shall bring them into the state or employer
harbor them therein. Oregon remains the only state in the
(32:47):
Union that ever banned black people from living there. Now
things have gotten better since eighteen fifty nine, but better
is a low bar. In Portland remains the whitest metropolitan
area in the United States. Seventy of the population is white,
less than six is black. Today, Portland's owns the distinction
as one of the most gentrified cities in the United States.
(33:09):
Oregon continues to report some of the worst graduation rates
for black students in the nation, and the wealth gap
between white and black oregon Ians over the last fifty
years has whitened, not shrunk. I moved to Portland like
like five and a half six years ago, I think,
and from where I definitely I did from northern California
(33:31):
Bay Area. Um, and I didn't really I didn't have
a idea of what the city was per se, Like
I've never seen an episode of port Land here, for instance.
I just kind of moved up here that would be
closed a family and and yeah, and when I when
(33:51):
I kind of first got here, it was like, you
know that hang out with a bunch of hippies, a
bunch of people who loved trees and too right bikes
and go hiking, and it's like, oh, they love the
environment and they love progressive you know politics, and you know,
and everything's just chill within. Like the longer I stayed here,
the facade started to like fall away, and and it's
(34:17):
I mean like I've been here for you know, almost
six years now, and I still I don't quite know
what to make of it still, you know, but like recently, um,
like with the passage of or like with the most
recent election, you know, like the local measures that passed
and didn't pass. It's like like Oregon loves to have
(34:43):
a black friend. That's what they like. They like to
have somebody they can point to and be like, look,
I'm not racist, but they don't. They're not interested in
actually like challenging the like white supremacists like power structures
that actually like benefit them and and if you like,
(35:05):
if you agitate them on that, they just you know,
that's that's when like the Pacific Northwest, like passive aggressiveness
like kicks in and they just like kind of like
try to ignore you, but secually they're totally fucking piste
off that you dare to like insinuate their racist um.
(35:26):
But yeah, that's like it's a really complicated thing and
I still quite haven't figured out like what makes white
people take here, but it's, you know, it's messy. Another
activist we interviewed, Courtney, is an indigenous Hawaiian person who
moved to Oregon when she was seventeen. She recalls being
stunned by how white her school was. Ended up going
(35:47):
to Oregon City High School, which was like insane. I
was the only non Hispanic person that was that that school. UM,
and nobody talked to me through really long time, and
I just was kind of like it was a culture
shock because there were so many white people that I
had never seen this many white people in my entire
(36:10):
life because everyone in hahaitis like mixed races, the majority
of them are Asian or Polynesian. So um, I definitely
was nobody really talked to me for a while, and
I kind of like found my little niche of people
to hang out with. UM. But yeah, like just even
(36:30):
living in that area, I would get a lot of
weird looks and um yeah, just not the most friendly
people to to be around. Um yeah, that's basically it's
just a culture shock to just be how white organ is.
I just I didn't expect it at all. I didn't
(36:52):
and I was like, I knew that they were going
to be like Hispanic people, but I just didn't realize that.
Um I thought maybe I would see more like black people.
And especially living in a city, you know, when you're
from what you you're like Sportland is just like a
major city in the United States, and then coming here
and not really seeing the mix of cultures was just
(37:15):
kind of shocking. Tristan described the racism in Portland as
unique in a subtle way. It's just it's very it's
very covert or you know, it tries to be very covert.
Um and it's very like like well, part part of
what it is is that for a very long time now,
there's barely been any people of co here at all. Like,
(37:39):
you know, it's one of the widest states in the country.
It's why it's major city in the country, and so like,
to a certain extent, people are I don't actually know
what like like what like a microaggression is or what
that would be like, you know, I had to experience um,
(38:02):
like just like a year, year and a half ago,
maybe I was out with this group um these like
forest offender type people. Every year they go out post
this big camp out and you know, like go out
into the woods and do like surveys and stuff like that,
try to collect data they can use to to fight
(38:23):
temper companies and ship and like someone us drop the
N word like there's five ft for me, there's like
in casual conversation, and then I had to like address
the camp like at breakfast, and I was like, okay,
so just just don't don't say that word. Like there's
(38:45):
no like like like even if you're just telling a
story that there's no appropriate context for a white person
to say that. And and that's one of the reasons
why I don't go to those fucking campouts anymo. But
like it's like that, it's like they just don't they
haven't been around black people or people of color in general,
(39:06):
and they just don't know what to do. And of course,
the racism that pervades Portland's is present in the Portland
Police Bureau. Despite black people making up again less than
six percent of the population. Portland police use force on
black people more often than people of any other race.
Portland police are five to fourteen times more likely to
(39:27):
shoot impact munitions at and to forcibly restrain black residents.
At one point in the late sixties, black Portlander's accounted
for nearly half of p PBS arrests. Portland's black community
has been fighting against this kind of racist violence for decades.
Here's Max Meth again for me. The battle with the
police began, you know, in the hip hop field. Um.
(39:50):
There was an event here in Portland that happened maybe
six or seven years ago. UM. That happened at a
venue called the Blue Monk, And it was a pretty deal.
And I was there and I had friends who were
performing at the show, and the police essentially came under
the guise of a capacity violation and brought like a
seven cars and twenty something officers and shut the whole
(40:14):
street of Belmont down And and that bar eventually actually
ended up a closing shortly after that. Um, And it
was a huge deal. They made a huge deal about
a small thing, and it went like into like national news.
And even prior to that, we had been really combating
(40:35):
the efforts of the police to kind of shut down
or stifle hip hop events in the city. Every time
we wanted to have a hip hop event, it became like,
you know, like a world war um, to the point
that it ended up actually being a protest about the
hip hop community here. And so that was a fight
that we had as far as hip hop music and clubs,
as far as hip hop events, as far as live music. Um.
(40:59):
They really just used the city's resources that the police,
the fire marshals and the o l c C To
really like shut down hip hop and and and really
any black lead events. Lawyer Allan Kessler has done a
lot of digging into the early history of the Portland police.
His research has revealed a century long history of Portland's
(41:20):
police involvement with hate groups, most particularly the Ku Klux Klan.
I think it was last Memorial that I spent the
whole weekend in the Oregonian Archives basically living through World
War two. It wasn't fun, uh and it's outrageous, Like
the clan was on there was a front page column
(41:41):
talked to a klansman every day for like a week, uh,
and then every other day they had the clan on
the front page anyway, but that you know, that was like, um,
it was, yeah, it was incredible. Um. During the war, Uh,
basically everybody, every adult white dude had a little star badge.
(42:04):
They the police would basically deputize anybody or people just
don't be badges made, so everybody in town had a badge.
There were lots of articles in that time frame about um,
fake police officer pulls over so and so and they sue.
In ninety three, a Portland Telegram article reported that the
Portland Police Bureau was quote full to the brink with klansmen.
(42:25):
The police bureau actually deputized a hundred klansmen handpicked by
the local Grand Dragon and designated them Portland Police vigilantes.
This was before the p p A existed, but the
tradition lives on. In two thousand ten, Portland police officer
Mark Krueger was suspended for erecting a memorial to five
deceased Nazi soldiers on city property. The p p A
(42:47):
successfully sued for him to be reinstated and given an apology.
When he quit in early he was the highest paid
police officer on the force. I asked Maria, a lifelong
Portland resident, her earliest memory of the police was here's
what she told me. I would say it was when
I was a child. Honestly, Um, I've had some some
(43:10):
family stuff and a family member have to go to
way to to prison. So I remember some like vaguely
stuff like remember then as far as like police brutality wise. Um,
the very first like murder I remember was Kindred James. Um,
that will happen like a mile from my house. And
I want to say I was like ten at the time.
Kindred James was a twenty one year old black mother
(43:31):
of two. She was killed under suspicious circumstances during a
traffic stop. Her killer, officer, Scott McCallister, fired a single
shot when James attempted to drive away from the traffic
stop after the motion of the vehicle caused him to fall.
A number of the statements he made in court were
inconsistent with physical evidence required from the shooting, and we
don't really know exactly what happened. Among other things, the
(43:55):
police argued in court that Portland police were trained to
quote shoot as they fall aslee f the police is
how I grew up. My dad is a huge like
Tupac fan, so like I would grow up on hearing
tupac lyrics all the time, goal threw the police and everything.
So yeah, I know, screw yeah, I know. That's how
I like grew up. Yeah, um is to like not
(44:17):
interact with them. Yeah, I've I've grown up. You know
how a lot of us, you know, people who are black,
feel like, you know, when we're being followed, profiled all that.
I mean, I got profiled to dance in a store
like it's it's still happened. It's been going on since
a kid. I don't know if I don't know when
it will stop. That you know, still goes on. Officer
McCallister was acquitted in federal court. He got to keep
(44:38):
his job, but even if he had been fired for
the shooting, the firing might not have stuck. Nationwide, of
police officers fired from his conductor reinstated because of union
mandated appeals over the years, this has included an officer
who challenged a handcuffed man to a fist fight for
his freedom, and a copper sexually assaulted a young woman
in his patrol car. In any cities, the number of
(45:01):
police reinstated by union appeals is much higher than of
fired san Antonio officers are reinstated because of union appeals.
The number is six for Philly cops and for Minneapolis cops.
This is part of why the people of Minneapolis burnt
the Third Precinct to the ground after George Floyd's murder.
(45:22):
They knew from experience that it was extremely likely Derek Chauvin,
Floyd's killer, would not just avoid prison, but would soon
be back on the street with a badge. In fact,
as soon as Derek Chauvin and the other officers responsible
for George Floyd's death were fired, police union head Bob
Kroll started fighting to have them reinstated. He was concerned
that they had been quote terminated without due process. Kroll
(45:45):
was oddly unconcerned that the same thing was true of
Mr Floyd. The fact that police officers are extremely difficult
to fire even when they commit murder or rape on
the job is a national problem. But it is a
national problem that TRACE's act to a single place where
else the city of Portland, Oregon, and more specifically to
(46:06):
the Portland Police Association. We make sure to check out
Drink Champs, your number one music podcast on the Black
Effect Podcast Network. Host n O. R. E and D
j E. F N sat down with artists and icon Yea,
(46:26):
which Vulture called one most significant interviews. I literally had
to go like Danos and I don't want to have
to be the villain. But when I went and did
the Donda thing, he returned and anybody had to sit
back and watch the real leader. Check out Drink Champs
conversation with Yea and many more legendary artists each and
every Friday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
(46:49):
or where ever you listen to your favorite shows. From
Cavalry Audio, comes the new true crime podcast The Shadow
Girls always wanted of it felt like to kill somebody
and started laughing. Prosecutors described him as a serial killer,
surt kicking up these girls, getting him in a position
of vulnerability. When he got hold of their neck, that
(47:11):
was it. I'm Caroline Asia, a journalist and lifelong resident
at the Pacific Northwest. I grew up near the banks
of the Green River and in the shadow of the
killer that bears its name. How many times did you
bring the camera? One of time? Just one time. He
started fantasizing about having sex with his mother, and he
fantasized about killing her. But this podcast isn't only about
(47:34):
tracking down the killer. It's about the victims. We stayed
in the woods. He always liked to go in the woods.
All of the kind of strange, you know how it
feels about prostitutes. Listen to The Shadow Girls on the
I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. The Black Effect Presinks features honest conversations
(47:57):
and exclusive interviews, a space for artists, everyday people and
listeners to amplify, elevate, and empower black voices with great conversations.
Make sure to listen to The Black Effect Presents podcast
on I Heart Radio, Apple podcast or wherever you get
your podcast. The Portland Police Association or p p A
(48:28):
is Portland's police union, and in a way, it's the
police union because the p p A is actually the
oldest functioning police union in the United States. Police had
attempted to unionize several times before the p PA was
established in nineteen forty two, but Portland was the first
city to get it right, and the p p A
has served as a model for the rest of the
nation's law enforcement ever since. Every other police union in
(48:52):
the United States is based off of the Portland Police Association,
and one of the many trends that pp A set
was in suing to reinstate fired officers. This story starts
on the night of March twelfth, nine, when two Portland
Police officers from the North Precinct dumped four dead possums
in the doorway of the Burger Barn, one of Portland's
(49:12):
few black owned businesses. The use of the word possum
as a derogatory term for black Americans dates back as
far as eighteen thirty. The owner of the Burger Barn,
George Powell, called the Police Commissioner to report the incident
and claimed that it was only the latest example of
police harassment his business had faced. An internal investigation was
opened and the officers responsible, Ward and Galloway, admitted their
(49:36):
guilt immediately. Their identity was initially kept hidden thanks to
a clause in the pp A contract with the city
that protected officers from having their names disclosed during disciplinary proceedings.
This is another one of the innovations that the Portland
Police Association brought to police departments nationwide. By the way,
the possum incident happened at an awkward time for the
Portland Police, several officers had just been fired and convict
(50:00):
did a faking evidence and using illegal drugs on the job.
Nearly a hundred criminal cases had to be thrown out
because of falsified evidence. Public opinion of the police bureau
was low, and when Portland or started marching and demonstrating
to demand that officers Ward and Galloway by fired, the
police commissioner was only too happy to oblige them. Enter
Stan Peters, the most powerful union president Portland has ever had.
(50:23):
Peters took to every local news show in town. He
circulated petitions. He even organized a massed protest march made
up of Portland police officers and their families. He forced
the city government into arbitration, which ended with both officers
being rehired and given back pay. There's actually a book
about the Portland Police Association, Pickets, Pistols and Politics. Alan
(50:44):
Kessler informed us of its existence. Here's what it says
about the court case that resolved the Possum incident. Quote.
The City of Portland versus Ward and Galloway case is
still the leading police discipline case in the United States
and in labor laws. Circles is the arbitration decision referred
to the most often it's legal nomenclature is simply City
(51:07):
of Portland. And so in the end, it really isn't
that odd that the City of Portland wound up as
ground zero for a battle against white supremacy and police
brutality and a battle for black lives. It's actually been
that for a very, very long time. As much as
people have just kind of started to contextualize how Antifa
has been fighting against these shuds here for years, you know,
(51:30):
it actually isn't just the last couple of years where
it's been in the news. It has been going off
for decades in Portland. There's always been a level of
especially in southeast of Portland, has always been like even
like in the eighties has been like, you know, these
white skinhead groups and the sharps, has always kind of
been like a race war between the white folks in Portland,
(51:50):
especially in the southeast. Over the course of the summer,
of Portland's wounds were exposed to the world after George
Floyd's gruesome murder accelerated long brutal unrest across the country
and even the globe. The Northwest's liberal bastion was forced
to reckon with its own deeply anti black traditions, while
also becoming an unlikely epicenter in a movement for black
(52:11):
lives that had taken the world by storm. Thousands took
to the streets in a battle that would be fought
against a corrupt police force, Trump's federal agents, right wing vigilantes,
and even at times between protesters themselves. Through it all,
people banded together to support each other and build the
infrastructure that would propel the city to a hundred plus
days of protests that even the strongest tear gas couldn't end.
(52:33):
In the next episode, we will delve into how a
disorganized crowd of angry Portlanders turned themselves into a movement
that could stand up to the worst violence the Trump
administration could throw at it. Uh or the grand Pops
who couldn't fathom the obamacist hate America just to mean
she keeps the promises looking like the sixties. It's crazy
(52:55):
a nation wide days are what my people posted, Dove
go to schools and aimed after the clan founder we're
around town is you don't see why were frowning Native
American students forced to learn about when o'pellah Sarah? How
is that fair? Bro? Some hero's unsung in Some monsters
get monuments built for them, but it ain't be all
a little bit of monster. We crook it. Man, Your
(53:17):
heroes are worthless and man can show private. Only God
gives purpose to crook it. This is Roxanne Gay, the
host of The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the bad feminist podcast
of your Dreams. Each week I talked to an interesting
(53:41):
person about feminism, race, writing in books, and art, food,
culture and yes, politics, we can't escape politics. Listen to
the luminary original podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda every Tuesday
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you could your podcasts. What Girls in the Forest, our
(54:04):
imagination and our family bonds. The forest is closer than
you think. Find a forest near you and discover the
forest dot Org brought to you by the United States
Forest Service and the AD Council. Look for your children's
eyes and you will discover the true magic of a forest.
Find a forest near you and start exploring it. Discover
(54:27):
the Forest dot Org brought to you by the United
States Forest Service and the AD Council.
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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