Part One: Oregon is a Bastard: The History of a White Supremacist State

In episode 35, Portland activist Marielle Eaton sits down with Robert Evans to talk about Oregon's exceedingly Bastardful history as a white nationalist paradise.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once
again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
everything you don't know about the very worst people in
all of history. And this week, of course, I'm in Portland, Oregon,
on the seventeenth, which is to us tomorrow but to
you in the past. There will be a rally from
a group called Patriot Prayer, who you will be hearing

(00:20):
a lot about in the next episode of this podcast,
with some members of Rose City antifas guests in the day.
Of course, my guest is My name is Marie L. Eaton,
and I've lived in Portland for fourteen years and I
do many different things here, including quite a bit of activism,
quite a bit of activism. My main effort is with

(00:40):
sexual and relationship violence prevention and victim advocacy, and I've
done activism around that for about a decade now, and
I am a victim advocate both in the university setting
as well as independent organization setting. And you've also done

(01:01):
quite a bit of anti fascist action in the street
during which you you were photographed, uh and have become
sort of a figurehead of anti fa for CNN's reports
on the matter. So we're officially is officially an interview
with Antifa. That's the Fox News chiron that would go across.
So we're gonna be talking about Oregon, your lovely home state,

(01:23):
which is one of the most beautiful places in the world.
Uh and also way more racist historically, at least than
most people would give it credit for based on Portlandia
and currently. Yeah, it's not just macrobiotic burritos. And uh,
I'm trying to think of something else. Hippie ash cars
that run on garbage. Garbage, Yeah, yeah, garbage cars. It's

(01:45):
it's it's a little bit deeper than that. So that's
what we're gonna be getting into the day today. The
bastard is the state of Oregon, which you know, Sorry, Oregon,
I do love you, but let's get into it. So
Peter Hardeman Burnett was born in eight no seven. He
started out as a self educated which I think in
eighteen o seven just means uneducated owner of a general

(02:06):
store in Clear Creek, Tennessee. As a young man, Peter
Burnett came to suspect that an enslaved black person was
drinking from his stores whiskey barrel at night, so he
set up a booby trap, a rifle that was rigged
to fire when the windows shutter was opened. His trap
wound up killing the poor man when the guy tried
to break into his house. Burnett expressed remorse, but was
not charged with any crime because it was eighteen o

(02:26):
seven and that sort of thing wasn't really a crime
in Tennessee back then. In eighteen forty three, Burnett helped
organize and lead the first great wagon train to Oregon.
So he was one of the pioneers who first discovered
this territory Oregon Trail. You could say is a game
about Peter Burnett, murderer and uh soon to be politician,
because he was quickly elected to the provisional Legislature of Oregon.

(02:48):
Now this before Oregan was a state, so it was
still a territory, and he served as the territory of
Oregon's first Supreme Court justice, chief Supreme Court Justice. So
I'm guessing his qualifications were let a wagon train and
was a murderer. So in either like you're our judge,
you're you're in charge of this state right now. Um,
So eighteen forty four, Peter Burnett was instrumental in passing

(03:10):
what came to be known as the Burnett Lash Law.
You heard of the Burnett Lash Law from you? Okay, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that we've talked this. Uh. I had not heard and
not remembered that. I'm sure I've heard it, but I
have not remembered that until you brought it up. It's
a little bit famous, um it. Uh. It's essentially stated

(03:33):
that all black people were required to leave Oregon County
under penalty of being whipped quote not less than twenty
or more than thirty nine stripes. Uh. This punishment was
to be repeated every six months until they left the state.
So one of the interesting things about Peter Burnett is
that he's a classic example of someone winding up on
the right side of a historical issue for tremendously wrong reasons.

(03:54):
Because Peter Burnette was an outspoken abolitionist, not because he
believes slavery was wrong, but because he was just that
racist and he thought that if there was slavery, there
would be people who weren't white in the country. That
was his whole issue, which is there's a whole like
chunk of the abolitionist movement which were just people who
were too racist to own slaves. Um. It's kind of
a little historical angle. It gets left out a lot
of the time, but bizarre. So Burnett's law did include

(04:18):
a grace period three years for black women and two
years for black men, so we gave him some time
to get out of the state. Burnett also pushed against
Chinese migration to Oregon. He tried to ban it um.
He later went on to become the first governor of
the state of California, so he's my state's first governor
as well. And of course his first action and governor
of the state of California was I'm pretty sure you
can guess he tried to ban all black people. Yeah, yeah,

(04:41):
what do you know? And then he tried to ban
all Chinese people from California. Peter Burnett was a consistent man,
if nothing else. Uh. And I got a picture of him,
and he looks like we'll put it up on the
site behind the bastards dot com. But he looks like
the guy you would cast to play a generical Look
at that four. That's a five head, Yes, that is
maybe even a seven. I mean it is. It just

(05:03):
keeps going and those little curls on the side the curls.
I'm not going to go against them for the curls.
I mean that's he seems like he might have. That's
the only redeeming quality. And I mean it's a weird cravat.
He looks like someone in a story who would like
take off his cravat and his head would fall off
in an old fable. Yeah, it doesn't look like a
very happy person. No, no, he does not. He looks

(05:24):
a little bit like the painting of the guy Vigo
and Ghostbusters to the bad guy who's trying to steal
that baby's body. Yeah, he's got that, he's got his
eyes are doing that sort of thing. So you really
owe it to yourself to look at a picture of
Peter Burnett, a guy who looks like his goal in
life was to ban people who aren't white from multiple states. Yeah,
so Burnett's lash law did not last long, which is

(05:47):
kind of hard to say. Ten times fast law did not.
I'm not even going to attend it fair enough. So
now the good news is that no black people are
recorded to have been lashed under. It apparently was not
used even in the eighteen forties in Oregon, and people
were like, this seems a little bit too racist. That said,
we're talking Oregon in eighteen forties. Who knows what happened,

(06:08):
especially rural areas where the rural law was even less
than it was in Portland. Whether or not it was used,
the law reflected the values of the first white people
who settled in the territory of Oregon. They wanted their
state to be slave free, but because that was the
only way to ensure the state had no black people
at all, in eighteen forty eight, the Oregon Territorial government
passed a law that banned any quote negro or mulatto

(06:30):
from living in Oregon. In eighteen fifty, the Oregon Land
Donation Act gave quote whites and half breed Indians six
and fifty acres of land from the government. All other
people of color were banned from receiving land grants. So
Oregon was founded as a whites only state. It was
seen as this is going to be just white people
in this chunk. So that was the Pacific Northwest from

(06:51):
the get go, almost two hundred years ago. Yeah, and
there's this we'll be talking about. There's some people who
still think that ought to be the way things work. Yes,
So from the beginning, Oregon was a very rough place
to be anything but a very very white person. There
were some extraordinarily brave black pioneers who did try to
make a life out here. In eighteen fifty one, one
of them was Jacob Vanderpool. He was a former sailor.

(07:13):
I think he came from the Caribbean Islands, but I
don't think we know exactly, But he came to own
a saloon, restaurant and boarding house in Oregon City. And
a white guy named Theophilius Magruder, which is a name,
quite a name in the name you would expect of
a guy who's about to do or who did what
we're about to talk about him doing, reported him for
the crime of being black in Oregon Um and he

(07:34):
was given thirty days to leave the state. Now, Magruder
also owned a hotel and a bar in the same town,
so it's entirely possible that his motive was as financial
as it was racist, if not more so. But Jacob
Vanderpool was forced to leave and forced to give up
his business. In eighteen fifty seven, Oregon wrote a state
constitution that enshrined its exclusion of black people into law.

(07:56):
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 the 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 Mulattos, and for their effectual exclusion
from the state, and from the punishment of persons who

(08:18):
shall bring them into the state, or employ them or
harbor them therein. Yeah, so that's the initial law that
Oregon is founded under eighteen fifty seven. In eighteen fifty nine,
Oregon Territory finally becomes a state. It was the only
state in the Union that was officially whites only. So
this is the only time that this happened. You know,
as much racism as there is in the history of

(08:39):
the United States, We're going the only state to try
to do this. So that's a fame. I guess. Texas
has the Alamo and which is also pretty racist as
kind of. I grew up in Texas and they always
kind of smoothed over why the Texans were rebelling against
Mexico a lot to do with the So they wanted

(09:00):
to own people in Mexico. Didn't like people owning people. Yeah, yeah,
they really hid that fat yeah always yeah. So, while
Oregon initially ratified the fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which
gave citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the
United States, including former slaves. This is why we have
birthright citizenship. It was they were trying to figure out
a legal solution too. We've got all these people that

(09:21):
were forced to be here and now they've got to
be citizens. Yeah. So Oregon initially ratified the fourteenth Amendment,
but then it almost immediately rescinded the ratification of the amendment.
I guess people got angry. Oregon is also one of
only six states that refused to ratify the fifteenth Amendment,
which gave black men the right to vote. So fortunately
Oregon eventually got it shipped together enough to finally ratify

(09:43):
the fifteen Amendment. Do you want to guess when that happened.
I've known this before, but I can't think of it.
It was eight or nineteen fifty nine. Nineteen fifty nine,
they were like, all right, we'll ratify the amendment. That
let's black guys vote, just black guys. Uh. Yeah. It
did not reratify the fourteenth Amendment until nineteen seventy three. Yes, yeah,

(10:04):
I definitely remember that date. I think it's important when
we talk about like why this stuff still lingers, because
it didn't. It's not we're not talking about like, you know,
a hundred eighteen sixty five. Really isn't that long ago
when you talk about generations because the last Civil War
widows pension just stop getting paid like three years ago. Absolutely. Um,
but we'll say that all the time, like, oh, racism

(10:24):
is done, slavery is over. Okay, interesting, let's talk about redlining.
Oh well that was a long time ago too, we
will be talking about Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, Oregon ratified
the amendment that gave birthright citizens ship to people fifteen
years before. I was not that long. Disco might have
been a thing. I don't know when that. I think
that may have been a thing. Yeah, it's about as

(10:44):
old as disco. It's about as old as disco. Although
that does feel that that does feel old now. Disco
actually feels older than white supremacy in orger Absolutely so. Um,
it's probably not hard to see why the state of
Oregon has stayed so white even though after eighteen sixty
eight there was nothing legally the state authorities could do

(11:06):
to keep black people out of Oregon. So again, it's
not whites only after that point. By eighteen ninety there
were only around a thousand black people in the entire state.
By nineteen twenty, there were just two thousand. Now, the
nineteen twenties would have been a rough time to be
a black person in Oregon because Oregon was the highest
per capita membership of the Ku Klux Klan of any
state in the Union. They marched in, Yeah, they gathered

(11:28):
in Portland proper all the time, thousands of them, thousands
of the thousands. They're Claverns, I think, Yeah, that's the name.
They're Grand Wizards, Burnings cross Burns Center in the city. Yeah,
I prefer to it's easier to focus on the ridiculous names.
But yeah, it was cross burnings and murders and yeah, yeah,

(11:49):
we have to talk about that now, No, I mean
we can. That's what we're here for, Yeah, that is
what we're here. So Democrat Walter Pierce was elected governor
in nineteen twenty two after receiving the enthusiastic endorsement of
the Oregon Ku Klux Klan. In fact, it may have
been why he won, According to an article in The
Guardian quote photos in the local papers show the Portland
Chief of Police, sheriff, District Attorney, U s Attorney, and

(12:11):
mayor posing with klansmen, accompanied by an article saying them
in we're taking advice from the clan. So again, really
not weird that it took until the seventies to ratify
the fourteenth raified it. Yeah, So World War two is
when things really started to change demographically in Oregon. This
was the first time that a large number of black
people began to move to the state. And it was
because America was in this whole war thing, and we

(12:34):
need to build a shipload of boats. And if there's
one thing Portland's great at, it's being a place to
build a shipload of boats. You guys, we got our boats.
If I ever need to build a navy, this is
the city. I'm gonna build that navy and go for it. Yeah,
we're here. I'm gonna crowdfunded like a like a like
a go fundmate, but instead of for medical bills, for
like a battleship or three. What are you going to
use it for? I don't know. You'll sail around like

(12:56):
what Elron Hubbard did, just sail around for eight or
nine years. Podcasting, podcasting, podcast boat, a podcast boat, a podcast,
cult boats podcast. I was going to say, uss past us,
that's more catchy than mine, exactly catchy than mine. I'm
not the namer in this well, in fairness, I'm not

(13:17):
the name or either somebody else figured that out there. No,
I I feel your pain. So, by the end of
World War two, more than black people had moved to Oregon.
Many of them resided in Vanport, a small city between
Portland and Vancouver, Washington, calling it a city at first
at least, yeah, small town, small town it was. Most

(13:41):
of it was temporary housing that was built because they
had so many workers coming in and they needed the
ability to host them in. Portland was a very tiny
city at this point. Still, here's how the Smithsonian described
the creation of Vanport quote completed in just a hundred
and ten days. The town, comprised of ten thousand, four
fourteen apartments and homes, was mostly a slipshod combination of

(14:02):
wooden blocks and fiber board walls built on marshaland between
the Columbia Slough and the Columbia River. Vanport was physically
segregated from Portland and kept dry only by a system
of dikes that held back the flow of the Columbia River.
So a little bit of foreshadowing there. This is built
and basically the worst location you could build a town
to keep it dry. Years later, Manly Maven, who grew

(14:22):
up in Vanport, would describe it this way. Quote the
psychological effective living on the bottom of a relatively small
area dyked on all sides to a height of fifteen
to twenty five ft was vaguely disturbing. It was almost
impossible to get a view of the horizon from anywhere
in Vanport, at least on the ground during the lower
level apartments, and it was even difficult from upper levels,
which I can't really imagine this. It sounds like almost

(14:44):
something you'd see in like a dystopian movie, where these
people just have these dikes rising like they're walled in
on all sides. And this is the hub of you know,
the black community in Portland. You know for the first
time that it really has any size at all. Um So, yeah,
the idea was that once folks had settled into Vanport

(15:04):
and you know, worked at their jobs long enough and
earn some cash, they would be able to rent your
by homes elsewhere. It was not intended to be a
permanent development, but discriminatory housing policy made it nearly impossible
for black people to uh, you know, live anywhere else
in the city. Um So, once the war ended, the
Mayor of Portland wrote a newspaper article telling the black
people of Vanport that they were no longer welcome in

(15:25):
the state. Uh. This is the Mayor of Portland has
basically put up a letter saying like, Okay, thank you
for building the boats. You can go. You can go now. Yeah.
The housing authority discussed tearing the town down. A nineteen
forty seven Oregon Journal article described local attitudes to Vanport
this way, too many Oregonians, Vanport has been undesirable because
it is supposed to have a large colored population. Of

(15:47):
the some twenty three thou inhabitants, only slightly over four
thousander colored residents. True, this is a high percentage per
capita compared to other Northwestern cities, but as one resident
puts it, the colored people have to live somewhere, and
whether the Northwesterners lie it or not, they're here to stay.
I think there's a lot to dig into in terms
of the phrasing. They're both that this this journalist rather
than being like kind of confronting the racism, is like, well,

(16:11):
they're not entirely accurate. It's only a quarter color. And
then also, yeah, whether whether the Northwesterners like it or not,
they are here to stay. That's the attitude in nineteen seven.
So today you know Vanport as Delta park. Um. That's
a sort of the land that it's that's on now
because very little of Vanport City still remains um. In

(16:32):
ninety eight, it started raining very hard on Memorial Day,
Residents of Vanport woke up to driving rain. In this
letter from the Housing Authority of Portland, the HP, Remember
dikes are safe at present. You will be warned if necessary,
you will have time to leave. Don't get excited. I

(16:52):
do feel like if the government's sending you all caps
notes that they don't get excited, she'd probably get excited.
To get pretty excited. Should get pretty side it, I mean.
And what happened next is uh horrendous, Yeah, horrendous and
very predictable. The dikes did not hold. A hole opened
up shortly after four pm, and roughly one day Vanport,
Oregon's second largest city at the time, was completely wiped

(17:15):
out by floodwaters. Eighteen thousand, five hundred people, sixty three
hundred of whom were black, were displaced. Hundreds died, but
we don't know how many, because it really seems like
the HP may have secretly disposed of hundreds of corpses um.
Even even with the predictability that you were mentioning, people
often will trust authority figures, and even if it seems

(17:35):
predictable in hindsight, at the time, it probably didn't. They
probably really trusted that that they were safe. Oh yeah,
and I was sorry. I was not trying to say
that people bandports should have predicted it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The city shaded on something. They didn't give a ship
with this place that was basically built underwater with the
water held in by walls, and then the walls start
getting flooded with water. Absolutely. Um, there's a rumor that

(17:57):
four fifty seven dead people were shipped to Japan for
some reason. There's a bunch of weird rumors around what
that's very god Yeah, it's it's it's kind of hard
to dig into. I heard they recover ups. I hadn't
heard that. It seems like a reasonable guests would be
somewhere between four and SI. But it's it's very hard
to say. Yeah, let me see that cycle repeating itself
with Puerto Rico. Yeah, where it's it's weird how things

(18:21):
rhyme all of the time in history. Ye all, the
speaking of rhyming, it's time for an ad break. That
was a bad plot. But do you have any products
and or services you'd like to plug before we get
to the ones that paid us? Uh? So it gets
to just kind of be anything anything you want. I
usually pick random objects on the table because I just
love advertising. All Right, I'm going to say that everyone

(18:42):
should read Man Search for Meaning by Victor frankpl Oh.
That is much more meaningful than the plug. I was
going to go, so, yeah, read Man Search for Ye well,
I was going Vino daily moisturizing lotion. Only daily moisturizing
lotion currently on this table of it. Let's uh, let's
let's move over to the products indoor services that actually

(19:04):
paid us for. We're back. We're back back, and we're
talking about racism Oregon. Now for something completely different. Well,
I mean compared to your sponsors. Oh, yes, very different,
because none of our sponsors support racism in Oregon for sure. Yeah,

(19:28):
pretty sure. I mean, like they make belts like Croup six.
I don't see how a belt could be racist. Depends
on where they're made. Should I be saying this? Should
I be talking about consumerism under capitalism? Well, yes, I
mean we do. It's one of those things we uh,
this is the ocean that we live in. So you
can't do anything but swim, but you can't try to

(19:50):
pick products that you feel don't add to the problems
as long as you're not sponsored by Amazon. We're not
sponsored by Amazon, and I do believe that it's a
general good to keep people's pants up. Yeah, let's get
back into us. Continue. So there's a lot more to
say in terms of Portland's history being terrible to the
black people who lived there. There was the time when
voters in nineteen fifty six approved the construction of an

(20:14):
arena that necessitated the destruction of four hundred and seventy
six films, half of which were black people's homes, And
of course black people made up like less than two
percent of the city at this point, so we're not
talking about a proportional sort of Yeah, and the expressway
as well. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm about to say. Well, actually, no,
I was about to go into a completely different time
that they did that. There's yeah, there was the time

(20:38):
also in fifty six when the city of Portland used
federal funds to expand a local hospital by bulldoz in
seventy six acres black owned homes and businesses at the
junction of North Williams Avenue and Russell Street, which at
that point was considered Portland's black main street, which if
I'm keeping track, is at least the third black main
street in a city in the United States that was destroyed.
Although since Portland didn't bomb their's, which is what happened

(20:58):
in a couple of other states, I guess it's yeah,
better than the air Force, I suppose. Yeah, I mean
it's not it's hard to tell better from worse. Slow
deprivation is not always Yeah, I was reaching for a
little bit of levity in a situation that doesn't deserve it.
So tell us about this expressway, which I did not

(21:18):
include it here. Yeah, So Anyone who's in Portland knows
exactly what I'm talking about. But for people outside, there
is this very long freeway project that goes past and
around the Memorial Coliseum, which you just mentioned that was
built the arena, and this expressway was initially going to

(21:39):
be in the west portion of Portland. Anyone who knows
Portland knows that the will Lambite River bisects east from west,
and so it was initially going to be on the
other side of the river. But then people over there
were saying, oh no, like, we don't want that over here.
And it was you know, predominantly white people who were
saying that, and so they decided, yeah, exactly, and nimby, nimby,

(22:00):
and so instead got placed right wrapped around right next
to the Memorial Coliseum and resulted in the destruction of many, many,
many many more homes and displaced people there. So it
just goes straight around northeast Portland and up north. But
I'm gonna guess most of those homes were upper middle class,
you know, Caucasian, right, because that's most of that part

(22:23):
of port Let me check hold on a second, No, really, yeah,
are you surprised, racist? Racist? Oh my gosh, that doesn't
sound like we're about to continue talking about Oh wait,
I thought we were back to the sponsors. We're back
to belts. No, we're not talking about we're not talking
to milds. So yeah. Really kicking off in the nineties,

(22:45):
seventies and eighties was a process called redlining. This is
basically banks colluding to refuse mortgage loans to qualify black applicants.
Would be the quick way to sort of sum up
both of that process. An investigation published by The Oregony
in nineteen ninety journalism found that Portland banks were granting
loans to black Oregonians at roughly one tenth the rate

(23:06):
they were granting them to white people, um and one
tenth the rate that they were supposed to be granting them.
And for those who don't know, it's literal red lines
drawn on a map, very specifically placed. And that's something
that I think a lot of people are not aware
of that it is. It really refers to red lines
that were written on maps. Yeah, and they're resentally saying

(23:29):
we want to keep black people out of its neighborhoods,
we want to allow them to buy houses here. And
it's not like that we're really granting a lot of
loans to the black neighborhoods either, but like, yeah, they
were basically trying to hymn them in. It was kind
of like the zoning version of Kettling a little bit. Yeah.
So there were also a series of police shootings of
black men in the nineteen seventies and Portland's and in

(23:51):
the nineteen eighties, and investigation revealed that the local Portland
police had been running over possums and leaving the corpses
in front of black owned restaurants, which don't even know
what to say. It's a thing that happened. So given
all of that, it's probably not much of a surprise
to listeners that for much of the nineteen eighties and
nineteen nineties, Portland became known in the punk community as

(24:11):
a haven for neo Nazi skinheads. Racist skins would be
I think the I listened to a lot of that
kind of punk music. Yeah, but yeah, there's a whole
lingo here. I saw the movie Green Room. It's a
fine film about Nazi skins in Oregon. Scary, scary. I
left feeling all sorts of feels. That's how you're supposed

(24:32):
to feel that's how you're supposed to feel real good racist. Yeah.
That was quite close to home. Yeah, yeah, but I
was going to say the possum imagery stayed really would still.
You would still see people refer to possums in coded
language even through the nineteen eighties, from racist skinheads. They
would say keep the possums out. Yeah, it was still utilized.

(24:57):
I did not have that. I just need that the
police were doing this, have no idea. I thought they
just like being dix and there were a lot of
dead possums in Portland. But there's a racial element to
the tape. Fascinating. Yeah, it was still used as a
symbol of terror and racism. Wow, So from the cops
to the punks. That's not usually how that goes. I
know one thing about I'm not supposed to talk to

(25:18):
cosh but yeah, yeah, but these are the these are
the Nazi skinheadpots. They like to win. The cops were
being racist. Yeah that's the thing they want cops doing. Yeah.
So on about a month after I was born, well
lamb It Weekly published Young Nazis Portland's New Breed of
Racists about the growing population of young fascists in the city.

(25:40):
Reporter Jim Retten interviewed several of these guys and their
Southeast Portland apartment and credit words due this was not
like the New York Times profile and the Nazi next
door thing like it was an important that was covering it.
He seems to have done it a good job of
doing it, at least from what I've read. He asked
them about an assault on a guy named Sam Chin,
a twenty seven year old Portland resid and originally from Singapore.

(26:01):
Three skinheads had confronted Chin's family, beat up and stomped
on him, and read and brought this up to the Nazis.
I'm gonna read a quote from the article. Although they
denounced the media's focus on violence, they are not unwilling
to completely reject it. While they say the assault on
Chin was not representative of their beliefs, they repeatedly stressed
that they are willing to fight for their cause. We
wouldn't beat up someone for no reason at all, says Kay,

(26:22):
a tall male with a tattoo of a heavily booted
skinhead on his left bicep. But we're ready to defend ourselves.
Which I picked that quote because you can put those
words in the mouth of patriot prayers. Joey Gibson. Absolutely,
who's the guy running the rallies that have been fights recently.
That's the same sort of sentiment that comes from oath keepers,
three percenters, all of them. Yeah. So next we're going

(26:45):
to talk about what happened on November when Muata Sarra,
a twenty eight year old Ethiopian immigrant student at PSU
and a father of one, was dropped off in the
parking lot of his apartment complex by some friends. He
was about to head into his apartment when a vehicle
holding three racist skinheads and their girlfriends pulled up. And
these guys have been drinking and handing out racist flyers

(27:07):
from an organization called White Area and Resistance. Get a
little bit more into that. A second one of the
skins who I was originally going to use names because
I usually do, but I do like your attitude of
not giving these guys the benefit of their names. So
I'm not going to name the skinheads. Yeah, but anyone
who's curious can get the book. A hundred Little Hitlers.
That's a good title. Yeah, that's a real good title.

(27:28):
And so I'm all for community education learning about people.
But there is a distinction of putting out the names
and repeating them out loud over and over and over again,
and forgetting the names of victims and heroes who have
stepped in. Yeah, I agree, that's that's that's yeah, so Chips, Sorry,

(27:49):
the things you can we'll bleep out. Yeah, we'll bleep
that out. The bleep you heard was a name that
we're not going to say. One of these skins lived
in the same block of apartments all and I think
one of the scripts I heard from a police officer
was they could have strung tin cans on strings and
talk to each other. They lived that close together. So yeah,

(28:10):
the Nazis had been drinking heavily and putting up white
supremacist posters around town. They shouted at Sara and his friends,
and then while their girlfriends shouted for them to kill him,
the Nazis jumped Mulaghetta Sarat. One of them hit Mulaghetta
in the back of the head, I believe with a
baseball bat, and there was no ball er mit in
the car. They did not have that for baseball. No,

(28:30):
they had it for me for Nazi reasons. The reason
the Nazis carry based bats and he had the initials
of the organization carved into the back. Really, so he
had war carved in them. I don't think he had war.
I think it was their own group, because they had
their own Yeah. So this was a batmant for doing
exactly what he did with committing violent assault and in

(28:52):
this case, murder, because they continued to hit mulu Getta
when he fell to the ground, and they also continued
to stomp on him with steel toed boots. He died
that night from blood force trauma. So they went to prison. Um.
At the time, a big deal was made about the
fact that one of them, the kid with the bat,
was the frontman of a popular local band and also
an actor who had worked with Gus Van Sant. Sort

(29:12):
of a bunch of articles they were talking about this
talented young actor and the terrible thing. It's like, well,
he murdered a guy, doesn't matter that he was good
at acting, right about that? And they still do that too. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean, like I said, it's not hard to the
way that perpetrators of various crimes depending on their race
makes a big difference in the headline. Yeah, you see
it every time there's a marked difference of what happens

(29:35):
when one of these people commits a crime in the
way that their report on them, or even if you
are a young black boy like Tamir Rice a child
and people are saying, oh, he was a big scary,
he was manlike, it's horrifying yea. And yet then we
see these white men committing crimes who actually did something

(29:58):
and the way that they're painting and it is absolutely ridiculous. Well,
and there's really old history to that. I remember reading.
We did an episode where we talked about through the U. S.
Occupation of the Philippines, and there was an island that
the there's a massacre in the U. S. Military base
where a bunch of US soldiers got killed, and then
in response, they massacred. And the language they used was
they killed all of the men over ten, which you're

(30:21):
not a man at eleven, not a man at twelve,
not a man at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, maybe seventeen.
But like it doesn't matter. I mean, massacring is wrong,
but like just the language used any man over ten
is like, I feel like you're not a man till twenty.
But that's just my view. I think it usually takes
more like maybe before I'll let you know when I

(30:42):
hit that point. I'm at thirty right now, and I
don't feel all the way there now. Mulgato Sura's murder
led to a legal case against Tom Metzker, a shriveled
little testicle of a man and the founder of White
areaan Resistance or War. You can see a documentary of
him made after this point with Louis Threw where he
spends several days with him, and you get the feeling
that he's a ridiculous kind And I think this is

(31:03):
a problem. This caused a problem because I think that
a lot of these people were covered that way as
sort of like, look at this ridiculous. He's racist, and
he's the things he says are terrible, but he's really
just a crazy old thing. He's kind of cute. Look
at this little guy. Yet, Now, what Tom had been
doing is sending his son up to Portland and sending
a significant amount of written propaganda up there that was

(31:24):
not just propaganda on you know, not national socialism or whatever,
but was specifically advocating violence and talking about ways to
commit violence. I believe, you know, a little bit more
about this than I do. Yeah, so War his white
Arian resistance group had these newspapers they would give out
that we're overtly, horrifyingly racist, and the cartoons that they

(31:46):
would have on the covers were just absolutely disgusting. And
they would send up stacks to Portland for these young
groups of men who previously, we're not organized. They were
just going around and they would get drunk and they
would talk about being arian and racism and all that.
Not to say they shouldn't have been taken seriously at all,
but they weren't organized at that point. And it wasn't
until Tom Medsker and his son stepped in that they

(32:09):
began to have tools. They began to have these newspapers, flyers,
they would pass out fake welfare applications that they would
pass out to women of color and humiliate them and
attempt to humiliate them. And it wasn't until that point
that they actually had these tools and these means of
propaganda to pass out that they began to feel organized.

(32:31):
And this is where we're get into something that's really
interesting me. It's a little bit difficult to talk about.
Are you familiar with the concept of the fewer principle. UM.
I don't think I've heard specifically about it, but I
imagine it has to do with having a leader to
organize you. That's an aspect of it. It was the idea,
this was like the central idea behind the original nazis

(32:51):
an individual can embody and electrify at people and bring
them up and sort of use them as a tool
almost that and that that desirable and good. And obviously
that's silly when you start talking about like nations, but
there's a little to it when you talk about something
like you've got these disaffected kids in Portland who have
no sort of organizing principle, and a guy like Tom

(33:13):
Metzger who has just enough charisma, just enough vision to
get them united behind a purpose, and then they become dangerous.
And I think that you're seeing something similar with a
guy like Joey Gibson, who has I watched his speech,
is a good amount of personal charisma. He's good at speaking,
he's good at organizing. UM. And these people, the people
who show up these patriot prayer rallies, just like the

(33:33):
people who murdered Mulugeta Sara, we're doing shitty, racist things
in their personal lives beforehand, but it took a leader
coming in and then they're a cohesive Yeah. Absolutely, So
I think that's where it's important to understand that concept
because that do you think it embodies something? Not that
like the Nazi said that this was how everything worked.
I don't think it's how everything work, but I think

(33:53):
it's how Nazis work across time, and whether or not
they call themselves Nazis or patriots or whatever, it's howies were.
Um so digression um yeah. Even though Tom Metzger had
not specifically ordered the Skinheads to commit that particular murder,
he was seen as having vicarious liability for indoctrinated kids
with racist ideology, publishing information on how to commit violent crimes,

(34:17):
and sending people up to talk to them. So he
was ordered to pay like twelve and a half million
dollars in damages. Yeah, and he wound up with losing
complately bankrupted him. He had to sell his house. He
lost his house. Yeah. I had to pay amounts every
single months. Yeah up to today, at age like eighties something.
And they sold his house to a Hispanic family. Yes

(34:37):
they did they or no, the I think it was
it was Sara's family right who, No, it was not.
Was it the A C l U who got it?
Or Southern Poverty Law Centered was the one to sue them,
if that's what you're asking. Yeah, And the neighbors were
extremely happy to see the new family move in. They
didn't like Tom Metzker really because gosh, what a likable
guy he was. He seemed like he had a lot

(34:58):
on the ball. Sure he's a bad neighbor, you're saying, Yes,
I would imagine weird how nazis. Yeah, it's like neighbors
don't like when a bunch of skinheads come in and
out of somebody's own Yeah, okay, keep that in mind. Yeah.
You know what else I'll keep in mind is these
products and services that are about to support our show,

(35:27):
and we're back, and we're back. You didn't hear it
because what we just said will not be in the thing.
But we just did a great plug for Microsoft that
we're not going to repeat. No, absolutely not, you know,
in our hearts, in our hearts. So let's get back
into racism in Oregon. Soura Is murdered. His funeral is
obviously a very big deal, very emotional time. A lot

(35:48):
of activists come out for it, and there are rumors
that before the funeral that three Nazi skinheads might show
up to protest. This did not wind up happening, but
in spite of the increased visibility of the city hate problem,
Portland's racist skinhead problem only got worse during the nineteen nineties.
In a two thousand seventeen article for The Guardian, reporter
Jason Wilson quote cr And Malloy, a union organizer and

(36:09):
anti fascist activist who was active during this period. In
the nineteen there were multiple gangs and three hundred Nazis
in a city of three hundred thousand. The anti racist
youth were intimidated and isolated. The Nazis were just openly
hanging out on the streets down in a Pioneer Courthouse Square.
They would just gather and sit around, and people knew

(36:30):
to avoid that entire block. Yeah, and then there's talk,
especially talk from racists about the quote unquote no go
zones in places like London rear Paris, which do not exist,
and a lot of reporting on establishing that they're not real.
There were no go zones in Portland for people of
color in this period of time. Pioneer Square would have
been one of them. Siern malloy added, quote, it's not

(36:50):
hyperbolic to call it a war. There was intense fighting.
So again, the street fighting that we're seeing right now
in Oregon, that might happen literally the day after we
record this podcast is nothing new. But fighting between racist
and anti racist skinheads in Portland earned it the nickname
Skinhead City during the nineteen nineties, which is a cool nickname.

(37:10):
Beats it does beat Portlandia. Yeah, yeah, you guys are
going to be carrying that right. I'm sorry what people
out from l A keep doing. The nice cities in
the Northwest. They destroyed Bend too. But I will say
about Skinhead City, it's at least accurate, which is a

(37:32):
heavy thing to say. But the whole Portlandia most you know,
there's some truth to that show, But that show is
for getting a very large portion of our population and culture.
Part of what I wonder, depending on how all of
this increased political violence goes, is how twenty or thirty years,
if that show will just make no sense to people,

(37:55):
I hope. So, yeah, well not in that way, oh ye,
well yeah, if you're if you're going Okay, I see
what you're saying. I see what you're saying. I was
just hoping that we'll win this fight against Joey Gibson
and then first Culture will actually be celebrated for the
first time in Portland. Yeah. That would be nice. That
would be nice. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. Yes. So. Um. Now,

(38:20):
the Nazi skins who infested Portland and who degree still
invests both Portland and Oregon were obsessed with an idea
that still holds much traction among the fascist right, the
Northwest Imperative. The basic reasoning behind the Northwest Imperative is that,
since Oregon is already super white and filled with fascists,
why not try and turn it into a white ethno state. Um.
From a Nazi point of view, the last two hundred

(38:41):
years of Oregon history have already done a really good
job of laying the groundwork for this. Oregon is currently
the whitest state, in Portland the whitest big city in
the United States. Yeah. There is today an organization called
the Northwest Front dedicated to making the dream of the
Northwest Imperative a reality. The about section of their website
sums them up this way. Quote the Northwest Front is

(39:02):
a political organization of Arian men and women in the
United States and Canada of all ages and social backgrounds,
who recognize that an independent and sovereign white nation in
the Pacific Northwest is the only possibility for the survival
of the white race on this continent. So that's the rhetoric,
that's what they're angling for. The Southern Poverty Law Center
identifies eighteen different hate groups in the state of Oregon.
An outside of explicit hate groups, Oregon still has a

(39:22):
lot of its old problems with hate. A two thousand
eleven audit found that six of landlords and leasing agents
in the city discriminated against black and Latino renters, giving
them higher rents, forcing them to pay larger deposits, and
levying additional fees against absolutely that's nuts. And with gentrification

(39:43):
as well, the neighborhoods that have been most chicken shaken, chicken, chicken, chicken,
most chicken they got shipped real good yes by gentrification
in uh recent times are the same neighborhoods like I'll
buy a neighborhood that we have seen a lot of
the history you've talked about of pushing people of color

(40:06):
to that center are now gentrified with huge condos and
entirely unrecognizable. Yeah, it's uh, I mean, and this is
the I mean, you can trace some of that back
to Portland, to be honest. So black students in Portland
are suspended and expelled at a rate four to five
times higher than that of their white peers. And this
brings us more or less to the modern era where

(40:28):
we are today. Portland is a city with a lot
of left wing political activism now and definite reputation is
being quote woke. It's seen as a hippie to be
sort of place. But you know, we've as we've covered,
there's a very long history of discrimination and a very
long history of racist organizing. Over the last two years,
though Oregon has entered what maybe a different era. The
fighting in the streets is bigger and bloodier than it
has ever been before. The group behind it, Patriot Prayer

(40:51):
and to a lesser extent, the Proud Boys, is harder
to place and harder to get the mainstream to condemn
than a man like Tom Metzger and an organization like
White Arian Existance. Newspapers know what to do when you
call yourself white or Area Resistance your Patriot Prayer, you're
covered an American flag, you say you don't support hate,
or if you're the Proud Boys and you're punching each
other in naming cereals like it's harder for especially casual Yeah. Yeah,

(41:15):
So that's where we are now, and that's what we're
going to get to in the next episode, the coming
of Patriot Prayer, the story of Joey Gibson and the
bloodshed that has gone with it. But before we close
out today, I would like to talk with you a
little bit about one of what I think is the
most promising attempts to kind of fix this problem that's
very deep problem in Oregon of racism and Oregon, of
of you know, white supremacy in Oregon. The rural organizing projects.

(41:39):
You want to tell me a little bit about them. Absolutely, Well,
first I want to just close out our conversation about
absolutely with a lot of the viewpoints that people think
that people in Portland have, and Portland's think that they
themselves have. They have let a lot of this just
go entirely under the radar, and I think it's because

(42:00):
a lot of people in Portland, particularly white people, and
I don't mean just particularly I'm talking specifically about white people.
They are silent about this oppression. They think if they
put a Black Lives Matter sign in their yard that
they've done racial justice work. And that's just not how
it's gonna solve all this. And so people need to
get involved in organizations. They need to educate themselves, they

(42:20):
need to read more about the history of Oregon, listen
to podcasts like this, and uh change things. Yes, right,
I did that just for you. I appreciate Rural Organizing Projects.
So I haven't personally organized with Rural Organizing Project, and
I want to say that upfront because I really think
that getting a representative from their organization would be wonderful.

(42:42):
But basically Rural Organizing Project focuses on underrepresented rural areas
and Oregon that have been disenfranchised and ignored. Because a
big reason why we see this current uprising and problem
with these groups like the Oathkeepers. Three per centers in
groups like Patriot Prayer will have this kind of sentiment

(43:03):
in their mission statements that poor white people, especially poor
white men, are not being properly represented. They feel like
things are being taken away from them, and they feel
like the right wing propaganda that they are getting radio
stations they listen to, podcasts they listen to, and websites

(43:26):
that they go on frequently. They feel like they are
getting accurate information when they oftentimes are getting very tainted
and biased information that is not telling the whole story
of why we have gotten to this point within our
hyper capitalistic system. And so Rural Organizing Project really tries

(43:46):
to bring representation back to those areas. They try to
organize with legislators to ensure that we are focusing energy
and resources to make sure that people are not being
left out in cold quite literally, um, not being left
out um to just rely on these groups to take

(44:08):
them in, but to instead feel like they are part
of the Oregon community and that they are valued and
that you don't have to be in a city to
get those resources. And through that they are able to
educate people on the dangers of these groups like oath keepers,
three percenters, etcetera. And so the work that they do
is so important because it is very true that we
cannot ignore rural areas in our communities, not just to

(44:31):
fight racism, but because they are human beings that deserve
resources and deserve care, and rural areas have been hit
hard by this hyper capitalistic automation and um jobs have
been stripped away over the course of history, and so
people have been just seeing jobs go away, and instead
of being given the proper information of oh, the reason

(44:52):
why these jobs have changed is for these reasons, they
instead are told by somebody, Oh, you know why, It's
because of that immigrant, it's because of of women wanting
to enter the workforce, It's because of this and that,
and so then they hold tight to these traditional ideas
of what it is to be an American, which were
never accurate to begin with if we really look at
our history. But that is how they're able to be radicalized.

(45:15):
So Rural Organizing Project takes that on and I am
very proud to have them in Oregon. And it's it's
my opinions as a journalist that low key and low
key because it hasn't been covered enough. One of the
most important stories going on in the country right now
is the disintegration of society and rural parts of the
United States. For example, cattle wrestling is the highest it's
been in more than a hundred years. Cattle wrestling, agricultural

(45:37):
theft is the highest it's been in quite a long time.
You are seeing rising rates of poverty and a lot
of chunks of rural America. What you're saying is a
breakdown of social order in these places. And all of
these things are number one, major contributors to the growth
of fascist movements, major contributors to the growth of racist movements,
and on a human lovel just terrible for the people there.
And we most people listening to this probably live in city.

(46:00):
It is important to pay attention to what happens out there.
But because they're your fellow citizens, and because when their
lives get worse, your lives get worse. Absolutely the way
it works in a society. So listeners, if you've enjoyed
this episode, if you find this compelling, please donate some
bucks to the Rural Organizing Project absolutely look come up, yeah,
look come up online. Will include the link to the

(46:21):
website on ours So yeah, check that out, check out
all of our sources behind the bastards dot com. And uh,
you know, open up your wallet strings if you have
a couple of extra bucks to give. And if you're
in Oregon, volunteer, Yeah, volunteer with Rural Organizing Project absolutely uh.
And if you're in Oregon in general, be more active.
There's some stuff going on, this stuff going on going on.

(46:43):
The only thing that will make it get better is
the people who aren't, i'll say charitably on the shitty
side of things, getting active or at least supporting the
people who are being active in the streets, because that's
really important too. So well, I'm working on a project
to help make that easier for people to have access
to what is needed in the area, and I'll send
that to you once I have something awesome. Well, you

(47:05):
got anything else you wanna you wanna pitch blood Man
search for Meeting, Right yeah, Victor Frankel read Man, Search
for Meeting Victor Frankel, Holocaust survivor, right yes. Check it
all out. You can check out this podcast on our
website behind the Bastards. You can check out all the sources,
and of course tomorrow we will be talking about Patriot Prayer,
Joey Gibson, and the most dangerous street gang in America

(47:27):
that you probably haven't heard of, Patriot Prayer, So all
of that coming up next in the week. Have fun
with it. Check it out and you can find us
on Instagram and Twitter at Bastard's pod and that's that's
that's all I got for you. Go go do something
positive for the world. Goodbye, And I love statistically about
of you.