August 25, 2021 • 43 mins
On August 22nd, for the second year in a row, Proud Boys and other Far Right associates descended on Portland Oregon. Here is our field report.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
That's racism. What the fuck? All right? This is it
could happen here the podcast that already started once, um,
and then, uh, I wasn't recording. Okay, I wasn't recording,
but you are now, and that's and then that's all
that matters. But I am now. I got it right eventually,
(00:24):
and people need to just be proud of me for
eventually doing things right. Garrison, Hi there, good morning. We're
supposed to record this yesterday, but I got a horrible
stomach virus. Uh, so we we didn't because I was
I was dying in bed yep mhm um. But we're
here today because on the two of August, which was
(00:45):
this Sunday, there was a Proud Boy and affiliated other
boys rally in Portland that turned into one of our
by now routine running street fights through the city, this
time in a new neighborhood. Um. And then there was
also a gunfight in the neighborhood where fighting has happened
(01:06):
generally but usually happens and usually happens. Yeah, and there's
some I don't know, I think kind of meaningful takeaways
from this event, um, both in terms of what the
far right is going to be increasingly doing and kind
of some missteps among the far left in confronting them. Um,
And I think it's important to kind of well, let's
(01:26):
start with giving a layout of how the day went.
So basically, the rally was announced a couple of weeks ago,
right after a big series of street fights over a
a Canadian pastor whose church lost religious status in Canada
because he was so bigoted. Technically like this, this rally
has been planned for a few months, but it really
(01:49):
got boosted after this thing earlier in August. Yeah, there
was always going to be something on the twenty two,
because there was a gigantic street fight in Portland on
the twenty second, right in front of police headquarters. UM.
And so they there was always going to be something,
and it kind of started to take shape two weeks
(02:09):
ago after this street fight where I mean the picture
that went viral was a guy pointing what looked to
be an a R fifteen and a friend of ours,
justin Yao, a photo journalist. UM. That was later turned
out to be an air soft gun. The guy's gotten
a couple of charges from menicing. Um. But it was
a whole thing. Uh. They announced that they were going
to be doing this rally downtown. Uh and then locally
(02:31):
anti fascists announced a rally very nearby, and a lot
of people started talking about it became clear that it
was going to get numbers, and they switched. At the
last moment, the right wing switched their rally to a
completely different part of town. UM in the northeast side
of Portland, in the most diverse neighborhood in Portland, right
next to park Rose High School, which is the most
(02:51):
diverse school in the entire state of Oregon. UM and uh, so,
you know, people alley left wing anti fascist protesters rallied
downtown at at Salmon Springs Park. UM. Pretty good numbers,
I would say, between three and four hundred kind of
at the height of the gathering. UM and then somewhere
(03:12):
around two is Proud Boys and other times and you
get in. You know, most of the most of the
left wing counter protesters who rallied were either from Portland
or from you know, a nearby city like Seattle or Salem.
Everyone was pretty local, relatively, Yeah, everybody was pretty local,
whereas a significant chunk, if not a majority, of the
right wing protesters were from other states, like including like
(03:35):
they brought out a fucking Enrique Tario, who just got
sentenced to I think six months in jail. Uh, leader
of the Proud Boys slash federal informant, was there as
we're a lot, you know, a lot of the same
crew who have been traveling around to fight people in
different parts of the country, including with They were a
bunch of California Proud Boys who have been taking part
in some of the events outside of the Los Angeles
(03:57):
you know, city hall and whatnot. So they showed up,
um and uh, basically, you know, at first they're gathering
was you know, they put out a big flag, they
had like a stage on in the back of a truck,
and they were, you know, given giving the standard speeches.
The rally was built as sort of a free our
(04:19):
political prisoners thing for the people arrested on January sixth,
and for Alan Sweeney, who's been in jail for nearly
a year after he pulled a gun on a crowd
of random, unarmed people and journalists and last year shot
a bunch of journalist with paintball guns, did a bunch
of you know, illegal ship. Um, so they were that's
(04:40):
how they were billing it. It was I don't know broadly.
It was very because we showed up kind of early
in the rally. UM, we kind of drove around the
parking lot a little bit, getting some shots from a distance. UM.
And they were definitely very paranoid from the beginning. They
had like a couple of rifle teams walking around the area. UM,
(05:00):
they had people in vehicles patrolling. We parked outside of
the event. We walked up. There were four local women, UM,
kind of all look to be in there in their
fifties or so, who were protesting, unmasked with signs in
front of but outside of the event. UM. And they
lived in the neighborhood. They just heard that the Proud
Boys were showing up and they were not happy about that. UM,
(05:20):
so they had shown up to protest. We walked over
to talk to them, and as we were talking to them,
we got surrounded by a group of of Proud Boys
and kind of affiliated folks who started you know, live
streaming and yelling questions and in a couple of cases
like walking up to us with weapons in hand and
asking if we wanted to fight. UM. And eventually we
kind of pulled back from that uh and talked to
(05:43):
some other locals maybe half a block away who had
just like stopped to watch the confrontation. And as we
were talking with them, we get surrounded again a second
time by by these folks UM, who again are both
trying to kind of menace us and menace the locals
that we had been interviewing. UM, And there was a
there was an interesting moment there that I took down
(06:05):
that I want to kind of quote from where they
they started like there was clearly this mix of like
wanting us to be scared of them and also wanting
to put on a good face for these locals, and
so they said to the locals at one point, hey,
we're being very civil and uh, the man we were
(06:26):
talking to look back at them and said, it's a
veneer of civility, like which I appreciated his attitude a lot. UM.
But uh so we backed off after a little while,
just because the people we were trying to interview kept
getting surrounded by proud boys and it kind of felt
like we were, uh bringing heat on them that that
(06:47):
we didn't want to be doing. UM. So we started
to head back downtown and while that was happening, UM,
a horrible giant fight broke out UM and it had
been I think the start of it was that. So
there were these you know, unmasked women kind of out
in front, and as they get surrounded, a couple of
folks in block came up to kind of try and
defend them. Like one of them pulled his Toyota Tacoma
(07:09):
up to the side of the group because people were
spilling out into the street, and so he was kind
of trying to block cars from the people who were
out in the street. UM. A couple of medics showed
up and we're just kind of hanging around out, you know,
at the edge of the thing, UM in case something happened. UM.
And it kind of seems like folks continued to flood
in and from what we know of what was happening
(07:30):
over downtown at the main anti fascist gathering UM, at
a certain point people said like, hey, we need the
block needs to show up and confront you know, the
fascists UH in Northeast and people couldn't agree on whether
or not they should go in numbers. There was kind
of like a failure to get consensus. So some scattered
groups showed up UM and the Proud Boys attacked UM
(07:53):
and there was a big ugly street fight that went
on for pretty close to an hour. It led to
at least two vehicles getting totaled. UM. They attacked the
drivers of a van who fled the van, and then
the van UH was flipped UH and totaled UM. And
you'll see like the disinformation kind of spent on this
is that Antifa was trying to drive a van into
the Proud Boys. But we we have video at the
(08:15):
very clear video show, Yeah, no one is in the
van because they've maced and beat people, and they ran
away from the van UH. And then later they're Proud
Boys like ran more than like a block away from
their location. They attacked a guy in a truck UM
and not just total distruckt but like multiple people were
beating him about the head and shoulders UM as he
(08:36):
was sitting alone in his truck. They occupied the parking
lot of a local high school. UM fired paintball guns
at random local bystanders and depress UM and the police
didn't show up at all. We never saw a single
police officer UH. In the aftermath of that, they were
like smoke bombs and fireworks and there's like paintballs going
off for like an hour and no, Yeah, they completely
(08:58):
completely left alone. They just royd like totally destroyed two vehicles.
And while this was happening, like right after this had happened,
and I think like as sort of the footage of
them destroying these vehicles, it started to go viral. A
right wing counter protester downtown got into an argument with
some left wing counter I say argument. The allegations are
(09:21):
that he was just hurling racial slurs at them, um
and trying to show a couple of black people video
of a lynching or footage of a lynching. Again, these
are kind of the the allegations folks on the scene
had made. Um. He got sort of chased out of
the event by a group of left wing counter protesters
and he was armed and had apparently been flashing his gun,
(09:42):
and a couple of them were armed. They were about
half a block well, they were like literally across the street,
so he was a good it looked like thirty or
forty feet away from them when he pulled out his gun,
got behind a trash can and started firing into the crowd,
and he his weapon jammed pretty quickly. I think he
got off maybe two shots, and people, uh, counter protesters
(10:07):
Jason Wilson, the Guardian said two of them, Um, but
I think only one actually got off. Shots fired back
and thankfully no one's bullets hit anybody. Um but and
he and he was the the shooter was arrested pretty
much immediately thereafter, which marked kind of the first time
the police showed up and there was an undercover cop
in the anti fascist crowd who got arresting the right
(10:32):
of arresting the guy who started shooting the anti fascists. Yeah. Yeah,
as soon as press saw the undercover cop with other cops,
the guy in playing clothes very quickly left the scene. Yeah,
he he ran away quite quickly. He might call him
burned now. So that's I don't know the rough shape
of the event. And of course, because of I think
a mix of the Proud Boys, you know, getting so
(10:54):
violent in the area they were rallying, UM and the
shooting happening. Uh, the anti fascists who were downtown at
Samon Springs Park, um did the thing that that demonstrators
do in Portland now, which is, uh, start tearing up
street signs and grabbing pieces of fencing and making barricades.
(11:15):
So they made a little barricade around the protest area
and they did. And this is again, this is just
kind of what happens at Portland protests if they go well,
if there's enough people, and then people just love the
fucking love building barricades. Um. I'm not convinced there was
a huge amount of purpose for building the barricades, but whatever,
it makes people happy. And there was this kind of
(11:36):
there was a pretty intense expectation that Proud Boys were
going to come out and attack at night. I don't
really think anything happened that night. I think they went
back to Vancouver and all got really drunk. Yeah, So
(11:56):
that's that was the rough shape of the day. UM.
I think I want to start by kind of getting
into some critiques we have of kind of what we
saw on the left that day, because it is this
the police completely abdicated, as did the city government, any
responsibility for the event. They announced ahead of time that
they were not going to intervene if people were being assaulted. Um,
(12:18):
because they assume that if you're being assaulted by the
Proud Boys, you're a combatant. Um. That was the assumption. Um.
And again, like these women we talked to who showed
up unmasked with science got like maced from behind and
shoved and stuff, and like absolutely, we're not combating. They've
basically just said that if you're near a Proud Boy
and you get attacked, we're not going to do anything
(12:39):
about it. Um. And they sure didn't um. So that
kind of necessitates and this has been this has been
an evolution of the police's attitudes for a while. For
the first couple of years of these gatherings, the police
would be there in heavy presence and would mostly attack
left wing counter protesters. And in recent last year in change,
they've just not shown up at all. Um. And so
(13:03):
again there's a when it comes comes to like sort
of the there's often this debate about like well, just
don't show up, don't counter protest them, and like they
won't get anything that they want. Well, when they show up,
they attack people. So like the last couple of weekends
there have been attacked. The last couple of times that
they've shown up in town late at night, groups of
people have attacked homeless encampments right, um, you know, when
(13:27):
they when they weren't heavily confronted. Two weekends ago, people
drove around macing and shooting paintball guns. A kind of
random bystanders. So the violence isn't predicated on whether or
not people in black blocks show up to UH to
confront them. It's predicated on the fact that they come
(13:47):
to Portland to do violence, and they'll find a way
to do it one way or the other. Now, the
fact that I think, you know, some form of community
response is necessary to this because again the local government
and the police are never going to do anything to
protect people, doesn't mean that I think the response that
we got on the twenty two is without criticism. We
saw some really dumb ship. I think one of the
(14:08):
first things we saw when we showed up was kind
of at the the outskirts of the event. There was
a guy in a a Grunt style shirt on a
bicycle who kept arguing with people at the anti fascist event.
And at the anti fascist event, yeah, he kept arguing
with people, and like, after I don't know thirty minutes
or so, one of them bear maced him. Um And obviously,
(14:29):
but so bear mace is great for bears. People like
to use it because it seems more hardcore than just
normally macing somebody. Bear mace also spreads a lot more
than normal mace. It's it's it's like gets carried by
the era a lot more so number one, when there's
hundreds of people around and you bear mace one guy,
you're going to get mason a bunch of people's faces,
(14:50):
which is exactly what happens. Yeah. Um, So it was
so purely for just like uh like obviously, so number one,
there was more of people were hit by that mace
who were on the side of whoever was spraying the
mace uh than who weren't, um, including a guy who
(15:11):
had been trying to de escalate things. Um. And secondly,
it's just like, no matter how annoying a dude is,
being macing a random dude arguing with you, um makes
you the shitty one. Which is a number of people
called out at the time. John the Lefty, a very
prominent Portland anti fascist activists, got very angry at this
because it was so it was fucking dumb and you know,
(15:33):
we shouldn't be I don't want to be doing the
you know the thing that like the right wing does,
which is you take an event hundreds of people were
at and you highlight one example of someone being dumb
and say this is the whole event because it wasn't,
but it is the kind of thing you do see
at these events, and it's part of the problem of
a completely horizontal movement. Where the benefit of that is
it's it's it's it's durable, it's hard to infiltrate. The
(15:54):
downside of that is, if some guy shows up at
the Outskirts and decides he's going to be Captain Bear
mace Um, you gonna do, like what are you gonna
do to stop him? You know? Yeah, And we kind
of saw this trend continue over the course at the
Anti Fascist Rality, like like after the shooting, when everyone
was all like amped up, like like you know, as
as you should be, you guys, because you you like
just got shot at everybody trying there should have been. Yeah,
(16:18):
a lot of the block was then like very aggressive
with uh, cars and drivers and people just like in
the area who were trying to go about their day,
like really unnecessarily Like there was like like a lot
of people were like you know, if someone was confused
about why there was stuff in the street, and they
were like driving you know, very slowly and stopping to
talk to people. People, and a lot of a lot
(16:40):
of people, a lot a lot of people. You know,
there was a few people in block who were who
were very very aggressive with them, and there was people
trying to be people trying to de escalate and stuff. UM.
And that's just not super useful, um, because it just
makes everyone more n c And it's it's it's not
you're not really you're not like reading the situation accurately. Um.
(17:00):
If you're taking every grandma who's driving their old car
trying to go to like the grocery store or whatever,
taking her as like this is a massive threat, she's not.
She's trying to talk to you because she doesn't know
what's happening. And if you just scream at her face
and like threaten her, that's that is an anti fascism. No.
And also if you were just kind of randomly as
(17:20):
we saw, expanding out into different intersections and taking intersections
and yelling at people um or just standing around with weapons,
that just kind of freaks people out and does not
that doesn't protect anybody. You're you're you're not your presence
at that random intersection, UM isn't doing anything. Um. And
And that was a frustration, and there were people at
the time, there was this one beautiful moment where this
(17:43):
one guy in block started saying to everybody, Hey, guys,
we have a defensible position back at the fountain. Why
are we standing at a random intersection. Let's get back
to like where we were. It's a much safer and
less stupid place to be standing. And then there was
some fucking dude with a paintball who said, why should
we go back? Let's take the city. You know, it
was my dude, what do you what are you gonna take?
(18:06):
You gotta fucking paintball gun and you're standing in an intersection, like,
come on, man, shut the funk up. Um. It was
just silly. Yeah, And it's the kind of silliness that again,
I don't think there's any sort of comparison for the
kind of violence deployed by the two groups. And I
think it's worth noting that when the Proud Boys don't
(18:26):
show up, there aren't random groups of people in black
standing in intersections with paintball guns. It's just not a
common thing in Portland. Outside of these events, we were seeing,
like a lot of the trends that got started last year,
people trying to like set up a spot to protest,
then defend that spot, like occupy this particular space, and
(18:46):
this isn't always a useful tactic, and it's not it's
not useful tactic for a lot of anti fascists demonstrations,
So like trying to occupy a four block city radius
doesn't make sense when you have a two d people
in a crowd who are doing like an anti fascist rally,
like it's it's it made a whole lot more sense
at the beginning of the rally when everyone was just
at the park because that was a very you know,
(19:06):
strong like like like show of strength um against against
any fascists who wanted to show up downtown UM. And
that it's it's a much much more defensible spot than
being spread up across like three different intersections. And I
think the Correallest Against Fascism, an anti fascist group, put
out a decent thread on this very topic talking about
(19:28):
all its kind of same criticisms and how there was
they They even talked about how you know, there was
instances of block like getting aggressive with like houseless people,
um and like threatening to like mace them, and like
a whole bunch of this kind of stuff, which is
you know, pretty similar to like like Corrales it is
like you're you're engaging in the same violence dance mentally
ill people and houses people that like cops do. And
when you're when you're getting this overly aggressive escalating um
(19:51):
terms of like um this this like this this escalating conflict,
you're you're just you're just treating people like cops. You're
not actually try trying to do anti fascism. And and
that is always the danger is this has evolved into
a thing, a more constant thing is people have gotten traumatized,
because I do think trauma is a huge part of this.
One of the things that when you've been when you've
(20:13):
repeatedly been the victim of violence, both from police and
from right wingers, you get extra amped up and you
show up with weapons, and you know if if no
one shows up, if you don't get that that kind
of fight that you you went into this for days
kind of preparing your adrenal system for maybe you just
start yelling at some random person in a car or
(20:35):
somebody on the street who who transgresses in some slight
way because you're you're extra amped up. And that is
the Yeah, I think that needs to be taken into
account as like as much of a problem as anything
else that needs to be dealt with, Like that's actually
an anti fascist problem is um, dealing with the brutalization
effect that occurs to people showing up at these events
(20:57):
and makes them more likely to engage in unreasonable behavior
that alienates people, that makes the overall cause harder. You know,
there were a couple other things there was there were
there's a recall effort to get the mayor to not
be the mayor anymore. And some people were there taking signatures.
I signed the sheet. Um they were, you know, wearing
uniforms and stuff, and like a group of people in
(21:18):
block are very angry at them, like you're putting people
in danger because you're taking their info down here. And
it's like, guys, they're not requiring you to sign anything,
and not everyone who shows up at these events is
is worried about being identified as having been at these events. Um,
they're just in their regular clothes. Because you don't need
(21:40):
to be in black block to be an anti fascist. Yeah,
and you don't have to hide your involvement in anti
fascist activity. Uh. And in fact, it's beneficial if there's
a lot of people who don't. If you're a more
extreme activist if you're also partaking in like anti police activist, Like, yeah,
I get it, you don't want your identity known, or
you're you're somebody who's directly confronting the right wing a
(22:00):
lot physically, you don't want your identity known because you
might get attacked. That's not everyone who shows up, and
everyone is safer if a bunch of random people who
might be perfectly comfortable signing a sheet like that also
show up at the event, and that's you know, somebody
got harassed, would be too strong where but somebody got
like critiqued at the event for like not showing up
in block and it was like, well, they don't need to.
(22:22):
Sometimes it's fine. It's you want as many random people
to show up as possible. It's it's overall beneficial to
the thing you're actually trying to do. The one other
(22:44):
thing we should we should bring up is the whole
horrible debate that's been going on Twitter around like press stuff,
because yeah, what's happened at the kmart around around the
kmart stuff, because it's this kind of because it's kind
of tie into all of these same root problems. I think, Yeah,
(23:04):
so the basic thing that happened that that was kind
of the big development on the you know, because there
has been kind of a growing cult of smashing cameras
on the left for a while. Uh. And you know,
some of it comes from a very reasonable place, which
is that a number of people are in jail or
or caught charges because of of footage that that press
(23:24):
took and posted, usually people not wearing block as well,
usually people not wearing block or disguising their identity, which
again we could we could litigate that. And so there's
this mix of people who are just extra heightened about
press and people who are just like, well, anytime you
see a camera, it's fine to to to hit its
cameras are snitches? Is like kay, um and uh, I
(23:49):
don't know, there's there's there's a number of of I think, uh,
shortcomings and that type of thinking, including the fact that
like those same people tend to repeatedly miss right wing
live streamers who are in block and filming, and it
happens every single time they're angry at a marked press person. Yeah. People, people,
we people get very angry at people who are you know,
(24:12):
like the people in the block will get very angry
and hostile at like photographers who are you know, clearly
marked um yet ignore and miss uh like bad like
bad actors who are dressed in block secretly filming, who
get a lot of footage people doing crimes, and this
gets missed every single time and no one talks about it.
(24:32):
This is something that it never gets brought up in
the debate about cameras. It's like the people getting actual
footage of you doing crimes are people in block and
you just ignore them and it's you know. That was
this weekend there are a local journalist, Marny stab was
filming and she actually got assaulted by both sides. She
was maced by a right winger before she got attacked
(24:54):
by some left wing folks in block and had her
camera broken. Um. It was a very ugly situation. Um
people like people called her a slut, like some misogynist
and someone block did that and they smashed her camera
stuff and she was trying to she was yeah, yeah,
it's and here it is a whole bunch of people
(25:15):
with with like contradictory claims. But what happened to some
people saying that she attacked the block she did, and
she was trying to get her phone back she didn't
attack the block like whatever you want to say about
like because there's arguments about like she only complained that
block at attacked, or she didn't point out that she
had also been mazed by right wingers like whatever, that's
he that's not the thing to harp on. The thing
the harp on is for all that people claim about
(25:36):
her camera putting them in danger, them assaulting her was
filmed from like six different angles. It turns out when
you when you when you very publicly assault a journalist
for quoting for like you know, because you think they're
gonna film you doing crimes, you get filmed doing crimes
from many angles in high definition like that. You did
not prevent yourself from getting caught on hamra doing crimes.
(26:01):
You've only made it more so. Also, as you were
doing this, fascists were assaulting people like you weren't doing
anti fascism. You were focused on this one journalist that
you don't like. You know, some people are some people
are like saying they don't like her because she has
worked with Ford Fisher in the past, and they don't
like ford Fisher because of covered cheese done so like
it's okay because she works with this with this media person, Like,
(26:24):
as you're arguing and doing all this stuff, they're literally
fascists a block away assaulting people inside a truck and like, right,
UM's so you're not actually doing anti fascism and you're
also not preventing yourself from getting caught on cameras. It's
a it's a whole bunch of things that are frustrating
because I feel like people really aren't thinking through this
position fully and what are actually what is actually happening
(26:46):
on the street. Yeah, if you just get caught in
this kind of endless debate that really has no actual
answer because no one's no one's going to change their
opinion on it, and like, I don't have, I don't
have like I under stand the sentiment, but I also
understand how there are lots of cases where press coverage
is very helpful for these types of movements, and then
(27:07):
there's definitely ways to do it responsibly. But also just
attacking every journalist on site does not seem like a
very anti fascist thing to do, And it's, um, yeah,
I I I don't want to like, I don't want
to claim that that's like the only majority response. It's
a specific subset of the left wing demonstrator. Because like
later on in the day, like my photographer and I
(27:28):
were getting shots of the barricades, um, and there were
some block people around them, and one of them walked
up and very politely said, hey, would you mind um
not photographing you know, the people in their blind We
showed them like, no, no no, no, we're just getting like
barricades and stuff. It was a very polite conversation, and
I think a reasonable way to like, everyone has a
has a right to walk up to press and request
(27:49):
that they not be photographed, you know. Um. Obviously that
doesn't necessarily come with like a legal backing or anything.
But I think most press, if someone walks say hey,
would you please not like most people are going to
be relatively decent about that. You'll deal with some like
shitty people now and again. And I I think that, um,
we're harping on these problems because the basic reality is
(28:11):
that a response from the community is necessary for these events.
People do need to show up, people do need to
confront and oppose these right wing groups when they show
up in town. And because the local government, the federal government,
and law enforcement have completely have stated in multiple States right.
(28:32):
This kind of ship has been going on in Los Angeles.
There have been street fights with people stabbed in front
of police headquarters, in front of the l A city hall. Um.
Police don't declare on lawful assembly, they don't do anything
to to to confront the folks who are just like
some of the same Proud Boys who are here in
Portland were out in front of a clinic in Los
Angeles a couple of months ago, assaulting cancer patients for
(28:53):
wearing masks into a clinic. Like a response is necessary
in a community. Response is necessar area, and because of
how necessary the responses, it is also necessary that we
critique the response when it falls short. Yeah, because all
all of these things distract from like the much more
severe thing that like proud Boys horribly beat people on
(29:15):
some day, like there was could have died, yes, smpleally ugly.
And I know there's been people complaining that there was
like seven photographers watching this happen, And like I I
totally understand that absolutely, that is very and that's a
very fair criticism of press because I happen to know
there have been times when like right wing videographers have
gotten caught in a crowd and beaten up, and members
(29:38):
of the press have said, hey, they've had enough after
a certain point, because you do, at a certain stage
have a responsibility to step in, you know. Um, It's
like if you're a photographer and you see somebody with
a gunshot wound, if it's safe for you to administer
first staid, it's more incumbent upon you to administer first
aid than to get a shot that said, like, there's
(29:58):
I don't know, this is a this is an old
argument and conflict reporting. They that very famous photo of um,
a child. I think it was an Ethiopia, but I'm
not certain where, Like a kid who's clearly dying of
malnutrition and a photographer took a picture of them, and
people like critique that photographer and attacked him, and I
think the photographer eventually committed suicide. But it was this whole.
(30:21):
It was this whole like debate over shouldn't he have
done something? In his argument, which I do think he
was writing, this was like I if it was something
I could have taken action on, I would have. But like,
this is a kid who's been malnourished for months and
months and months, like nothing I can give them is
going to You can't even just give them food because
they can die when they're that malnourished. Just this whole
it's this whole question. I'm not saying that I think
(30:42):
the photographer is taking pictures of that guy getting beaten
in the truck should have charged in with sticks and
beat the proud boys. But someone could have said, hey, guys,
you like you need to back off, like he's had
enough something like that, especially because that there was there
was a lot of them, and yes they were outnumbered
by the boys. And yes, the bystander effect is a
real thing. Um, you know, more people are there, you're
(31:05):
you assume someone else is going to intervene, um than
everyone just like watches, because that's just what humans do
well in a lot of cases. It's like that. But yes,
they're there. There could have there could have been things
done to prevent this, to maybe slightly prevent this man
from getting beaten so badly because he he was. It was,
it's it is. It is horrible. It's horrible. Yeah, um,
(31:27):
And I do think yeah, And I also I get
I I don't want to like come at this by
saying I think that they're like the the anger at
press is completely irrational. There's some very understandable reasons for it.
Both stuff like that and just kind of the general
basic fact with that if one group of both groups
of people are having violence against them and getting traumatized,
(31:49):
but one group of people is also making a profit
off of their presence there, that's going to cause friction.
Like there's a number of things that cause friction between
the press and communities. And when you kind of have
this commune unity of press who's come up and makes
a living off of photos of these events that are
deeply traumatic for the people personally involved, that's going to
(32:09):
be a cause of friction. But the fact that there's
friction and the fact that there's uncomfortable questions to be
asked about that doesn't mean that like, well, just attack
people with cameras is a is a reasonable response? Um,
And like attacking people with cameras and like attacking them
as they're like throwing soda cans at them as they're
getting medical aid, like that's yeah, Like like for people
(32:31):
saying like, oh, like doing this kind of stuff is
self defense because we're defending our communities from getting documented.
First of all, Like if you're wearing good block. You
shouldn't be identifiable in the first place, that's why block
was invented. Um. And second like, throwing soda cans at
someone getting medalaide isn't self defense. In no way, that's
self defense against people filming you, Like, it's not, that's
(32:52):
that's you are. You are very, you are very past
that point. You're just hurting someone who's getting treated by medics.
That that's that's a you're doing at that point. And again,
you're not stopping other people from filming you because this
whole situation has caused more cameras to focus on specific individuals.
It's like you're you're not even achieving your goal, and
your goal is slightly confusing because you're not you're you're,
(33:17):
you're you're you're just hurting people who are getting medical
aid at this point, and that's not that's not really super. Yeah,
I don't I don't see how that's really is in
line with trying to prevent fascists from hurting your community,
as fascists are literally a block away beating up people. Yeah,
and it's um, you know, uh, we talked to some
(33:38):
locals in the neighborhood. UM while while this was going
down and I think there is in Portland a broad
kind of support for UH people confronting these folks. And
there's even you know, we we talked to UM as
we were as we were putting on our gas mesks
and shipped to wade into you know, kind of the
(34:01):
tail end of the big street fight other people in
masks and armor who had like just come up from downtown.
We're walking past and there was like we ran into
this this young black woman, Mars, who was heading to
a church event UM with her family and who we
had just like parked in front of her house. And
she was like, Hey, what's going on? And we were like, oh,
it's the proud and it you know, she had she
(34:22):
was a community organizer. She'd had to stop showing up
at events because she had gotten targeted and maced and
and followed home and stuff. UM, and she was surprised
to learn that like the event had been moved at
the last moment to be right next to her, you know,
her community, and was supportive of the fact that people
were showing up to counter these folks. UM. And I
(34:43):
think that I think that the the the long term
solution to more effectively opposing these people is UM continuing
community outreach UM and and building ties within the areas
where they show up because there's a lot of it's
friendly territory in a lot of cases. Um Mars told
us that, like she thinks that the block showing up
(35:05):
at events like this is necessary, especially like there's a
lot of criticism about like, oh, well, these are all
like white people showing up, And her attitude was that, like, well,
that's it's kind of incumbent when other when like white
supremacist groups are showing up in black neighborhoods to confront people,
it's kind of incumbent upon other white people to show
up and protect and like put their bodies on the line.
(35:26):
Like that's that That's kind of how she she saw it. UM.
Another good part of like like like you know, a
like objectively successful part of this particular UM situation is
the mass mobilization online of the anti fascist resistance at
the original meeting spot, which successfully. There was so much
(35:48):
talk about it that the fascists got scared away, Like
they got scared. There's even and they had to meet
inside a kmart parking a lot. Now, yes, they they
did violence outside of that, but they kept they kept
the you know, the mobilization online um, and they like
you know, preparing for the in person thing in downtown,
(36:10):
got the fascist away from downtown, got the fascist away
from the homeless encampments downtown that they've been targeting the
past few weeks. Like that was very successful, um, in
terms of keeping fascists out of downtown and keeping them
and keeping you know, a large mob of proud boys
away from just running through a homeless encampment beating up people, um,
as they've done in the past. So that is like,
you know, in terms of positive things, that is absolutely
(36:32):
very very good. And there was a lot of anti
fascists on the ground right, Like we're talking about a
very all of our critiques are talking about a very
small group of people because there were there were hundreds
of people on the ground. A lot of block was
doing a very good job keeping keeping you know, people protected,
keeping certain spots that secured, especially at Samon Springs. Yeah.
(36:53):
And there was a right wing live stream where they
like drove past the counter protest event part of and
said like it's a sea of black, we shouldn't go
down there. Um. And yeah, that that is when folks
show up. It does protect certain areas, and kind of
one of the shortcomings that isn't a moral shortcoming of
the response was kind of the the fact that when
(37:13):
they showed up in a different location there, there was
not really a very a very good concerted response to
like getting people out, and so you kind of have
really unclear, isolated small groups of people in blocks showing
up and so they were outnumbered and it didn't like
the confrontation with them in Northeast didn't go super well.
They weren't able to have enough people there to show
(37:35):
up a strong resistance. Yeah. Yeah, because like when back
at Salmon Springs in downtown, it's a lot of like
rumors like how much a block is going over to
the kmart? Isn't just a little bit? Is a lot?
Like it was very unclear um, and that that part
was because of the location change and people debating whether
or not they should go to the to the kmart
where the Proud Boys are at that that that is
(37:57):
kind of the root of all of like the kind
of the the issues that came up that day just
because of the crowd size got split. It was very
it was very awkward. This led you know, there wasn't enough,
there wasn't enough anti fascism blocked to like really actively
opposed the Proud Boys. So then they started, you know,
focusing on a few of the journalists who they did
not like there, and that's kind of caused that. That's
(38:18):
kind of why how that problem got got to that
certain point, and they weren't able to know, really show
a good a good defense when when the Proud Boys
started attacking and pushing people out. Um, so you know
there's a few a few you know, logistical things that
are you know that that just is a hard problem
like that, like that is a very difficult thing to
(38:39):
figure out on the ground. Um, I'm yeah, that's yeah,
It's totally sympathize with an organizational problem and a pretty
new one, and like you can't you know, this is
an ongoing adaptation thing and I'm not really sure what
the long term solution to that is going to be.
And I think the fact that there was an armed
attack on the pro test downtown one of the things
(39:02):
I'm worried about going forward is that, like, now that
line has been crossed, this isn't the first time there's
been gunfire at one of these events. There's happened a
couple of times. Uh, this is the first time though,
that there's been an exchange of fire, and that's worrisome
and it's kind of hard to tell like where that's
going to go, and especially if what I think makes
this a particular dangers that when we see deadly violence
(39:24):
like we saw with um Um j Danielson and Michael
Ryanol last year, like we saw with Skyler Journe again
firing a gun into a crowd. Um. Both of those
two situations just mentioned happened at parking garages. This one
happened out in front of a pizza joint, a block
and a half something like that away from the main gathering.
The really violent ship always happens on the periphery, and
(39:44):
it always happens between small groups of people, sometimes just individuals.
And I'm worried that if if there isn't a better
solution figured out for dealing with Okay, they changed location,
they're showing up in numbers here. We've already got hundreds
of people here who comes over to the new location.
How many of them come? If that isn't kind of
settled in a in a concerted way, you're going to
increasingly have small groups of people, most of whom are
(40:07):
probably packing firearms running into each other on the peripheries
of events, and that is a fucking recipe for for
people getting shot to death. Like one other good thing
is when anti fascists did fire back because they were
being fired upon, they were absolutely right to This was
one of the better instances of like how they actually fired,
Like you know, you talked about how they were how
(40:30):
all of like the bullet packs we found were like
lower onto the ground. None of them cracked the windows
of the building. So they were shooting low. Yeah, and
they weren't. They weren't shooting someone as they run away.
They weren't trying to shoot you know, like a moving
vehicle or a moving target. It was very like you know,
like focus firing at a stationary person who was firing
on them. They took effective cover between the wheels and
(40:51):
with wheels and engine blocks of cars between them, um,
and they aimed low. It was very very effective and
I think very justified self defense. Yeah. Yeah, So I
think that kind of wraps up most of what happened,
But we could have focused more on what the Proud
Boys did. But I'm pretty sure everyone kind of knows
that they're bad and the bad things. If you're listening
(41:14):
to this, you know they're bad and they did bad things.
There's no there's no equivalence between like the level of
violence deployed because uh, you know, in terms of severe injuries. Uh,
it's it's pretty one sided. And like I'm we're not
trying to like backseat activist here by talking to you know,
by critiquing stuff. But like as much as people find
(41:34):
it frustrating, optics do matter because there is more of
them than us, Like, we can't we can't win this
battle without without optics. So all the time they gets,
they gets dedicated to talking about, oh, here's how much
Antifa is attacking you know, random people filming. All that
distracts from the actual like brutal assault that happened, um
(41:56):
bye by the Proud Boys. You know. So all of
these things do do are in the long run because unfortunately,
um there is there is a lot of them, and
for now, at least, we optics are things that needs
to be considered if we want to have any kind
of success at this type of organizing. Yeah, and I
also think that just um obviously like part of why
(42:18):
we're not focusing on the Proud Boys as much as
that everyone listening to this knows they're dangerous, uh, And
it's much more effective to talk about, Hey, what were
the shortcomings on our side this event? What are the
things that like could be done or need to be
done better in order to improve people's safety and approve
the efficacy of the resistance to these groups, because that's
(42:40):
what people are actually going to listen to, you know.
All right, yeah, ye, all right, that's an episode. Get
out of here, go home, you're drunk. M
That's racism. What the fuck? All right? This is it
could happen here the podcast that already started once, um,
and then, uh, I wasn't recording. Okay, I wasn't recording,
but you are now, and that's and then that's all
that matters. But I am now. I got it right eventually,
(00:24):
and people need to just be proud of me for
eventually doing things right. Garrison, Hi there, good morning. We're
supposed to record this yesterday, but I got a horrible
stomach virus. Uh, so we we didn't because I was
I was dying in bed yep mhm um. But we're
here today because on the two of August, which was
(00:45):
this Sunday, there was a Proud Boy and affiliated other
boys rally in Portland that turned into one of our
by now routine running street fights through the city, this
time in a new neighborhood. Um. And then there was
also a gunfight in the neighborhood where fighting has happened
(01:06):
generally but usually happens and usually happens. Yeah, and there's
some I don't know, I think kind of meaningful takeaways
from this event, um, both in terms of what the
far right is going to be increasingly doing and kind
of some missteps among the far left in confronting them. Um,
And I think it's important to kind of well, let's
(01:26):
start with giving a layout of how the day went.
So basically, the rally was announced a couple of weeks ago,
right after a big series of street fights over a
a Canadian pastor whose church lost religious status in Canada
because he was so bigoted. Technically like this, this rally
has been planned for a few months, but it really
(01:49):
got boosted after this thing earlier in August. Yeah, there
was always going to be something on the twenty two,
because there was a gigantic street fight in Portland on
the twenty second, right in front of police headquarters. UM.
And so they there was always going to be something,
and it kind of started to take shape two weeks
(02:09):
ago after this street fight where I mean the picture
that went viral was a guy pointing what looked to
be an a R fifteen and a friend of ours,
justin Yao, a photo journalist. UM. That was later turned
out to be an air soft gun. The guy's gotten
a couple of charges from menicing. Um. But it was
a whole thing. Uh. They announced that they were going
to be doing this rally downtown. Uh and then locally
(02:31):
anti fascists announced a rally very nearby, and a lot
of people started talking about it became clear that it
was going to get numbers, and they switched. At the
last moment, the right wing switched their rally to a
completely different part of town. UM in the northeast side
of Portland, in the most diverse neighborhood in Portland, right
next to park Rose High School, which is the most
(02:51):
diverse school in the entire state of Oregon. UM and uh, so,
you know, people alley left wing anti fascist protesters rallied
downtown at at Salmon Springs Park. UM. Pretty good numbers,
I would say, between three and four hundred kind of
at the height of the gathering. UM and then somewhere
(03:12):
around two is Proud Boys and other times and you
get in. You know, most of the most of the
left wing counter protesters who rallied were either from Portland
or from you know, a nearby city like Seattle or Salem.
Everyone was pretty local, relatively, Yeah, everybody was pretty local,
whereas a significant chunk, if not a majority, of the
right wing protesters were from other states, like including like
(03:35):
they brought out a fucking Enrique Tario, who just got
sentenced to I think six months in jail. Uh, leader
of the Proud Boys slash federal informant, was there as
we're a lot, you know, a lot of the same
crew who have been traveling around to fight people in
different parts of the country, including with They were a
bunch of California Proud Boys who have been taking part
in some of the events outside of the Los Angeles
(03:57):
you know, city hall and whatnot. So they showed up,
um and uh, basically, you know, at first they're gathering
was you know, they put out a big flag, they
had like a stage on in the back of a truck,
and they were, you know, given giving the standard speeches.
The rally was built as sort of a free our
(04:19):
political prisoners thing for the people arrested on January sixth,
and for Alan Sweeney, who's been in jail for nearly
a year after he pulled a gun on a crowd
of random, unarmed people and journalists and last year shot
a bunch of journalist with paintball guns, did a bunch
of you know, illegal ship. Um, so they were that's
(04:40):
how they were billing it. It was I don't know broadly.
It was very because we showed up kind of early
in the rally. UM, we kind of drove around the
parking lot a little bit, getting some shots from a distance. UM.
And they were definitely very paranoid from the beginning. They
had like a couple of rifle teams walking around the area. UM,
(05:00):
they had people in vehicles patrolling. We parked outside of
the event. We walked up. There were four local women, UM,
kind of all look to be in there in their
fifties or so, who were protesting, unmasked with signs in
front of but outside of the event. UM. And they
lived in the neighborhood. They just heard that the Proud
Boys were showing up and they were not happy about that. UM,
(05:20):
so they had shown up to protest. We walked over
to talk to them, and as we were talking to them,
we got surrounded by a group of of Proud Boys
and kind of affiliated folks who started you know, live
streaming and yelling questions and in a couple of cases
like walking up to us with weapons in hand and
asking if we wanted to fight. UM. And eventually we
kind of pulled back from that uh and talked to
(05:43):
some other locals maybe half a block away who had
just like stopped to watch the confrontation. And as we
were talking with them, we get surrounded again a second
time by by these folks UM, who again are both
trying to kind of menace us and menace the locals
that we had been interviewing. UM, And there was a
there was an interesting moment there that I took down
(06:05):
that I want to kind of quote from where they
they started like there was clearly this mix of like
wanting us to be scared of them and also wanting
to put on a good face for these locals, and
so they said to the locals at one point, hey,
we're being very civil and uh, the man we were
(06:26):
talking to look back at them and said, it's a
veneer of civility, like which I appreciated his attitude a lot. UM.
But uh so we backed off after a little while,
just because the people we were trying to interview kept
getting surrounded by proud boys and it kind of felt
like we were, uh bringing heat on them that that
(06:47):
we didn't want to be doing. UM. So we started
to head back downtown and while that was happening, UM,
a horrible giant fight broke out UM and it had
been I think the start of it was that. So
there were these you know, unmasked women kind of out
in front, and as they get surrounded, a couple of
folks in block came up to kind of try and
defend them. Like one of them pulled his Toyota Tacoma
(07:09):
up to the side of the group because people were
spilling out into the street, and so he was kind
of trying to block cars from the people who were
out in the street. UM. A couple of medics showed
up and we're just kind of hanging around out, you know,
at the edge of the thing, UM in case something happened. UM.
And it kind of seems like folks continued to flood
in and from what we know of what was happening
(07:30):
over downtown at the main anti fascist gathering UM, at
a certain point people said like, hey, we need the
block needs to show up and confront you know, the
fascists UH in Northeast and people couldn't agree on whether
or not they should go in numbers. There was kind
of like a failure to get consensus. So some scattered
groups showed up UM and the Proud Boys attacked UM
(07:53):
and there was a big ugly street fight that went
on for pretty close to an hour. It led to
at least two vehicles getting totaled. UM. They attacked the
drivers of a van who fled the van, and then
the van UH was flipped UH and totaled UM. And
you'll see like the disinformation kind of spent on this
is that Antifa was trying to drive a van into
the Proud Boys. But we we have video at the
(08:15):
very clear video show, Yeah, no one is in the
van because they've maced and beat people, and they ran
away from the van UH. And then later they're Proud
Boys like ran more than like a block away from
their location. They attacked a guy in a truck UM
and not just total distruckt but like multiple people were
beating him about the head and shoulders UM as he
(08:36):
was sitting alone in his truck. They occupied the parking
lot of a local high school. UM fired paintball guns
at random local bystanders and depress UM and the police
didn't show up at all. We never saw a single
police officer UH. In the aftermath of that, they were
like smoke bombs and fireworks and there's like paintballs going
off for like an hour and no, Yeah, they completely
(08:58):
completely left alone. They just royd like totally destroyed two vehicles.
And while this was happening, like right after this had happened,
and I think like as sort of the footage of
them destroying these vehicles, it started to go viral. A
right wing counter protester downtown got into an argument with
some left wing counter I say argument. The allegations are
(09:21):
that he was just hurling racial slurs at them, um
and trying to show a couple of black people video
of a lynching or footage of a lynching. Again, these
are kind of the the allegations folks on the scene
had made. Um. He got sort of chased out of
the event by a group of left wing counter protesters
and he was armed and had apparently been flashing his gun,
(09:42):
and a couple of them were armed. They were about
half a block well, they were like literally across the street,
so he was a good it looked like thirty or
forty feet away from them when he pulled out his gun,
got behind a trash can and started firing into the crowd,
and he his weapon jammed pretty quickly. I think he
got off maybe two shots, and people, uh, counter protesters
(10:07):
Jason Wilson, the Guardian said two of them, Um, but
I think only one actually got off. Shots fired back
and thankfully no one's bullets hit anybody. Um but and
he and he was the the shooter was arrested pretty
much immediately thereafter, which marked kind of the first time
the police showed up and there was an undercover cop
in the anti fascist crowd who got arresting the right
(10:32):
of arresting the guy who started shooting the anti fascists. Yeah. Yeah,
as soon as press saw the undercover cop with other cops,
the guy in playing clothes very quickly left the scene. Yeah,
he he ran away quite quickly. He might call him
burned now. So that's I don't know the rough shape
of the event. And of course, because of I think
a mix of the Proud Boys, you know, getting so
(10:54):
violent in the area they were rallying, UM and the
shooting happening. Uh, the anti fascists who were downtown at
Samon Springs Park, um did the thing that that demonstrators
do in Portland now, which is, uh, start tearing up
street signs and grabbing pieces of fencing and making barricades.
(11:15):
So they made a little barricade around the protest area
and they did. And this is again, this is just
kind of what happens at Portland protests if they go well,
if there's enough people, and then people just love the
fucking love building barricades. Um. I'm not convinced there was
a huge amount of purpose for building the barricades, but whatever,
it makes people happy. And there was this kind of
(11:36):
there was a pretty intense expectation that Proud Boys were
going to come out and attack at night. I don't
really think anything happened that night. I think they went
back to Vancouver and all got really drunk. Yeah, So
(11:56):
that's that was the rough shape of the day. UM.
I think I want to start by kind of getting
into some critiques we have of kind of what we
saw on the left that day, because it is this
the police completely abdicated, as did the city government, any
responsibility for the event. They announced ahead of time that
they were not going to intervene if people were being assaulted. Um,
(12:18):
because they assume that if you're being assaulted by the
Proud Boys, you're a combatant. Um. That was the assumption. Um.
And again, like these women we talked to who showed
up unmasked with science got like maced from behind and
shoved and stuff, and like absolutely, we're not combating. They've
basically just said that if you're near a Proud Boy
and you get attacked, we're not going to do anything
(12:39):
about it. Um. And they sure didn't um. So that
kind of necessitates and this has been this has been
an evolution of the police's attitudes for a while. For
the first couple of years of these gatherings, the police
would be there in heavy presence and would mostly attack
left wing counter protesters. And in recent last year in change,
they've just not shown up at all. Um. And so
(13:03):
again there's a when it comes comes to like sort
of the there's often this debate about like well, just
don't show up, don't counter protest them, and like they
won't get anything that they want. Well, when they show up,
they attack people. So like the last couple of weekends
there have been attacked. The last couple of times that
they've shown up in town late at night, groups of
people have attacked homeless encampments right, um, you know, when
(13:27):
they when they weren't heavily confronted. Two weekends ago, people
drove around macing and shooting paintball guns. A kind of
random bystanders. So the violence isn't predicated on whether or
not people in black blocks show up to UH to
confront them. It's predicated on the fact that they come
(13:47):
to Portland to do violence, and they'll find a way
to do it one way or the other. Now, the
fact that I think, you know, some form of community
response is necessary to this because again the local government
and the police are never going to do anything to
protect people, doesn't mean that I think the response that
we got on the twenty two is without criticism. We
saw some really dumb ship. I think one of the
(14:08):
first things we saw when we showed up was kind
of at the the outskirts of the event. There was
a guy in a a Grunt style shirt on a
bicycle who kept arguing with people at the anti fascist event.
And at the anti fascist event, yeah, he kept arguing
with people, and like, after I don't know thirty minutes
or so, one of them bear maced him. Um And obviously,
(14:29):
but so bear mace is great for bears. People like
to use it because it seems more hardcore than just
normally macing somebody. Bear mace also spreads a lot more
than normal mace. It's it's it's like gets carried by
the era a lot more so number one, when there's
hundreds of people around and you bear mace one guy,
you're going to get mason a bunch of people's faces,
(14:50):
which is exactly what happens. Yeah. Um, So it was
so purely for just like uh like obviously, so number one,
there was more of people were hit by that mace
who were on the side of whoever was spraying the
mace uh than who weren't, um, including a guy who
(15:11):
had been trying to de escalate things. Um. And secondly,
it's just like, no matter how annoying a dude is,
being macing a random dude arguing with you, um makes
you the shitty one. Which is a number of people
called out at the time. John the Lefty, a very
prominent Portland anti fascist activists, got very angry at this
because it was so it was fucking dumb and you know,
(15:33):
we shouldn't be I don't want to be doing the
you know the thing that like the right wing does,
which is you take an event hundreds of people were
at and you highlight one example of someone being dumb
and say this is the whole event because it wasn't,
but it is the kind of thing you do see
at these events, and it's part of the problem of
a completely horizontal movement. Where the benefit of that is
it's it's it's it's durable, it's hard to infiltrate. The
(15:54):
downside of that is, if some guy shows up at
the Outskirts and decides he's going to be Captain Bear
mace Um, you gonna do, like what are you gonna
do to stop him? You know? Yeah, And we kind
of saw this trend continue over the course at the
Anti Fascist Rality, like like after the shooting, when everyone
was all like amped up, like like you know, as
as you should be, you guys, because you you like
just got shot at everybody trying there should have been. Yeah,
(16:18):
a lot of the block was then like very aggressive
with uh, cars and drivers and people just like in
the area who were trying to go about their day,
like really unnecessarily Like there was like like a lot
of people were like you know, if someone was confused
about why there was stuff in the street, and they
were like driving you know, very slowly and stopping to
talk to people. People, and a lot of a lot
(16:40):
of people, a lot a lot of people. You know,
there was a few people in block who were who
were very very aggressive with them, and there was people
trying to be people trying to de escalate and stuff. UM.
And that's just not super useful, um, because it just
makes everyone more n c And it's it's it's not
you're not really you're not like reading the situation accurately. Um.
(17:00):
If you're taking every grandma who's driving their old car
trying to go to like the grocery store or whatever,
taking her as like this is a massive threat, she's not.
She's trying to talk to you because she doesn't know
what's happening. And if you just scream at her face
and like threaten her, that's that is an anti fascism. No.
And also if you were just kind of randomly as
(17:20):
we saw, expanding out into different intersections and taking intersections
and yelling at people um or just standing around with weapons,
that just kind of freaks people out and does not
that doesn't protect anybody. You're you're you're not your presence
at that random intersection, UM isn't doing anything. Um. And
And that was a frustration, and there were people at
the time, there was this one beautiful moment where this
(17:43):
one guy in block started saying to everybody, Hey, guys,
we have a defensible position back at the fountain. Why
are we standing at a random intersection. Let's get back
to like where we were. It's a much safer and
less stupid place to be standing. And then there was
some fucking dude with a paintball who said, why should
we go back? Let's take the city. You know, it
was my dude, what do you what are you gonna take?
(18:06):
You gotta fucking paintball gun and you're standing in an intersection, like,
come on, man, shut the funk up. Um. It was
just silly. Yeah, And it's the kind of silliness that again,
I don't think there's any sort of comparison for the
kind of violence deployed by the two groups. And I
think it's worth noting that when the Proud Boys don't
(18:26):
show up, there aren't random groups of people in black
standing in intersections with paintball guns. It's just not a
common thing in Portland. Outside of these events, we were seeing,
like a lot of the trends that got started last year,
people trying to like set up a spot to protest,
then defend that spot, like occupy this particular space, and
(18:46):
this isn't always a useful tactic, and it's not it's
not useful tactic for a lot of anti fascists demonstrations,
So like trying to occupy a four block city radius
doesn't make sense when you have a two d people
in a crowd who are doing like an anti fascist rally,
like it's it's it made a whole lot more sense
at the beginning of the rally when everyone was just
at the park because that was a very you know,
(19:06):
strong like like like show of strength um against against
any fascists who wanted to show up downtown UM. And
that it's it's a much much more defensible spot than
being spread up across like three different intersections. And I
think the Correallest Against Fascism, an anti fascist group, put
out a decent thread on this very topic talking about
(19:28):
all its kind of same criticisms and how there was
they They even talked about how you know, there was
instances of block like getting aggressive with like houseless people,
um and like threatening to like mace them, and like
a whole bunch of this kind of stuff, which is
you know, pretty similar to like like Corrales it is
like you're you're engaging in the same violence dance mentally
ill people and houses people that like cops do. And
when you're when you're getting this overly aggressive escalating um
(19:51):
terms of like um this this like this this escalating conflict,
you're you're just you're just treating people like cops. You're
not actually try trying to do anti fascism. And and
that is always the danger is this has evolved into
a thing, a more constant thing is people have gotten traumatized,
because I do think trauma is a huge part of this.
One of the things that when you've been when you've
(20:13):
repeatedly been the victim of violence, both from police and
from right wingers, you get extra amped up and you
show up with weapons, and you know if if no
one shows up, if you don't get that that kind
of fight that you you went into this for days
kind of preparing your adrenal system for maybe you just
start yelling at some random person in a car or
(20:35):
somebody on the street who who transgresses in some slight
way because you're you're extra amped up. And that is
the Yeah, I think that needs to be taken into
account as like as much of a problem as anything
else that needs to be dealt with, Like that's actually
an anti fascist problem is um, dealing with the brutalization
effect that occurs to people showing up at these events
(20:57):
and makes them more likely to engage in unreasonable behavior
that alienates people, that makes the overall cause harder. You know,
there were a couple other things there was there were
there's a recall effort to get the mayor to not
be the mayor anymore. And some people were there taking signatures.
I signed the sheet. Um they were, you know, wearing
uniforms and stuff, and like a group of people in
(21:18):
block are very angry at them, like you're putting people
in danger because you're taking their info down here. And
it's like, guys, they're not requiring you to sign anything,
and not everyone who shows up at these events is
is worried about being identified as having been at these events. Um,
they're just in their regular clothes. Because you don't need
(21:40):
to be in black block to be an anti fascist. Yeah,
and you don't have to hide your involvement in anti
fascist activity. Uh. And in fact, it's beneficial if there's
a lot of people who don't. If you're a more
extreme activist if you're also partaking in like anti police activist, Like, yeah,
I get it, you don't want your identity known, or
you're you're somebody who's directly confronting the right wing a
(22:00):
lot physically, you don't want your identity known because you
might get attacked. That's not everyone who shows up, and
everyone is safer if a bunch of random people who
might be perfectly comfortable signing a sheet like that also
show up at the event, and that's you know, somebody
got harassed, would be too strong where but somebody got
like critiqued at the event for like not showing up
in block and it was like, well, they don't need to.
(22:22):
Sometimes it's fine. It's you want as many random people
to show up as possible. It's it's overall beneficial to
the thing you're actually trying to do. The one other
(22:44):
thing we should we should bring up is the whole
horrible debate that's been going on Twitter around like press stuff,
because yeah, what's happened at the kmart around around the
kmart stuff, because it's this kind of because it's kind
of tie into all of these same root problems. I think, Yeah,
(23:04):
so the basic thing that happened that that was kind
of the big development on the you know, because there
has been kind of a growing cult of smashing cameras
on the left for a while. Uh. And you know,
some of it comes from a very reasonable place, which
is that a number of people are in jail or
or caught charges because of of footage that that press
(23:24):
took and posted, usually people not wearing block as well,
usually people not wearing block or disguising their identity, which
again we could we could litigate that. And so there's
this mix of people who are just extra heightened about
press and people who are just like, well, anytime you
see a camera, it's fine to to to hit its
cameras are snitches? Is like kay, um and uh, I
(23:49):
don't know, there's there's there's a number of of I think, uh,
shortcomings and that type of thinking, including the fact that
like those same people tend to repeatedly miss right wing
live streamers who are in block and filming, and it
happens every single time they're angry at a marked press person. Yeah. People, people,
we people get very angry at people who are you know,
(24:12):
like the people in the block will get very angry
and hostile at like photographers who are you know, clearly
marked um yet ignore and miss uh like bad like
bad actors who are dressed in block secretly filming, who
get a lot of footage people doing crimes, and this
gets missed every single time and no one talks about it.
(24:32):
This is something that it never gets brought up in
the debate about cameras. It's like the people getting actual
footage of you doing crimes are people in block and
you just ignore them and it's you know. That was
this weekend there are a local journalist, Marny stab was
filming and she actually got assaulted by both sides. She
was maced by a right winger before she got attacked
(24:54):
by some left wing folks in block and had her
camera broken. Um. It was a very ugly situation. Um
people like people called her a slut, like some misogynist
and someone block did that and they smashed her camera
stuff and she was trying to she was yeah, yeah,
it's and here it is a whole bunch of people
(25:15):
with with like contradictory claims. But what happened to some
people saying that she attacked the block she did, and
she was trying to get her phone back she didn't
attack the block like whatever you want to say about
like because there's arguments about like she only complained that
block at attacked, or she didn't point out that she
had also been mazed by right wingers like whatever, that's
he that's not the thing to harp on. The thing
the harp on is for all that people claim about
(25:36):
her camera putting them in danger, them assaulting her was
filmed from like six different angles. It turns out when
you when you when you very publicly assault a journalist
for quoting for like you know, because you think they're
gonna film you doing crimes, you get filmed doing crimes
from many angles in high definition like that. You did
not prevent yourself from getting caught on hamra doing crimes.
(26:01):
You've only made it more so. Also, as you were
doing this, fascists were assaulting people like you weren't doing
anti fascism. You were focused on this one journalist that
you don't like. You know, some people are some people
are like saying they don't like her because she has
worked with Ford Fisher in the past, and they don't
like ford Fisher because of covered cheese done so like
it's okay because she works with this with this media person, Like,
(26:24):
as you're arguing and doing all this stuff, they're literally
fascists a block away assaulting people inside a truck and like, right,
UM's so you're not actually doing anti fascism and you're
also not preventing yourself from getting caught on cameras. It's
a it's a whole bunch of things that are frustrating
because I feel like people really aren't thinking through this
position fully and what are actually what is actually happening
(26:46):
on the street. Yeah, if you just get caught in
this kind of endless debate that really has no actual
answer because no one's no one's going to change their
opinion on it, and like, I don't have, I don't
have like I under stand the sentiment, but I also
understand how there are lots of cases where press coverage
is very helpful for these types of movements, and then
(27:07):
there's definitely ways to do it responsibly. But also just
attacking every journalist on site does not seem like a
very anti fascist thing to do, And it's, um, yeah,
I I I don't want to like, I don't want
to claim that that's like the only majority response. It's
a specific subset of the left wing demonstrator. Because like
later on in the day, like my photographer and I
(27:28):
were getting shots of the barricades, um, and there were
some block people around them, and one of them walked
up and very politely said, hey, would you mind um
not photographing you know, the people in their blind We
showed them like, no, no no, no, we're just getting like
barricades and stuff. It was a very polite conversation, and
I think a reasonable way to like, everyone has a
has a right to walk up to press and request
(27:49):
that they not be photographed, you know. Um. Obviously that
doesn't necessarily come with like a legal backing or anything.
But I think most press, if someone walks say hey,
would you please not like most people are going to
be relatively decent about that. You'll deal with some like
shitty people now and again. And I I think that, um,
we're harping on these problems because the basic reality is
(28:11):
that a response from the community is necessary for these events.
People do need to show up, people do need to
confront and oppose these right wing groups when they show
up in town. And because the local government, the federal government,
and law enforcement have completely have stated in multiple States right.
(28:32):
This kind of ship has been going on in Los Angeles.
There have been street fights with people stabbed in front
of police headquarters, in front of the l A city hall. Um.
Police don't declare on lawful assembly, they don't do anything
to to to confront the folks who are just like
some of the same Proud Boys who are here in
Portland were out in front of a clinic in Los
Angeles a couple of months ago, assaulting cancer patients for
(28:53):
wearing masks into a clinic. Like a response is necessary
in a community. Response is necessar area, and because of
how necessary the responses, it is also necessary that we
critique the response when it falls short. Yeah, because all
all of these things distract from like the much more
severe thing that like proud Boys horribly beat people on
(29:15):
some day, like there was could have died, yes, smpleally ugly.
And I know there's been people complaining that there was
like seven photographers watching this happen, And like I I
totally understand that absolutely, that is very and that's a
very fair criticism of press because I happen to know
there have been times when like right wing videographers have
gotten caught in a crowd and beaten up, and members
(29:38):
of the press have said, hey, they've had enough after
a certain point, because you do, at a certain stage
have a responsibility to step in, you know. Um, It's
like if you're a photographer and you see somebody with
a gunshot wound, if it's safe for you to administer
first staid, it's more incumbent upon you to administer first
aid than to get a shot that said, like, there's
(29:58):
I don't know, this is a this is an old
argument and conflict reporting. They that very famous photo of um,
a child. I think it was an Ethiopia, but I'm
not certain where, Like a kid who's clearly dying of
malnutrition and a photographer took a picture of them, and
people like critique that photographer and attacked him, and I
think the photographer eventually committed suicide. But it was this whole.
(30:21):
It was this whole like debate over shouldn't he have
done something? In his argument, which I do think he
was writing, this was like I if it was something
I could have taken action on, I would have. But like,
this is a kid who's been malnourished for months and
months and months, like nothing I can give them is
going to You can't even just give them food because
they can die when they're that malnourished. Just this whole
it's this whole question. I'm not saying that I think
(30:42):
the photographer is taking pictures of that guy getting beaten
in the truck should have charged in with sticks and
beat the proud boys. But someone could have said, hey, guys,
you like you need to back off, like he's had
enough something like that, especially because that there was there
was a lot of them, and yes they were outnumbered
by the boys. And yes, the bystander effect is a
real thing. Um, you know, more people are there, you're
(31:05):
you assume someone else is going to intervene, um than
everyone just like watches, because that's just what humans do
well in a lot of cases. It's like that. But yes,
they're there. There could have there could have been things
done to prevent this, to maybe slightly prevent this man
from getting beaten so badly because he he was. It was,
it's it is. It is horrible. It's horrible. Yeah, um,
(31:27):
And I do think yeah, And I also I get
I I don't want to like come at this by
saying I think that they're like the the anger at
press is completely irrational. There's some very understandable reasons for it.
Both stuff like that and just kind of the general
basic fact with that if one group of both groups
of people are having violence against them and getting traumatized,
(31:49):
but one group of people is also making a profit
off of their presence there, that's going to cause friction.
Like there's a number of things that cause friction between
the press and communities. And when you kind of have
this commune unity of press who's come up and makes
a living off of photos of these events that are
deeply traumatic for the people personally involved, that's going to
(32:09):
be a cause of friction. But the fact that there's
friction and the fact that there's uncomfortable questions to be
asked about that doesn't mean that like, well, just attack
people with cameras is a is a reasonable response? Um,
And like attacking people with cameras and like attacking them
as they're like throwing soda cans at them as they're
getting medical aid, like that's yeah, Like like for people
(32:31):
saying like, oh, like doing this kind of stuff is
self defense because we're defending our communities from getting documented.
First of all, Like if you're wearing good block. You
shouldn't be identifiable in the first place, that's why block
was invented. Um. And second like, throwing soda cans at
someone getting medalaide isn't self defense. In no way, that's
self defense against people filming you, Like, it's not, that's
(32:52):
that's you are. You are very, you are very past
that point. You're just hurting someone who's getting treated by medics.
That that's that's a you're doing at that point. And again,
you're not stopping other people from filming you because this
whole situation has caused more cameras to focus on specific individuals.
It's like you're you're not even achieving your goal, and
your goal is slightly confusing because you're not you're you're,
(33:17):
you're you're you're just hurting people who are getting medical
aid at this point, and that's not that's not really super. Yeah,
I don't I don't see how that's really is in
line with trying to prevent fascists from hurting your community,
as fascists are literally a block away beating up people. Yeah,
and it's um, you know, uh, we talked to some
(33:38):
locals in the neighborhood. UM while while this was going
down and I think there is in Portland a broad
kind of support for UH people confronting these folks. And
there's even you know, we we talked to UM as
we were as we were putting on our gas mesks
and shipped to wade into you know, kind of the
(34:01):
tail end of the big street fight other people in
masks and armor who had like just come up from downtown.
We're walking past and there was like we ran into
this this young black woman, Mars, who was heading to
a church event UM with her family and who we
had just like parked in front of her house. And
she was like, Hey, what's going on? And we were like, oh,
it's the proud and it you know, she had she
(34:22):
was a community organizer. She'd had to stop showing up
at events because she had gotten targeted and maced and
and followed home and stuff. UM, and she was surprised
to learn that like the event had been moved at
the last moment to be right next to her, you know,
her community, and was supportive of the fact that people
were showing up to counter these folks. UM. And I
(34:43):
think that I think that the the the long term
solution to more effectively opposing these people is UM continuing
community outreach UM and and building ties within the areas
where they show up because there's a lot of it's
friendly territory in a lot of cases. Um Mars told
us that, like she thinks that the block showing up
(35:05):
at events like this is necessary, especially like there's a
lot of criticism about like, oh, well, these are all
like white people showing up, And her attitude was that, like, well,
that's it's kind of incumbent when other when like white
supremacist groups are showing up in black neighborhoods to confront people,
it's kind of incumbent upon other white people to show
up and protect and like put their bodies on the line.
(35:26):
Like that's that That's kind of how she she saw it. UM.
Another good part of like like like you know, a
like objectively successful part of this particular UM situation is
the mass mobilization online of the anti fascist resistance at
the original meeting spot, which successfully. There was so much
(35:48):
talk about it that the fascists got scared away, Like
they got scared. There's even and they had to meet
inside a kmart parking a lot. Now, yes, they they
did violence outside of that, but they kept they kept
the you know, the mobilization online um, and they like
you know, preparing for the in person thing in downtown,
(36:10):
got the fascist away from downtown, got the fascist away
from the homeless encampments downtown that they've been targeting the
past few weeks. Like that was very successful, um, in
terms of keeping fascists out of downtown and keeping them
and keeping you know, a large mob of proud boys
away from just running through a homeless encampment beating up people, um,
as they've done in the past. So that is like,
you know, in terms of positive things, that is absolutely
(36:32):
very very good. And there was a lot of anti
fascists on the ground right, Like we're talking about a
very all of our critiques are talking about a very
small group of people because there were there were hundreds
of people on the ground. A lot of block was
doing a very good job keeping keeping you know, people protected,
keeping certain spots that secured, especially at Samon Springs. Yeah.
(36:53):
And there was a right wing live stream where they
like drove past the counter protest event part of and
said like it's a sea of black, we shouldn't go
down there. Um. And yeah, that that is when folks
show up. It does protect certain areas, and kind of
one of the shortcomings that isn't a moral shortcoming of
the response was kind of the the fact that when
(37:13):
they showed up in a different location there, there was
not really a very a very good concerted response to
like getting people out, and so you kind of have
really unclear, isolated small groups of people in blocks showing
up and so they were outnumbered and it didn't like
the confrontation with them in Northeast didn't go super well.
They weren't able to have enough people there to show
(37:35):
up a strong resistance. Yeah. Yeah, because like when back
at Salmon Springs in downtown, it's a lot of like
rumors like how much a block is going over to
the kmart? Isn't just a little bit? Is a lot?
Like it was very unclear um, and that that part
was because of the location change and people debating whether
or not they should go to the to the kmart
where the Proud Boys are at that that that is
(37:57):
kind of the root of all of like the kind
of the the issues that came up that day just
because of the crowd size got split. It was very
it was very awkward. This led you know, there wasn't enough,
there wasn't enough anti fascism blocked to like really actively
opposed the Proud Boys. So then they started, you know,
focusing on a few of the journalists who they did
not like there, and that's kind of caused that. That's
(38:18):
kind of why how that problem got got to that
certain point, and they weren't able to know, really show
a good a good defense when when the Proud Boys
started attacking and pushing people out. Um, so you know
there's a few a few you know, logistical things that
are you know that that just is a hard problem
like that, like that is a very difficult thing to
(38:39):
figure out on the ground. Um, I'm yeah, that's yeah,
It's totally sympathize with an organizational problem and a pretty
new one, and like you can't you know, this is
an ongoing adaptation thing and I'm not really sure what
the long term solution to that is going to be.
And I think the fact that there was an armed
attack on the pro test downtown one of the things
(39:02):
I'm worried about going forward is that, like, now that
line has been crossed, this isn't the first time there's
been gunfire at one of these events. There's happened a
couple of times. Uh, this is the first time though,
that there's been an exchange of fire, and that's worrisome
and it's kind of hard to tell like where that's
going to go, and especially if what I think makes
this a particular dangers that when we see deadly violence
(39:24):
like we saw with um Um j Danielson and Michael
Ryanol last year, like we saw with Skyler Journe again
firing a gun into a crowd. Um. Both of those
two situations just mentioned happened at parking garages. This one
happened out in front of a pizza joint, a block
and a half something like that away from the main gathering.
The really violent ship always happens on the periphery, and
(39:44):
it always happens between small groups of people, sometimes just individuals.
And I'm worried that if if there isn't a better
solution figured out for dealing with Okay, they changed location,
they're showing up in numbers here. We've already got hundreds
of people here who comes over to the new location.
How many of them come? If that isn't kind of
settled in a in a concerted way, you're going to
increasingly have small groups of people, most of whom are
(40:07):
probably packing firearms running into each other on the peripheries
of events, and that is a fucking recipe for for
people getting shot to death. Like one other good thing
is when anti fascists did fire back because they were
being fired upon, they were absolutely right to This was
one of the better instances of like how they actually fired,
Like you know, you talked about how they were how
(40:30):
all of like the bullet packs we found were like
lower onto the ground. None of them cracked the windows
of the building. So they were shooting low. Yeah, and
they weren't. They weren't shooting someone as they run away.
They weren't trying to shoot you know, like a moving
vehicle or a moving target. It was very like you know,
like focus firing at a stationary person who was firing
on them. They took effective cover between the wheels and
(40:51):
with wheels and engine blocks of cars between them, um,
and they aimed low. It was very very effective and
I think very justified self defense. Yeah. Yeah, So I
think that kind of wraps up most of what happened,
But we could have focused more on what the Proud
Boys did. But I'm pretty sure everyone kind of knows
that they're bad and the bad things. If you're listening
(41:14):
to this, you know they're bad and they did bad things.
There's no there's no equivalence between like the level of
violence deployed because uh, you know, in terms of severe injuries. Uh,
it's it's pretty one sided. And like I'm we're not
trying to like backseat activist here by talking to you know,
by critiquing stuff. But like as much as people find
(41:34):
it frustrating, optics do matter because there is more of
them than us, Like, we can't we can't win this
battle without without optics. So all the time they gets,
they gets dedicated to talking about, oh, here's how much
Antifa is attacking you know, random people filming. All that
distracts from the actual like brutal assault that happened, um
(41:56):
bye by the Proud Boys. You know. So all of
these things do do are in the long run because unfortunately,
um there is there is a lot of them, and
for now, at least, we optics are things that needs
to be considered if we want to have any kind
of success at this type of organizing. Yeah, and I
also think that just um obviously like part of why
(42:18):
we're not focusing on the Proud Boys as much as
that everyone listening to this knows they're dangerous, uh, And
it's much more effective to talk about, Hey, what were
the shortcomings on our side this event? What are the
things that like could be done or need to be
done better in order to improve people's safety and approve
the efficacy of the resistance to these groups, because that's
(42:40):
what people are actually going to listen to, you know.
All right, yeah, ye, all right, that's an episode. Get
out of here, go home, you're drunk. M
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