December 7, 2020 • 47 mins
Over the course of June, 2020, BLM protests in most of the country either fizzled out or started to wane in frequency. Portland kept right on going, every single night, without break. In this episode we explain the infrastructure of resistance that gave birth to the Portland Uprising, and we talk about the fateful decision that turned President Trump's eyes towards the City of Roses.
Host: Robert Evans
Executive Producer: Sophie Lichterman
Writers: Bea Lake, Donovan Smith, Elaine Kinchen, Garrison Davis, Robert Evans
Narration: Bea Lake, Donovan Smith, Elaine Kinchen, Garrison Davis, Robert Evans
Editor: Chris Szczech
Music: Crooked Ways by Propaganda
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
We started this series by asking why Portland, and the
most accurate answer to that question is the history lesson.
We gave an episode one, but the most direct answer
to why the city of Portland became the nexus of
an uprising starts with a bunch of teenagers in a
statue of George Washington. Our own Garrison Davis was there.
Here's what he experienced. On Thursday June, I set out
(00:30):
for a park in East Portland. The teenage activist group
Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front or just the Wire Left
posted on their Twitter account that something was planned for
eight pm, so I made my way, expecting something interesting
to happen. The previous night, the Wire Left and some
New Black organizers had set up an autonomous zone style
(00:52):
occupation in front of the Mayor's apartment in the upscale
Pearl district, inspired by Seattle's Capitol Hill Occupied protest slash
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Coome morning, not enough bodies were
present at the attempted autonomous zone to resist the riot
police who arrived to clear the area. After the very
short lived Autonomous Zone, I had wondered what the Wire
(01:15):
Left had planned next. As eight pm approached On that Thursday,
only a little over a dozen people gathered at the
original meeting spot. The small group were mostly in black block.
Black block is a tactic that originated with German anti
globalization protesters. It involves wearing all black clothing to make
it difficult to identify specific people. Shortly after I arrived,
(01:39):
the crowd had began marching north. They decided to take
the sidewalk instead of the street to due to their
low numbers. In a matter of minutes, the crowd arrived
at their apparent destination, the Portland German American Society, which
features a large statue of George Washington out in front
of the building. Activists started by draping in a man
(02:00):
a can flag over the face of the statue and
lighting into blaze. People spray painted the base and statue itself,
writing genocidal colonist, slave owner and six nineteen, the year
the first enslaved Africans were brought to America. Slowly more
people arrived as calls for support were made out over
social media. The few dozen people in attendance started attaching
(02:21):
nylon straps to the head of the statue and began
pulling back and forth. By eleven pm, the statue of
George Washington had been completely torn down. The crowd quickly left,
(02:42):
calling the night of success, and police arrived a little
over half an hour later. At the time, no one
could have known that this small action would trigger a
series of events that would turn Portland's BLM protests into
the biggest story in the entire country. Right Wing media
(03:15):
reacted to the toppling of the George Washington statue as expected.
A narrative was spun that police were letting a violent
mob of ANTIFA rioters go around town destroying property without consequence.
Pundits criticized protesters for erasing history. The Portland police defended
their failure to stop the toppling of the statue by
complaining that they had been occupied with a concurrent protest
(03:35):
at the Justice Center fence. They stated the group blocked
the street for several hours, throwing projectiles such as hot
dogs at the Justice Centered doors. By this point, three
weeks into the protests, dozens of Portlanders had been arrested
at actions, and yet a narrative had begun to spread
on right wing media that there had been no consequences
for protesters engaging in destructive activity. The toppling of George
(03:58):
Washington flipped a switch in national far right media, and
suddenly Portland was a symbol of everything wrong with the left.
Here's President Trump on the campaign trail two days ago.
Left as radicals in Portland, Oregon ripped down a statue
of George Washington and wrapped it in an American flag
(04:23):
and set the American flag on fire. Democrat A Democrats.
Everything I tell you is Democrat. And you know, we
ought to do something. Mr Senators, we have two great senators.
We ought to come up with legislation that if you
burned the American flag, you go to jail for one year.
(04:46):
There are a lot of things wrong with that statement.
First off, some of the folks who took down that
statue would find being called a Democrat insulting. Also, the
Supreme Court has ruled that burning an American flag is
a constitutionally protected form of free speech. Portland protesters toppling
at George Washington statue seems to have inspired the President
to suggest legislation that would ban not just the toppling
(05:07):
of statues, which was already illegal, but flag burning and
similar acts of protest. As it turned out, Donald Trump
would follow through on the idea of criminalizing that sort
of behavior, But why would protesters go through all the
trouble of tumbling down statues in the first place. We
talked with some members of the y LF, the Youth
Liberation Front to get their perspective. Since the President of
(05:28):
the United States has threatened these again literal children repeatedly.
We've redubbed the audio in order to protect their identities
because they represent monuments to people who are white supremacist
and genocidal, and as an anarchist, I think every statue
to a human should be torn down because they don't
believe in idolizing anyone, but especially like people who led
(05:50):
the way for colonization and just awful atrocities in their lifetime.
President Trump's fury over the George Washington action through the
Youth Liberation Front into the national spotlight. But that statue
was not actually the first to fall in Portland, and
it would not be the last, though the wire Left
would become synonymous with a more radical, militant segment of
the protests acting under the cover of night. The first
(06:11):
statue to come down in Portland was actually at Thomas
Jefferson High School. One of the only remaining majority black
schools in the state. On the afternoon of June fourteenth,
as a large peaceful march led by Rose City Justice
departed from Jefferson, the statue of the school's namesake was
torn from its pedestal by a small enthusiastic group in
broad daylight. Picking up the rest of the story is
(06:32):
my colleague and partner in getting horribly tear gassed A
Laine Kinchen. Toppling statues of historical slaveholders became a nationwide
trend during the first three weeks of the George Floyd protests.
By the time the George Washington statue at the Portland
German American Association came down, eighteen other statues had fallen
to crowds across the country. In the weeks that followed,
at least seventeen more statues would meet the same fate,
(06:55):
and many more would be quietly relocated for their own protection,
just as the wire left vandal Is. Some of the
Washington statue fits into a larger context of statue toppling,
the while of themselves are only one part of Portland's
activist ecosystem, Originally emerging from a loose coalition of anti
racist and anti Trump high school groups. Here are two
while of members talking about the genesis of the group
(07:17):
in nineteen the comrades who started it made a lot
of connections with the Occupy ICE and started running things
running the social media. I think it was really born.
It came out of like really sporadic school protests, just
like whatever was happening, and it was something that people
felt was really important. Back then, the group slowly moved
towards like anti fascism and you liberation, trying to interest
(07:40):
agism as well in those spaces, and I think it
definitely went that direction completely. June. Yeah, that was like
a big anti fascist and fascist rally in Portland, and
I definitely think that kind of sparked a turning point
where I think like the organization really blossomed from there. Yeah,
we started off as like a very liberal group, like
one of those many boring student activist groups that just
like PARTICE, spated in walkouts. But then we started to
(08:02):
take a more radical turn. Like our first protest that
I was involved with was for gun control rally and
that's yeah, that's really cringe looking back, because now we're
all like insurrectionary anarchists. Oh. I think it definitely moved
from that into a more radical stance after June twenty nine,
and then came on the seventeenth, which was another big
rally in Portland. That um where he I mean like
(08:25):
a good amount of focus was placed on us all
of a sudden, Yeah, and I think it kind of
just continued after that. Jacob bu Eros, the founder of
Direct Action Alliance, says he first encountered what would eventually
become the wire Left in March of seventeen while organizing
to counter a far right demonstration in the wealthy suburb
of Lake Oswego. It would be you know, Rose City Antifa,
Direct Action Alliance tm w Y, a left which I
(08:47):
think had back then it was still called Oregonians Against
Trump or something like that. But um, that's when we
first started organizing together to confront the right wing. Was
during that time in March of seventeen through May of seventeen,
and then after that it was discoordinated effort. Jacob says
(09:07):
the Direct Action Alliance was formed out of a sense
of desperation in late Yeah, after the election, I just
didn't want to keep wasting my time in politics, and
I felt this really big sense of urgency. And around
that time was when they started attacking people um at
Standing Rock, and both of my kids are our citizens
(09:30):
of the Cherokee Nation. My partners the citizen of the
Cherokee Nation, and they were they were all really upset
about it, and I was really upset about it. Jacob
had been an activist for a while previous to this point,
and he was already familiar with Portland organizers who had
risen to prominence with the first Black Lives Matter protests.
In These include Danielle James and the founder of Don't
(09:50):
Shoot Portland, Teresa Raefford. We each have our own individual
thing that we really focus on, except for in the
Direct Action Alliance, we kind of just do everything. Most
groups have their own thing that they focus on. But
we're all the same people helping each other behind the scene.
So when Wild Left is working focusing on something that's
anti anti police, right, it's the same people who organized
(10:13):
the large peaceful blm rallies who are working with them
to support them. And so that's where the intersection is.
We're all one big family here in Portland. It's not
a it's not like in other cities. Where we actually
have to build alliance sause people have been active in
the city for so long and have been seeing the
same faces for so long. I'd say it all goes
back to Terressa Rayford. She's the one. She's the one
(10:35):
who took it from even when the when the Occupy
movement happened and kind of molded that energy into something
where Portland became an activist scene. Again. This this city
wasn't wasn't very active. It kind of lost its edge
until Terressa Rayford came along and started pushing people to
(10:56):
come out, to show up to fight back. When Kwanis
Hayes was killed, was out there calling everyone to come
out do something about it. And I'd say that she was.
I'd say she's at the core of it. I mean
most of the people who I've met, who I've coordinated with,
who I've worked with, all of those groups that I
just mentioned to you, I met all of them that
Don't Shoot Portland rallies. Way back before Trump was president,
(11:18):
Rayford had originally formed Don't Shoot PDX in response to
the killing of Michael Brown and Ferguson, but the failed
PPB shooting of teenager Quanice Hayes in February seventeen, gave
a new local urgency to calls for police accountability and
came in the midst of an upswing of far right
mobilizations targeting Portland. Every city has certain defining moments, traumas
(11:40):
which galvanized the community, spur the creation of new coalitions,
and give rise to new organizing strategies. One of those
defining moments for Portland came in May of tw seventeen,
when a white supremacist named Jeremy Christian murdered two people
on a max light rail train. The day before the killings,
Christian assaulted another Orlander, Dmitria Hester. Here she recounts her experience. Okay,
(12:04):
so three years ago, Um, Jeremy Joseph Christian um attacked me.
He's a white known supremacist that's here in organists that
the police knew about. Everybody's the the mayor knew about.
I mean, everybody just knew about him because he had
set the tone at every march and staying and stating
(12:27):
how much he hates, you know, the races, anyone that
wasn't black, and wasn't that wasn't white, and wanted to
harm or kill anyone that wasn't you know those descents
of that descent of being white and Christian. So um,
he verbally attacks me for three stops on the MAX
(12:51):
and May two thousand, two thousand's seven teen front and center,
often with a bullhorn in hand. Dmitria became one of
the most recognizable voices of Portland's protests. The man she's describing,
Jeremy Christian, was a regular attendee of far right rallies
in the Portland area. That night, Dimitria fended off Christian
(13:14):
with pepper spray. Police responded, but Christian was not detained
and he got away to kill the people. The next
day on that same green line. He was looking for
me because I mased him the night before. He encountered
to um one African American lady and one lady who
(13:34):
had to have Geva Bevon and um she wasn't. He
thought she was Muslimed, So he verbally started attaching these
little girls under eighteen, and three men came into their rescuing.
Was defending them and tried to de escalate the problem,
but he stabbed two of wom and killed them, and
(13:57):
uh stabbed a third and tried to kill him. So
the police um got the call not to even use
uh force when they were got the call that he
did this on the max. This just shows you how
the police play a part and um everything he did
and the reason why he got away with what he did.
(14:19):
And then so when they actually um caught him, he
was still wielding the knife that he killed people with. UM.
He threatened four people on his way to when they
detained him. And the only reason they detained him again
was because the public was following him. And UM, they
(14:40):
didn't even shoot him with rubber bullis or cheered gasim
or anything. With a knife in his hand and threatening
the police, he was able to throw the knife on
the police car, still drinking his wine that he had
in another Gatoray bottle. UM, and they detain him. And
(15:02):
after they detain him, he bragged about what he did.
Ricky John Best and Tallesia Namchaimchi died in the attack.
The third man, Micah Fletcher, survived. A Few weeks before
the murders, Christian had attended a right wing free speech
event in the Montevilla neighborhood of Portland. The rally aimed
to build on the momentum of the Lake Oswego event.
(15:23):
In March. Micah Fletcher, the only survivor of the stabbings,
had been in Montevilla as well, counter protesting alongside Direct
Action Alliance, Rose City, ANTIFA and what would eventually become
the y LF. In some ways, Portland is a very
small town. After the murders, far right rallies in Portland continued.
Anti fascist counter protests were large and spirited at first,
(15:46):
but as Effie Bound describes, that didn't last. And in
a year since that we had seen UM the counter
demonstrations dwindle to just basically a small um Black Blocks
that was based that was showing up to counter that UM.
And on June it had turned into a really really
violent UM events where a lot of folks on our
(16:08):
side got pretty seriously hurt and um some of them
had to go to the hospital and sustained school fractures.
And there was that video of um, you know, etan
Ordine or Rufio, um, you know, knocking out somebody, and
UM that kind of you know became the viral Proud
(16:30):
Boy sensation. It did, and really kind of um you know,
did a lot for recruitment for them UM, and so
we decided that what we needed in Portland was UM,
a strong organizing effort to get as many people as
possible to show up to oppose them when they have
these rallies. FEE is part of a group called pop mop,
(16:51):
short for Popular Mobilization. Their goal is to use innovative
and community friendly organizing tactics to foster a big tent
approach to anti fascism. We planned pretty closely with Rosity,
Antifa and d s a UM. Pretty much all of
our events that we've had have been in partnership with
at least those two organizations, and then for various events,
we've had coalitions of up to thirty, you know, plus
(17:14):
organizations at various times have signed onto different actions that
we've had, involving groups like Jobs with Justice and UM
like the Buddhist Piece Fellowship and UH Queer Liberation Front,
UH UH Symbiosis and UH Portland's Assembly. There's a lot
of different organization since pop mob has countered far right
(17:35):
events with online fundraisers, hundreds of free vegan milkshakes, and
anti fascist dance parties. When the George Floyd protests began,
they took on a different role. So one thing is
that we've always had a very very narrow mission as
an organization, and we've been really intentional about UM trying
to stick within the scope of that mission, which is
(17:56):
inspiring people to show up and oppose the far right
and UM. So UM, we didn't feel like we were
in a position, UM where we should be leading anything.
So we instead UM agreed as a group that we
wanted to operate in a support role only. And UM.
One of the things that we've done over the last
(18:16):
a couple of years is kind of really built up
on a social media presence and UM have you know,
had a lot of UM but like enough, there's some
really talented people within our groups that do a lot
of great media work and UM, and so we had
basically just wanted to use our platform to boost the
organizing the other groups were doing on the ground. Don't
(18:38):
Shoot would organize rallies throughout the summer. Marches called by
the Direct Action Alliance would repeatedly target police infrastructure. But
as new groups sprung up and led marches of thousands,
Portland also had a robust support network of activist groups
looking for ways to help. Longtime Portland activist Gregory McKelvey
describes the transition to new leadership and groups springing up
(18:59):
in There were people who were new brand, knew that
we're called to the moment because of the murder of
George Floyd. And I think that it is really imperative
that those people become the leaders. Also think it's imperative
that the people who were previous leaders take a step
back and allow those people to be the new leaders. Right, um,
(19:19):
And but I think that we cannot keep reinventing the
wheel every time that protest movement comes up. So what
needs to happen is the previous leaders of every protest
movement that happens need to mentor and try and um
teach the lessons that they learned to the new generation
that is called to a current moment. The stabbing would
(19:41):
put all eyes on Portland, though no outlets reporting on
the incident knew about Demitria's encounter the day before. Months later,
she would link with activist group Don't Shoot Portland and
other organizations to tell her story. Thank You, Thank Good
(20:02):
would prevail over evil. For three years, we our community,
the victims, have been waking up hoping to see so
closer to the end of the senseless travesty. Today it's
chinally here would a twill unanimous votes from the people
of our community. Let's get community to thank you for
(20:34):
the beautiful, amazing, resilient support. Through this, we have changed
the narrative. They came hard and strong towards represent our community,
ready intelligience, our heroes, and will forever be looked at
as hero We're confind until everyone like Jeremy Christians it's
(21:02):
all the street is. They are not welcome here. We
look back until we are creative. Well. She'd continue to
work with Don't Shoot, which had grown to become the
largest Black Lives Matter organization in the state throughout the
(21:22):
litigation of her case. In June, well into the Portland uprisings,
Jeremy Christian was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole.
At the sentencing hearing, Demitria offered her own indictment of
not only Christian, but the entire law enforcement system for
facilitating people like him, before offering some searing last words
for her attacker. Need people feel colored. That's our community,
(21:48):
can't all. We need our community and always to do
what has been for our community. Not people get are
looking how the popularity and these know we're wants to
stop me from using our debts to capitalize and make
a profit at the We will not let you get
these people in office. You are not welcome here and
(22:12):
to the Westaer Derek and Christian. Your mom should have
flat too. You are a waste of bread. Oh can
you die? You go to hill. I hope you write, yeah, Hey,
what do I tell you? Can water? Fine? The exchange
(22:45):
would become fuel for Demetrius Chance in the streets. Next
is my colleague Beatrix. Beatrix is a reporter who worked
at me on the ground in Portland. One time I
watched her get shot in the head with a grenade
by a federal agent. She's fine, she had a good helmet.
She's going to take you through what happened next, starting
with the story of Portland's largest new activist group. As
(23:05):
thousands of newly activated Portlanders looked for meaningful ways to
latch onto the movement, butting in their own backyard, one
organization quickly sprung up as one of the loudest in
the crowd, Rose City Justice. Almost overnight, Rose City Justice
or r c J, was leading marches throughout the city
educating about Portland's past its black community, gentrification and police brutality.
(23:28):
Led by a black truck an enthusiastic chance, these marches
amassed upwards of ten thousand people at times. Jedi was
part of another organization that formed in the wake of
Floyd's death. His group, Portland's Civil Rights Collective, began informally
through a chance meet up on the first night of
the Portland uprisings. Their goal at first making cops hate
(23:49):
their jobs. Every night, he and the PCRC team would
take to the streets, warring with cops downtown in an
attempt to drain police resources. Their fight would unknowingly lead
them to our c J So the first um me
and Kinsey, you know, Kinsey Smith. Um, I met her
that night and we had just like linked up and
(24:12):
just so happened to just find ourselves leading. I mean,
like eighty random people that were down just around battling
the cops all night. We just kind of fell into
that role because I mean there's very few black people
to begin with, even downtown anyway. So um, we were
like the only ones that we could really see in
our vicinity that we're able to like. Um, I hate
(24:35):
the word leader, but just like lead the allies around
UM and trying to keep them safe. And so that
night we got we exchanged numbers with like eighty different
people that we had in that group. Well really I
took everybody's number and put it all on the signal
group chat, and we just kept going out every single night.
(24:57):
And then eventually, uh, maybe like five or six days,
maybe a week passes in a Kinsey had came up
with a name, and she named it Port the Civil
Rights Collective, And so we did our things for like
a week or two, and then we linked up with
ros City Justice. Once the merge happened, they began taking
(25:19):
to the streets in a very different way. No longer
were they standing toe to toe with cops every night.
Now they were marching in the streets. Sometimes. Jedi said,
it felt like they were going nowhere. Man. It's that's
a it's interesting because it's not how I would have
probably imagined it because Rosity Justice at the time was
not they were really going out at night. I feel
(25:42):
like they were doing like the early date or late evening,
but still daytime marches because it was still light out UM.
And then things were like calmed down, like you know,
once it got dark, uh PCRC, we were like out
out on the ground every night all night, uh, just
(26:02):
battling the police basically. UM. And so when we linked
up with r c J, because they they had like
a much larger following at at the time, and they
also had a larger social media presence that was like
twice the size as of ours. In a way, seems
like we defaulted to their style of of resistance basically,
(26:23):
which was just like doing these Now when I think
about people called them the long marches to nowhere, which
is really true in retrospect, that's kind of what what's happening.
I'd like to think that we still made an impact
on uh a lot of the community that we would
roll around, a lot of the neighborhoods that we we'd
(26:46):
roll around, Like it was nice to see like families
come out of their houses and like actually joined the
marches sometimes, or you know, just seeing their kids on
the porch with holding up their signs and stuff and
that kind of stuff. But when I think about how
I literally never ever saw the police that any of
these marches, it it makes me wonder like just the
(27:10):
effectiveness of it all. If the police didn't give a
funk about what we're doing then was it really helping?
But I don't I don't think that's a fair assessment
of exactly like how we impacted the community. Nonetheless, like
it kind of just it evolved into basically us doing
(27:34):
marches every day, trying to basically trying to activate people
to come out. It's kind of I guess how I
would look at it, um, but that's kind of what
it turned into. It can It went from us going
out every night, battling the police too, gathering like hundreds
(27:54):
and thousands of people actually uh to go on these
long marches while r c J led massive actions the
so called peaceful protests favored by the likes of Wheeler,
events at the Sacred Fence continued to draw the ire
of City Hall and the police. Some protesters even started
to wonder if there was really any point in getting
tear gassed at the same location every night. Divisions began
(28:18):
to mount between our CJ's education leaning resistance during the
day and the more lively and more volatile standoffs with
cops at the fence at night. Rifts formed between the
peaceful crowd and what you might call the direct action crowd.
Activist and live streamer Max Smith said he's purposefully not
tied to any one organization, but as the so called
(28:40):
fence wars raged on, he too found himself questioning how
this was furthering the cause for black lives A fight
and fence that was what we were here for. You know.
The fence was like some ship that kind of it
was like ed to call the Grand thet autos aside mission,
like this isn't this has nothing to do with what
we're supposed to be doing right now, but we have
(29:00):
to complete this to get back in the game, you know.
And it was really weird, and I think at that
moment I really realized that the distraction was intentional and
that this was all getting just diverted to become like
a like a Trump campaign at you know, He's gonna
come through and support these police unions and this is
(29:23):
his big commercial for it. So it was a very uh.
I felt like it was a frustrating part of the
protest because a it was really a dangerous and people
were really getting hurt and kidnapped and all that kind
of weird stuff. And then on top of that, it
wasn't the fight that I wanted to you know, to
be fighting, but it was. But it's the fight that
brings out a lot of people. So a very contrasting
(29:47):
and confusing time for sure. Gregory also found frustration with
some of the unclear goals of the protests as they developed.
I think this is a big part of the story
that I think is not being told, or that the
harder further left UM has failed to really reckon with
UM in an effective way. So UM one, I'm still
(30:11):
I'm sure if any of the protests have an incredibly
coherent goal. Um, for some it's abolish the police, for
some it's defund the police. For some of those things
mean the same thing. And then I also think there
are a ton of Portlanders, actually most Portlanders, after working
in politics for so long, who don't support either of
those things. I mean, we hold all of those things. UM.
They're not popular. UM, They're incredibly popular on the left,
(30:33):
and if you were at the protest, you would think
that these are unanimous things. They're not. UM. So I
think there was an incredible opportunity for us when those
massive protests were happening to get a lot of change,
not just the common sense reforms that I think would
make you know. People on the hard left just call
me a liberal. As divisions grew, trouble loomed for our
(30:55):
c J. In addition to the sometimes fierce arguments over tactics,
many Portlanders criticized r c J leadership for including a
former military police officer. There were also claims of financial mismanagement,
particularly once leaders from our CJ posted about attending a
luxurious three day retreat. As tensions rose, activists trew lines
(31:17):
in the sand and began retreating to their respective corners
from it, people started, I guess people weren't really moving
on principle, and people weren't moving slow enough because a
lot of people were really new to to like organizing
and protesting. People just wanted to like get their way in.
(31:40):
They wanted things to go their way basically, and when
you have too many cooks in the kitchen, you know
the recipe is gonna get sucked up eventually, especially when
everybody wants their recipe to work. I mean I personally
left because I was with PCRC and the split was
(32:00):
basically all the original r c J members and all
the original PCRC members are splitting down the middle, and
we're going our separate ways because we had initially combined forces.
R c J didn't formally disband after the falling out,
but things got noticeably quieter for the group after June.
During the height of the r c J Days, their
(32:22):
marches had drawn thousands multiple times a week, but by
late June they were mostly boosting other groups actions via Instagram.
Many of the organizers involved with the group went on
to form their own organizations that continue to play key
roles in the movement today. Youth let orgs like Friday's
for Freedom and Black Youth Movement immediately began staging community
(32:46):
focused neighborhood events throughout the city. Another group, calling itself
Justice Unity, Integrity, Community Equality or Juice PDX, would go
on to host several rallies later in the summer. Despite
the split, organizers remember parts of the r c J
Days fondly. Jedi says the mass marches of June helped
(33:07):
feed an undeniable sense of momentum. The amount of people
that will come out and also like just some of
the education that we're giving to the crowd was I
think really amazing, man, and it'smissed um because during those marches,
like I would create like little speeches to give to
the crowd, and so with Chrissy UM, and so would
(33:31):
see be like some of the other organizers, we get
on the mic and like have like oh, we'd also
like give the crowd homework sometimes, so like we'd be like,
all right, we want you all to read like the
Willie Lynch letters. And then like two days March, like
literally the next day or the day where we like
asked the crowd, all right, so raise your hand if
you read that, you know. So Um, those were really
(33:52):
nice moments because like you'd see some people literally raise
their hand and obviously you know, some people probably have him,
but like some people literally did their homework. So it
was nice to see that. And also just like i'd say,
like a high points, just we've never seen mass mobilization
like that ever happened important I will I've never seen
that before. Uh, for for an extended period of time,
(34:16):
like seeing thousands of people come out every single day,
um to basically wake up their neighborhoods. That seemed like
that was really powerful for for all of us too,
to feel like we were kind of shifting the you know,
the we're causing like a paradigm shift in our community.
(34:38):
With Rose City Justice no longer organizing large scale marches
on a regular basis, and the nightly crowd at the
Justice Center and getting smaller each night, some activists decided
a change was needed. On June, people again attempted a
temporary autonomous zone, this time in North Portland in front
of the Portland Police Bureaus North Precinct. Barricades were put
(34:59):
up along the streets the precincts doors facing the occupied
area were boarded shut and the main exit an entrance
facing the other direction were left open so that police
could vacate the premises. Police responded to this occupation faster
than the one at Wheeler's apartment. For one, it was
at a police precinct, so there was a police presence,
(35:21):
and two, it had the same problem as the first
attempted autonomous zone. Not enough people were present to hold
down the area. After only a few hours, police came
charging from around the corner, ripping apart barricades and firing
off Stunn grenades and pepper balls. The crowd moved to
(35:45):
block North and then quickly started a dumpster fire in
the middle of the road. The police, you worked at
dispers now ran control agents and impact unions will be
you and again there your bail to the lie. There
was also a second, much smaller trash can fire beside
(36:05):
a building adjacent to the police precinct. The flames from
inside the trash can caught on fire some of the
plywood boards covering a window. Protesters noticed and people began yelling,
this is a black owned business. Put the fire out.
People scrambled to put out the small flames on the plywood,
and at the same time police started shooting off tear
gas and flash bangs. The next day, the police, mayor
(36:29):
and local news companies spread the narrative that protesters locked
and barricaded officers inside their precinct and then the precinct
on fire. But what happened here last night, with doors
being nailed shut, barred shut, with fires being set to
the outside of the building with people inside, that is
(36:54):
not transformation. What happened here isn't helping to bring about
any meaningful change, reform, or an end of the historic races,
and that all of us are joined together and seeking
to eliminate. Last night it was plainly and simply about arson.
It was about destruction, It was about endangering lives, it's
(37:19):
blatant criminal violence, violence that is totally unacceptable. That, of course,
is not what happened, But once a narrative gets spread
enough through mainstream outlets, it's very difficult to correct. Throughout
the next few months, Portland police would put out misleading
statements and flat out lies regarding the protests, which news
(37:40):
outlets would signal boost and treat as absolute fact. We
get after the protest at the North Precinct, people still
(38:01):
wanted to get away from the nightly dread at the
Justice Center and Fence Direct Action Alliance, the Youth Liberation
Front and some of the BIPOC activists who started the
initial Justice Center protest organized another protest in North Portland,
this time at the Police Union Building. So for a
month we were just targeting downtown, right, we were just
straight downtown every single day, and we we figured that
(38:24):
we needed to diversify a little bit and start hitting
other targets around town. Um going and protesting in areas
like that, in neighborhood letting people participate, you know, come
out into the streets with us. So that's when we
decided to start marching through neighborhoods. So we did another
events in Peninsula Park on June, and this time we
wanted to make it a lot more community oriented, so
(38:46):
we invited a lot of artists to come perform. Mike
Crenshaw was there, um Emiliana Desapato was there, um uh
c three, the Guru, all these people. It was like
a concert slash alley and it was great. And we
and that was the first night we targeted the Portland
Police Association building and so we went out there and
(39:07):
that's when they gassed us, and they gassed the whole neighborhood.
That was the first night that they gassed an entire
fucking neighborhood. When hundreds of Portlanders arrived at the Police
Union building to protest, the building was already surrounded by
Portland police and Oregon State troopers in riot gere. Within minutes,
an unlawful assembly was declared, and soon after cops began
(39:29):
pushing people east away from the p p A building.
Do not stop now, get you get. The cops shoved
(39:57):
and hit people with their batons while walking east for
few blocks, and then began to bull rush the crowd.
In a bulrush, a line of officers sprints towards the
massive people, knocking over as many as possible, and then
officers in the back typically come to tackle and arrest
anyone on the ground. That night, officers initially used smoke grenades,
(40:17):
flash bangs, pepper balls and rubber bullets as well. This
event has been deep and unlawful. Assimily, you need to
disperse to the east, killer to a lawful subject, future
rest and forced to include crowd control of munitions moved
to the east. After multiple bulrushes and constant volleys of munitions,
(40:39):
protesters began throwing munitions back at the armored police, along
with plastic water bottles. Police responded by declaring a riot
and blanketing the neighborhood, and tear gas first be used
to dispersed on the area. Tear gas had been banned
(41:05):
in Portland since June nine. On the eight in Japman Square,
Mayor Wheeler had addressed an unfriendly crowd of activists who
had spent the last two weeks getting repeatedly tear gassed
by Portland police. He promised to ban the use of
tear gas the next day. Soon after he left, officers
gas the crowd. The next day, Wheeler kept his word,
(41:31):
sort of. The band came with a lot of holes.
Gas was allowed in situations where quote lives or safety
of the public or the police are at risk, which
was too vague to mean much. But Portland police did
take longer than usual to use tear gas on the
night of June. The reason why was that earlier that day,
(41:54):
Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into law a bill that
banned the use of tear gas. The exception was if
Portland police declared a riot and announced out loud that
tear gas was about to be used. So, of course,
the police switched tactics and made sure to declare a
riot when they wanted to use tear gas. On the
(42:15):
thirty The main justifications seemed to be the protesters were
near the Union building and some of them had hucked
plastic water bottles at riot lines of armored cups. The
Portland police declared a riot and started gassing. In the end,
neither the state nor local bands on tear gas helped
the Portlanders who lived in houses and apartments along North
(42:36):
Lombard Street. It was a balmy summer night and many
of them had their windows open in the fresh air.
When that air turned to poison gas, multiple residents were
assaulted and even arrested while trying to flee their gas
filled homes outside of Oregon. On the federal level, other
events in late June would contribute to Portland becoming the
most heavily tear gas city in the United States. On June,
(43:00):
President Trump had signed Executive Order one three nine three
three protecting American Monuments, memorials and statues, and federal property.
As we've already explained, toppling statues had become a viral
sensation at the time, but the toppling of a George
Washington statue by teenage Portlanders seemed to have been the
most direct inspiration for this executive order. President even referenced
(43:24):
Portland in his press release on the matter. The order
also presents its own timeline of the nationwide protests of June,
saying quote, over the last five weeks, there have been
sustained assaults on the life and property of civilians, law
enforcement officers, government property, and revered American monuments such as
(43:44):
the Lincoln Memorial. Many of the rioters, arsonists, and left
wing extremists who have carried out and supported these acts
have explicitly identified themselves with ideologies such as Marxism that
call for the destruction of the United States system of government.
Anarchists and left wing extremists have sought to advance a
fringe ideology that paints the United States of America as
(44:08):
fundamentally unjust, and have sought to impose that ideology on
Americans through violence and mob intimidation. The order describes a massive,
overwhelmingly peaceful nationwide protest movement throughout May and June is
five nightmarish weeks of rampant violence and murder, but its
solutions focus confusingly on the prevention of vandalism to statues.
(44:32):
It states that quote United States law authors is a
penalty of up to ten years imprisonment for the wilful
injury of federal property end quote, and goes on to
say state and locals law enforcement agencies that failed to
protect monuments, memorials, and statues will be subject to withholding
of federal support, and the federal government will ensure personnel
(44:55):
are available across the nation to assist with the protection
of federal monuments, memorials, statues, and property. Feorder is unclear
on how broadly federal jurisdiction extends in the protection of statues.
All in all, dozens of statues were vandalized and destroyed
throughout the country in the first five weeks of the
(45:16):
George Floyd uprisings. The vast majority of these statues were
Confederate monuments in the American South. As of June twenty six,
only two statues had been targeted by Portland's protests, one
on the steps of a high school and the other
on the private property of the Portland German American Society.
Both of these were miles from any federal property. However,
(45:36):
under the president's new executive order, Portland would become the
first city to see the large scale deployment of federal troops.
The Multnoma County Justice Center, the epicenter of Portland's ongoing protests,
is flanked on both sides by federal buildings, the Mark O.
Hatfield court House and the Edith Green Windell Wyatt Federal Building.
A few blocks away, the federal landmark of Pioneer Courthouse
(45:57):
overlooks Courthouse Square, the site of many of June's large
daytime rallies, as well as many tear gas choked showdowns
between nighttime protesters and PPB riot lines. When Feds were
sent in, they would be deploying into the center of
Portland's ongoing protests. On July one, Acting Secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolfe, put out a statement
(46:19):
answering the President's call, referring to the executive order he
had made. The end of that statement read, as we
approached the July fourth holiday, I have directed the deployment
and prepositioning of rapid response teams across the country to
respond to potential threats to facilities and property. While the
Department respects every American's right to protest peacefully, violence and
civil unrest will not be tolerated. In the next episode,
(46:43):
we'll hear how Portland protesters and those rapid deployment teams
met in Portland for the very first time on July fourth.
Uh or the grand pops who couldn't fathom the obamacist
hate America just to mean she keeps a promise twenty
teams looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide deja
(47:04):
wo what my people post to do go to schools
named after the clan founder we're around town is I
don't see why we're frowning Native American students forced to
learn about wind o'pellah Sarah, How is that fair, bro?
Some heroes unsung in some monsters get monuments built for them.
But it ain't be all a little bit of monster.
We crook it
We started this series by asking why Portland, and the
most accurate answer to that question is the history lesson.
We gave an episode one, but the most direct answer
to why the city of Portland became the nexus of
an uprising starts with a bunch of teenagers in a
statue of George Washington. Our own Garrison Davis was there.
Here's what he experienced. On Thursday June, I set out
(00:30):
for a park in East Portland. The teenage activist group
Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front or just the Wire Left
posted on their Twitter account that something was planned for
eight pm, so I made my way, expecting something interesting
to happen. The previous night, the Wire Left and some
New Black organizers had set up an autonomous zone style
(00:52):
occupation in front of the Mayor's apartment in the upscale
Pearl district, inspired by Seattle's Capitol Hill Occupied protest slash
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Coome morning, not enough bodies were
present at the attempted autonomous zone to resist the riot
police who arrived to clear the area. After the very
short lived Autonomous Zone, I had wondered what the Wire
(01:15):
Left had planned next. As eight pm approached On that Thursday,
only a little over a dozen people gathered at the
original meeting spot. The small group were mostly in black block.
Black block is a tactic that originated with German anti
globalization protesters. It involves wearing all black clothing to make
it difficult to identify specific people. Shortly after I arrived,
(01:39):
the crowd had began marching north. They decided to take
the sidewalk instead of the street to due to their
low numbers. In a matter of minutes, the crowd arrived
at their apparent destination, the Portland German American Society, which
features a large statue of George Washington out in front
of the building. Activists started by draping in a man
(02:00):
a can flag over the face of the statue and
lighting into blaze. People spray painted the base and statue itself,
writing genocidal colonist, slave owner and six nineteen, the year
the first enslaved Africans were brought to America. Slowly more
people arrived as calls for support were made out over
social media. The few dozen people in attendance started attaching
(02:21):
nylon straps to the head of the statue and began
pulling back and forth. By eleven pm, the statue of
George Washington had been completely torn down. The crowd quickly left,
(02:42):
calling the night of success, and police arrived a little
over half an hour later. At the time, no one
could have known that this small action would trigger a
series of events that would turn Portland's BLM protests into
the biggest story in the entire country. Right Wing media
(03:15):
reacted to the toppling of the George Washington statue as expected.
A narrative was spun that police were letting a violent
mob of ANTIFA rioters go around town destroying property without consequence.
Pundits criticized protesters for erasing history. The Portland police defended
their failure to stop the toppling of the statue by
complaining that they had been occupied with a concurrent protest
(03:35):
at the Justice Center fence. They stated the group blocked
the street for several hours, throwing projectiles such as hot
dogs at the Justice Centered doors. By this point, three
weeks into the protests, dozens of Portlanders had been arrested
at actions, and yet a narrative had begun to spread
on right wing media that there had been no consequences
for protesters engaging in destructive activity. The toppling of George
(03:58):
Washington flipped a switch in national far right media, and
suddenly Portland was a symbol of everything wrong with the left.
Here's President Trump on the campaign trail two days ago.
Left as radicals in Portland, Oregon ripped down a statue
of George Washington and wrapped it in an American flag
(04:23):
and set the American flag on fire. Democrat A Democrats.
Everything I tell you is Democrat. And you know, we
ought to do something. Mr Senators, we have two great senators.
We ought to come up with legislation that if you
burned the American flag, you go to jail for one year.
(04:46):
There are a lot of things wrong with that statement.
First off, some of the folks who took down that
statue would find being called a Democrat insulting. Also, the
Supreme Court has ruled that burning an American flag is
a constitutionally protected form of free speech. Portland protesters toppling
at George Washington statue seems to have inspired the President
to suggest legislation that would ban not just the toppling
(05:07):
of statues, which was already illegal, but flag burning and
similar acts of protest. As it turned out, Donald Trump
would follow through on the idea of criminalizing that sort
of behavior, But why would protesters go through all the
trouble of tumbling down statues in the first place. We
talked with some members of the y LF, the Youth
Liberation Front to get their perspective. Since the President of
(05:28):
the United States has threatened these again literal children repeatedly.
We've redubbed the audio in order to protect their identities
because they represent monuments to people who are white supremacist
and genocidal, and as an anarchist, I think every statue
to a human should be torn down because they don't
believe in idolizing anyone, but especially like people who led
(05:50):
the way for colonization and just awful atrocities in their lifetime.
President Trump's fury over the George Washington action through the
Youth Liberation Front into the national spotlight. But that statue
was not actually the first to fall in Portland, and
it would not be the last, though the wire Left
would become synonymous with a more radical, militant segment of
the protests acting under the cover of night. The first
(06:11):
statue to come down in Portland was actually at Thomas
Jefferson High School. One of the only remaining majority black
schools in the state. On the afternoon of June fourteenth,
as a large peaceful march led by Rose City Justice
departed from Jefferson, the statue of the school's namesake was
torn from its pedestal by a small enthusiastic group in
broad daylight. Picking up the rest of the story is
(06:32):
my colleague and partner in getting horribly tear gassed A
Laine Kinchen. Toppling statues of historical slaveholders became a nationwide
trend during the first three weeks of the George Floyd protests.
By the time the George Washington statue at the Portland
German American Association came down, eighteen other statues had fallen
to crowds across the country. In the weeks that followed,
at least seventeen more statues would meet the same fate,
(06:55):
and many more would be quietly relocated for their own protection,
just as the wire left vandal Is. Some of the
Washington statue fits into a larger context of statue toppling,
the while of themselves are only one part of Portland's
activist ecosystem, Originally emerging from a loose coalition of anti
racist and anti Trump high school groups. Here are two
while of members talking about the genesis of the group
(07:17):
in nineteen the comrades who started it made a lot
of connections with the Occupy ICE and started running things
running the social media. I think it was really born.
It came out of like really sporadic school protests, just
like whatever was happening, and it was something that people
felt was really important. Back then, the group slowly moved
towards like anti fascism and you liberation, trying to interest
(07:40):
agism as well in those spaces, and I think it
definitely went that direction completely. June. Yeah, that was like
a big anti fascist and fascist rally in Portland, and
I definitely think that kind of sparked a turning point
where I think like the organization really blossomed from there. Yeah,
we started off as like a very liberal group, like
one of those many boring student activist groups that just
like PARTICE, spated in walkouts. But then we started to
(08:02):
take a more radical turn. Like our first protest that
I was involved with was for gun control rally and
that's yeah, that's really cringe looking back, because now we're
all like insurrectionary anarchists. Oh. I think it definitely moved
from that into a more radical stance after June twenty nine,
and then came on the seventeenth, which was another big
rally in Portland. That um where he I mean like
(08:25):
a good amount of focus was placed on us all
of a sudden, Yeah, and I think it kind of
just continued after that. Jacob bu Eros, the founder of
Direct Action Alliance, says he first encountered what would eventually
become the wire Left in March of seventeen while organizing
to counter a far right demonstration in the wealthy suburb
of Lake Oswego. It would be you know, Rose City Antifa,
Direct Action Alliance tm w Y, a left which I
(08:47):
think had back then it was still called Oregonians Against
Trump or something like that. But um, that's when we
first started organizing together to confront the right wing. Was
during that time in March of seventeen through May of seventeen,
and then after that it was discoordinated effort. Jacob says
(09:07):
the Direct Action Alliance was formed out of a sense
of desperation in late Yeah, after the election, I just
didn't want to keep wasting my time in politics, and
I felt this really big sense of urgency. And around
that time was when they started attacking people um at
Standing Rock, and both of my kids are our citizens
(09:30):
of the Cherokee Nation. My partners the citizen of the
Cherokee Nation, and they were they were all really upset
about it, and I was really upset about it. Jacob
had been an activist for a while previous to this point,
and he was already familiar with Portland organizers who had
risen to prominence with the first Black Lives Matter protests.
In These include Danielle James and the founder of Don't
(09:50):
Shoot Portland, Teresa Raefford. We each have our own individual
thing that we really focus on, except for in the
Direct Action Alliance, we kind of just do everything. Most
groups have their own thing that they focus on. But
we're all the same people helping each other behind the scene.
So when Wild Left is working focusing on something that's
anti anti police, right, it's the same people who organized
(10:13):
the large peaceful blm rallies who are working with them
to support them. And so that's where the intersection is.
We're all one big family here in Portland. It's not
a it's not like in other cities. Where we actually
have to build alliance sause people have been active in
the city for so long and have been seeing the
same faces for so long. I'd say it all goes
back to Terressa Rayford. She's the one. She's the one
(10:35):
who took it from even when the when the Occupy
movement happened and kind of molded that energy into something
where Portland became an activist scene. Again. This this city
wasn't wasn't very active. It kind of lost its edge
until Terressa Rayford came along and started pushing people to
(10:56):
come out, to show up to fight back. When Kwanis
Hayes was killed, was out there calling everyone to come
out do something about it. And I'd say that she was.
I'd say she's at the core of it. I mean
most of the people who I've met, who I've coordinated with,
who I've worked with, all of those groups that I
just mentioned to you, I met all of them that
Don't Shoot Portland rallies. Way back before Trump was president,
(11:18):
Rayford had originally formed Don't Shoot PDX in response to
the killing of Michael Brown and Ferguson, but the failed
PPB shooting of teenager Quanice Hayes in February seventeen, gave
a new local urgency to calls for police accountability and
came in the midst of an upswing of far right
mobilizations targeting Portland. Every city has certain defining moments, traumas
(11:40):
which galvanized the community, spur the creation of new coalitions,
and give rise to new organizing strategies. One of those
defining moments for Portland came in May of tw seventeen,
when a white supremacist named Jeremy Christian murdered two people
on a max light rail train. The day before the killings,
Christian assaulted another Orlander, Dmitria Hester. Here she recounts her experience. Okay,
(12:04):
so three years ago, Um, Jeremy Joseph Christian um attacked me.
He's a white known supremacist that's here in organists that
the police knew about. Everybody's the the mayor knew about.
I mean, everybody just knew about him because he had
set the tone at every march and staying and stating
(12:27):
how much he hates, you know, the races, anyone that
wasn't black, and wasn't that wasn't white, and wanted to
harm or kill anyone that wasn't you know those descents
of that descent of being white and Christian. So um,
he verbally attacks me for three stops on the MAX
(12:51):
and May two thousand, two thousand's seven teen front and center,
often with a bullhorn in hand. Dmitria became one of
the most recognizable voices of Portland's protests. The man she's describing,
Jeremy Christian, was a regular attendee of far right rallies
in the Portland area. That night, Dimitria fended off Christian
(13:14):
with pepper spray. Police responded, but Christian was not detained
and he got away to kill the people. The next
day on that same green line. He was looking for
me because I mased him the night before. He encountered
to um one African American lady and one lady who
(13:34):
had to have Geva Bevon and um she wasn't. He
thought she was Muslimed, So he verbally started attaching these
little girls under eighteen, and three men came into their rescuing.
Was defending them and tried to de escalate the problem,
but he stabbed two of wom and killed them, and
(13:57):
uh stabbed a third and tried to kill him. So
the police um got the call not to even use
uh force when they were got the call that he
did this on the max. This just shows you how
the police play a part and um everything he did
and the reason why he got away with what he did.
(14:19):
And then so when they actually um caught him, he
was still wielding the knife that he killed people with. UM.
He threatened four people on his way to when they
detained him. And the only reason they detained him again
was because the public was following him. And UM, they
(14:40):
didn't even shoot him with rubber bullis or cheered gasim
or anything. With a knife in his hand and threatening
the police, he was able to throw the knife on
the police car, still drinking his wine that he had
in another Gatoray bottle. UM, and they detain him. And
(15:02):
after they detain him, he bragged about what he did.
Ricky John Best and Tallesia Namchaimchi died in the attack.
The third man, Micah Fletcher, survived. A Few weeks before
the murders, Christian had attended a right wing free speech
event in the Montevilla neighborhood of Portland. The rally aimed
to build on the momentum of the Lake Oswego event.
(15:23):
In March. Micah Fletcher, the only survivor of the stabbings,
had been in Montevilla as well, counter protesting alongside Direct
Action Alliance, Rose City, ANTIFA and what would eventually become
the y LF. In some ways, Portland is a very
small town. After the murders, far right rallies in Portland continued.
Anti fascist counter protests were large and spirited at first,
(15:46):
but as Effie Bound describes, that didn't last. And in
a year since that we had seen UM the counter
demonstrations dwindle to just basically a small um Black Blocks
that was based that was showing up to counter that UM.
And on June it had turned into a really really
violent UM events where a lot of folks on our
(16:08):
side got pretty seriously hurt and um some of them
had to go to the hospital and sustained school fractures.
And there was that video of um, you know, etan
Ordine or Rufio, um, you know, knocking out somebody, and
UM that kind of you know became the viral Proud
(16:30):
Boy sensation. It did, and really kind of um you know,
did a lot for recruitment for them UM, and so
we decided that what we needed in Portland was UM,
a strong organizing effort to get as many people as
possible to show up to oppose them when they have
these rallies. FEE is part of a group called pop mop,
(16:51):
short for Popular Mobilization. Their goal is to use innovative
and community friendly organizing tactics to foster a big tent
approach to anti fascism. We planned pretty closely with Rosity,
Antifa and d s a UM. Pretty much all of
our events that we've had have been in partnership with
at least those two organizations, and then for various events,
we've had coalitions of up to thirty, you know, plus
(17:14):
organizations at various times have signed onto different actions that
we've had, involving groups like Jobs with Justice and UM
like the Buddhist Piece Fellowship and UH Queer Liberation Front,
UH UH Symbiosis and UH Portland's Assembly. There's a lot
of different organization since pop mob has countered far right
(17:35):
events with online fundraisers, hundreds of free vegan milkshakes, and
anti fascist dance parties. When the George Floyd protests began,
they took on a different role. So one thing is
that we've always had a very very narrow mission as
an organization, and we've been really intentional about UM trying
to stick within the scope of that mission, which is
(17:56):
inspiring people to show up and oppose the far right
and UM. So UM, we didn't feel like we were
in a position, UM where we should be leading anything.
So we instead UM agreed as a group that we
wanted to operate in a support role only. And UM.
One of the things that we've done over the last
(18:16):
a couple of years is kind of really built up
on a social media presence and UM have you know,
had a lot of UM but like enough, there's some
really talented people within our groups that do a lot
of great media work and UM, and so we had
basically just wanted to use our platform to boost the
organizing the other groups were doing on the ground. Don't
(18:38):
Shoot would organize rallies throughout the summer. Marches called by
the Direct Action Alliance would repeatedly target police infrastructure. But
as new groups sprung up and led marches of thousands,
Portland also had a robust support network of activist groups
looking for ways to help. Longtime Portland activist Gregory McKelvey
describes the transition to new leadership and groups springing up
(18:59):
in There were people who were new brand, knew that
we're called to the moment because of the murder of
George Floyd. And I think that it is really imperative
that those people become the leaders. Also think it's imperative
that the people who were previous leaders take a step
back and allow those people to be the new leaders. Right, um,
(19:19):
And but I think that we cannot keep reinventing the
wheel every time that protest movement comes up. So what
needs to happen is the previous leaders of every protest
movement that happens need to mentor and try and um
teach the lessons that they learned to the new generation
that is called to a current moment. The stabbing would
(19:41):
put all eyes on Portland, though no outlets reporting on
the incident knew about Demitria's encounter the day before. Months later,
she would link with activist group Don't Shoot Portland and
other organizations to tell her story. Thank You, Thank Good
(20:02):
would prevail over evil. For three years, we our community,
the victims, have been waking up hoping to see so
closer to the end of the senseless travesty. Today it's
chinally here would a twill unanimous votes from the people
of our community. Let's get community to thank you for
(20:34):
the beautiful, amazing, resilient support. Through this, we have changed
the narrative. They came hard and strong towards represent our community,
ready intelligience, our heroes, and will forever be looked at
as hero We're confind until everyone like Jeremy Christians it's
(21:02):
all the street is. They are not welcome here. We
look back until we are creative. Well. She'd continue to
work with Don't Shoot, which had grown to become the
largest Black Lives Matter organization in the state throughout the
(21:22):
litigation of her case. In June, well into the Portland uprisings,
Jeremy Christian was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole.
At the sentencing hearing, Demitria offered her own indictment of
not only Christian, but the entire law enforcement system for
facilitating people like him, before offering some searing last words
for her attacker. Need people feel colored. That's our community,
(21:48):
can't all. We need our community and always to do
what has been for our community. Not people get are
looking how the popularity and these know we're wants to
stop me from using our debts to capitalize and make
a profit at the We will not let you get
these people in office. You are not welcome here and
(22:12):
to the Westaer Derek and Christian. Your mom should have
flat too. You are a waste of bread. Oh can
you die? You go to hill. I hope you write, yeah, Hey,
what do I tell you? Can water? Fine? The exchange
(22:45):
would become fuel for Demetrius Chance in the streets. Next
is my colleague Beatrix. Beatrix is a reporter who worked
at me on the ground in Portland. One time I
watched her get shot in the head with a grenade
by a federal agent. She's fine, she had a good helmet.
She's going to take you through what happened next, starting
with the story of Portland's largest new activist group. As
(23:05):
thousands of newly activated Portlanders looked for meaningful ways to
latch onto the movement, butting in their own backyard, one
organization quickly sprung up as one of the loudest in
the crowd, Rose City Justice. Almost overnight, Rose City Justice
or r c J, was leading marches throughout the city
educating about Portland's past its black community, gentrification and police brutality.
(23:28):
Led by a black truck an enthusiastic chance, these marches
amassed upwards of ten thousand people at times. Jedi was
part of another organization that formed in the wake of
Floyd's death. His group, Portland's Civil Rights Collective, began informally
through a chance meet up on the first night of
the Portland uprisings. Their goal at first making cops hate
(23:49):
their jobs. Every night, he and the PCRC team would
take to the streets, warring with cops downtown in an
attempt to drain police resources. Their fight would unknowingly lead
them to our c J So the first um me
and Kinsey, you know, Kinsey Smith. Um, I met her
that night and we had just like linked up and
(24:12):
just so happened to just find ourselves leading. I mean,
like eighty random people that were down just around battling
the cops all night. We just kind of fell into
that role because I mean there's very few black people
to begin with, even downtown anyway. So um, we were
like the only ones that we could really see in
our vicinity that we're able to like. Um, I hate
(24:35):
the word leader, but just like lead the allies around
UM and trying to keep them safe. And so that
night we got we exchanged numbers with like eighty different
people that we had in that group. Well really I
took everybody's number and put it all on the signal
group chat, and we just kept going out every single night.
(24:57):
And then eventually, uh, maybe like five or six days,
maybe a week passes in a Kinsey had came up
with a name, and she named it Port the Civil
Rights Collective, And so we did our things for like
a week or two, and then we linked up with
ros City Justice. Once the merge happened, they began taking
(25:19):
to the streets in a very different way. No longer
were they standing toe to toe with cops every night.
Now they were marching in the streets. Sometimes. Jedi said,
it felt like they were going nowhere. Man. It's that's
a it's interesting because it's not how I would have
probably imagined it because Rosity Justice at the time was
not they were really going out at night. I feel
(25:42):
like they were doing like the early date or late evening,
but still daytime marches because it was still light out UM.
And then things were like calmed down, like you know,
once it got dark, uh PCRC, we were like out
out on the ground every night all night, uh, just
(26:02):
battling the police basically. UM. And so when we linked
up with r c J, because they they had like
a much larger following at at the time, and they
also had a larger social media presence that was like
twice the size as of ours. In a way, seems
like we defaulted to their style of of resistance basically,
(26:23):
which was just like doing these Now when I think
about people called them the long marches to nowhere, which
is really true in retrospect, that's kind of what what's happening.
I'd like to think that we still made an impact
on uh a lot of the community that we would
roll around, a lot of the neighborhoods that we we'd
(26:46):
roll around, Like it was nice to see like families
come out of their houses and like actually joined the
marches sometimes, or you know, just seeing their kids on
the porch with holding up their signs and stuff and
that kind of stuff. But when I think about how
I literally never ever saw the police that any of
these marches, it it makes me wonder like just the
(27:10):
effectiveness of it all. If the police didn't give a
funk about what we're doing then was it really helping?
But I don't I don't think that's a fair assessment
of exactly like how we impacted the community. Nonetheless, like
it kind of just it evolved into basically us doing
(27:34):
marches every day, trying to basically trying to activate people
to come out. It's kind of I guess how I
would look at it, um, but that's kind of what
it turned into. It can It went from us going
out every night, battling the police too, gathering like hundreds
(27:54):
and thousands of people actually uh to go on these
long marches while r c J led massive actions the
so called peaceful protests favored by the likes of Wheeler,
events at the Sacred Fence continued to draw the ire
of City Hall and the police. Some protesters even started
to wonder if there was really any point in getting
tear gassed at the same location every night. Divisions began
(28:18):
to mount between our CJ's education leaning resistance during the
day and the more lively and more volatile standoffs with
cops at the fence at night. Rifts formed between the
peaceful crowd and what you might call the direct action crowd.
Activist and live streamer Max Smith said he's purposefully not
tied to any one organization, but as the so called
(28:40):
fence wars raged on, he too found himself questioning how
this was furthering the cause for black lives A fight
and fence that was what we were here for. You know.
The fence was like some ship that kind of it
was like ed to call the Grand thet autos aside mission,
like this isn't this has nothing to do with what
we're supposed to be doing right now, but we have
(29:00):
to complete this to get back in the game, you know.
And it was really weird, and I think at that
moment I really realized that the distraction was intentional and
that this was all getting just diverted to become like
a like a Trump campaign at you know, He's gonna
come through and support these police unions and this is
(29:23):
his big commercial for it. So it was a very uh.
I felt like it was a frustrating part of the
protest because a it was really a dangerous and people
were really getting hurt and kidnapped and all that kind
of weird stuff. And then on top of that, it
wasn't the fight that I wanted to you know, to
be fighting, but it was. But it's the fight that
brings out a lot of people. So a very contrasting
(29:47):
and confusing time for sure. Gregory also found frustration with
some of the unclear goals of the protests as they developed.
I think this is a big part of the story
that I think is not being told, or that the
harder further left UM has failed to really reckon with
UM in an effective way. So UM one, I'm still
(30:11):
I'm sure if any of the protests have an incredibly
coherent goal. Um, for some it's abolish the police, for
some it's defund the police. For some of those things
mean the same thing. And then I also think there
are a ton of Portlanders, actually most Portlanders, after working
in politics for so long, who don't support either of
those things. I mean, we hold all of those things. UM.
They're not popular. UM, They're incredibly popular on the left,
(30:33):
and if you were at the protest, you would think
that these are unanimous things. They're not. UM. So I
think there was an incredible opportunity for us when those
massive protests were happening to get a lot of change,
not just the common sense reforms that I think would
make you know. People on the hard left just call
me a liberal. As divisions grew, trouble loomed for our
(30:55):
c J. In addition to the sometimes fierce arguments over tactics,
many Portlanders criticized r c J leadership for including a
former military police officer. There were also claims of financial mismanagement,
particularly once leaders from our CJ posted about attending a
luxurious three day retreat. As tensions rose, activists trew lines
(31:17):
in the sand and began retreating to their respective corners
from it, people started, I guess people weren't really moving
on principle, and people weren't moving slow enough because a
lot of people were really new to to like organizing
and protesting. People just wanted to like get their way in.
(31:40):
They wanted things to go their way basically, and when
you have too many cooks in the kitchen, you know
the recipe is gonna get sucked up eventually, especially when
everybody wants their recipe to work. I mean I personally
left because I was with PCRC and the split was
(32:00):
basically all the original r c J members and all
the original PCRC members are splitting down the middle, and
we're going our separate ways because we had initially combined forces.
R c J didn't formally disband after the falling out,
but things got noticeably quieter for the group after June.
During the height of the r c J Days, their
(32:22):
marches had drawn thousands multiple times a week, but by
late June they were mostly boosting other groups actions via Instagram.
Many of the organizers involved with the group went on
to form their own organizations that continue to play key
roles in the movement today. Youth let orgs like Friday's
for Freedom and Black Youth Movement immediately began staging community
(32:46):
focused neighborhood events throughout the city. Another group, calling itself
Justice Unity, Integrity, Community Equality or Juice PDX, would go
on to host several rallies later in the summer. Despite
the split, organizers remember parts of the r c J
Days fondly. Jedi says the mass marches of June helped
(33:07):
feed an undeniable sense of momentum. The amount of people
that will come out and also like just some of
the education that we're giving to the crowd was I
think really amazing, man, and it'smissed um because during those marches,
like I would create like little speeches to give to
the crowd, and so with Chrissy UM, and so would
(33:31):
see be like some of the other organizers, we get
on the mic and like have like oh, we'd also
like give the crowd homework sometimes, so like we'd be like,
all right, we want you all to read like the
Willie Lynch letters. And then like two days March, like
literally the next day or the day where we like
asked the crowd, all right, so raise your hand if
you read that, you know. So Um, those were really
(33:52):
nice moments because like you'd see some people literally raise
their hand and obviously you know, some people probably have him,
but like some people literally did their homework. So it
was nice to see that. And also just like i'd say,
like a high points, just we've never seen mass mobilization
like that ever happened important I will I've never seen
that before. Uh, for for an extended period of time,
(34:16):
like seeing thousands of people come out every single day,
um to basically wake up their neighborhoods. That seemed like
that was really powerful for for all of us too,
to feel like we were kind of shifting the you know,
the we're causing like a paradigm shift in our community.
(34:38):
With Rose City Justice no longer organizing large scale marches
on a regular basis, and the nightly crowd at the
Justice Center and getting smaller each night, some activists decided
a change was needed. On June, people again attempted a
temporary autonomous zone, this time in North Portland in front
of the Portland Police Bureaus North Precinct. Barricades were put
(34:59):
up along the streets the precincts doors facing the occupied
area were boarded shut and the main exit an entrance
facing the other direction were left open so that police
could vacate the premises. Police responded to this occupation faster
than the one at Wheeler's apartment. For one, it was
at a police precinct, so there was a police presence,
(35:21):
and two, it had the same problem as the first
attempted autonomous zone. Not enough people were present to hold
down the area. After only a few hours, police came
charging from around the corner, ripping apart barricades and firing
off Stunn grenades and pepper balls. The crowd moved to
(35:45):
block North and then quickly started a dumpster fire in
the middle of the road. The police, you worked at
dispers now ran control agents and impact unions will be
you and again there your bail to the lie. There
was also a second, much smaller trash can fire beside
(36:05):
a building adjacent to the police precinct. The flames from
inside the trash can caught on fire some of the
plywood boards covering a window. Protesters noticed and people began yelling,
this is a black owned business. Put the fire out.
People scrambled to put out the small flames on the plywood,
and at the same time police started shooting off tear
gas and flash bangs. The next day, the police, mayor
(36:29):
and local news companies spread the narrative that protesters locked
and barricaded officers inside their precinct and then the precinct
on fire. But what happened here last night, with doors
being nailed shut, barred shut, with fires being set to
the outside of the building with people inside, that is
(36:54):
not transformation. What happened here isn't helping to bring about
any meaningful change, reform, or an end of the historic races,
and that all of us are joined together and seeking
to eliminate. Last night it was plainly and simply about arson.
It was about destruction, It was about endangering lives, it's
(37:19):
blatant criminal violence, violence that is totally unacceptable. That, of course,
is not what happened, But once a narrative gets spread
enough through mainstream outlets, it's very difficult to correct. Throughout
the next few months, Portland police would put out misleading
statements and flat out lies regarding the protests, which news
(37:40):
outlets would signal boost and treat as absolute fact. We
get after the protest at the North Precinct, people still
(38:01):
wanted to get away from the nightly dread at the
Justice Center and Fence Direct Action Alliance, the Youth Liberation
Front and some of the BIPOC activists who started the
initial Justice Center protest organized another protest in North Portland,
this time at the Police Union Building. So for a
month we were just targeting downtown, right, we were just
straight downtown every single day, and we we figured that
(38:24):
we needed to diversify a little bit and start hitting
other targets around town. Um going and protesting in areas
like that, in neighborhood letting people participate, you know, come
out into the streets with us. So that's when we
decided to start marching through neighborhoods. So we did another
events in Peninsula Park on June, and this time we
wanted to make it a lot more community oriented, so
(38:46):
we invited a lot of artists to come perform. Mike
Crenshaw was there, um Emiliana Desapato was there, um uh
c three, the Guru, all these people. It was like
a concert slash alley and it was great. And we
and that was the first night we targeted the Portland
Police Association building and so we went out there and
(39:07):
that's when they gassed us, and they gassed the whole neighborhood.
That was the first night that they gassed an entire
fucking neighborhood. When hundreds of Portlanders arrived at the Police
Union building to protest, the building was already surrounded by
Portland police and Oregon State troopers in riot gere. Within minutes,
an unlawful assembly was declared, and soon after cops began
(39:29):
pushing people east away from the p p A building.
Do not stop now, get you get. The cops shoved
(39:57):
and hit people with their batons while walking east for
few blocks, and then began to bull rush the crowd.
In a bulrush, a line of officers sprints towards the
massive people, knocking over as many as possible, and then
officers in the back typically come to tackle and arrest
anyone on the ground. That night, officers initially used smoke grenades,
(40:17):
flash bangs, pepper balls and rubber bullets as well. This
event has been deep and unlawful. Assimily, you need to
disperse to the east, killer to a lawful subject, future
rest and forced to include crowd control of munitions moved
to the east. After multiple bulrushes and constant volleys of munitions,
(40:39):
protesters began throwing munitions back at the armored police, along
with plastic water bottles. Police responded by declaring a riot
and blanketing the neighborhood, and tear gas first be used
to dispersed on the area. Tear gas had been banned
(41:05):
in Portland since June nine. On the eight in Japman Square,
Mayor Wheeler had addressed an unfriendly crowd of activists who
had spent the last two weeks getting repeatedly tear gassed
by Portland police. He promised to ban the use of
tear gas the next day. Soon after he left, officers
gas the crowd. The next day, Wheeler kept his word,
(41:31):
sort of. The band came with a lot of holes.
Gas was allowed in situations where quote lives or safety
of the public or the police are at risk, which
was too vague to mean much. But Portland police did
take longer than usual to use tear gas on the
night of June. The reason why was that earlier that day,
(41:54):
Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into law a bill that
banned the use of tear gas. The exception was if
Portland police declared a riot and announced out loud that
tear gas was about to be used. So, of course,
the police switched tactics and made sure to declare a
riot when they wanted to use tear gas. On the
(42:15):
thirty The main justifications seemed to be the protesters were
near the Union building and some of them had hucked
plastic water bottles at riot lines of armored cups. The
Portland police declared a riot and started gassing. In the end,
neither the state nor local bands on tear gas helped
the Portlanders who lived in houses and apartments along North
(42:36):
Lombard Street. It was a balmy summer night and many
of them had their windows open in the fresh air.
When that air turned to poison gas, multiple residents were
assaulted and even arrested while trying to flee their gas
filled homes outside of Oregon. On the federal level, other
events in late June would contribute to Portland becoming the
most heavily tear gas city in the United States. On June,
(43:00):
President Trump had signed Executive Order one three nine three
three protecting American Monuments, memorials and statues, and federal property.
As we've already explained, toppling statues had become a viral
sensation at the time, but the toppling of a George
Washington statue by teenage Portlanders seemed to have been the
most direct inspiration for this executive order. President even referenced
(43:24):
Portland in his press release on the matter. The order
also presents its own timeline of the nationwide protests of June,
saying quote, over the last five weeks, there have been
sustained assaults on the life and property of civilians, law
enforcement officers, government property, and revered American monuments such as
(43:44):
the Lincoln Memorial. Many of the rioters, arsonists, and left
wing extremists who have carried out and supported these acts
have explicitly identified themselves with ideologies such as Marxism that
call for the destruction of the United States system of government.
Anarchists and left wing extremists have sought to advance a
fringe ideology that paints the United States of America as
(44:08):
fundamentally unjust, and have sought to impose that ideology on
Americans through violence and mob intimidation. The order describes a massive,
overwhelmingly peaceful nationwide protest movement throughout May and June is
five nightmarish weeks of rampant violence and murder, but its
solutions focus confusingly on the prevention of vandalism to statues.
(44:32):
It states that quote United States law authors is a
penalty of up to ten years imprisonment for the wilful
injury of federal property end quote, and goes on to
say state and locals law enforcement agencies that failed to
protect monuments, memorials, and statues will be subject to withholding
of federal support, and the federal government will ensure personnel
(44:55):
are available across the nation to assist with the protection
of federal monuments, memorials, statues, and property. Feorder is unclear
on how broadly federal jurisdiction extends in the protection of statues.
All in all, dozens of statues were vandalized and destroyed
throughout the country in the first five weeks of the
(45:16):
George Floyd uprisings. The vast majority of these statues were
Confederate monuments in the American South. As of June twenty six,
only two statues had been targeted by Portland's protests, one
on the steps of a high school and the other
on the private property of the Portland German American Society.
Both of these were miles from any federal property. However,
(45:36):
under the president's new executive order, Portland would become the
first city to see the large scale deployment of federal troops.
The Multnoma County Justice Center, the epicenter of Portland's ongoing protests,
is flanked on both sides by federal buildings, the Mark O.
Hatfield court House and the Edith Green Windell Wyatt Federal Building.
A few blocks away, the federal landmark of Pioneer Courthouse
(45:57):
overlooks Courthouse Square, the site of many of June's large
daytime rallies, as well as many tear gas choked showdowns
between nighttime protesters and PPB riot lines. When Feds were
sent in, they would be deploying into the center of
Portland's ongoing protests. On July one, Acting Secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolfe, put out a statement
(46:19):
answering the President's call, referring to the executive order he
had made. The end of that statement read, as we
approached the July fourth holiday, I have directed the deployment
and prepositioning of rapid response teams across the country to
respond to potential threats to facilities and property. While the
Department respects every American's right to protest peacefully, violence and
civil unrest will not be tolerated. In the next episode,
(46:43):
we'll hear how Portland protesters and those rapid deployment teams
met in Portland for the very first time on July fourth.
Uh or the grand pops who couldn't fathom the obamacist
hate America just to mean she keeps a promise twenty
teams looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide deja
(47:04):
wo what my people post to do go to schools
named after the clan founder we're around town is I
don't see why we're frowning Native American students forced to
learn about wind o'pellah Sarah, How is that fair, bro?
Some heroes unsung in some monsters get monuments built for them.
But it ain't be all a little bit of monster.
We crook it
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