November 23, 2020 • 47 mins
For more than a hundred consecutive nights, Portland's Black Lives Matter movement endured violence from police, federal agents and right-wing vigilantes. In this episode, you'll learn how it all started, and why the city of Portland's history turned it into a battleground.
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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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
At around ten thirty pm on May nine, a crowd
of more than a thousand people gathered in North Portland's
Peninsula Park and marched downtown to the Justice Center, headquarters
of the Portland Police Bureau. The direct inspirations for the
(00:24):
march were the murders of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor.
Many in attendance also had a strong desire to express
solidarity with protesters in Minneapolis. That's what brought Chris Wise,
volunteer protest medic out into the streets that first night.
Initially I came out because as an African American, you know,
(00:46):
it was that that straw that broke the camel's back
on just like one death too many. We are murdered
by police and other law enforcement agencies at a rate
of three to one when compared to the average white American.
And those numbers get a little funky because you know,
(01:08):
obviously more white people die a year than black people
in police related shootings, but there are also you know,
six times as many white people, uh then black people. Tristan,
another Black Portlander, didn't go out that night, but he
watched everything that happened on the live streams honestly, like
my my first um impression was that it probably wasn't
(01:34):
going to be much, you know what I mean. I
didn't expect it to blow up the way it did.
I kind of felt like because I've I've seen it
happen in the past, where you know, there's will be
some kind of like something happening like nationwide or another
city in Portland will kind of like you know, show
up and solidarity for it, and it might become something,
(01:56):
but usually it's kind of like a one off. So
that's kind of what I was expecting, and so I
was pretty surprised to see like how quickly grew and
then also how like how the police were responding like
and like a very tear guys kind of way. Mariah
is a photojournalist and a lifestyle photographer. She was out
(02:18):
at Peninsula Park for the very start of the march
was the beginning to you know, something that not a
lot of us knew we were going to get into,
you know, but gosh, I remember being at Peninsula Park
and it was really great to see everyone there, and like,
it just reminds me of some I hate that it's
like a routine thing for us because it's you know,
(02:38):
why we're still fighting. And while we've been fighting so strong,
but you know, when someone gets killed by you know,
via police brutality, everyone meets up. You know, maybe we
protest for a few days and like you know, quote unquote,
we go back to like normal life. But you know,
we already haven't been a normal life since it's been
a pandemic this whole freaking year. But it was really
beautiful to see all the people and all the signs
and the speeches. The side walks bordering Peninsula Park were
(03:01):
filled with different slogans and exhortations written in chalk. One
of the most striking statements was make the moment count.
As it turned out, the city of Portland took that
to heart. The crowd at Peninsula Park marched nearly five
miles to downtown Portland. There they merged with a crowd
that had gathered around the Justice Center. The moment both
(03:22):
groups met was powerful. You could taste the energy in
the air. Portland's Black Lives Matter protests had actually started
several days earlier before that mass gathering. On the twenty nine,
a handful of activists of color had begun occupying the
steps of the Justice Center immediately after George Floyd's murder.
(03:46):
One of them was Tracy Molina, an Indigenous portland Er
better known as Colsca. Well. I remember it wasn't not
long after the George Floyd's story broke. A lot of
us wanted to do something here, but I think most
of the regular organizers kept saying wait, you know, let's wait,
(04:06):
let's wait for this, let's wait for that. And then finally, um,
then Danielle James, I think she's a pretty prominent black
activist in this community and stood up against Patriot Prayer
and Proud Boys and other white supremacist for years. Um,
it was kind of the spark for that. You know.
She was said like, we shouldn't wait in the night, supporter,
(04:28):
I said, I don't think we should wait either. I
think we should do something now. And so we ended
up the seven ten thirty all meeting at I and
starting to protest there, and then we moved. Um, sometime
after midnight, we moved over to the Justice Center and
slept on the steps there and planned to to occupy
(04:48):
it as long as we could. And so we stayed
there and then um, there was only maybe like four
of us that slept on the steps, and then then
next day, like at ice, we had about thirty or
forty people. And then the next day after we stayed
on those steps, I would say there was about forty
or fifty people that showed up in the afternoon and
(05:09):
they did a direct action or we blocked off the
streets in front of the steps of the Justice Center,
and I think they did it also did it die.
And that night there was also impromptu direct action or
some people, some young women sat on sat in the
doorway of the Justice Center and they brought riot police
(05:31):
out for that. And there was at that time there
was only about twenty of us and only like six
people participating in the sit in, but they still brought
riot police out and they were violently removed. That made
the news because one of the women, one of the
women that was hit with a baton, was she was
actually pregnant, a black woman. And the only way us
(05:54):
the why I know that for sure is because after
she was in the ambulance, she came I don't know
if she went to the hospital, but after she was
in the ambulans, she returned paperwork from the as proving
that she was pregnant. And was, you know, showing some
of the police officers that were still standing around. But yeah,
that's how the first few days went. And then um,
(06:16):
then we we all, um, we're going to have a
rally at um and Insula Park. And then I agreed
to do part of the opening. And when I was there,
more and more people kept coming, and I was surprised
at there are so many. I don't know, maybe a
thousand people that there was a lot, there was a
(06:37):
lot of people there. Was surprised, and it just kept
getting bigger and bigger. The now merged crowd, which numbered
at least a couple of thousand people, marched back to
the Justice Center. For a few minutes, they stood outside
chanting George Floyd's name. The police were nowhere to be seen.
While most of the crowd stood out in the street,
(06:57):
a hundred or so people gathered in front of the
windows of the Justice Center. They started spray painting slogans
on the glass. A few people peered on the doorway,
someone lit a small fire out in front, and then
quite suddenly, one person broke a window. The first broken
(07:17):
windows set off a frenzy, and soon people were using
their feet, rocks and any tools they could find to
shatter every exposed piece of glass on the building. With
the windows shattered, protesters ran into the Justice Center, ransacking
police offices and setting small fires. The Portland police arrived
a little bit later and began showering the crowd with
tear gas and flash band grenades. Though no one knew
(07:42):
it at the time, events had just been set into
motion that would lead to more than a hundred consecutive
nights of protests and tear gas. The Portland Uprising had begun.
We should probably start by talking a bit about the
(08:03):
definition of a riot. Legally, anything the cops declare a
riot is a riot. May nine is generally referred to
as riot night, because after the crowd was dispersed from
the Justice Center, hundreds of people ran through the streets
of Portland's luxury shopping district, smashing up high end chain
stores while the police chased after them. It certainly felt
(08:23):
like a riot, but a number of the folks that
we interviewed actually disagreed. Alan Kessler, a Portland based lawyer,
pushed back on that description. I guess I disagree that
even the first night was a real riot. I mean,
there were some shops goot burg Old, there were there
were something stolen. Um, there was a fire in the
(08:47):
in the j c. Um, I'm not sure that that.
I don't. I don't know the intent there right, like
looking at the fire, looking at the Piddale fire as
I've seen, I don't know if anybody means to burn
the buildings down or to y. Yeah, I don't know. Uh,
it didn't seem like it. It doesn't seem it. If
(09:10):
I were going to burn down the building, I would
use a hell of a lot more accelerant. Then it
seems like people are using. Um, I don't know. Uh.
I was struck by even on even on that night,
I was struck by uh, excuse me, Oh yeah, that
(09:33):
was a lot more context. Yeah, please don't. Alvin Kessler says,
I'm trusting you all the freedoms in your hands straight
to Andy. So Um. Now, even that night, I was
(09:55):
struck by Commissioner Fritz U, who I have absolutely no
love for, h who seemed just horrified that that goocy
got robbed. And uh, and I didn't seem able to
put that in any kind of context. Um, Yeah, I don't,
I don't. I didn't. I didn't see that as a riot.
(10:16):
I didn't think that people, uh I wanted to just
break shit. I think even then it was it was
still it's political. It was it was a protest and
it you know, I wouldn't recommend that people break stuff,
for steal stuff, for set stuff on fire. But I
understood the upset and I yeah, I just didn't see
in those terms. Um, And it didn't seem like I
(10:40):
don't remember that anybody died. I'm sure somebody was hurt,
but I don't remember that it was particularly severe that evening,
Like I don't. I don't remember that as a as
a violent knight. I remember it as a night of
property damage. Yeah. Yeah. And I wasn't making a legal distinct.
There was more of a oral argument, like I think
(11:01):
people put a moral import behind riot and it I
don't think it was that. I don't think it was
I don't think it was a breakdown in civilization. I
think it was a uh, extremely heartfelt uh frustration with
a system that wasn't meeting people's needs. Max Smith, a
(11:23):
Portland based activist in live streamer, called it a riot
light I called like a riot light that night. I
think I was like that seems like a little kind
of a riot light. They broke a couple of windows,
you know, they sacked the Apple Store. Of course, you know,
some opera students are gonna, you know, take that opportunity
if something is, if things are getting broken, someone's gonna
rob the Apple store. It's it's it's dumb because you're
(11:44):
gonna get caught, but go ahead and rob the Apple store.
But you know, that's kind of what I thought of it, Like,
some stuff is gonna get broken. That's what happened. And
I actually thought the police, you know, I thought that,
and actually thought there was going to be some change,
which we saw a couple of things, like they started
talking about, you know, canceling the the d v R
T and the cops in schools and things like that,
(12:06):
and uh and since then, it's it's it's been fairly tame,
and we haven't seen a whole lot of progress, So
you know, I felt like it worked a little bit.
The point Mac made is one that a lot of
activists would agree with property damage, they argue is not
nearly in the same moral realm as injuring or killing
human beings. Mac himself was not out on the twenty nine,
(12:28):
but he was most directly inspired to start protesting because
of something else that happened that day, hundreds of miles
south of Portland in San Jose, California, there was a
guy named Derek Sanderland in San Jose and he was
protesting for you know, he was prochasing against the murder
of George Floyd in solidarity with Minneapolis. And I remember
(12:53):
waking up and getting on my phone and kind of
just flicking through things and seeing that this man had
been shot in the testicles with a rubber bullet and
it like required like emergency surgery and he's probably never
gonna have kids. And I'm looking at this dude and
(13:13):
he's like twenties seven years old. He's like a black dude.
He's got dreads, he wears glasses, he's got a scrappys
beard like mine, you know. And I'm looking at this
guy like, man, that could have been me. And then
I keep reading and he was like he was like
a teacher. He taught the police about like not targeting
(13:35):
people or whatever, like you know, de escalation tactics or whatever.
And I'm like, you're telling me they shot a dude
that that trains them, Like this has got to be
one of the craziest things I've ever heard in my life.
And he could have died from this, you know, And
that just made me so mad. And I was like,
it's even if it wasn't you know, it wasn't me.
(13:58):
It could have been me if I would have been
out there, And so I was just like, that's insane,
Like this should not be a thing at all. This
shouldn't this just this, this can't be realized. Many protesters
and some journalists will argue that most of the riots
Portlands saw this summer, we're not cases of protesters rioting,
but we're instead cop riots. After all, if people breaking
(14:20):
windows and looting an Apple store is a riot, then
police driving into crowds, throwing grenades at random, and tear
gassing hundreds of innocent motorists probably counts as a riot too, right.
Riot we Broke was not the first night of Portland's
(14:55):
bill and protests, but it was the night that set
the tone for the next hundred plus nights. There was
tear gas, flash bangs, armored cops fighting demonstrators who were
armed with in the beginning, cardboard signs and water bottles.
Now we're going to cover a lot of ground in
this series, and it's probably best to kick this off
by giving everyone an overview of what exactly happened in
Portland from late May to the end of September, because
(15:18):
the mainstream media only really showed a portion of this story.
Late on the night of the twenty nine, the people
of Portland learned that their mayor, Ted Wheeler had actually
been out of town visiting his mother. His first response
to what had happened was a tweet that started with
the word enough in all caps and ended with a
promise that he was coming back now. Now was also
in all caps. City Commissioner joe Anne Hardesty, who was
(15:41):
acting president in the mayor's absence, declared a state of
emergency and enacted a curfew from eight pm until six am.
At this point, Portland was in the same boat as
many other American cities, including New York and Los Angeles.
In Portland, the curfew was not enough to clamp down
on unrest, quite the opposite. In fact, local activists like
d s A member Olivia Cutty Smith were inspired. I
(16:04):
just thought that it was it was not like anything
I've ever seen before. I've never seen that level of
um destruction happened at a protest before. It was exciting.
I was like, we're going to start. This is huge,
this is going to take off all across the country.
It's happening in Portland, it's having in Minneapolis, like this
is the start of a revolution, um, you know, and
(16:28):
even knowing that that might not be true, that that's
the feeling that I had. That night, several thousand people
gathered again and one nearly ten thousand Portlanders marched to
the Justice Center. We actually sort of organized the protest
behind the scenes um and got like ten thousand people
across the bridge, which was offer um. And yeah, it
(16:52):
was just it felt like the sky was a limit
at that point, like I can't believe there are ten
thousand pep while showing up every single night like this
does never happened before. We have to turn us into something.
Both times, police eventually dispersed the crowd with indiscriminate tear
gas use and liberal clubbing with truncheons. Thousands of protesters
(17:12):
were gassed, but so were hundreds of motorists who happened
to be out on city streets and dozens of houseless
individuals who were gassed in their tents for no apparent reason.
The curfew was rescinded in early June. It clearly hadn't helped. Next,
the city began to build what would become a massive
fence around the Justice Center. The protest movement started to
splinter between a large group of demonstrators who engaged in
(17:35):
daily marches that avoided police contact, and a smaller group
who repeatedly confronted police at the fence. At first, Portland
police would gas and grenade any group of people that
drew close to the fence, along with any motorists who
happened to be driving nearby. Protesters started calling at the
sacred fence because law enforcements seemed to value it more
than the physical well being of Portlander's The first fence
(17:57):
war between protesters and police lasted host of June. There
were occasional protests at other police buildings like the p
p A, headquarters of the Portland Police Union, and the
North Precinct. Smaller groups of activists also engaged in what
was briefly a nationwide practice of pulling down statues of
famous white supremacists. On June eighteenth, a small number of
(18:17):
mostly teenage Portlanders toppled a statue of George Washington. This
prompted President Trump to create an executive order to protect statues, monuments,
and federal property. He sent dozens of federal agents to
Portland to enforce this new order. The first time the
Feds made a large appearance was on July four. That
night was a turning point for a number of reasons,
(18:38):
after weeks of declining numbers. More than a thousand Portlanders
showed up outside the Justice Center to shoot commercial grade
fireworks at its windows. They fired a few with the
adjacent Federal courthouse as well. The police l rad a
car mounted loudspeaker started warning everyone not to shoot the
court house, so, of course, the entire crowd swarmed around
the building and continued shooting it with fireworks. Suddenly, wooden
(19:00):
hatches opened up on the front of the fortress like building,
and the Federal Allegiance inside began tossing out tear gas
grenades and shooting impact munitions into the crowd. For a
few minutes, the scene resembled a cross between an acid
trip in a medieval siege, with protesters bombarding the courthouse
with fireworks while the Feds inside pumped out gas and
riot munitions, Yeah, everybody. Eventually the fight spilled out into
(19:28):
the street, and for several hours, Portland police and Department
of Homeland Security agents engaged in a running battle with
hundreds of protesters. Fireworks provided the activists with their first
weapon that could disrupt a police riot line, while law
enforcement responded by escalating physical violence even further. I was
walking up from the j C Up towards the park blocks,
(19:49):
and there was a person who was essentially having an
asthma attack and a cloud of tear gas, and they
had one buddy with them, and it was just such
an impossible project for that one buddy to sort of
haul them out of tear gas while they're having an
asthma attack and like a panic attack and really having
her off time. Everything got more serious after the fourth
the federal agents started responding to protests downtown more often
(20:12):
than the Portland Police Bureau. A week later, federal agents
almost killed a protester named Donovan Labella by shooting him
in the forehead with a less lethal round. Slowly, the
mainstream media began to realize that something strange and terrifying
was happening in Portland. The national interest was finally peaked
a few days later when camo clad Feds in a
rental band started kidnapping people off the streets. In early July,
(20:36):
the fourth accepted most nightly protests only numbered a few
dozen to a hundred or so protesters, but national media,
in the specter of federal snatch fans panicked Portland's liberal majority.
By mid late July, thousands upon thousands of protesters were
showing up in the street every night. The time between
July thirty, dubbed the Fed War, is the stuff most
(20:58):
Americans saw from Portland in the news. Moms and dad's, veterans, doctors, chefs,
and students gathering in front of the Federal courthouse, chanting demands,
banging on doors, setting fires, ripping off plywood covering the windows,
and repeatedly tearing down that massive fence. Whenever the federal
agents came out, a shield wall of protesters would form,
deflecting metal tear gas canisters and flash bangs up into
(21:21):
the air. People armed with leafblowers directed gas back at
the Feds. In response, the Feds started using experimental new weapons,
including a pesticide sprayer jerry rigged di spew poison gas.
Seeing the police attack people, especially the FEDS when the
Feds came, when they came started attacking people like like
in the smoke. After I got like a gas mask
(21:41):
and started going into the smoke, you know, and seeing
what was going on in there, I was pretty I
was pretty uh disturbed by seeing the way that they
were like beating people under the under the cover of
tear gas. That was, um, that was a prize for me.
I'd heard people saying, I've got I ask it in there,
(22:03):
but I didn't know it was going down like that.
As July came and went, so did the visible federal
presence downtown. Most of the more liberal types packed it up,
calling the protests a success. But while the days of
walls of camouflaged Fed's head temporarily ended despite reports of
their withdrawal, federal presence in Portland lingered on for weeks.
Dedicated activists were not fooled by the faux withdrawal. They
(22:25):
knew the work was far from over. Throughout August, protesters
gathered in front of police precincts, city buildings in Portland's
ice facility. Sometimes they engaged in property damage, but more
often they just stood in the street yelling at the
cops until they were inevitably charged by riot lines. It
was in August that Portland first saw right wing counter protests,
generally framed as back the Blue or MAGA gatherings. Sometimes
(22:49):
these escalated into street brawls between Proud Boys and left
wing activists. On several occasions, Proud Boys and other right
wing vigilantes through home made explosives and shot paintball guns
into crowds. Five rounds were even fired into the air
and into crowds. The escalation continued until a Trump caravan
of vehicles waving flags drove through Portland in late August.
(23:10):
Several Trump supporters fired paintball guns and mace into the
crowds as they drove by. The whole awful day ended
with a member of the right wing street gang Patriot Prayer,
being shot and killed by a white BLM activist after
charging him with a can of mace. Throughout all this
Portland's BLM marches occurred every single night, right up until
late September, when a series of devastating wildfires overwhelmed Oregon
(23:33):
and blanketed the city of Portland in a thick haze
of poison. The nightly marches were halted, and the various
mutual aid organizations that had started up to service the
protests turned their efforts to meeting the needs of evacuees. Meanwhile,
right wing activists blamed the fires on Antifa and spent
several days setting up a legal arm checkpoints and threatening
people with rifles. When the rains came and the air cleared,
(23:56):
the protests started up again. There were no longer nightly affairs,
but they've remained regular occurrences ever since. And all of
this begs the question why Portland all fifty U s
States hosted Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of
Many cities saw mass demonstrations, and while of b l
M protests were considered peaceful, numerous cities saw rioting, exchanges
(24:19):
of gunfire, and even had buildings burnt down. But no
city in the United States had as many continuous nights
of protests as Portland. No city saw thousands of citizens
lay a week's long siege of a federal courthouse. No
city experienced a thousand persons street fight between right and
left wing demonstrators. Perhaps most importantly, no city earned the
(24:39):
ire of President Donald Trump in the same way as Portland.
It seems bizarre that this all would happen in Portland,
a small city off about six hundred and fifty three
thousand people. How did it grow to become one of
the most active front lines in a national battle for
black lives and against white supremacy. It actually makes a
lot of sense once you scratch beneath surface a bit.
(25:01):
Here's Tristan again. Organ was kind of um, I found
it as like something of like a white utopia, you know,
like a place for the the white man to really
like find his destiny right and like conquer this you know,
this continent. And I think that's just kind of like
(25:21):
it's just like baked into the culture here where even
like even like the love of the outdoors isn't like
isn't like a love of um like keep like keeping
the environment like healthy and like bounce. It's just like
a very like commodified like we deserve this, you know,
(25:45):
we deserve to live in this beautiful place, and we're
the only ones who know how to take care of it.
And obviously that's like mellowed out a little bit over
the you know, decades, but I think that's still basically
like what what like um, it's like the undercurrent, you know,
(26:05):
that's like behind most of what cos in Oregon. You
can learn a lot of what you need to know
about Oregon's history of racism by studying one of the
state's founders, Peter Hardman Burnett. As a young man in Tennessee,
he murdered a black person with a booby trap as
revenge for petty theft. In eighteen forty three, he helped
organize the first great wagon train of white people that
(26:27):
headed to the Oregon Territory. He was elected to the
Provisional Legislature and served as the territory's first Supreme Court justice.
In eighteen forty four, he worked to pass what became
known as Burnett's Lash Law. This stated that all black
people were required to leave Oregon under penalty of being
whipped in public not less than twenty or more than
thirty nine stripes. This punishment was to be repeated every
(26:49):
six months until they moved. The law did include a
grace period three years for black women and two years
for black men. Burnett also pushed to ban Chinese immigration
into Oregon. While there are no documented instances of the
Lash laws being used, it set a clear tone for
the state Burnet's Lash law reflected the values of the
first white people who moved to Oregon. They were abolitionists
(27:12):
in that they hated slavery, but they only hated slavery
because they were revolted by the thought of living near
black people. In eighteen forty eight, the Oregon Territorial government
passed a law that banned any quote, negro or mulatto
from living in Oregon. In eighteen fifty, the Oregon Donation
Land Act gave whites and half breed Indians their quote,
(27:32):
six hundred and fifty acres of land from the government.
All other people of color were banned from the land grants.
Oregon was finally made a state in February eighteen fifty nine.
Under its constitution, quote, no free negro or mulatto not
residing in this state at the time of the adoption
of this Constitution shall ever come reside or be within
(27:53):
this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract,
or maintain any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall
prove by penal laws for the removal by public officers
of all such free negroes and mulatto's, and for their
effectual exclusion from the state and for the punishment of
persons who shall bring them into the state or employer
harbor them there in. Oregon remains the only state in
(28:16):
the Union that ever banned black people from living there.
Now things have gotten better since eighteen fifty nine, but
better is a low bar. In Portland remains the whitest
metropolitan area in the United States. Seventent of the population
is white, less than six percent is black. Today, Portland's
owns the distinction as one of the most gentrified cities
(28:37):
in the United States. Oregon continues to report some of
the worst graduation rates for black students in the nation,
and the wealth gap between white and black Oregonians over
the last fifty years has widened, not shrunk. And moved
to Portland like like five and a half six years ago,
I think, and from where I definitely I did from
(28:58):
northern California, got a Bay area, um, and I didn't
really I didn't have a idea of what the city
was per se, Like I've never seen an episode of
Portland here, for instance. I just kind of moved up
here would be closed with a family and and yeah,
(29:20):
and when I when I kind of first got here,
it was like, you know, that hang out with a
bunch of like hippies, a bunch of people who love
trees and to ride bikes and go hiking, and it's like, oh,
they love the environment and they love progressive you know politics,
and you know, and everything's just chill within. Like the
longer I stayed here, the facade started to like fall away,
(29:44):
and and it's I mean, like I've been here for
you know, almost six years now, and I still I
don't quite know what to make of it still, you know,
but like recently, um like if the passage of or
like with the most recent election, you know, like so
(30:05):
the local measures that passed and didn't pass. It's like
like Oregon loves to have a black friend. That's what
they like. They like to have somebody they can point
to and be like, look, I'm not racist, but they don't.
They're not interested in actually like challenging the like white
(30:26):
supremacists like power structures that actually like benefit them and
and if you like, if you agitate them on that,
they just you know. That's that's when like the Pacific
Northwest like passive aggressiveness like kicks in and they just
like kind of like try to ignore you. But secually
(30:46):
they're totally fucking piste off that you dare to like
insinuate their racist um. But yeah, that's like it's a
really complicated thing and I still quite haven't figured out
like what makes white people take here, but it's, you know,
it's messy. Another activist we interviewed, Courtney, is an indigenous
(31:08):
Hawaiian person who moved to Oregon when she was seventeen.
She recalls being stunned by how white her school was.
I like ended up going to Oregon City High School,
which was like insane. I was the only non Hispanic
person that was at that school. Um, and nobody talked
(31:28):
to me for a really long time, and I just
was kind of like it was a culture shock because
there were so many white people that I had never
seen this many white people in my entire life because
everyone in Hawaii is like mixed races, majority of them
are Asian or Polynesian. So um, I definitely was nobody
(31:51):
really talked to me for a while, and I kind
of like found my little niche of people to hang
out with. Um. But yeah, like just even live in
that area, I would get a lot of weird looks
and um, yeah, just not the most friendly people to
(32:11):
be around. Um. Yeah, that's basically it's just a culture
shock to just see how white organ is. I just
I didn't expect it at all. I didn't and I
was like, I knew that they were going to be
like Hispanic people, but I just didn't realize that. Um.
I thought maybe I would see more after like black people,
(32:32):
and especially living in a city, you know, in sport
when you're from what you're like, Portland is just like
a major city in the United States, and then coming
here and not really seeing the mix of cultures was
just kind of shocking. Tristan described the races of in
Portland as unique in a subtle way. It's just it's
very it's very covert, or you know, it tries to
(32:54):
be very covert. Um and it's very like like well,
part part of what it is is that for a
very long time now they're barely when any people of
co here at all. Like, you know, it's one of
the widest states in the country. That's why it's major
city in the country, and so like to a certain extent,
(33:15):
people are they just don't actually know what like like
what like a microaggression is or what that would be like,
you know, I had to experience um, like just like
a year, year and a half ago, maybe I was
(33:36):
out with this group um these like forest offender type
people and every year they go out post this big
camp out and you know, like go out into the
woods and do like surveys and stuff like that, try
to collect data they can use to fight timber companies
and ship and like someone us drop the N word
(33:57):
like just five ft from me. There's like in casual conversation,
and then I had to like address the camp like
at breakfast. I was like, okay, so just just don't
don't say that word. Like there's no like like like
even if you're just telling a story that there's no
(34:18):
appropriate context for a white person to say that. And
and that's one of the reasons why I don't go
to those fucking campouts anymore. But like it's like that,
it's like they just don't they haven't been around black
people or people of color in general, and they just
don't know what to do. And of course the racism
(34:41):
that pervades Portland's is present in the Portland Police Bureau.
Despite black people making up again less than six percent
of the population, Portland Police use force on black people
more often than people of any other race. Portland police
are five to fourteen times more likely to shoot impact
munitions at and to forcibly restrain black residents. At one
(35:01):
point in the late sixties, black Portlanders accounted for nearly
half of p p b's arrests. Portland's black community has
been fighting against this kind of racist violence for decades.
Here's Max Smith again. For me, the battle with the
police began, you know, in the hip hop field. Um.
There was an event here in Portland that happened maybe
(35:22):
six or seven years ago. UM. That happened at a
venue called the Blue Monk, and it was a pretty
big deal. And I was there and I had friends
who were performing at the show, and the police essentially
came under the guise of a capacity of violation and
brought like a seven cars and twenty something officers and
(35:42):
shut the whole street of Belmont down And and that
bar eventually actually ended up a closing shortly after that. Um.
And it was a huge deal. They made a huge
deal about a small thing, and it went like into
like national news. And even prior to that, we had
been really combating the efforts of the police to kind
(36:06):
of shut down or stifle hip hop events in the city.
Every time we wanted to have a hip hop event,
it became like, you know, like a world war um,
to the point that it ended up actually being a
protest about the hip hop community here. And so that
was a fight that we had as far as hip
hop music and clubs, as far as hip hop events,
as far as live music. Um. They really just used
(36:29):
the city's resources that the police, the fire marshals, and
the o l c C to really like shut down
hip hop and and really any black lead events. Lawyer
Allan Kessler has done a lot of digging into the
early history of the Portland police. His research has revealed
a century long history of Portland police involvement with hate groups,
(36:51):
most particularly the Ku Klux Klan. I think it was
lost Memorial Day. I spent the whole weekend in the
Oregonian Archives basic living through World War two. It wasn't
fun uh and it's outrageous, like the clan was on
there was a front page column talked to a klansman
(37:11):
every day for like a week, uh, and then every
other day they had the clan on the front page. Anyway,
but that you know that was like, um, it was yeah,
it was incredible. Um. During the war, Uh, basically everybody,
every adult white dude had a little star badge. Uh.
(37:33):
They the police would basically deputize anybody or people just
don't be a badge is made, so everybody in town
had a badge. There were lots of articles in that
time frame about um, fake police officer pulls over so
and so and they sue. In a Portland Telegram article
reported that the Portland Police Bureau was quote full to
the brink with klansmen. The police bureau actually deputized a
(37:57):
hundred clansmen handpicked by the local Grand Dragon and designated
them Portland Police Vigilantes. This was before the p p
A existed, but the tradition lives on. In two thousand ten,
Portland police officer Mark Krueger was suspended for erecting a
memorial to five deceased Nazi soldiers on city property. The
p p A successfully sued for him to be reinstated
(38:19):
and given an apology. When he quit in early he
was the highest paid police officer on the force. I
asked Maria, a lifelong Portland resident, what her earliest memory
if the police was. Here's what she told me. I
would say it was when I was a child. Honestly, Um,
I've had some some family stuff and a family member
(38:41):
have to go to way to to prison. So I
remember some like vaguely stuff like remember then as far
as like police brutality wise. Um, the very first like
murder I remember was Kindred James. Um, that will happen
like a mile from my house. And I want to
say I was like ten at the time. Kindred James
was a twenty one year old black mother of two.
(39:01):
She was killed under suspicious circumstances during a traffic stop.
Her killer, officer, Scott McCallister, fired a single shot when
James attempted to drive away from the traffic stop after
the motion of the vehicle caused him to fall. A
number of the statements he made in court were inconsistent
with physical evidence required from the shooting, and we don't
really know exactly what happened, Among other things, The police
(39:24):
argued in court that Portland police were trained to quote
shoot as they fall aslee as the police is how
I grew up. My dad is a huge like Tupac fan,
so like I would grow up on hearing tupac lyrics
all the time. Will screw the police and everything. So yeah,
no screw Yeah. Now that's how I like grew up. Yeah,
(39:45):
um is to like not interact with them. Yeah, I've
I've grown up. You know how A lot of us,
you know, people who are black, feel like, you know,
when we're being followed, profiled all that. I mean, I
got profiled to dance in a store like it's it's
still happened. That's been going on as the kid. I
don't know if I don't know when it will stop,
that you know, goes on. Officer McCallister was acquitted in
(40:06):
federal court. He got to keep his job, but even
if he had been fired for the shooting, the firing
might not have stuck. Nationwide, of police officers fired from
his conduct are reinstated because of union mandated appeals. Over
the years. This has included an officer who challenged a
handcuffed man to a fist fight for his freedom, and
a copper sexually assaulted a young woman in his patrol car.
(40:28):
In many cities, the number of police reinstated by union
appeals is much higher than sevent of fired San Antonio
officers are reinstated because of union appeals. The number is
sixty for Philly cops and fifty from Minneapolis cops. This
is part of why the people of Minneapolis burnt the
Third Precinct to the ground after George Floyd's murder. They
(40:51):
knew from experience that it was extremely likely Derek Chauvin,
Floyd's killer, would not just avoid prison, but would soon
be back on the street with a badge. In fact,
as soon as Derek Schaubin and the other officers responsible
for George Floyd's death were fired, police union head Bob
Kroll started fighting to have them reinstated. He was concerned
that they had been quote terminated without due process. Kroll
(41:14):
was oddly unconcerned that the same thing was true of
Mr Floyd. The fact that police officers are extremely difficult
to fire, even when they commit murder or rape on
the job is a national problem. But it is a
national problem that traces back to a single place where
else the city of Portland, Oregon, and more specifically to
(41:35):
the Portland Police Association. The Portland Police Association or p
(41:57):
p A, is Portland's police union. In a way, it's
the police union because the p p A is actually
the oldest functioning police union in the United States. Police
had attempted to unionize several times before the p PA
was established in nineteen forty two, but Portland was the
first city to get it right, and the p p
A has served as a model for the rest of
(42:17):
the nation's law enforcement ever since. Every other police union
in the United States is based off of the Portland
Police Association, and one of the many trends that pp
A set was ensuing to reinstate fired officers. This story
starts on the night of March twelfth, nineteen one, when
to Portland police officers from the North Precinct dumped four
(42:39):
dead possums in the doorway of the Burger Barn, one
of Portland's few black owned businesses. The use of the
word possum as a derogatory term for black Americans dates
back as far as eighteen thirty. The owner of the
Burger Barn, George Powell, called the police commissioner to report
the incident and claimed that it was only the latest
example of police harassment his business had faced. An internal
(43:01):
investigation was opened, and the officers responsible, Ward and Galloway,
admitted their guilt immediately Their identity was initially kept hidden
thanks to a clause in the pp A contract with
the city that protected officers from having their names disclosed
during disciplinary proceedings. This is another one of the innovations
that the Portland Police Association brought to police departments nationwide.
(43:22):
By the way, the possum incident happened at an awkward
time for the Portland Police. Several officers had just been
fired and convicted of faking evidence and using illegal drugs
on the job. Nearly a hundred criminal cases had to
be thrown out because of falsified evidence. Public opinion of
the police bureau was low, and when Portland started marching
and demonstrating to demand that officers Ward and Galloway be fired,
(43:43):
the police Commissioner was only too happy to oblige them.
Enter Stan Peters, the most powerful union president Portland has
ever had. Peters took to every local news show in town.
He circulated petitions. He even organized a massed protest march
made up of Portland po last officers and their families.
He forced the city government into arbitration, which ended with
(44:05):
both officers being rehired and given back pay. There's actually
a book about the Portland Police Association, Pickets, pistols and Politics.
Alan Kessler informed us of its existence. Here's what it
says about the court case that resolved the Possum incident. Quote,
the City of Portland versus Ward and Galloway case is
still the leading police discipline case in the United States,
(44:28):
and in labor law circles is the arbitration decision referred
to the most often. It's legal nomenclature is simply City
of Portland. And so in the end, it really isn't
that odd that the City of Portland wound up as
ground zero for a battle against white supremacy and police
brutality and a battle for black lives. It's actually been
(44:49):
that for a very very long time. As much as
people have just kind of started to contextualize how Antifa
has been fighting against these studs here for years. You know,
it actually isn't just the last couple of years where
it's been in the news. It has been going off
for decades. In Portland. There's always been a level of
especially in southeast of Portland, has always been like even
(45:11):
like in the eighties, has been like, you know, these
white skinhead groups and the Sharps has always kind of
been like a race war between the white folks in Portland,
especially in the southeast. Over the course of the summer
of Portland's wounds were exposed to the world after George
Floyd's gruesome murder accelerated long brewing unrest across the country
and even the globe. The Northwest's liberal bastion was forced
(45:34):
to reckon with its own deeply anti black traditions while
also becoming an unlikely epicenter in a movement for black
lives that had taken the world by storm. Thousands took
to the streets and a battle that would be fought
against a corrupt police force, Trump's federal agents, right wing vigilantes,
and even at times between protesters themselves. Through it all,
people banded together to support each other and build the
(45:56):
infrastructure that would propel the city to a hundred plus
days of protests that even the strongest tear gas couldn't end.
In the next episode, we will delve into how a
disorganized crowd of angry Portlander's turned themselves into a movement
that could stand up to the worst violence the Trump
administration could throw at it. Uh where the grandpops who
(46:17):
couldn't fathom the obamacist, I don't hate America just to me,
And she keeps the promises teens looking like the sixties.
It's crazy, a nationwide deja fo. 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 want to learn about when o'parah sarah.
How is that fair? Bro? Some heroes unsung in some
(46:41):
monster's get monuments built for them. But it ain't be
all a little bit of monster. We crook it. Man,
Your heroes are worthless and man can show private only
God gives purpose. You crook it
At around ten thirty pm on May nine, a crowd
of more than a thousand people gathered in North Portland's
Peninsula Park and marched downtown to the Justice Center, headquarters
of the Portland Police Bureau. The direct inspirations for the
(00:24):
march were the murders of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor.
Many in attendance also had a strong desire to express
solidarity with protesters in Minneapolis. That's what brought Chris Wise,
volunteer protest medic out into the streets that first night.
Initially I came out because as an African American, you know,
(00:46):
it was that that straw that broke the camel's back
on just like one death too many. We are murdered
by police and other law enforcement agencies at a rate
of three to one when compared to the average white American.
And those numbers get a little funky because you know,
(01:08):
obviously more white people die a year than black people
in police related shootings, but there are also you know,
six times as many white people, uh then black people. Tristan,
another Black Portlander, didn't go out that night, but he
watched everything that happened on the live streams honestly, like
my my first um impression was that it probably wasn't
(01:34):
going to be much, you know what I mean. I
didn't expect it to blow up the way it did.
I kind of felt like because I've I've seen it
happen in the past, where you know, there's will be
some kind of like something happening like nationwide or another
city in Portland will kind of like you know, show
up and solidarity for it, and it might become something,
(01:56):
but usually it's kind of like a one off. So
that's kind of what I was expecting, and so I
was pretty surprised to see like how quickly grew and
then also how like how the police were responding like
and like a very tear guys kind of way. Mariah
is a photojournalist and a lifestyle photographer. She was out
(02:18):
at Peninsula Park for the very start of the march
was the beginning to you know, something that not a
lot of us knew we were going to get into,
you know, but gosh, I remember being at Peninsula Park
and it was really great to see everyone there, and like,
it just reminds me of some I hate that it's
like a routine thing for us because it's you know,
(02:38):
why we're still fighting. And while we've been fighting so strong,
but you know, when someone gets killed by you know,
via police brutality, everyone meets up. You know, maybe we
protest for a few days and like you know, quote unquote,
we go back to like normal life. But you know,
we already haven't been a normal life since it's been
a pandemic this whole freaking year. But it was really
beautiful to see all the people and all the signs
and the speeches. The side walks bordering Peninsula Park were
(03:01):
filled with different slogans and exhortations written in chalk. One
of the most striking statements was make the moment count.
As it turned out, the city of Portland took that
to heart. The crowd at Peninsula Park marched nearly five
miles to downtown Portland. There they merged with a crowd
that had gathered around the Justice Center. The moment both
(03:22):
groups met was powerful. You could taste the energy in
the air. Portland's Black Lives Matter protests had actually started
several days earlier before that mass gathering. On the twenty nine,
a handful of activists of color had begun occupying the
steps of the Justice Center immediately after George Floyd's murder.
(03:46):
One of them was Tracy Molina, an Indigenous portland Er
better known as Colsca. Well. I remember it wasn't not
long after the George Floyd's story broke. A lot of
us wanted to do something here, but I think most
of the regular organizers kept saying wait, you know, let's wait,
(04:06):
let's wait for this, let's wait for that. And then finally, um,
then Danielle James, I think she's a pretty prominent black
activist in this community and stood up against Patriot Prayer
and Proud Boys and other white supremacist for years. Um,
it was kind of the spark for that. You know.
She was said like, we shouldn't wait in the night, supporter,
(04:28):
I said, I don't think we should wait either. I
think we should do something now. And so we ended
up the seven ten thirty all meeting at I and
starting to protest there, and then we moved. Um, sometime
after midnight, we moved over to the Justice Center and
slept on the steps there and planned to to occupy
(04:48):
it as long as we could. And so we stayed
there and then um, there was only maybe like four
of us that slept on the steps, and then then
next day, like at ice, we had about thirty or
forty people. And then the next day after we stayed
on those steps, I would say there was about forty
or fifty people that showed up in the afternoon and
(05:09):
they did a direct action or we blocked off the
streets in front of the steps of the Justice Center,
and I think they did it also did it die.
And that night there was also impromptu direct action or
some people, some young women sat on sat in the
doorway of the Justice Center and they brought riot police
(05:31):
out for that. And there was at that time there
was only about twenty of us and only like six
people participating in the sit in, but they still brought
riot police out and they were violently removed. That made
the news because one of the women, one of the
women that was hit with a baton, was she was
actually pregnant, a black woman. And the only way us
(05:54):
the why I know that for sure is because after
she was in the ambulance, she came I don't know
if she went to the hospital, but after she was
in the ambulans, she returned paperwork from the as proving
that she was pregnant. And was, you know, showing some
of the police officers that were still standing around. But yeah,
that's how the first few days went. And then um,
(06:16):
then we we all, um, we're going to have a
rally at um and Insula Park. And then I agreed
to do part of the opening. And when I was there,
more and more people kept coming, and I was surprised
at there are so many. I don't know, maybe a
thousand people that there was a lot, there was a
(06:37):
lot of people there. Was surprised, and it just kept
getting bigger and bigger. The now merged crowd, which numbered
at least a couple of thousand people, marched back to
the Justice Center. For a few minutes, they stood outside
chanting George Floyd's name. The police were nowhere to be seen.
While most of the crowd stood out in the street,
(06:57):
a hundred or so people gathered in front of the
windows of the Justice Center. They started spray painting slogans
on the glass. A few people peered on the doorway,
someone lit a small fire out in front, and then
quite suddenly, one person broke a window. The first broken
(07:17):
windows set off a frenzy, and soon people were using
their feet, rocks and any tools they could find to
shatter every exposed piece of glass on the building. With
the windows shattered, protesters ran into the Justice Center, ransacking
police offices and setting small fires. The Portland police arrived
a little bit later and began showering the crowd with
tear gas and flash band grenades. Though no one knew
(07:42):
it at the time, events had just been set into
motion that would lead to more than a hundred consecutive
nights of protests and tear gas. The Portland Uprising had begun.
We should probably start by talking a bit about the
(08:03):
definition of a riot. Legally, anything the cops declare a
riot is a riot. May nine is generally referred to
as riot night, because after the crowd was dispersed from
the Justice Center, hundreds of people ran through the streets
of Portland's luxury shopping district, smashing up high end chain
stores while the police chased after them. It certainly felt
(08:23):
like a riot, but a number of the folks that
we interviewed actually disagreed. Alan Kessler, a Portland based lawyer,
pushed back on that description. I guess I disagree that
even the first night was a real riot. I mean,
there were some shops goot burg Old, there were there
were something stolen. Um, there was a fire in the
(08:47):
in the j c. Um, I'm not sure that that.
I don't. I don't know the intent there right, like
looking at the fire, looking at the Piddale fire as
I've seen, I don't know if anybody means to burn
the buildings down or to y. Yeah, I don't know. Uh,
it didn't seem like it. It doesn't seem it. If
(09:10):
I were going to burn down the building, I would
use a hell of a lot more accelerant. Then it
seems like people are using. Um, I don't know. Uh.
I was struck by even on even on that night,
I was struck by uh, excuse me, Oh yeah, that
(09:33):
was a lot more context. Yeah, please don't. Alvin Kessler says,
I'm trusting you all the freedoms in your hands straight
to Andy. So Um. Now, even that night, I was
(09:55):
struck by Commissioner Fritz U, who I have absolutely no
love for, h who seemed just horrified that that goocy
got robbed. And uh, and I didn't seem able to
put that in any kind of context. Um, Yeah, I don't,
I don't. I didn't. I didn't see that as a riot.
(10:16):
I didn't think that people, uh I wanted to just
break shit. I think even then it was it was
still it's political. It was it was a protest and
it you know, I wouldn't recommend that people break stuff,
for steal stuff, for set stuff on fire. But I
understood the upset and I yeah, I just didn't see
in those terms. Um, And it didn't seem like I
(10:40):
don't remember that anybody died. I'm sure somebody was hurt,
but I don't remember that it was particularly severe that evening,
Like I don't. I don't remember that as a as
a violent knight. I remember it as a night of
property damage. Yeah. Yeah. And I wasn't making a legal distinct.
There was more of a oral argument, like I think
(11:01):
people put a moral import behind riot and it I
don't think it was that. I don't think it was
I don't think it was a breakdown in civilization. I
think it was a uh, extremely heartfelt uh frustration with
a system that wasn't meeting people's needs. Max Smith, a
(11:23):
Portland based activist in live streamer, called it a riot
light I called like a riot light that night. I
think I was like that seems like a little kind
of a riot light. They broke a couple of windows,
you know, they sacked the Apple Store. Of course, you know,
some opera students are gonna, you know, take that opportunity
if something is, if things are getting broken, someone's gonna
rob the Apple store. It's it's it's dumb because you're
(11:44):
gonna get caught, but go ahead and rob the Apple store.
But you know, that's kind of what I thought of it, Like,
some stuff is gonna get broken. That's what happened. And
I actually thought the police, you know, I thought that,
and actually thought there was going to be some change,
which we saw a couple of things, like they started
talking about, you know, canceling the the d v R
T and the cops in schools and things like that,
(12:06):
and uh and since then, it's it's it's been fairly tame,
and we haven't seen a whole lot of progress, So
you know, I felt like it worked a little bit.
The point Mac made is one that a lot of
activists would agree with property damage, they argue is not
nearly in the same moral realm as injuring or killing
human beings. Mac himself was not out on the twenty nine,
(12:28):
but he was most directly inspired to start protesting because
of something else that happened that day, hundreds of miles
south of Portland in San Jose, California, there was a
guy named Derek Sanderland in San Jose and he was
protesting for you know, he was prochasing against the murder
of George Floyd in solidarity with Minneapolis. And I remember
(12:53):
waking up and getting on my phone and kind of
just flicking through things and seeing that this man had
been shot in the testicles with a rubber bullet and
it like required like emergency surgery and he's probably never
gonna have kids. And I'm looking at this dude and
(13:13):
he's like twenties seven years old. He's like a black dude.
He's got dreads, he wears glasses, he's got a scrappys
beard like mine, you know. And I'm looking at this
guy like, man, that could have been me. And then
I keep reading and he was like he was like
a teacher. He taught the police about like not targeting
(13:35):
people or whatever, like you know, de escalation tactics or whatever.
And I'm like, you're telling me they shot a dude
that that trains them, Like this has got to be
one of the craziest things I've ever heard in my life.
And he could have died from this, you know, And
that just made me so mad. And I was like,
it's even if it wasn't you know, it wasn't me.
(13:58):
It could have been me if I would have been
out there, And so I was just like, that's insane,
Like this should not be a thing at all. This
shouldn't this just this, this can't be realized. Many protesters
and some journalists will argue that most of the riots
Portlands saw this summer, we're not cases of protesters rioting,
but we're instead cop riots. After all, if people breaking
(14:20):
windows and looting an Apple store is a riot, then
police driving into crowds, throwing grenades at random, and tear
gassing hundreds of innocent motorists probably counts as a riot too, right.
Riot we Broke was not the first night of Portland's
(14:55):
bill and protests, but it was the night that set
the tone for the next hundred plus nights. There was
tear gas, flash bangs, armored cops fighting demonstrators who were
armed with in the beginning, cardboard signs and water bottles.
Now we're going to cover a lot of ground in
this series, and it's probably best to kick this off
by giving everyone an overview of what exactly happened in
Portland from late May to the end of September, because
(15:18):
the mainstream media only really showed a portion of this story.
Late on the night of the twenty nine, the people
of Portland learned that their mayor, Ted Wheeler had actually
been out of town visiting his mother. His first response
to what had happened was a tweet that started with
the word enough in all caps and ended with a
promise that he was coming back now. Now was also
in all caps. City Commissioner joe Anne Hardesty, who was
(15:41):
acting president in the mayor's absence, declared a state of
emergency and enacted a curfew from eight pm until six am.
At this point, Portland was in the same boat as
many other American cities, including New York and Los Angeles.
In Portland, the curfew was not enough to clamp down
on unrest, quite the opposite. In fact, local activists like
d s A member Olivia Cutty Smith were inspired. I
(16:04):
just thought that it was it was not like anything
I've ever seen before. I've never seen that level of
um destruction happened at a protest before. It was exciting.
I was like, we're going to start. This is huge,
this is going to take off all across the country.
It's happening in Portland, it's having in Minneapolis, like this
is the start of a revolution, um, you know, and
(16:28):
even knowing that that might not be true, that that's
the feeling that I had. That night, several thousand people
gathered again and one nearly ten thousand Portlanders marched to
the Justice Center. We actually sort of organized the protest
behind the scenes um and got like ten thousand people
across the bridge, which was offer um. And yeah, it
(16:52):
was just it felt like the sky was a limit
at that point, like I can't believe there are ten
thousand pep while showing up every single night like this
does never happened before. We have to turn us into something.
Both times, police eventually dispersed the crowd with indiscriminate tear
gas use and liberal clubbing with truncheons. Thousands of protesters
(17:12):
were gassed, but so were hundreds of motorists who happened
to be out on city streets and dozens of houseless
individuals who were gassed in their tents for no apparent reason.
The curfew was rescinded in early June. It clearly hadn't helped. Next,
the city began to build what would become a massive
fence around the Justice Center. The protest movement started to
splinter between a large group of demonstrators who engaged in
(17:35):
daily marches that avoided police contact, and a smaller group
who repeatedly confronted police at the fence. At first, Portland
police would gas and grenade any group of people that
drew close to the fence, along with any motorists who
happened to be driving nearby. Protesters started calling at the
sacred fence because law enforcements seemed to value it more
than the physical well being of Portlander's The first fence
(17:57):
war between protesters and police lasted host of June. There
were occasional protests at other police buildings like the p
p A, headquarters of the Portland Police Union, and the
North Precinct. Smaller groups of activists also engaged in what
was briefly a nationwide practice of pulling down statues of
famous white supremacists. On June eighteenth, a small number of
(18:17):
mostly teenage Portlanders toppled a statue of George Washington. This
prompted President Trump to create an executive order to protect statues, monuments,
and federal property. He sent dozens of federal agents to
Portland to enforce this new order. The first time the
Feds made a large appearance was on July four. That
night was a turning point for a number of reasons,
(18:38):
after weeks of declining numbers. More than a thousand Portlanders
showed up outside the Justice Center to shoot commercial grade
fireworks at its windows. They fired a few with the
adjacent Federal courthouse as well. The police l rad a
car mounted loudspeaker started warning everyone not to shoot the
court house, so, of course, the entire crowd swarmed around
the building and continued shooting it with fireworks. Suddenly, wooden
(19:00):
hatches opened up on the front of the fortress like building,
and the Federal Allegiance inside began tossing out tear gas
grenades and shooting impact munitions into the crowd. For a
few minutes, the scene resembled a cross between an acid
trip in a medieval siege, with protesters bombarding the courthouse
with fireworks while the Feds inside pumped out gas and
riot munitions, Yeah, everybody. Eventually the fight spilled out into
(19:28):
the street, and for several hours, Portland police and Department
of Homeland Security agents engaged in a running battle with
hundreds of protesters. Fireworks provided the activists with their first
weapon that could disrupt a police riot line, while law
enforcement responded by escalating physical violence even further. I was
walking up from the j C Up towards the park blocks,
(19:49):
and there was a person who was essentially having an
asthma attack and a cloud of tear gas, and they
had one buddy with them, and it was just such
an impossible project for that one buddy to sort of
haul them out of tear gas while they're having an
asthma attack and like a panic attack and really having
her off time. Everything got more serious after the fourth
the federal agents started responding to protests downtown more often
(20:12):
than the Portland Police Bureau. A week later, federal agents
almost killed a protester named Donovan Labella by shooting him
in the forehead with a less lethal round. Slowly, the
mainstream media began to realize that something strange and terrifying
was happening in Portland. The national interest was finally peaked
a few days later when camo clad Feds in a
rental band started kidnapping people off the streets. In early July,
(20:36):
the fourth accepted most nightly protests only numbered a few
dozen to a hundred or so protesters, but national media,
in the specter of federal snatch fans panicked Portland's liberal majority.
By mid late July, thousands upon thousands of protesters were
showing up in the street every night. The time between
July thirty, dubbed the Fed War, is the stuff most
(20:58):
Americans saw from Portland in the news. Moms and dad's, veterans, doctors, chefs,
and students gathering in front of the Federal courthouse, chanting demands,
banging on doors, setting fires, ripping off plywood covering the windows,
and repeatedly tearing down that massive fence. Whenever the federal
agents came out, a shield wall of protesters would form,
deflecting metal tear gas canisters and flash bangs up into
(21:21):
the air. People armed with leafblowers directed gas back at
the Feds. In response, the Feds started using experimental new weapons,
including a pesticide sprayer jerry rigged di spew poison gas.
Seeing the police attack people, especially the FEDS when the
Feds came, when they came started attacking people like like
in the smoke. After I got like a gas mask
(21:41):
and started going into the smoke, you know, and seeing
what was going on in there, I was pretty I
was pretty uh disturbed by seeing the way that they
were like beating people under the under the cover of
tear gas. That was, um, that was a prize for me.
I'd heard people saying, I've got I ask it in there,
(22:03):
but I didn't know it was going down like that.
As July came and went, so did the visible federal
presence downtown. Most of the more liberal types packed it up,
calling the protests a success. But while the days of
walls of camouflaged Fed's head temporarily ended despite reports of
their withdrawal, federal presence in Portland lingered on for weeks.
Dedicated activists were not fooled by the faux withdrawal. They
(22:25):
knew the work was far from over. Throughout August, protesters
gathered in front of police precincts, city buildings in Portland's
ice facility. Sometimes they engaged in property damage, but more
often they just stood in the street yelling at the
cops until they were inevitably charged by riot lines. It
was in August that Portland first saw right wing counter protests,
generally framed as back the Blue or MAGA gatherings. Sometimes
(22:49):
these escalated into street brawls between Proud Boys and left
wing activists. On several occasions, Proud Boys and other right
wing vigilantes through home made explosives and shot paintball guns
into crowds. Five rounds were even fired into the air
and into crowds. The escalation continued until a Trump caravan
of vehicles waving flags drove through Portland in late August.
(23:10):
Several Trump supporters fired paintball guns and mace into the
crowds as they drove by. The whole awful day ended
with a member of the right wing street gang Patriot Prayer,
being shot and killed by a white BLM activist after
charging him with a can of mace. Throughout all this
Portland's BLM marches occurred every single night, right up until
late September, when a series of devastating wildfires overwhelmed Oregon
(23:33):
and blanketed the city of Portland in a thick haze
of poison. The nightly marches were halted, and the various
mutual aid organizations that had started up to service the
protests turned their efforts to meeting the needs of evacuees. Meanwhile,
right wing activists blamed the fires on Antifa and spent
several days setting up a legal arm checkpoints and threatening
people with rifles. When the rains came and the air cleared,
(23:56):
the protests started up again. There were no longer nightly affairs,
but they've remained regular occurrences ever since. And all of
this begs the question why Portland all fifty U s
States hosted Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of
Many cities saw mass demonstrations, and while of b l
M protests were considered peaceful, numerous cities saw rioting, exchanges
(24:19):
of gunfire, and even had buildings burnt down. But no
city in the United States had as many continuous nights
of protests as Portland. No city saw thousands of citizens
lay a week's long siege of a federal courthouse. No
city experienced a thousand persons street fight between right and
left wing demonstrators. Perhaps most importantly, no city earned the
(24:39):
ire of President Donald Trump in the same way as Portland.
It seems bizarre that this all would happen in Portland,
a small city off about six hundred and fifty three
thousand people. How did it grow to become one of
the most active front lines in a national battle for
black lives and against white supremacy. It actually makes a
lot of sense once you scratch beneath surface a bit.
(25:01):
Here's Tristan again. Organ was kind of um, I found
it as like something of like a white utopia, you know,
like a place for the the white man to really
like find his destiny right and like conquer this you know,
this continent. And I think that's just kind of like
(25:21):
it's just like baked into the culture here where even
like even like the love of the outdoors isn't like
isn't like a love of um like keep like keeping
the environment like healthy and like bounce. It's just like
a very like commodified like we deserve this, you know,
(25:45):
we deserve to live in this beautiful place, and we're
the only ones who know how to take care of it.
And obviously that's like mellowed out a little bit over
the you know, decades, but I think that's still basically
like what what like um, it's like the undercurrent, you know,
(26:05):
that's like behind most of what cos in Oregon. You
can learn a lot of what you need to know
about Oregon's history of racism by studying one of the
state's founders, Peter Hardman Burnett. As a young man in Tennessee,
he murdered a black person with a booby trap as
revenge for petty theft. In eighteen forty three, he helped
organize the first great wagon train of white people that
(26:27):
headed to the Oregon Territory. He was elected to the
Provisional Legislature and served as the territory's first Supreme Court justice.
In eighteen forty four, he worked to pass what became
known as Burnett's Lash Law. This stated that all black
people were required to leave Oregon under penalty of being
whipped in public not less than twenty or more than
thirty nine stripes. This punishment was to be repeated every
(26:49):
six months until they moved. The law did include a
grace period three years for black women and two years
for black men. Burnett also pushed to ban Chinese immigration
into Oregon. While there are no documented instances of the
Lash laws being used, it set a clear tone for
the state Burnet's Lash law reflected the values of the
first white people who moved to Oregon. They were abolitionists
(27:12):
in that they hated slavery, but they only hated slavery
because they were revolted by the thought of living near
black people. In eighteen forty eight, the Oregon Territorial government
passed a law that banned any quote, negro or mulatto
from living in Oregon. In eighteen fifty, the Oregon Donation
Land Act gave whites and half breed Indians their quote,
(27:32):
six hundred and fifty acres of land from the government.
All other people of color were banned from the land grants.
Oregon was finally made a state in February eighteen fifty nine.
Under its constitution, quote, no free negro or mulatto not
residing in this state at the time of the adoption
of this Constitution shall ever come reside or be within
(27:53):
this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract,
or maintain any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall
prove by penal laws for the removal by public officers
of all such free negroes and mulatto's, and for their
effectual exclusion from the state and for the punishment of
persons who shall bring them into the state or employer
harbor them there in. Oregon remains the only state in
(28:16):
the Union that ever banned black people from living there.
Now things have gotten better since eighteen fifty nine, but
better is a low bar. In Portland remains the whitest
metropolitan area in the United States. Seventent of the population
is white, less than six percent is black. Today, Portland's
owns the distinction as one of the most gentrified cities
(28:37):
in the United States. Oregon continues to report some of
the worst graduation rates for black students in the nation,
and the wealth gap between white and black Oregonians over
the last fifty years has widened, not shrunk. And moved
to Portland like like five and a half six years ago,
I think, and from where I definitely I did from
(28:58):
northern California, got a Bay area, um, and I didn't
really I didn't have a idea of what the city
was per se, Like I've never seen an episode of
Portland here, for instance. I just kind of moved up
here would be closed with a family and and yeah,
(29:20):
and when I when I kind of first got here,
it was like, you know, that hang out with a
bunch of like hippies, a bunch of people who love
trees and to ride bikes and go hiking, and it's like, oh,
they love the environment and they love progressive you know politics,
and you know, and everything's just chill within. Like the
longer I stayed here, the facade started to like fall away,
(29:44):
and and it's I mean, like I've been here for
you know, almost six years now, and I still I
don't quite know what to make of it still, you know,
but like recently, um like if the passage of or
like with the most recent election, you know, like so
(30:05):
the local measures that passed and didn't pass. It's like
like Oregon loves to have a black friend. That's what
they like. They like to have somebody they can point
to and be like, look, I'm not racist, but they don't.
They're not interested in actually like challenging the like white
(30:26):
supremacists like power structures that actually like benefit them and
and if you like, if you agitate them on that,
they just you know. That's that's when like the Pacific
Northwest like passive aggressiveness like kicks in and they just
like kind of like try to ignore you. But secually
(30:46):
they're totally fucking piste off that you dare to like
insinuate their racist um. But yeah, that's like it's a
really complicated thing and I still quite haven't figured out
like what makes white people take here, but it's, you know,
it's messy. Another activist we interviewed, Courtney, is an indigenous
(31:08):
Hawaiian person who moved to Oregon when she was seventeen.
She recalls being stunned by how white her school was.
I like ended up going to Oregon City High School,
which was like insane. I was the only non Hispanic
person that was at that school. Um, and nobody talked
(31:28):
to me for a really long time, and I just
was kind of like it was a culture shock because
there were so many white people that I had never
seen this many white people in my entire life because
everyone in Hawaii is like mixed races, majority of them
are Asian or Polynesian. So um, I definitely was nobody
(31:51):
really talked to me for a while, and I kind
of like found my little niche of people to hang
out with. Um. But yeah, like just even live in
that area, I would get a lot of weird looks
and um, yeah, just not the most friendly people to
(32:11):
be around. Um. Yeah, that's basically it's just a culture
shock to just see how white organ is. I just
I didn't expect it at all. I didn't and I
was like, I knew that they were going to be
like Hispanic people, but I just didn't realize that. Um.
I thought maybe I would see more after like black people,
(32:32):
and especially living in a city, you know, in sport
when you're from what you're like, Portland is just like
a major city in the United States, and then coming
here and not really seeing the mix of cultures was
just kind of shocking. Tristan described the races of in
Portland as unique in a subtle way. It's just it's
very it's very covert, or you know, it tries to
(32:54):
be very covert. Um and it's very like like well,
part part of what it is is that for a
very long time now they're barely when any people of
co here at all. Like, you know, it's one of
the widest states in the country. That's why it's major
city in the country, and so like to a certain extent,
(33:15):
people are they just don't actually know what like like
what like a microaggression is or what that would be like,
you know, I had to experience um, like just like
a year, year and a half ago, maybe I was
(33:36):
out with this group um these like forest offender type
people and every year they go out post this big
camp out and you know, like go out into the
woods and do like surveys and stuff like that, try
to collect data they can use to fight timber companies
and ship and like someone us drop the N word
(33:57):
like just five ft from me. There's like in casual conversation,
and then I had to like address the camp like
at breakfast. I was like, okay, so just just don't
don't say that word. Like there's no like like like
even if you're just telling a story that there's no
(34:18):
appropriate context for a white person to say that. And
and that's one of the reasons why I don't go
to those fucking campouts anymore. But like it's like that,
it's like they just don't they haven't been around black
people or people of color in general, and they just
don't know what to do. And of course the racism
(34:41):
that pervades Portland's is present in the Portland Police Bureau.
Despite black people making up again less than six percent
of the population, Portland Police use force on black people
more often than people of any other race. Portland police
are five to fourteen times more likely to shoot impact
munitions at and to forcibly restrain black residents. At one
(35:01):
point in the late sixties, black Portlanders accounted for nearly
half of p p b's arrests. Portland's black community has
been fighting against this kind of racist violence for decades.
Here's Max Smith again. For me, the battle with the
police began, you know, in the hip hop field. Um.
There was an event here in Portland that happened maybe
(35:22):
six or seven years ago. UM. That happened at a
venue called the Blue Monk, and it was a pretty
big deal. And I was there and I had friends
who were performing at the show, and the police essentially
came under the guise of a capacity of violation and
brought like a seven cars and twenty something officers and
(35:42):
shut the whole street of Belmont down And and that
bar eventually actually ended up a closing shortly after that. Um.
And it was a huge deal. They made a huge
deal about a small thing, and it went like into
like national news. And even prior to that, we had
been really combating the efforts of the police to kind
(36:06):
of shut down or stifle hip hop events in the city.
Every time we wanted to have a hip hop event,
it became like, you know, like a world war um,
to the point that it ended up actually being a
protest about the hip hop community here. And so that
was a fight that we had as far as hip
hop music and clubs, as far as hip hop events,
as far as live music. Um. They really just used
(36:29):
the city's resources that the police, the fire marshals, and
the o l c C to really like shut down
hip hop and and really any black lead events. Lawyer
Allan Kessler has done a lot of digging into the
early history of the Portland police. His research has revealed
a century long history of Portland police involvement with hate groups,
(36:51):
most particularly the Ku Klux Klan. I think it was
lost Memorial Day. I spent the whole weekend in the
Oregonian Archives basic living through World War two. It wasn't
fun uh and it's outrageous, like the clan was on
there was a front page column talked to a klansman
(37:11):
every day for like a week, uh, and then every
other day they had the clan on the front page. Anyway,
but that you know that was like, um, it was yeah,
it was incredible. Um. During the war, Uh, basically everybody,
every adult white dude had a little star badge. Uh.
(37:33):
They the police would basically deputize anybody or people just
don't be a badge is made, so everybody in town
had a badge. There were lots of articles in that
time frame about um, fake police officer pulls over so
and so and they sue. In a Portland Telegram article
reported that the Portland Police Bureau was quote full to
the brink with klansmen. The police bureau actually deputized a
(37:57):
hundred clansmen handpicked by the local Grand Dragon and designated
them Portland Police Vigilantes. This was before the p p
A existed, but the tradition lives on. In two thousand ten,
Portland police officer Mark Krueger was suspended for erecting a
memorial to five deceased Nazi soldiers on city property. The
p p A successfully sued for him to be reinstated
(38:19):
and given an apology. When he quit in early he
was the highest paid police officer on the force. I
asked Maria, a lifelong Portland resident, what her earliest memory
if the police was. Here's what she told me. I
would say it was when I was a child. Honestly, Um,
I've had some some family stuff and a family member
(38:41):
have to go to way to to prison. So I
remember some like vaguely stuff like remember then as far
as like police brutality wise. Um, the very first like
murder I remember was Kindred James. Um, that will happen
like a mile from my house. And I want to
say I was like ten at the time. Kindred James
was a twenty one year old black mother of two.
(39:01):
She was killed under suspicious circumstances during a traffic stop.
Her killer, officer, Scott McCallister, fired a single shot when
James attempted to drive away from the traffic stop after
the motion of the vehicle caused him to fall. A
number of the statements he made in court were inconsistent
with physical evidence required from the shooting, and we don't
really know exactly what happened, Among other things, The police
(39:24):
argued in court that Portland police were trained to quote
shoot as they fall aslee as the police is how
I grew up. My dad is a huge like Tupac fan,
so like I would grow up on hearing tupac lyrics
all the time. Will screw the police and everything. So yeah,
no screw Yeah. Now that's how I like grew up. Yeah,
(39:45):
um is to like not interact with them. Yeah, I've
I've grown up. You know how A lot of us,
you know, people who are black, feel like, you know,
when we're being followed, profiled all that. I mean, I
got profiled to dance in a store like it's it's
still happened. That's been going on as the kid. I
don't know if I don't know when it will stop,
that you know, goes on. Officer McCallister was acquitted in
(40:06):
federal court. He got to keep his job, but even
if he had been fired for the shooting, the firing
might not have stuck. Nationwide, of police officers fired from
his conduct are reinstated because of union mandated appeals. Over
the years. This has included an officer who challenged a
handcuffed man to a fist fight for his freedom, and
a copper sexually assaulted a young woman in his patrol car.
(40:28):
In many cities, the number of police reinstated by union
appeals is much higher than sevent of fired San Antonio
officers are reinstated because of union appeals. The number is
sixty for Philly cops and fifty from Minneapolis cops. This
is part of why the people of Minneapolis burnt the
Third Precinct to the ground after George Floyd's murder. They
(40:51):
knew from experience that it was extremely likely Derek Chauvin,
Floyd's killer, would not just avoid prison, but would soon
be back on the street with a badge. In fact,
as soon as Derek Schaubin and the other officers responsible
for George Floyd's death were fired, police union head Bob
Kroll started fighting to have them reinstated. He was concerned
that they had been quote terminated without due process. Kroll
(41:14):
was oddly unconcerned that the same thing was true of
Mr Floyd. The fact that police officers are extremely difficult
to fire, even when they commit murder or rape on
the job is a national problem. But it is a
national problem that traces back to a single place where
else the city of Portland, Oregon, and more specifically to
(41:35):
the Portland Police Association. The Portland Police Association or p
(41:57):
p A, is Portland's police union. In a way, it's
the police union because the p p A is actually
the oldest functioning police union in the United States. Police
had attempted to unionize several times before the p PA
was established in nineteen forty two, but Portland was the
first city to get it right, and the p p
A has served as a model for the rest of
(42:17):
the nation's law enforcement ever since. Every other police union
in the United States is based off of the Portland
Police Association, and one of the many trends that pp
A set was ensuing to reinstate fired officers. This story
starts on the night of March twelfth, nineteen one, when
to Portland police officers from the North Precinct dumped four
(42:39):
dead possums in the doorway of the Burger Barn, one
of Portland's few black owned businesses. The use of the
word possum as a derogatory term for black Americans dates
back as far as eighteen thirty. The owner of the
Burger Barn, George Powell, called the police commissioner to report
the incident and claimed that it was only the latest
example of police harassment his business had faced. An internal
(43:01):
investigation was opened, and the officers responsible, Ward and Galloway,
admitted their guilt immediately Their identity was initially kept hidden
thanks to a clause in the pp A contract with
the city that protected officers from having their names disclosed
during disciplinary proceedings. This is another one of the innovations
that the Portland Police Association brought to police departments nationwide.
(43:22):
By the way, the possum incident happened at an awkward
time for the Portland Police. Several officers had just been
fired and convicted of faking evidence and using illegal drugs
on the job. Nearly a hundred criminal cases had to
be thrown out because of falsified evidence. Public opinion of
the police bureau was low, and when Portland started marching
and demonstrating to demand that officers Ward and Galloway be fired,
(43:43):
the police Commissioner was only too happy to oblige them.
Enter Stan Peters, the most powerful union president Portland has
ever had. Peters took to every local news show in town.
He circulated petitions. He even organized a massed protest march
made up of Portland po last officers and their families.
He forced the city government into arbitration, which ended with
(44:05):
both officers being rehired and given back pay. There's actually
a book about the Portland Police Association, Pickets, pistols and Politics.
Alan Kessler informed us of its existence. Here's what it
says about the court case that resolved the Possum incident. Quote,
the City of Portland versus Ward and Galloway case is
still the leading police discipline case in the United States,
(44:28):
and in labor law circles is the arbitration decision referred
to the most often. It's legal nomenclature is simply City
of Portland. And so in the end, it really isn't
that odd that the City of Portland wound up as
ground zero for a battle against white supremacy and police
brutality and a battle for black lives. It's actually been
(44:49):
that for a very very long time. As much as
people have just kind of started to contextualize how Antifa
has been fighting against these studs here for years. You know,
it actually isn't just the last couple of years where
it's been in the news. It has been going off
for decades. In Portland. There's always been a level of
especially in southeast of Portland, has always been like even
(45:11):
like in the eighties, has been like, you know, these
white skinhead groups and the Sharps has always kind of
been like a race war between the white folks in Portland,
especially in the southeast. Over the course of the summer
of Portland's wounds were exposed to the world after George
Floyd's gruesome murder accelerated long brewing unrest across the country
and even the globe. The Northwest's liberal bastion was forced
(45:34):
to reckon with its own deeply anti black traditions while
also becoming an unlikely epicenter in a movement for black
lives that had taken the world by storm. Thousands took
to the streets and a battle that would be fought
against a corrupt police force, Trump's federal agents, right wing vigilantes,
and even at times between protesters themselves. Through it all,
people banded together to support each other and build the
(45:56):
infrastructure that would propel the city to a hundred plus
days of protests that even the strongest tear gas couldn't end.
In the next episode, we will delve into how a
disorganized crowd of angry Portlander's turned themselves into a movement
that could stand up to the worst violence the Trump
administration could throw at it. Uh where the grandpops who
(46:17):
couldn't fathom the obamacist, I don't hate America just to me,
And she keeps the promises teens looking like the sixties.
It's crazy, a nationwide deja fo. 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 want to learn about when o'parah sarah.
How is that fair? Bro? Some heroes unsung in some
(46:41):
monster's get monuments built for them. But it ain't be
all a little bit of monster. We crook it. Man,
Your heroes are worthless and man can show private only
God gives purpose. You crook it
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com