July 9, 2020 • 58 mins
For more than forty nights, activists in Portland have confronted the city's Police Bureau in a series of marches, occupations and vigils. For more than a month the bulk of these demonstrations have ended in tear gas, truncheons and horrific Police violence. But as the weeks have gone on the people of Portland have learned how to stand up against their police, and as July sets in the conflict has escalated to stranger, and more dangerous, level.
Sources:
https://twitter.com/IwriteOK/status/1279651721891860480
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zQFQ9BKPjg&feature=youtu.be
Portland Journalists:
https://twitter.com/45thabsurdist?lang=en
https://twitter.com/TheRealCoryElia
https://twitter.com/tuckwoodstock
https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart Radio.
We Get Everything, So don't you get a rout up
(00:27):
to the last Welcome to the Worst Year Ever? A
podcast about you know and such. I'm Robert Evans and
(00:47):
my co hosts are Katie Still and Cody Johnston. And
today we're going to talk about what's been happening in
the city of Portland for the last forty days, because
the city has been through now more than forty straight
days of protesting and about like half of those days
have wound up being riots. And in fact, this specific
(01:09):
episode is coming after a five night a series of
five nights in which three riots were declared. Um, so
it's been it's been a real one in Portland. Wow.
You know what's interesting? Forty days. That is so many
days and you do not see it getting covered in
the mainstream media. Um. I know it's happening from you.
(01:31):
But I've said this before, but even people that I
know that live in Portland aren't aware of the extent
to what's happening downtown. You know, everyone's sheltering in place.
Just the media coverage of it is abysmal. Yeah, it
hasn't you know, there's a lot of great journalists out
there in the streets, but most of them aren't working
for huge outlets, you know. As part of one of
the things we're going to discuss a little bit later today.
(01:53):
The specific thing that just happened on the fourth of
July that I think needs to be covered is it
was essentially, we essentially saw a medieval siege in this
in the streets of an American city, UM waged between
like federal agents firing through murder slits and a fortified,
(02:16):
uh federal courthouse and being shot back at by protesters
armed with hundreds of illegal fireworks. Um. It was. It
was one of the craziest things I've ever seen, Like
federal agents dropping tear gas out of slits in the
walls of a courthouse, as like people with shields, you know,
clustered to stop the impact rounds being fired into the
(02:37):
crowds that folks could shoot fireworks back into the courthouse.
It was fucking It was nuts, like I've never I've
never seen anything like it. Um. I guess I would
say the closest thing I've seen to what we saw
in July four was is was actual warfare. Um. It
was about as close as you can get to actual
warfare without people shooting live rounds at each other. UM.
(03:00):
And things have escalated in some ways since then. And
what's what's happening in Portland is interesting for a number
of reasons, UM fundamentally, And this is something that's been
brought up to me by two of my stringers, you know,
who have been working with me in the streets of
Portland's UM. They go under Twitter at at forty Absurdest Brigade,
but UM. One of them, Elaine, pointed out to me
(03:21):
that like we're essentially seeing, um, what happens when a
huge chunk of a city loses its fear of its
police force. Because that's something that that has really been evident.
After so many nights of getting tear gassed and shot
at and hit with sticks and arrested, the people who
continue to show up at these protests aren't scared of
(03:43):
cops anymore. UM. And so the police and law enforcement
has had to escalate. And what's happened in the wake
of July four is they've been sending out federal agents,
UM who who are And essentially you're saying, like federal
agents who are indistinguishable from soldiers, UM, not wearing like
police riot armor, but wearing full combat armor, carrying him
(04:04):
four rifles, you know, charging out to grab and arrest
people for stuff like knocking on the door of the courthouse. Um.
Because they don't have any rules of engagement. You know,
the police have limitations on what they can do. The
federal agents don't. And so as the people of Portland
have lost their fear of the police and the police
have become less and less able to disperse the crowds
(04:27):
arrayed against them, um, the Feds are coming in more
and more to funk people up, um, and and doing
so using tactics that are that are straight up military
tactics that aren't like militarized. You're not talking about like
a lot of people, you know, You're not just saying like, oh,
the police have grenade launchers, so they're militarized. It's like no, no, no,
no no. The federal federal troops are essentially using military
(04:50):
tactics to try to break up these gatherings. UM. So
one of the things that you see with police is
police are supposed to announce something called an unlawful ass
simbly or a riot or something. They're supposed to make
announcements to the crowd, giving them a chance to disperse
before the use of munitions, before they start arresting people.
This is like there's a rhythm to a protest, even
(05:10):
a very aggressive one, even a riot that is predictable
because the police have have legal strictures on how they're
supposed to act that that that go in certain ways.
And this doesn't mean the police don't use success of force,
but it means there's certain things that they do because
their police, the federal agents have just been sort of
charging out of the courthouse without warning, grabbing people off
(05:33):
the street. Um. Like the police were doing things like
firing you know, tear guests and what not to clear
out people who had been you know, sometimes shooting off
fireworks and stuff. One of the things that caused a
federal sally, um two nights ago was a guy walked
up and he knocked on the door of the courthouse
and that's all he did, and they charged out into
the street. They cleared people up for blocks away. They
(05:55):
were tackling people to the ground, um, and they like
they tackled this guy, grabbed him and dragged back into
the courthouse and my, uh, my employee on the ground.
A lane who has seen a lot of street action
over the last couple of weeks and has has no
fear of tear gas or even impact rounds or night
sticks from the police, UM was terrified because like it
(06:16):
was this there was no no ability to predict what
they were going to do, which is kind of like
when you're when you're prosecuting a war. Like one of
the things they have to train soldiers to do in
our military that makes them effective in a combat situation
is the ability to engage in and display like relentless
aggression because the goal is always to ensure the enemy
(06:38):
never has any chance to get on a stable footing. Um.
It's constant disruption. So the unpredictability, the inability for them
to formulate an effective strategy, like that's how you that's
how you deal with an enemy in a car and
and like a combat situation, that kind of aggression and
that sort of that sort of meter of aggression um,
which is not how police are supposed to in gay
(07:00):
and and not how police engage with the crowd. For
all of the critiques of the Portland Police Bureau their
behavior even when it was illegal, uh, and we'll talk
about that a bit, because they did break the law
on a number of occasions. It was predictable. Um, you
could you could start to understand, Okay, this is going
to happen, the police will react in this way or
one of these ways. There was no kind of predicting,
(07:21):
Like the federal troops were rushing out of the courthouse
to arrest and and grab and tackle people sometimes when
no discernible action had been taken by the crowd because
there's no restrictions on their behavior, um and so you
you're seeing what you're seeing in the streets of Portland
is it started with militarized police meeting a crowd that
(07:42):
was willing to willing to kind of meet them with
insurgent tactics, with military tactics and not with um the
kind of military tactics I think the crowd was the
police were expecting, but with a lot of stuff that
looked would have been more at place, you know, in
a medieval conflict, um and or you know, like fa
lanxes and stuff like that. So even going further back
(08:03):
than that. But like but like you you saw the
crowd adopting these sort of organized military tactics um in
order to deal with a police force that was utilizing
variations of those of those same tactics. UM. And what
you've seen now is federal troops who have come in
and essentially, you know, use the word troops. We're talking
about U. S. Marshals, We're talking about department with Homeland
(08:24):
security officers, UM. But we're talking about people who are
visually indistinguishable from soldiers and carrying the same weaponry as soldiers.
So they're not packing just the non lethals. They're packing
them for assault rifles and ship Now, UM, you're seeing
them bring in because you know, police tactics are are militarized,
but in a lot of cases, you know, you're still
looking at kind of like more ancient military tactics because
(08:47):
at the end of the day, when you have police
in a riot line confronting each other, you have two
groups of people armed with melee weapons primarily like like
coming into conflict with each other, a lot of them
carrying shields and sticks and stuff. So it has it's militarized,
but it has more in terms of like what you
actually see on the ground, it has more in common
with you know, what people would have experienced fighting. You know,
(09:08):
a few centuries ago than it does with modern military tactics,
and now that that that has gone to the point
where the police can't disperse these crowds effectively. Um, federal
agents are using very modern military tactics, the kind of stuff,
like the kind of literal physical tactics, um, that you
would more expect to see in in an active war
(09:31):
zone than than what police are supposed to be doing. Um,
it's gotten very strange. It sounds like an appropriate way
to be spending the Fourth of July weekend, citizens protesting
and you know, feeling like it was the way people
fought hundreds of years ago. Um. Yeah, the videos that
(09:52):
you sent us were very intense. Yeah. Yeah, we'll play
a little clip from that right here, when there was
this was the moment at which there was essentially just
a straight up siege of this. So, so for an
idea of what downtown Portland is like, you have the
Justice Center, which is um, the police headquarters in the jail,
and it's next to a federal courthouse, and so the
(10:13):
Justice Center is guarded by normal cops. The federal courthouse
is guarded by DHS agents, Homeland Security and essentially military dudes,
you know, that's how they look at operate UM, and
you had this crowd of a thousand or so people
gather around both um kind of drunk. A lot of
people were kind of drunk. It was the fourth and
they had a ton of fireworks and a ton of
(10:35):
really illegal fireworks. But it's easy to get them because
there's nothing that's illegal in Washington. So people just drive
up to Washington, buy a bunch of illegal fireworks, come
down to Portland. And this was happening all over. Look,
it seems like all over the country people have the
access to illegal fireworks. Another segment. So in Portland, they
just started firing hundreds of illegal fireworks directly at the
(10:56):
courthouse and the Justice Center. UM. And it was really
it was. There were some great moments where like you
could see people who were in the jail like cheering
and waving and like sticking their fists in the air
because they were getting like the fireworks were exploding at
their windows. UM. So they gotta they got a show,
and they seemed to be enjoying it. But people also,
you know, it was it was a pretty chill despite
(11:20):
the reckless use of fire the fireworks, it was pretty chill. UM.
The crowd was, and there wasn't a lot of people
pushing towards the actual buildings themselves, just kind of shooting
at their facades. And these are gigantic concrete buildings. Um,
there was no no real there was no danger of
the fireworks doing any damage to them. Then the police
brought out their their sound system and started telling people
(11:40):
not to shoot at the Federal Courthouse, which guaranteed that
that's all people were going to want to do for
the rest of the Yeah, and the crowd then clustered.
They gassed everyone once and so the cloud crowd began
clustering just around the Federal Courthouse and firing into like
the plywood they'd put up over the windows and trying
to shoot in through them murder slits that the the
(12:01):
agents had cut so that they can shoot out at
the crowd. Um. And that that, you know, kind of
culminated in what what Yeah, what looked very much like
a fucking medieval siege, just with fireworks and fucking paintball uh,
pepper ball rounds and rubber bullets and ship It was
very strange. Um. I want to play you a little
clip from that. Yeah, you can see here one of
(12:24):
the murder slates medieval time, I think, So that's here
they're scooting out from the tres. So we definitely have
like an old fashioned medieval seeds to sort of proud
getting their sem. Uh. You see a proud getting the
shields to the front. You see the defenders firing at
(12:45):
a murder hole. You see fire, you know, pilots shot
into the thing. This is Jesus Christ. So yeah, like
that's I don't even know like what to say about
it to a certain extent because it's so surreal to
see this, Like I spent you know, we after this,
(13:07):
the police dispersed the crowd from the Justice Center area,
and the crowd spent hours kind of you know, running
battle with the cops um, and there was a lot
of like it got pretty intensely violent. Like it was
weird because this was the best the mood has been
from the crowd. Like everyone's morale was really high because
people were I think really excited about how well they
(13:29):
were doing it staying together and reforming and not getting
dispersed by the police. Um. But the police were unbelievably
angry and we're beating the ship out of people. Like
when they would get close. They were hitting them with truncheons.
I watched at one point they grabbed a man and
dragged him on his back across the asphalt into a
cloud of tear gas to arrest him. They fucking stabbed
(13:51):
the tires out of a van that was handing out snacks,
and they didn't arrest the driving it. They just stabbed
as tires like it was wild. The issue wasn't with
the man, he is but a man. It's with the car.
It's with the van fires, it's with the BLM snack van.
They fucking hated that van. And it was like they
(14:14):
were doing ship like gassing the crowd and then firing
rubber bullets and foam bullets into the smoke, so like
they clearly can't see what they're shooting at. Their just
shooting in to the crowd with impact munitions, which you're
supposed to be very carefully usually supposed to fire these
at the ground to bounce them up into people. You're
not supposed to shoot people directly with them. They were
just shooting into the munitions, being an example of like
(14:38):
rubber bullets, rubber bullets, foam bullets, pepper balls. These are
all impact munitions. Yeah, it does real damage. So it
was it was it was pretty intense to experience. UM,
and it was just like you know, we've had we've
had dozens of nights of a of a not dissimilar tempo,
usually less fireworks, some fireworks, but less fireworks. But um,
(15:01):
this keeps happening every single week. You know, the first
two weeks after George Floyd's murder, this happened something like
this happened pretty much every night, and then since then
it's at least been every three or four days there's
been a night like this. Um. Sometimes the fewer people,
but like that intensity, the fact that you still are
pulling crowds of a thousand people is wild and incredible,
(15:27):
you know. Yeah, to keep people showing up every night
or most nights like this. Yeah, and there's you know,
the nights afterwards it was more like a hundred hundred
and fifty people that showed up. But it's still this
like you know, it's keeping this like heartbeat alive, I guess, um,
And I think there's a lot of you know, there's
(15:47):
a lot there's there's some criticisms folks including me, will
make about like the decision to continually rally at the
Justice Center because tactically it is a terrible place to
get into a fight with the police. They can surround
you very easily. Um, they can tear gas the ship
out of you very easily. UM. It's not Um, it's
not a great defensible position. And the fact that the
(16:08):
Feds are next door creates additional issues because now people
are getting federal charges. The folks who are being arrested
by the Feds. You know, when the cops arrest you,
your charges are generally going to go up that night.
Usually you'll be out the next day. Um. A lot
of folks just get released with a citation. Um. The
Feds have been keeping people in jail for two three
days before anyone even finds out their charges. Um. And
(16:30):
then those charges are again federal charges. So people are
getting you know, the chances are that they will get
much more prison higher prison sentences when this finally comes out.
And the Feds are also keeping their ship, keeping their phones,
keeping their house keys, keeping their wallets as evidence. It's
kind of a bad tactical decision to involve. And you
had on on July four, you had people with bullhorns
(16:50):
being like, when we get back because the crowd eventually
marched back to the Justice Center after like three hours
of fighting and reforming in the streets, made its way
back and reoccupied the justice which has never happened before.
But there were people like begging folks in the crowd,
don't funk with the courthouse again, Like we we can't.
We we probably shouldn't try to start a fight with
both the Feds and the local police at the same time.
(17:12):
Like this might not be the best the best Tacticum,
that seems well reasoned. Yeah, so we'll see what happens next.
But um, it's been fucking surreal and it's Um, I
don't think we've seen the biggest rallies we're going to
see in Portland this year. And I don't think we've
seen the most police or law enforcement violence we're going
(17:32):
to see this year. No, I don't think we have either.
We're in such a weird lull. I don't know. It
feels like things still feel tents, that there's stuff crackling
beneath the surface. It does not seem like police seem
um cowed by people or by the potential of you
(17:57):
know that we have as a actively too to uprise
and to protest because we're continuing to see police violence everywhere. Um. Yeah,
so I agree with you. I don't. I don't. I
think it's the end of it. We have to take
a quick ad break. Oh yeah, you know what won't
(18:17):
fire impact munitions blindly into smoke filled crowd? Wow, don't
say yeah, Raytheon? Well no, Raytheon's new knife missile cody
is the opposite of firing blindly into a crowd. It's
firing a knife missile at exactly the place with precisions. Yeah,
(18:38):
they would have, they would have. They wouldn't have missed
those murder holes. No, they wouldn't have. Together everything back
from the ad ad at, Yeah, we share. Are get mad?
(19:02):
I like thought, Katie mad mad. I'm just I'm living.
Um yeah, so I want to. I wanted to play
you y'all because I like how you said you and
then corrected yourself to y'all. Thank you. It's inclusive. Um. So,
like when these ships started in Portland, there was like
(19:22):
a lot of local coverage about what was happening, and
there you know, it was even some Uh, there wasn't
a huge amount of national coverage just because what was
going on in Minneapolis was so much crazier. UM. But
as Portland has wound up having like kind of one
of the longer um running protest movements. In the wake
of all this, like we've gotten, local media has had
(19:44):
to pull back a bit just because their budgets can't
cope with it. And you know, they've done a varying
levels of quality jobs in terms of actually handling the story.
Some of them have sucked, some of them have been incredible. UM.
But uh, we we have gotten. When we've got national coverage,
it's tended to look more like this, And I want
to play you. I want to actually go through this
(20:05):
whole Fox News segment. So this is like a yeah, Mark,
that will help my migraine, Robert. Yeah, this is Fox
and Friends, and it's Fox and Friends interviewing uh, the
Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Mark Morgan m about the
fourth of July riot in UH in Portland. And I
(20:27):
find this really UM, I mean I find it. I
find it infuriating and inaccurate, but I also find it interesting.
So we're gonna go through it and take some time
to pause bit by bit and talk about what what
he's saying and what the truth is this is a
fun news segment. Yeah, this will be interesting. Here we
go violence rocking Portland overnight. Police declaring a riot yet again,
(20:51):
as the city sees is thirty eight straight day of unrest.
Border Patrol now called in to assist here with an update.
Is acting CBP com Sure Mark Morrigan, Good morning, Mr Commissioner.
The third time this week you've had to declare a
riot in Portland's what's going on there? And one thing
I want to correct is that he did the CBPP.
(21:11):
He didn't declare a riot. The police eventually did declare
a riot. The FEDS, which is you know, include CBP
and and all of these other agencies we've been talking about,
started dumping munitions before there was any kind of declaration
of anything because they don't have to declare. They can
just they can just shoot shipped off. Good do you
know That's that is a point to be made. We'll
tell you griff. And these are not protesters. These are
(21:34):
criminals who got the organized and planned and actually brought weapons.
They brought a shield, they brought water bottles. Rock I
can tell you Number one is very funny to me,
with the number of weapons used against the protesters that
he's so angry. They brought shields, They brought water bottles.
(21:56):
I haven't seen any frozen water bottles, and I have
seen some have seen thousands of water bottles thrown at
the cops. They all splatter open upon hitting. Because they're
not a weapon. It's a party. It's the fourth of July. People,
water fights are cultural cannon. They brought weapons. I love
(22:16):
the obviously, I love the shield thing, but also like,
these aren't protesters. These people organized, they had a plan.
They didn't just march around and go back home, not
accomplishing anything. It's it's great lasers weapons with the intent
to destroy the Federal building. Lasers, lasers, tons of like
(22:42):
like laser pointers. Yeah, like laser pointers they shine. Those
are very threatening. Yeah, and they're not the I will
tell you there are laser pointers that can do that
will do permanent eye damage. These are not the ones
being used. No police officers anywhere in the country have
suffered any eye damages or result of lasers being deployed.
Um and all of the lasers until the police started
(23:05):
shooting people, at which point folks shine lazers and face
masks to try to blind the people shooting them temporarily. Um, yeah,
that's I would say. So the lasers were being used
to blind cameras. Um. Yeah, so we're not talking like
those little laser pointers you buy for your cat. No, no, no,
they're heavier duty than that. But they're not the ones
that are like, you know, you get the heavy, the
(23:26):
really big ones that you can like you can light
cigarettes with and if you shine them in someone's eyes,
it will suck them up forever. Um, these are not those.
People are not shooting those into faces. No police officers
have been had their vision damaged, um by the fucking lasers,
which I would compare to maybe the flashbanks that they
throw at people, even though they're not supposed to throw
(23:46):
them at people and shoot directly at people's bodies, which
have exploded within inches of my body and a number
of occasions and definitely have have had an impact on
my vision and hearing. Um whatever, it's fine, it's fine.
I'm so sorry they brought yields. Yeah, my fucking heads pounding. Um.
So that's all very funny. It's very funny that he
(24:08):
says that they had the attempt to destroy the federal building,
the federal courthouse and downtown Portland is again, it is
a fortress. It is a massive concrete structure. None of
these none of the fireworks did any kind of damage.
None of them could have done any kind of damage.
You would have had to bring military grade weaponry to
do any meaningful damage to anything but the plywood. And
(24:30):
I don't think they even damaged the plywood. Seriously, one
person broke a window. The idea that it would have
been possible for this crowd to destroy that courthouse, um,
is absurd because it's basically a castle. Well, it's either
a lie or stupid. They knocked aggressively. I thought you
were talking about that was the next night. That was
the next night. Uh, someone just knocked on the door
(24:52):
and got arrested. Yeah, you could tell they meant business
with that knock. Yeah, yeah, it was an assault knock. Um,
all right, let's listen to our friends continue. And I've
said it before, I don't care what your ideological police are.
Your political is wrong. And I can tell you for one,
(25:12):
I'm glad that this president United States understands importance of
law order. And then it's a cornerstone of American society.
What we saw in Portland last night was criminal. And
it's funny that he says violence is wrong because again
the police were repeatedly pumping impact munitions blindly into a
crowd and dragging people across the ground and beating them
(25:33):
with sticks. So I'm interested for this, for for Mark
Morgan's condemnation of the Portland police for that, but I
didn't hear it. Yeah, he says he doesn't care about
our what do you say, ideological? Ideological? Yeah, he does.
He cares, he cares what your well. I mean, he
(25:53):
immediately invoked the president. So I think you have a
little bit to do with some sort of ideology. Yeah,
I think he might have an ideology. It's possible, Mr Krisher.
The presidents have warned that this element, there are parts
of these groups that are terrorists, perhaps that they're literally
trying to do pure HARMONSI isn't about making a statement.
(26:17):
You have some news you can share with us now
about the arrest on Friday and the attack on the
Hatfield Thrial courthouse. What is that absolutely group? Earliest morning?
In fact, I just got this situation report a few
minutes ago. Is that one of the criminals that were
actually trying to assault one of the CDP employees while
he was being arrested. The report right now is is
(26:38):
telling us that a pipe bomb, a fused and sinary device,
and a machete was actually discovered during that search. Now,
this is really interesting. It wasn't but if there was
a if there was a machete in the possession of
someone there, they were violating no law because it is
the possession of unconcealed machete is completely unregulated in the
(27:02):
state of Oregon and completely legal. The pipe bomb thing
is real funny because I found the picture that they
posted to this and number one. For whatever reason, they
posted the picture of the pipe bomb with a bunch
of tissue paper and zip ties, which was a weird call.
And also, it's not a pipe bomb. It's very it's
(27:23):
very clear. It is a pipe with uh two bits
of like metal um uh plugs like screwed into either end.
I can see how someone might initially think, oh, that
might be a pipe bomb, but there's no whole drilled
in it, there's no fuse, there's no evidence of any
explosives at all. And what it actually is and what
(27:43):
it appears to be, I should say, um, based on
my experience going to a whole lot of protests and riots.
Is people make ship like this all the times to
break windows. It's a window breaking thing. It is a
thing somebody mads that they can fucking crack a window
very easily. And there's no evidence that it's a pipe bomb.
That's surprising to me that they would report that it's
(28:04):
a pipe bomb, though, because Fox News is pretty diligent
about checking these things. And you'll notice you'll notice the
language that the CBP commissioner uses because he says he
after saying it's a pipe bomb, he says, okay, but
he goes back and says, based on the report that
we're reading right now, um, because at some point they're
(28:25):
going to walk this back, because there will. My suspicion
is that they will have no evidence of any actual
explosives and thus that this was not a pipe bomb. Um.
So you know, you've got to make sure that everyone knows,
oh what I you know, based on the report I've read,
they had a pipe bomb, and then you never have
to correct it. They're not going to have him back
on Fox News to be like, ah, you know what,
it was just a guy who was ready to fucking
break some windows because he wanted to loot some Louis
(28:47):
Vuitton or whatever. UM. Very frustrating, but I'm interested in
their fucking analysis of that pipe bomb with no fuse
in it at all. Uh, that'll be fun anyway. Let's
contin in. You think about that, Griff, think about the
deadly consequences from these criminal actions, no one, Let's just
get out there and see some video. There's a video
(29:08):
where a woman is overheard confronting one of the agents
there and she refers to it as Hey, I know
this game. I'm on a city sidewalk. There's nothing that
you can do. And she goes further and says, why
don't you go back where you came from? White boy?
That's what this is, Griff, It's a game to see.
I love this. I love this because he immediately says,
you know, we need to talk about the deadly consequences
(29:29):
of this. And then those consequences are somebody called a
Copple white boy, while standing on a sidewalk and asserting
her right to be on the sidewalk of a city
that she lives in. That's the deadly consequences here. Very fun.
Love love this guy. It's a deadly game. But series
this is about law and order. We must be united.
(29:50):
Where are the local political leaders griff standing up saying
this is uncomfortable, this is wrong and these individuals should
see some desists and be arrested. Where that? Where are they? Now?
That's that's funny because in the City of Portland, our
mayor has stood by the police pretty pretty significantly um
(30:10):
and has made only the most milk toast kind of complaints.
And so did our our city Commissioner, Joanne Hardesty. She
wrote a real mean letter to the police after they
beat the piss out of a bunch of people last Tuesday. UM.
But that letter she wrote the day after she was
like one of the deciding votes to approve the new
police budget for the next several months, so uh gave
(30:32):
up any sort of leverage that she had to the
police and then said that they were mean. Um. Because again,
local political leaders in Portland are terrified of the police
union UM and usually terrified to take any action against it. Now,
what I will say, if you're trying to look at
how popular these protests are, I don't have perfect data
for you, but there's a current runoff election for the
Mayor of Portland between the current Mayor Ted Wheeler uh
(30:54):
and Sarah yann Rone who is his his like did
well enough in the election that there's a run off
in November. She was something like twenty points behind before
all this started, and now they are neck and neck. Um,
So that might suggest that there's actually quite a bit
of sympathy in the city of Portland's for the people
out protesting the police every night. Um, we'll see it
(31:15):
in November, I suppose troubling that a pipe bomb allegedly
was found along with thee So what will happen now
with that individuals and those that you're arresting there? That individuals, absolutely, Griffin,
that's where you said, this really is a whole of
government approach. So we had United States Marshal's Federal Protective
(31:38):
Service there ice HS I said, agents there, and the
FBI has committed a lot of resources to making sure
that these individuals are arrested, arrested and prosecuted to the
full extendaal law for the criminals that they are. We
are doing disservice to peaceful, lawful protesters when we call
these individual protesters, they're not they're criminal thugs with an agenda.
(32:01):
In the last second, Mr Commissioner, do you see this
being now you'll have to escalate the force that you're
already deploying. Look, we're we're going to escalate to the
use of force that's needed to repel these criminals and
apprehend them and prosecute them. But I can tell you
I've been doing this for twenty five years and this
(32:22):
president is behind us, and I'm glad that we have
an administration that understands the importance of law and order.
We're not walking away from our federal facilities like police departments,
having some communities, We're staying. Mr. Commissurance, Thanks for being Yeah,
so that's fun going on there. Yeah, that's going on there.
That guy really had a line to push about how
(32:43):
much he likes the president. I'm guessing because yeah, yeah,
I mean the coded language also, like we finally have
a president that backs us up here. You know, we
know what they're backing up also, criminals. Just the words
that they used to describe protesters. What are they doing? Okay,
I guess you shouldn't technically be firing fireworks out of
(33:04):
federal building. I think it is against the law. I do.
I do suspect it's against the law to shoot a
legal fireworks at a federal courthouse. I'll get that's not
everybody that's you know. And also they've been using the
same language for all of this. It's not just that
you know, um, but overall very impressed with their coverage. Yeah,
(33:32):
I couldn't say that with a straight face. It's very funny, um.
I it's funny, like the focus on the violence of
the protesters when the actual injuries um have been pretty
one sided. Uh and and and largely dealt out by
the police. The police like every every time they can
will post a video of like they posted one after
(33:53):
the July four that showed um burns on a guy's
on officers pants um from a firework and another officer
who was doused in paint UM and they're like, these
are just two examples of the kind of violence done
to our officers, and it's showing them. The journalists who
lost her eye, Yeah, I mean that was another city,
but they did mace one of our journalists and shove
(34:15):
him to the ground, and another journalist who was filming
and arrest got knocked down and beaten on the legs
with with trunchean's um. Several of us have been shot
with impact munitions. Um, I've had my pants burned by
a flash bang. Uh, which you know is I would
say at least comparable to what happened to that other
officers pants. No one is poured. I will say this,
(34:37):
I did not get covered in paint. Um. That is
that is a type of tremendous violence. That is a
unique experience of of of Portland police officers. So yeah,
Andy does well. Yeah, he wouldn't know it was something
else white and creamy. Um. Yeah, we have to take
another at break. I'm speaking of white and creamy. Yeah,
(34:59):
I get to you. Did you say speaking of something
white and creamy? I sure did, Katie one pump, one
cream pad, break together everything we're back. Oh my god,
(35:20):
I love cream. Um. No I don't. You don't, No,
not really. Um, I mean yeah, it's a I have.
I have complicated emotional feelings on the nature of cream. Um.
We'll get dig into that in another day. Yeah. So
I'm left like we're in a We're in this very
(35:43):
strange place in Portland where things seem to have escalated
to the high I can't imagine things escalating further. Then
they went on the fourth without gunfire. Um, most likely
gunfire from federal or even you know, local police, because
I think a lot of them are itching to be
able to do that. UM. I have trouble imagining things
(36:05):
escalating further. So in terms of how the movement continues here,
I can only see it moving laterally, right. You know,
we had you know, people going after different targets, not confronted,
you know, going after the Portland Police Association headquarters again. UM.
I could also see other tactics being adopted, but in
terms of physical confrontation of the police, it doesn't get
(36:26):
much more intense than having a fireworks fight with them,
Like yeah, uh yeah, I don't know, is there Um.
I know that we've we've mentioned this before and and
goals kind of evolve and change, But what is it
(36:46):
that people specifically want from Portland's Is this the dissolution
of the police department? Is it acknowledgement of um certain
officers there. I'm just curious. Yeah, as you know, morphs
and changes too. But I think of the folks I've
talked to, most of them, the minimum they wanted was
(37:07):
like fifty million taken out of the budget, and they
got about half that. UM. More common people want the
Portland Police Association dissolved. They don't want you know, they
do not want the police in Portland to have a union.
They want officers who have been involved in questionable shootings
to be prosecuted. UM. Pretty reasonable. Yeah. They want an
end too, and they've won actually an into a number
(37:29):
of the of the most problematic units in the Portland
Police bureau. So like the Gang Task Force, which is
responsible for a lot of shootings has been dissolved. Um.
And the Transit Police they're not getting funding, although the
funding has just been shifted to the Sheriff's Department for
the Transit police, who are responsible for a lot of
fucking with the houseless people. Uh. They are removing officers
(37:49):
from Portland's schools, which is a big win. UM. So
I think people want to see more of that. There's
more units they'd like to see dissolved. They'd like to
see stuff like, you know, don't just shift the funding
over to the Sheriff's Department for transit police, cut it entirely. Um.
I think most people who are out every night at
the Justice Center want the Portland Police completely dissolved and
(38:10):
replaced with something new. UM. That is probably the single
most common view, but at the very minimum, people want
to see the police much more defunded um, and want
to see them no longer sort of immune to the
consequences of their violence. Um. Yeah. And there's also a
general I think desire for charges to be dropped, um,
and not just charges against protesters, but journalists are getting charged.
(38:31):
I was just chatting with core Elia who um was
assaulted by the Portland Police early on in all this
was like thrown to the ground and maced in the
face for filming them um, and sued them as a result,
is brought them a civil suit and a couple of
weeks later, Uh, he was at a protest outside of
the one by the Portland Police Association and he recognized
(38:52):
the officer who I believe the one who maced him,
and he stated the officer's name on a live stream
and he was arrested very aggressively and is being charged
with two felony counts of assaulting a police officer, which
I can say conclusively is a lie by the Portland Police. Bear.
I'll testify in court to that I watched his arrest,
I filmed it. Um. There was no evidence of any
(39:12):
kind of aggression from Corey. Now police often have you know,
like in d C. If you struggle while handcuffed, you're
assaulting a police officer. So, um, we'll see what actually
is able to hold up in court. Um. But the
yield they struggled, they struggled while handcuffed violence. Um. They
(39:32):
clearly are are throwing these charges at Corey both because
you know he piste off a specific officer, um, but
also because they want to chill the free press in Portland.
And if you get even if their bogus charges, getting
felony charges against you completely changes your life. While you
are under them. You are not innocent until proven guilty.
(39:52):
You suffer immediate consequences as a result of having felony
charges against you. UM. So yeah, I mean it had
a chilling effect on me because I see, I would
see getting felony charges against me is not all that
far from a death sentence because one of the things
that will happen. I have a number of death threats
against me. I get them pretty regularly. Um. I carry
(40:14):
a firearm and rely on a firearm for self defense.
If I were to be charged with a felony Um,
they would come and take all of my firearms. And
not only that, but my name would become you know,
they would it would be a very public case. Um.
The Portland Police know where I live, and there are
cases of We just had an officer retire with full
pension who had been caught in photographs with a shrine
(40:35):
to Adolf Hitler. Um. There's a long documented history of
the Portland Police collaborating with groups like the Proud Boys
and Patriot Prayer in this city. Like emails between them,
you can read all this. UM, I have no I
have no doubt that my address would get out. UM.
So like that that has altered my coverage and where
I have gone and physically put myself while trying to
(40:55):
cover these protests. And that was the goal. You know,
their goal was to scare Journey listened to not and
they have had now a federal injunction put against them
that says they can't arrest journalists or demand that we disperse.
So that's good. I'm less worried now as a result
of that. UM. And on the fourth I felt generally
pretty safe, but they did target a couple of colleagues
of mine and another journalist live streamer got arrested. Because
(41:16):
there's now this debate between like what is a journalist?
You know, how many of these, like citizen reporters UM
really count as journalist And obviously the police want to
narrow a definition of journalists as possible UM. But mainstream
like the big local outlets and stuff, can't afford to
have reporters out in the street every nights. We're at
forty nights now. You know, even the local the local
(41:37):
press that's done the best job of covering this, like
the oregon Ian UM and will Emitt weekly or is
our Oregonian and the Mercury, which have both done I
think pretty good jobs, particularly the Mercury, of covering this
UM in the streets like they're not they're not able
to send people out every night, and neither is like
local news TV stations because it's just too there's too much.
So if you're a person who lives here and wants
(42:00):
to know what your police are doing, lets you know
what's happening in the streets of your city. You're very
reliant on these the citizen journalists UM, some of whom
have professional credential like a professional history, and some of
whom are very new to this. You're very reliant on
all of these people to actually know what's happening. Um.
And I think there's a reason we don't have a
strict legal definition of what makes a journalist as long
(42:21):
as these people aren't participating in the protests, um, which
I haven't seen any of them, do you. I I haven't
seen them carrying a sign or lighting things on fire.
They're just filming. And as long as they're doing that,
I don't see any reason not to consider them a
journalist legally. You know. Well, yeah, because journalism is different
now than it's ever been. Yeah, this is how people
get news and spread news. Um. And that's just the
(42:42):
reality of it. Yeah, you are, if you are going
to show up at a protest as a journalist, there
are some behavioral things that I think are incumbent upon you. Um,
in order to to be a professional at this sort
of an event. Um, You're you are not supposed to be.
You know. The only the only actions I will tell
outside of reporting at these events is to render medical aid,
which I think is a general responsibility everybody has if
(43:05):
they're able to. Um. But you don't, you don't take
part in you know, you know, none of the people
shooting fireworks offward journalists. People were just filming. Um. And
I think as long as people make that, as long
as the people out there filming, these citizen journalists are
are being journalists, um, they should be treated as such
(43:26):
under the law. Um. And it's it's very I think
it's it's something everyone needs to be concerned about that
we have both state and federal law enforcement kind of
peeking and pushing it around the edges of the legal
protections journalists and joy to try to scare them as
much as possible. That should really concern everybody. Oh, it
(43:47):
sounds really scary to be there in the midst of
all this. Yeah, it's interesting. It's really interesting. You know.
It's it's a lot of PTSD in the streets of
Portland because all of the protesters who have been out
regularly have have accrued a decent amount of trauma because
it is traumatic being subject to that kind of the
kind of fighting that's been happening in the streets. It's
(44:09):
it's traumatic to be subject to that kind of police violence,
to watch them throwing people to the ground and beating
them with sticks. To have so many fucking flash bangs
explode next to your face, um, to have all that
tear gas and abandoned a sustained way like this. Yeah,
it sucks you up and we're all like all the
journalists definitely, especially the ones who have been out the most,
(44:30):
are like dealing with um, pretty significant trauma. A lot
of therapists are going to make a good living off
the Portland Press Corps after this. UM. But I am
you know, I'm really uh, I'm really proud of the
journalists in Portland because a lot of people who I
don't think ever had any sort of ambition or plan
to cover conflict UM have really risen to the occasion
(44:53):
in a very difficult situation. UM. You know, Corey Ellie
as primary beat was like he covered homelessness on like
the streets of Portland's UM. He's been, you know, doing
a lot of frontline work and and is you know,
currently taking a break because of the felony charges against
him and because the police stole all of his equipment
and aren't giving it back. But he's done incredible work.
You can find him on Twitter at the real Corey Eliot.
(45:16):
Tuck Woodstock at t U c K. Woodstock has also
done you know, they've done some really incredible reporting on
the ground. They're there most nights. Alex Olinsky UM has
done really great work for the Mercury Garrison. This we
were one of you know, the on the one of
the first couple of nights, I was out there UM
(45:36):
my colleague and I meet this like this young man
UM who it was very clearly very very new to
UH journalism period Um and you know, part like it
had been doing some UH data journalism, but I think
it was new to like street work, and you know,
it was just kind of out because the protests and
riots were starting in Portland, and he kind of shadowed
(45:57):
my partner and I for a couple of nights, and
he's been out in the street almost every night that
this has been happening since he's sucked down on an
incredible amount of tear gas and it's just like I've
the more I've learned about him, the more I impressed
I am, because he's he's like seventeen years old and
a parkour instructor and just the most the the squirreliest
(46:19):
like it like wiliest report, like street reporter I think
I've ever witnessed with my own eyes, just incredible at
getting in getting amazing shots and then running like funk
from the cops. When it becomes clear that it's time
to run like from the cops, park skills to get away.
He absolutely does. You should see it. He's awesome. He's
(46:40):
so good flips over their heads yes, yeah, I mean
not quite that, but like over fences and ship. Yeah.
You can find him at at Hungry bow Tie on Twitter. Um,
and he does. He puts out some amazing videos. Like again,
the first couple of nights he was kind of like
hanging around us and he's just been like clearly doesn't
have anything left to learn from the likes of me. Um.
(47:03):
I've wound up following him a few times lately just
because he's he's gotten so good at this sort of ship. Um.
So yeah, Garrison's a great follow Um. Yeah. Sergio Almost,
who has been assaulted by the police and a couple
of occasions, is a great local reporter, one of those
like whenever folks are out for the first time and
(47:25):
asking like where they should be at the proach, go
find Sergio. Um, you can find him at Mr Almost.
He's yeah, just a just a wonderful journalist. Yeah. So
I mean, I'm i'm, I'm, I'm leaving out some folks
that I'm going to be Oh yeah, and you can
find my own stringers, like the folks that I've been
working with and who have been doing some independent reporting
(47:46):
themselves at atty absurdist on Twitter. Um. They put out
great videos, UM, and put out a really interesting article
that I want to talk about right now about the
President's recent declaration about statues and ship protecting American Monuments
Executive Order thirty three Protecting American Monuments, Memorial Statues, and
Combating Recent criminal Violence. We'll have a link to the
(48:09):
article they wrote. UM. It's a medium post, but they
put together it's a very good breakdown of what this
executive order does. But this is essentially Trump's So clearly,
this situation on the streets nationwide has kind of gotten
away from the President, and this is his this is
his attempt to do something about it. UM. And the
(48:30):
gist of it is that he's declaring all statues and
monuments in the country to basically be federal property. UM.
Like regardless even if it's not a federal no, even
if it's not UM, and it's a very illegal order. UM.
The statues don't even have to be government property. UM.
(48:51):
They're just statues any person that counterpoint law and order. Yeah, yeah,
that's really his argument. And like it's it's it's interesting.
There's a lot that's fascinating because, like in the justification
for why this crackdown is necessary, he notes, anarchists and
left wing extremists have sought to advance a fringe ideology
(49:11):
that paints the United States of America is fundamentally unjustined
have sought to impose that ideology and Americans through violence
and mob intimidations. Uh. And then he goes on to
list things that these anarchists and left wing extremists have
done as including killed an assaulted government officers as well
as business owners defending their property. That does not happened.
Not a single, not a single case of this has happened. Uh. Now,
(49:34):
some right wing extremists have absolutely murdered some cops uh.
And some right wing extremists have driven into crowds, recently
killing a person in Seattle, UM. But no left wing
anarchists have murdered cops or business owners during this UM.
But that's one of the justifications for like why federal
agencies not. So it's not only that like federal law
(49:55):
enforcement and is going to like go after anyone who
sucks up any kind of monument it um. But Trump
announces in this that if city and state governments don't
protect public monuments, memorials, and statues from destruction in vandalism, um,
the federal government will withhold federal support from state and
(50:17):
local law enforcement agencies. Um. So they're threatening state and
local governments with pulling federal dollars away from law enforcement
if those governments don't protect not just actual like monuments
that are government property of some sort, but just statues
in general. Yeah, so that's some problem. I would say,
I'm not I'm not in love with this, But it's
(50:40):
also like I think the president kind of knows any
At this point, the court battle over whether or not
this is even legal um won't be settled before the election,
and it might know and it doesn't matter. He can
just say something. He will just say it, and it
doesn't matter if there's truth to it or if anything
he's or if said he says has merits. It's just
(51:01):
something he gets to say and people. Yeah, maybe presidents
shouldn't be able to do executive orders. Maybe maybe not.
I believe he railed against executive orders when the president
was Obama. I believe, I believe. I know that for
a fact. So like when there's like a president, you
(51:22):
like what they do with their powers good. When there's
a president you don't like, it's bad. Um, but presidents
are still good. Like that we have them. Is that
we're landing on, Like maybe like maybe we should just
not get rid of like not have presidents. It seems maybe, yeah,
that I would be okay with that. Or statues also,
let's get rid of them too, yeah, statues of anything. Ever,
(51:48):
So I don't know either. This is this is where
we are, This is where I am, um, I and
like there's so much I want to say, and part
of why it's kind of hard for me to put
this together. I'm trying to put together an article on
it and writing is really I find that after one
of these nights when it's like a serious, when it's
(52:08):
a when it it goes out like this, because it
will usually be sometimes six seven straight hours of violence, Um,
it's like a good forty eight to seventy two hours
before it's like actually I can actually write again. I
can put that too, um and not just right about um,
not just right about police violence, but like write about
(52:29):
anything like it's like it's it's it's physically difficult to
like focus my brain, which is part of why I'm
not out as often as because I have jobs to
do and they require me being able to write. Um. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, yeah, You've mentioned this a couple of times,
but uh, yeah, the toll on mental health and physical
(52:51):
well being with this kind of extended yeah, trauma, Uh,
it is very real. Uh. And it makes sense that
you have a hard time sitting down to write and
we're going anything. I mean, I think people are experiencing
that anyway right now. Uh. And this is is amplifies that. Yeah,
and it's I it's not normally it's not normally a
(53:16):
problem from me. I've i've like so for an idea
of just like the severity of this again, I've I've
covered real fucking worse and and this, um, this is
this is fucking me up. Um And it's not as bad.
Obviously no one has died, so clearly it is not
as bad. But in terms of the actual the physical
(53:38):
shock to the system. Um, you know, I'm interested in
what's actually happening to our brains from the sheer repeated
exposure to things like flash bangs at very that are
not meant to be fired into groups of people at
you know, at close range. Because one thing they found
from my soldiers in Iraq and stuff just from like
shooting the heavier weaponry rockets and stuff. Um, if you
(53:59):
do that enough, it does have it. It It causes
some like CTE like symptoms um And obviously again nothing
that we're being exposed to is quite that powerful, but
there's also so much of it. I wouldn't be surprised
if there is. I don't know what's happening to us basically,
and like that with all of these munitions. Even the
smoke that they like, the non tear gas smoke is
(54:20):
carcinogenic and you're breathing clouds of it. Like there's so
much ship that is being pumped into crowds that we
don't have any data on the long term effects of.
I mean also the tear gas. I don't know what
the studies are into it, but it's looking like it's
not great. You well, but tear gas specifically on women
and menstruation um and and what it does to your
(54:44):
body uh and affects your menstruation or if somebody happens
to be with child and all of that. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
there's a I yeah, there's a lot of research that
still needs to be done on how this ship is
affecting people. Um, before you shoot it on people. Yeah,
(55:07):
maybe before you shoot it on people. I don't know.
I'm a little bit of a not firing things into
crowds of people that we don't know how will affect
those crowds of people. Also, especially if like crowds at
their homes basically like this is their neighborhood. Yeah. Just
you like you're talking about like you've been you've been
war zones and stuff like that. Um, that was there's
(55:29):
something to be said about like the effect the psychological
effects something like that has on I'm going here to
cover this versus I'm going down the street from my
home to cover this. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like I'm
almost at a loss just because like it's it's it's
got you know. One of the things that's sucked it
up is that it's hard to talk about anything else.
(55:50):
It's hard to like maintain my relationships. Um, it's hard
to like be a person. Um. And like everyone I
know who's covering this is kind of deal with that
same problem. And like, I also feel kind of bad
about focusing on the journalist because this is obviously I
have great sympathy for the protesters, and they're all dealing
with in some ways an even worse version of this
because they don't have even the minimal protections the press enjoy. UM.
(56:13):
But it's just that's the crew I know the best,
right like part of you know, partly for their own protection.
I don't spend a huge amount of time talking to
individual protesters at these events because I don't know who
the fox monitoring my ship and I don't want to
like expose people to stuff. But I I talked to
all the journalists a lot, so you know, they're the
ones that I have the most detailed conversations about mental
health with um, and like we're all funked up at
(56:36):
the moment um. It's not great. Well, we appreciate you
and the work you're doing and are concerned for you,
but no, you are doing important stuff. But yeah, it's
it's complicated. Yeah m hm, well um, yeah, is that
(56:58):
it for us today? I think that's it for us today.
Thank you again, Robert for doing all of this. Yeah,
we're we're going to have in the in the notes
for this episode will have links to all of the
other Portland journalists that I recommend following if you want
to keep up on this. And they also all have
donation cash apps and whatnot. You know, most of them
(57:20):
are working independently, uh and and could use your money.
Um if you have extra two spare not made but
them will include all of their links. Um. And also
we will include a link to that article that um
my my stringers wrote about Trump's executive order. So yeah, okay,
check out all of those things you just mentioned. Also,
(57:41):
you can find us online at worst your pod, on
Instagram and Twitter and you'll see us there to our handles.
We don't need to push that, but you know, be cool, guys,
be cool. If if you need to chill out and
relax a little bit, maybe google a picture of Jay R.
(58:03):
Bolsaaro clearly dying. Um, it's so good. He's just he is.
You might need to put some dates in there too,
because every man in the world, it's unbelievable. He already
had coronavirus. Oh, he's on his like third or fourth
case of the rhona so far, just like completely depleted
(58:23):
like it looks it looked like a balloon that has
been let out like it's it's so unbelievable. Oh man, Yeah,
and enjoy that. We'll see you next weeks. Everything Still
(58:48):
Worst Year Ever is a production of I heart Radio.
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Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart Radio.
We Get Everything, So don't you get a rout up
(00:27):
to the last Welcome to the Worst Year Ever? A
podcast about you know and such. I'm Robert Evans and
(00:47):
my co hosts are Katie Still and Cody Johnston. And
today we're going to talk about what's been happening in
the city of Portland for the last forty days, because
the city has been through now more than forty straight
days of protesting and about like half of those days
have wound up being riots. And in fact, this specific
(01:09):
episode is coming after a five night a series of
five nights in which three riots were declared. Um, so
it's been it's been a real one in Portland. Wow.
You know what's interesting? Forty days. That is so many
days and you do not see it getting covered in
the mainstream media. Um. I know it's happening from you.
(01:31):
But I've said this before, but even people that I
know that live in Portland aren't aware of the extent
to what's happening downtown. You know, everyone's sheltering in place.
Just the media coverage of it is abysmal. Yeah, it
hasn't you know, there's a lot of great journalists out
there in the streets, but most of them aren't working
for huge outlets, you know. As part of one of
the things we're going to discuss a little bit later today.
(01:53):
The specific thing that just happened on the fourth of
July that I think needs to be covered is it
was essentially, we essentially saw a medieval siege in this
in the streets of an American city, UM waged between
like federal agents firing through murder slits and a fortified,
(02:16):
uh federal courthouse and being shot back at by protesters
armed with hundreds of illegal fireworks. Um. It was. It
was one of the craziest things I've ever seen, Like
federal agents dropping tear gas out of slits in the
walls of a courthouse, as like people with shields, you know,
clustered to stop the impact rounds being fired into the
(02:37):
crowds that folks could shoot fireworks back into the courthouse.
It was fucking It was nuts, like I've never I've
never seen anything like it. Um. I guess I would
say the closest thing I've seen to what we saw
in July four was is was actual warfare. Um. It
was about as close as you can get to actual
warfare without people shooting live rounds at each other. UM.
(03:00):
And things have escalated in some ways since then. And
what's what's happening in Portland is interesting for a number
of reasons, UM fundamentally, And this is something that's been
brought up to me by two of my stringers, you know,
who have been working with me in the streets of
Portland's UM. They go under Twitter at at forty Absurdest Brigade,
but UM. One of them, Elaine, pointed out to me
(03:21):
that like we're essentially seeing, um, what happens when a
huge chunk of a city loses its fear of its
police force. Because that's something that that has really been evident.
After so many nights of getting tear gassed and shot
at and hit with sticks and arrested, the people who
continue to show up at these protests aren't scared of
(03:43):
cops anymore. UM. And so the police and law enforcement
has had to escalate. And what's happened in the wake
of July four is they've been sending out federal agents,
UM who who are And essentially you're saying, like federal
agents who are indistinguishable from soldiers, UM, not wearing like
police riot armor, but wearing full combat armor, carrying him
(04:04):
four rifles, you know, charging out to grab and arrest
people for stuff like knocking on the door of the courthouse. Um.
Because they don't have any rules of engagement. You know,
the police have limitations on what they can do. The
federal agents don't. And so as the people of Portland
have lost their fear of the police and the police
have become less and less able to disperse the crowds
(04:27):
arrayed against them, um, the Feds are coming in more
and more to funk people up, um, and and doing
so using tactics that are that are straight up military
tactics that aren't like militarized. You're not talking about like
a lot of people, you know, You're not just saying like, oh,
the police have grenade launchers, so they're militarized. It's like no, no, no,
no no. The federal federal troops are essentially using military
(04:50):
tactics to try to break up these gatherings. UM. So
one of the things that you see with police is
police are supposed to announce something called an unlawful ass
simbly or a riot or something. They're supposed to make
announcements to the crowd, giving them a chance to disperse
before the use of munitions, before they start arresting people.
This is like there's a rhythm to a protest, even
(05:10):
a very aggressive one, even a riot that is predictable
because the police have have legal strictures on how they're
supposed to act that that that go in certain ways.
And this doesn't mean the police don't use success of force,
but it means there's certain things that they do because
their police, the federal agents have just been sort of
charging out of the courthouse without warning, grabbing people off
(05:33):
the street. Um. Like the police were doing things like
firing you know, tear guests and what not to clear
out people who had been you know, sometimes shooting off
fireworks and stuff. One of the things that caused a
federal sally, um two nights ago was a guy walked
up and he knocked on the door of the courthouse
and that's all he did, and they charged out into
the street. They cleared people up for blocks away. They
(05:55):
were tackling people to the ground, um, and they like
they tackled this guy, grabbed him and dragged back into
the courthouse and my, uh, my employee on the ground.
A lane who has seen a lot of street action
over the last couple of weeks and has has no
fear of tear gas or even impact rounds or night
sticks from the police, UM was terrified because like it
(06:16):
was this there was no no ability to predict what
they were going to do, which is kind of like
when you're when you're prosecuting a war. Like one of
the things they have to train soldiers to do in
our military that makes them effective in a combat situation
is the ability to engage in and display like relentless
aggression because the goal is always to ensure the enemy
(06:38):
never has any chance to get on a stable footing. Um.
It's constant disruption. So the unpredictability, the inability for them
to formulate an effective strategy, like that's how you that's
how you deal with an enemy in a car and
and like a combat situation, that kind of aggression and
that sort of that sort of meter of aggression um,
which is not how police are supposed to in gay
(07:00):
and and not how police engage with the crowd. For
all of the critiques of the Portland Police Bureau their
behavior even when it was illegal, uh, and we'll talk
about that a bit, because they did break the law
on a number of occasions. It was predictable. Um, you
could you could start to understand, Okay, this is going
to happen, the police will react in this way or
one of these ways. There was no kind of predicting,
(07:21):
Like the federal troops were rushing out of the courthouse
to arrest and and grab and tackle people sometimes when
no discernible action had been taken by the crowd because
there's no restrictions on their behavior, um and so you
you're seeing what you're seeing in the streets of Portland
is it started with militarized police meeting a crowd that
(07:42):
was willing to willing to kind of meet them with
insurgent tactics, with military tactics and not with um the
kind of military tactics I think the crowd was the
police were expecting, but with a lot of stuff that
looked would have been more at place, you know, in
a medieval conflict, um and or you know, like fa
lanxes and stuff like that. So even going further back
(08:03):
than that. But like but like you you saw the
crowd adopting these sort of organized military tactics um in
order to deal with a police force that was utilizing
variations of those of those same tactics. UM. And what
you've seen now is federal troops who have come in
and essentially, you know, use the word troops. We're talking
about U. S. Marshals, We're talking about department with Homeland
(08:24):
security officers, UM. But we're talking about people who are
visually indistinguishable from soldiers and carrying the same weaponry as soldiers.
So they're not packing just the non lethals. They're packing
them for assault rifles and ship Now, UM, you're seeing
them bring in because you know, police tactics are are militarized,
but in a lot of cases, you know, you're still
looking at kind of like more ancient military tactics because
(08:47):
at the end of the day, when you have police
in a riot line confronting each other, you have two
groups of people armed with melee weapons primarily like like
coming into conflict with each other, a lot of them
carrying shields and sticks and stuff. So it has it's militarized,
but it has more in terms of like what you
actually see on the ground, it has more in common
with you know, what people would have experienced fighting. You know,
(09:08):
a few centuries ago than it does with modern military tactics,
and now that that that has gone to the point
where the police can't disperse these crowds effectively. Um, federal
agents are using very modern military tactics, the kind of stuff,
like the kind of literal physical tactics, um, that you
would more expect to see in in an active war
(09:31):
zone than than what police are supposed to be doing. Um,
it's gotten very strange. It sounds like an appropriate way
to be spending the Fourth of July weekend, citizens protesting
and you know, feeling like it was the way people
fought hundreds of years ago. Um. Yeah, the videos that
(09:52):
you sent us were very intense. Yeah. Yeah, we'll play
a little clip from that right here, when there was
this was the moment at which there was essentially just
a straight up siege of this. So, so for an
idea of what downtown Portland is like, you have the
Justice Center, which is um, the police headquarters in the jail,
and it's next to a federal courthouse, and so the
(10:13):
Justice Center is guarded by normal cops. The federal courthouse
is guarded by DHS agents, Homeland Security and essentially military dudes,
you know, that's how they look at operate UM, and
you had this crowd of a thousand or so people
gather around both um kind of drunk. A lot of
people were kind of drunk. It was the fourth and
they had a ton of fireworks and a ton of
(10:35):
really illegal fireworks. But it's easy to get them because
there's nothing that's illegal in Washington. So people just drive
up to Washington, buy a bunch of illegal fireworks, come
down to Portland. And this was happening all over. Look,
it seems like all over the country people have the
access to illegal fireworks. Another segment. So in Portland, they
just started firing hundreds of illegal fireworks directly at the
(10:56):
courthouse and the Justice Center. UM. And it was really
it was. There were some great moments where like you
could see people who were in the jail like cheering
and waving and like sticking their fists in the air
because they were getting like the fireworks were exploding at
their windows. UM. So they gotta they got a show,
and they seemed to be enjoying it. But people also,
you know, it was it was a pretty chill despite
(11:20):
the reckless use of fire the fireworks, it was pretty chill. UM.
The crowd was, and there wasn't a lot of people
pushing towards the actual buildings themselves, just kind of shooting
at their facades. And these are gigantic concrete buildings. Um,
there was no no real there was no danger of
the fireworks doing any damage to them. Then the police
brought out their their sound system and started telling people
(11:40):
not to shoot at the Federal Courthouse, which guaranteed that
that's all people were going to want to do for
the rest of the Yeah, and the crowd then clustered.
They gassed everyone once and so the cloud crowd began
clustering just around the Federal Courthouse and firing into like
the plywood they'd put up over the windows and trying
to shoot in through them murder slits that the the
(12:01):
agents had cut so that they can shoot out at
the crowd. Um. And that that, you know, kind of
culminated in what what Yeah, what looked very much like
a fucking medieval siege, just with fireworks and fucking paintball uh,
pepper ball rounds and rubber bullets and ship It was
very strange. Um. I want to play you a little
clip from that. Yeah, you can see here one of
(12:24):
the murder slates medieval time, I think, So that's here
they're scooting out from the tres. So we definitely have
like an old fashioned medieval seeds to sort of proud
getting their sem. Uh. You see a proud getting the
shields to the front. You see the defenders firing at
(12:45):
a murder hole. You see fire, you know, pilots shot
into the thing. This is Jesus Christ. So yeah, like
that's I don't even know like what to say about
it to a certain extent because it's so surreal to
see this, Like I spent you know, we after this,
(13:07):
the police dispersed the crowd from the Justice Center area,
and the crowd spent hours kind of you know, running
battle with the cops um, and there was a lot
of like it got pretty intensely violent. Like it was
weird because this was the best the mood has been
from the crowd. Like everyone's morale was really high because
people were I think really excited about how well they
(13:29):
were doing it staying together and reforming and not getting
dispersed by the police. Um. But the police were unbelievably
angry and we're beating the ship out of people. Like
when they would get close. They were hitting them with truncheons.
I watched at one point they grabbed a man and
dragged him on his back across the asphalt into a
cloud of tear gas to arrest him. They fucking stabbed
(13:51):
the tires out of a van that was handing out snacks,
and they didn't arrest the driving it. They just stabbed
as tires like it was wild. The issue wasn't with
the man, he is but a man. It's with the car.
It's with the van fires, it's with the BLM snack van.
They fucking hated that van. And it was like they
(14:14):
were doing ship like gassing the crowd and then firing
rubber bullets and foam bullets into the smoke, so like
they clearly can't see what they're shooting at. Their just
shooting in to the crowd with impact munitions, which you're
supposed to be very carefully usually supposed to fire these
at the ground to bounce them up into people. You're
not supposed to shoot people directly with them. They were
just shooting into the munitions, being an example of like
(14:38):
rubber bullets, rubber bullets, foam bullets, pepper balls. These are
all impact munitions. Yeah, it does real damage. So it
was it was it was pretty intense to experience. UM,
and it was just like you know, we've had we've
had dozens of nights of a of a not dissimilar tempo,
usually less fireworks, some fireworks, but less fireworks. But um,
(15:01):
this keeps happening every single week. You know, the first
two weeks after George Floyd's murder, this happened something like
this happened pretty much every night, and then since then
it's at least been every three or four days there's
been a night like this. Um. Sometimes the fewer people,
but like that intensity, the fact that you still are
pulling crowds of a thousand people is wild and incredible,
(15:27):
you know. Yeah, to keep people showing up every night
or most nights like this. Yeah, and there's you know,
the nights afterwards it was more like a hundred hundred
and fifty people that showed up. But it's still this
like you know, it's keeping this like heartbeat alive, I guess, um,
And I think there's a lot of you know, there's
(15:47):
a lot there's there's some criticisms folks including me, will
make about like the decision to continually rally at the
Justice Center because tactically it is a terrible place to
get into a fight with the police. They can surround
you very easily. Um, they can tear gas the ship
out of you very easily. UM. It's not Um, it's
not a great defensible position. And the fact that the
(16:08):
Feds are next door creates additional issues because now people
are getting federal charges. The folks who are being arrested
by the Feds. You know, when the cops arrest you,
your charges are generally going to go up that night.
Usually you'll be out the next day. Um. A lot
of folks just get released with a citation. Um. The
Feds have been keeping people in jail for two three
days before anyone even finds out their charges. Um. And
(16:30):
then those charges are again federal charges. So people are
getting you know, the chances are that they will get
much more prison higher prison sentences when this finally comes out.
And the Feds are also keeping their ship, keeping their phones,
keeping their house keys, keeping their wallets as evidence. It's
kind of a bad tactical decision to involve. And you
had on on July four, you had people with bullhorns
(16:50):
being like, when we get back because the crowd eventually
marched back to the Justice Center after like three hours
of fighting and reforming in the streets, made its way
back and reoccupied the justice which has never happened before.
But there were people like begging folks in the crowd,
don't funk with the courthouse again, Like we we can't.
We we probably shouldn't try to start a fight with
both the Feds and the local police at the same time.
(17:12):
Like this might not be the best the best Tacticum,
that seems well reasoned. Yeah, so we'll see what happens next.
But um, it's been fucking surreal and it's Um, I
don't think we've seen the biggest rallies we're going to
see in Portland this year. And I don't think we've
seen the most police or law enforcement violence we're going
(17:32):
to see this year. No, I don't think we have either.
We're in such a weird lull. I don't know. It
feels like things still feel tents, that there's stuff crackling
beneath the surface. It does not seem like police seem
um cowed by people or by the potential of you
(17:57):
know that we have as a actively too to uprise
and to protest because we're continuing to see police violence everywhere. Um. Yeah,
so I agree with you. I don't. I don't. I
think it's the end of it. We have to take
a quick ad break. Oh yeah, you know what won't
(18:17):
fire impact munitions blindly into smoke filled crowd? Wow, don't
say yeah, Raytheon? Well no, Raytheon's new knife missile cody
is the opposite of firing blindly into a crowd. It's
firing a knife missile at exactly the place with precisions. Yeah,
(18:38):
they would have, they would have. They wouldn't have missed
those murder holes. No, they wouldn't have. Together everything back
from the ad ad at, Yeah, we share. Are get mad?
(19:02):
I like thought, Katie mad mad. I'm just I'm living.
Um yeah, so I want to. I wanted to play
you y'all because I like how you said you and
then corrected yourself to y'all. Thank you. It's inclusive. Um. So,
like when these ships started in Portland, there was like
(19:22):
a lot of local coverage about what was happening, and
there you know, it was even some Uh, there wasn't
a huge amount of national coverage just because what was
going on in Minneapolis was so much crazier. UM. But
as Portland has wound up having like kind of one
of the longer um running protest movements. In the wake
of all this, like we've gotten, local media has had
(19:44):
to pull back a bit just because their budgets can't
cope with it. And you know, they've done a varying
levels of quality jobs in terms of actually handling the story.
Some of them have sucked, some of them have been incredible. UM.
But uh, we we have gotten. When we've got national coverage,
it's tended to look more like this, And I want
to play you. I want to actually go through this
(20:05):
whole Fox News segment. So this is like a yeah, Mark,
that will help my migraine, Robert. Yeah, this is Fox
and Friends, and it's Fox and Friends interviewing uh, the
Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Mark Morgan m about the
fourth of July riot in UH in Portland. And I
(20:27):
find this really UM, I mean I find it. I
find it infuriating and inaccurate, but I also find it interesting.
So we're gonna go through it and take some time
to pause bit by bit and talk about what what
he's saying and what the truth is this is a
fun news segment. Yeah, this will be interesting. Here we
go violence rocking Portland overnight. Police declaring a riot yet again,
(20:51):
as the city sees is thirty eight straight day of unrest.
Border Patrol now called in to assist here with an update.
Is acting CBP com Sure Mark Morrigan, Good morning, Mr Commissioner.
The third time this week you've had to declare a
riot in Portland's what's going on there? And one thing
I want to correct is that he did the CBPP.
(21:11):
He didn't declare a riot. The police eventually did declare
a riot. The FEDS, which is you know, include CBP
and and all of these other agencies we've been talking about,
started dumping munitions before there was any kind of declaration
of anything because they don't have to declare. They can
just they can just shoot shipped off. Good do you
know That's that is a point to be made. We'll
tell you griff. And these are not protesters. These are
(21:34):
criminals who got the organized and planned and actually brought weapons.
They brought a shield, they brought water bottles. Rock I
can tell you Number one is very funny to me,
with the number of weapons used against the protesters that
he's so angry. They brought shields, They brought water bottles.
(21:56):
I haven't seen any frozen water bottles, and I have
seen some have seen thousands of water bottles thrown at
the cops. They all splatter open upon hitting. Because they're
not a weapon. It's a party. It's the fourth of July. People,
water fights are cultural cannon. They brought weapons. I love
(22:16):
the obviously, I love the shield thing, but also like,
these aren't protesters. These people organized, they had a plan.
They didn't just march around and go back home, not
accomplishing anything. It's it's great lasers weapons with the intent
to destroy the Federal building. Lasers, lasers, tons of like
(22:42):
like laser pointers. Yeah, like laser pointers they shine. Those
are very threatening. Yeah, and they're not the I will
tell you there are laser pointers that can do that
will do permanent eye damage. These are not the ones
being used. No police officers anywhere in the country have
suffered any eye damages or result of lasers being deployed.
Um and all of the lasers until the police started
(23:05):
shooting people, at which point folks shine lazers and face
masks to try to blind the people shooting them temporarily. Um, yeah,
that's I would say. So the lasers were being used
to blind cameras. Um. Yeah, so we're not talking like
those little laser pointers you buy for your cat. No, no, no,
they're heavier duty than that. But they're not the ones
that are like, you know, you get the heavy, the
(23:26):
really big ones that you can like you can light
cigarettes with and if you shine them in someone's eyes,
it will suck them up forever. Um, these are not those.
People are not shooting those into faces. No police officers
have been had their vision damaged, um by the fucking lasers,
which I would compare to maybe the flashbanks that they
throw at people, even though they're not supposed to throw
(23:46):
them at people and shoot directly at people's bodies, which
have exploded within inches of my body and a number
of occasions and definitely have have had an impact on
my vision and hearing. Um whatever, it's fine, it's fine.
I'm so sorry they brought yields. Yeah, my fucking heads pounding. Um.
So that's all very funny. It's very funny that he
(24:08):
says that they had the attempt to destroy the federal building,
the federal courthouse and downtown Portland is again, it is
a fortress. It is a massive concrete structure. None of
these none of the fireworks did any kind of damage.
None of them could have done any kind of damage.
You would have had to bring military grade weaponry to
do any meaningful damage to anything but the plywood. And
(24:30):
I don't think they even damaged the plywood. Seriously, one
person broke a window. The idea that it would have
been possible for this crowd to destroy that courthouse, um,
is absurd because it's basically a castle. Well, it's either
a lie or stupid. They knocked aggressively. I thought you
were talking about that was the next night. That was
the next night. Uh, someone just knocked on the door
(24:52):
and got arrested. Yeah, you could tell they meant business
with that knock. Yeah, yeah, it was an assault knock. Um,
all right, let's listen to our friends continue. And I've
said it before, I don't care what your ideological police are.
Your political is wrong. And I can tell you for one,
(25:12):
I'm glad that this president United States understands importance of
law order. And then it's a cornerstone of American society.
What we saw in Portland last night was criminal. And
it's funny that he says violence is wrong because again
the police were repeatedly pumping impact munitions blindly into a
crowd and dragging people across the ground and beating them
(25:33):
with sticks. So I'm interested for this, for for Mark
Morgan's condemnation of the Portland police for that, but I
didn't hear it. Yeah, he says he doesn't care about
our what do you say, ideological? Ideological? Yeah, he does.
He cares, he cares what your well. I mean, he
(25:53):
immediately invoked the president. So I think you have a
little bit to do with some sort of ideology. Yeah,
I think he might have an ideology. It's possible, Mr Krisher.
The presidents have warned that this element, there are parts
of these groups that are terrorists, perhaps that they're literally
trying to do pure HARMONSI isn't about making a statement.
(26:17):
You have some news you can share with us now
about the arrest on Friday and the attack on the
Hatfield Thrial courthouse. What is that absolutely group? Earliest morning?
In fact, I just got this situation report a few
minutes ago. Is that one of the criminals that were
actually trying to assault one of the CDP employees while
he was being arrested. The report right now is is
(26:38):
telling us that a pipe bomb, a fused and sinary device,
and a machete was actually discovered during that search. Now,
this is really interesting. It wasn't but if there was
a if there was a machete in the possession of
someone there, they were violating no law because it is
the possession of unconcealed machete is completely unregulated in the
(27:02):
state of Oregon and completely legal. The pipe bomb thing
is real funny because I found the picture that they
posted to this and number one. For whatever reason, they
posted the picture of the pipe bomb with a bunch
of tissue paper and zip ties, which was a weird call.
And also, it's not a pipe bomb. It's very it's
(27:23):
very clear. It is a pipe with uh two bits
of like metal um uh plugs like screwed into either end.
I can see how someone might initially think, oh, that
might be a pipe bomb, but there's no whole drilled
in it, there's no fuse, there's no evidence of any
explosives at all. And what it actually is and what
(27:43):
it appears to be, I should say, um, based on
my experience going to a whole lot of protests and riots.
Is people make ship like this all the times to
break windows. It's a window breaking thing. It is a
thing somebody mads that they can fucking crack a window
very easily. And there's no evidence that it's a pipe bomb.
That's surprising to me that they would report that it's
(28:04):
a pipe bomb, though, because Fox News is pretty diligent
about checking these things. And you'll notice you'll notice the
language that the CBP commissioner uses because he says he
after saying it's a pipe bomb, he says, okay, but
he goes back and says, based on the report that
we're reading right now, um, because at some point they're
(28:25):
going to walk this back, because there will. My suspicion
is that they will have no evidence of any actual
explosives and thus that this was not a pipe bomb. Um.
So you know, you've got to make sure that everyone knows,
oh what I you know, based on the report I've read,
they had a pipe bomb, and then you never have
to correct it. They're not going to have him back
on Fox News to be like, ah, you know what,
it was just a guy who was ready to fucking
break some windows because he wanted to loot some Louis
(28:47):
Vuitton or whatever. UM. Very frustrating, but I'm interested in
their fucking analysis of that pipe bomb with no fuse
in it at all. Uh, that'll be fun anyway. Let's
contin in. You think about that, Griff, think about the
deadly consequences from these criminal actions, no one, Let's just
get out there and see some video. There's a video
(29:08):
where a woman is overheard confronting one of the agents
there and she refers to it as Hey, I know
this game. I'm on a city sidewalk. There's nothing that
you can do. And she goes further and says, why
don't you go back where you came from? White boy?
That's what this is, Griff, It's a game to see.
I love this. I love this because he immediately says,
you know, we need to talk about the deadly consequences
(29:29):
of this. And then those consequences are somebody called a
Copple white boy, while standing on a sidewalk and asserting
her right to be on the sidewalk of a city
that she lives in. That's the deadly consequences here. Very fun.
Love love this guy. It's a deadly game. But series
this is about law and order. We must be united.
(29:50):
Where are the local political leaders griff standing up saying
this is uncomfortable, this is wrong and these individuals should
see some desists and be arrested. Where that? Where are they? Now?
That's that's funny because in the City of Portland, our
mayor has stood by the police pretty pretty significantly um
(30:10):
and has made only the most milk toast kind of complaints.
And so did our our city Commissioner, Joanne Hardesty. She
wrote a real mean letter to the police after they
beat the piss out of a bunch of people last Tuesday. UM.
But that letter she wrote the day after she was
like one of the deciding votes to approve the new
police budget for the next several months, so uh gave
(30:32):
up any sort of leverage that she had to the
police and then said that they were mean. Um. Because again,
local political leaders in Portland are terrified of the police
union UM and usually terrified to take any action against it. Now,
what I will say, if you're trying to look at
how popular these protests are, I don't have perfect data
for you, but there's a current runoff election for the
Mayor of Portland between the current Mayor Ted Wheeler uh
(30:54):
and Sarah yann Rone who is his his like did
well enough in the election that there's a run off
in November. She was something like twenty points behind before
all this started, and now they are neck and neck. Um,
So that might suggest that there's actually quite a bit
of sympathy in the city of Portland's for the people
out protesting the police every night. Um, we'll see it
(31:15):
in November, I suppose troubling that a pipe bomb allegedly
was found along with thee So what will happen now
with that individuals and those that you're arresting there? That individuals, absolutely, Griffin,
that's where you said, this really is a whole of
government approach. So we had United States Marshal's Federal Protective
(31:38):
Service there ice HS I said, agents there, and the
FBI has committed a lot of resources to making sure
that these individuals are arrested, arrested and prosecuted to the
full extendaal law for the criminals that they are. We
are doing disservice to peaceful, lawful protesters when we call
these individual protesters, they're not they're criminal thugs with an agenda.
(32:01):
In the last second, Mr Commissioner, do you see this
being now you'll have to escalate the force that you're
already deploying. Look, we're we're going to escalate to the
use of force that's needed to repel these criminals and
apprehend them and prosecute them. But I can tell you
I've been doing this for twenty five years and this
(32:22):
president is behind us, and I'm glad that we have
an administration that understands the importance of law and order.
We're not walking away from our federal facilities like police departments,
having some communities, We're staying. Mr. Commissurance, Thanks for being Yeah,
so that's fun going on there. Yeah, that's going on there.
That guy really had a line to push about how
(32:43):
much he likes the president. I'm guessing because yeah, yeah,
I mean the coded language also, like we finally have
a president that backs us up here. You know, we
know what they're backing up also, criminals. Just the words
that they used to describe protesters. What are they doing? Okay,
I guess you shouldn't technically be firing fireworks out of
(33:04):
federal building. I think it is against the law. I do.
I do suspect it's against the law to shoot a
legal fireworks at a federal courthouse. I'll get that's not
everybody that's you know. And also they've been using the
same language for all of this. It's not just that
you know, um, but overall very impressed with their coverage. Yeah,
(33:32):
I couldn't say that with a straight face. It's very funny, um.
I it's funny, like the focus on the violence of
the protesters when the actual injuries um have been pretty
one sided. Uh and and and largely dealt out by
the police. The police like every every time they can
will post a video of like they posted one after
(33:53):
the July four that showed um burns on a guy's
on officers pants um from a firework and another officer
who was doused in paint UM and they're like, these
are just two examples of the kind of violence done
to our officers, and it's showing them. The journalists who
lost her eye, Yeah, I mean that was another city,
but they did mace one of our journalists and shove
(34:15):
him to the ground, and another journalist who was filming
and arrest got knocked down and beaten on the legs
with with trunchean's um. Several of us have been shot
with impact munitions. Um, I've had my pants burned by
a flash bang. Uh, which you know is I would
say at least comparable to what happened to that other
officers pants. No one is poured. I will say this,
(34:37):
I did not get covered in paint. Um. That is
that is a type of tremendous violence. That is a
unique experience of of of Portland police officers. So yeah,
Andy does well. Yeah, he wouldn't know it was something
else white and creamy. Um. Yeah, we have to take
another at break. I'm speaking of white and creamy. Yeah,
(34:59):
I get to you. Did you say speaking of something
white and creamy? I sure did, Katie one pump, one
cream pad, break together everything we're back. Oh my god,
(35:20):
I love cream. Um. No I don't. You don't, No,
not really. Um, I mean yeah, it's a I have.
I have complicated emotional feelings on the nature of cream. Um.
We'll get dig into that in another day. Yeah. So
I'm left like we're in a We're in this very
(35:43):
strange place in Portland where things seem to have escalated
to the high I can't imagine things escalating further. Then
they went on the fourth without gunfire. Um, most likely
gunfire from federal or even you know, local police, because
I think a lot of them are itching to be
able to do that. UM. I have trouble imagining things
(36:05):
escalating further. So in terms of how the movement continues here,
I can only see it moving laterally, right. You know,
we had you know, people going after different targets, not confronted,
you know, going after the Portland Police Association headquarters again. UM.
I could also see other tactics being adopted, but in
terms of physical confrontation of the police, it doesn't get
(36:26):
much more intense than having a fireworks fight with them,
Like yeah, uh yeah, I don't know, is there Um.
I know that we've we've mentioned this before and and
goals kind of evolve and change, But what is it
(36:46):
that people specifically want from Portland's Is this the dissolution
of the police department? Is it acknowledgement of um certain
officers there. I'm just curious. Yeah, as you know, morphs
and changes too. But I think of the folks I've
talked to, most of them, the minimum they wanted was
(37:07):
like fifty million taken out of the budget, and they
got about half that. UM. More common people want the
Portland Police Association dissolved. They don't want you know, they
do not want the police in Portland to have a union.
They want officers who have been involved in questionable shootings
to be prosecuted. UM. Pretty reasonable. Yeah. They want an
end too, and they've won actually an into a number
(37:29):
of the of the most problematic units in the Portland
Police bureau. So like the Gang Task Force, which is
responsible for a lot of shootings has been dissolved. Um.
And the Transit Police they're not getting funding, although the
funding has just been shifted to the Sheriff's Department for
the Transit police, who are responsible for a lot of
fucking with the houseless people. Uh. They are removing officers
(37:49):
from Portland's schools, which is a big win. UM. So
I think people want to see more of that. There's
more units they'd like to see dissolved. They'd like to
see stuff like, you know, don't just shift the funding
over to the Sheriff's Department for transit police, cut it entirely. Um.
I think most people who are out every night at
the Justice Center want the Portland Police completely dissolved and
(38:10):
replaced with something new. UM. That is probably the single
most common view, but at the very minimum, people want
to see the police much more defunded um, and want
to see them no longer sort of immune to the
consequences of their violence. Um. Yeah. And there's also a
general I think desire for charges to be dropped, um,
and not just charges against protesters, but journalists are getting charged.
(38:31):
I was just chatting with core Elia who um was
assaulted by the Portland Police early on in all this
was like thrown to the ground and maced in the
face for filming them um, and sued them as a result,
is brought them a civil suit and a couple of
weeks later, Uh, he was at a protest outside of
the one by the Portland Police Association and he recognized
(38:52):
the officer who I believe the one who maced him,
and he stated the officer's name on a live stream
and he was arrested very aggressively and is being charged
with two felony counts of assaulting a police officer, which
I can say conclusively is a lie by the Portland Police. Bear.
I'll testify in court to that I watched his arrest,
I filmed it. Um. There was no evidence of any
(39:12):
kind of aggression from Corey. Now police often have you know,
like in d C. If you struggle while handcuffed, you're
assaulting a police officer. So, um, we'll see what actually
is able to hold up in court. Um. But the
yield they struggled, they struggled while handcuffed violence. Um. They
(39:32):
clearly are are throwing these charges at Corey both because
you know he piste off a specific officer, um, but
also because they want to chill the free press in Portland.
And if you get even if their bogus charges, getting
felony charges against you completely changes your life. While you
are under them. You are not innocent until proven guilty.
(39:52):
You suffer immediate consequences as a result of having felony
charges against you. UM. So yeah, I mean it had
a chilling effect on me because I see, I would
see getting felony charges against me is not all that
far from a death sentence because one of the things
that will happen. I have a number of death threats
against me. I get them pretty regularly. Um. I carry
(40:14):
a firearm and rely on a firearm for self defense.
If I were to be charged with a felony Um,
they would come and take all of my firearms. And
not only that, but my name would become you know,
they would it would be a very public case. Um.
The Portland Police know where I live, and there are
cases of We just had an officer retire with full
pension who had been caught in photographs with a shrine
(40:35):
to Adolf Hitler. Um. There's a long documented history of
the Portland Police collaborating with groups like the Proud Boys
and Patriot Prayer in this city. Like emails between them,
you can read all this. UM, I have no I
have no doubt that my address would get out. UM.
So like that that has altered my coverage and where
I have gone and physically put myself while trying to
(40:55):
cover these protests. And that was the goal. You know,
their goal was to scare Journey listened to not and
they have had now a federal injunction put against them
that says they can't arrest journalists or demand that we disperse.
So that's good. I'm less worried now as a result
of that. UM. And on the fourth I felt generally
pretty safe, but they did target a couple of colleagues
of mine and another journalist live streamer got arrested. Because
(41:16):
there's now this debate between like what is a journalist?
You know, how many of these, like citizen reporters UM
really count as journalist And obviously the police want to
narrow a definition of journalists as possible UM. But mainstream
like the big local outlets and stuff, can't afford to
have reporters out in the street every nights. We're at
forty nights now. You know, even the local the local
(41:37):
press that's done the best job of covering this, like
the oregon Ian UM and will Emitt weekly or is
our Oregonian and the Mercury, which have both done I
think pretty good jobs, particularly the Mercury, of covering this
UM in the streets like they're not they're not able
to send people out every night, and neither is like
local news TV stations because it's just too there's too much.
So if you're a person who lives here and wants
(42:00):
to know what your police are doing, lets you know
what's happening in the streets of your city. You're very
reliant on these the citizen journalists UM, some of whom
have professional credential like a professional history, and some of
whom are very new to this. You're very reliant on
all of these people to actually know what's happening. Um.
And I think there's a reason we don't have a
strict legal definition of what makes a journalist as long
(42:21):
as these people aren't participating in the protests, um, which
I haven't seen any of them, do you. I I haven't
seen them carrying a sign or lighting things on fire.
They're just filming. And as long as they're doing that,
I don't see any reason not to consider them a
journalist legally. You know. Well, yeah, because journalism is different
now than it's ever been. Yeah, this is how people
get news and spread news. Um. And that's just the
(42:42):
reality of it. Yeah, you are, if you are going
to show up at a protest as a journalist, there
are some behavioral things that I think are incumbent upon you. Um,
in order to to be a professional at this sort
of an event. Um, You're you are not supposed to be.
You know. The only the only actions I will tell
outside of reporting at these events is to render medical aid,
which I think is a general responsibility everybody has if
(43:05):
they're able to. Um. But you don't, you don't take
part in you know, you know, none of the people
shooting fireworks offward journalists. People were just filming. Um. And
I think as long as people make that, as long
as the people out there filming, these citizen journalists are
are being journalists, um, they should be treated as such
(43:26):
under the law. Um. And it's it's very I think
it's it's something everyone needs to be concerned about that
we have both state and federal law enforcement kind of
peeking and pushing it around the edges of the legal
protections journalists and joy to try to scare them as
much as possible. That should really concern everybody. Oh, it
(43:47):
sounds really scary to be there in the midst of
all this. Yeah, it's interesting. It's really interesting. You know.
It's it's a lot of PTSD in the streets of
Portland because all of the protesters who have been out
regularly have have accrued a decent amount of trauma because
it is traumatic being subject to that kind of the
kind of fighting that's been happening in the streets. It's
(44:09):
it's traumatic to be subject to that kind of police violence,
to watch them throwing people to the ground and beating
them with sticks. To have so many fucking flash bangs
explode next to your face, um, to have all that
tear gas and abandoned a sustained way like this. Yeah,
it sucks you up and we're all like all the
journalists definitely, especially the ones who have been out the most,
(44:30):
are like dealing with um, pretty significant trauma. A lot
of therapists are going to make a good living off
the Portland Press Corps after this. UM. But I am
you know, I'm really uh, I'm really proud of the
journalists in Portland because a lot of people who I
don't think ever had any sort of ambition or plan
to cover conflict UM have really risen to the occasion
(44:53):
in a very difficult situation. UM. You know, Corey Ellie
as primary beat was like he covered homelessness on like
the streets of Portland's UM. He's been, you know, doing
a lot of frontline work and and is you know,
currently taking a break because of the felony charges against
him and because the police stole all of his equipment
and aren't giving it back. But he's done incredible work.
You can find him on Twitter at the real Corey Eliot.
(45:16):
Tuck Woodstock at t U c K. Woodstock has also
done you know, they've done some really incredible reporting on
the ground. They're there most nights. Alex Olinsky UM has
done really great work for the Mercury Garrison. This we
were one of you know, the on the one of
the first couple of nights, I was out there UM
(45:36):
my colleague and I meet this like this young man
UM who it was very clearly very very new to
UH journalism period Um and you know, part like it
had been doing some UH data journalism, but I think
it was new to like street work, and you know,
it was just kind of out because the protests and
riots were starting in Portland, and he kind of shadowed
(45:57):
my partner and I for a couple of nights, and
he's been out in the street almost every night that
this has been happening since he's sucked down on an
incredible amount of tear gas and it's just like I've
the more I've learned about him, the more I impressed
I am, because he's he's like seventeen years old and
a parkour instructor and just the most the the squirreliest
(46:19):
like it like wiliest report, like street reporter I think
I've ever witnessed with my own eyes, just incredible at
getting in getting amazing shots and then running like funk
from the cops. When it becomes clear that it's time
to run like from the cops, park skills to get away.
He absolutely does. You should see it. He's awesome. He's
(46:40):
so good flips over their heads yes, yeah, I mean
not quite that, but like over fences and ship. Yeah.
You can find him at at Hungry bow Tie on Twitter. Um,
and he does. He puts out some amazing videos. Like again,
the first couple of nights he was kind of like
hanging around us and he's just been like clearly doesn't
have anything left to learn from the likes of me. Um.
(47:03):
I've wound up following him a few times lately just
because he's he's gotten so good at this sort of ship. Um.
So yeah, Garrison's a great follow Um. Yeah. Sergio Almost,
who has been assaulted by the police and a couple
of occasions, is a great local reporter, one of those
like whenever folks are out for the first time and
(47:25):
asking like where they should be at the proach, go
find Sergio. Um, you can find him at Mr Almost.
He's yeah, just a just a wonderful journalist. Yeah. So
I mean, I'm i'm, I'm, I'm leaving out some folks
that I'm going to be Oh yeah, and you can
find my own stringers, like the folks that I've been
working with and who have been doing some independent reporting
(47:46):
themselves at atty absurdist on Twitter. Um. They put out
great videos, UM, and put out a really interesting article
that I want to talk about right now about the
President's recent declaration about statues and ship protecting American Monuments
Executive Order thirty three Protecting American Monuments, Memorial Statues, and
Combating Recent criminal Violence. We'll have a link to the
(48:09):
article they wrote. UM. It's a medium post, but they
put together it's a very good breakdown of what this
executive order does. But this is essentially Trump's So clearly,
this situation on the streets nationwide has kind of gotten
away from the President, and this is his this is
his attempt to do something about it. UM. And the
(48:30):
gist of it is that he's declaring all statues and
monuments in the country to basically be federal property. UM.
Like regardless even if it's not a federal no, even
if it's not UM, and it's a very illegal order. UM.
The statues don't even have to be government property. UM.
(48:51):
They're just statues any person that counterpoint law and order. Yeah, yeah,
that's really his argument. And like it's it's it's interesting.
There's a lot that's fascinating because, like in the justification
for why this crackdown is necessary, he notes, anarchists and
left wing extremists have sought to advance a fringe ideology
(49:11):
that paints the United States of America is fundamentally unjustined
have sought to impose that ideology and Americans through violence
and mob intimidations. Uh. And then he goes on to
list things that these anarchists and left wing extremists have
done as including killed an assaulted government officers as well
as business owners defending their property. That does not happened.
Not a single, not a single case of this has happened. Uh. Now,
(49:34):
some right wing extremists have absolutely murdered some cops uh.
And some right wing extremists have driven into crowds, recently
killing a person in Seattle, UM. But no left wing
anarchists have murdered cops or business owners during this UM.
But that's one of the justifications for like why federal
agencies not. So it's not only that like federal law
(49:55):
enforcement and is going to like go after anyone who
sucks up any kind of monument it um. But Trump
announces in this that if city and state governments don't
protect public monuments, memorials, and statues from destruction in vandalism, um,
the federal government will withhold federal support from state and
(50:17):
local law enforcement agencies. Um. So they're threatening state and
local governments with pulling federal dollars away from law enforcement
if those governments don't protect not just actual like monuments
that are government property of some sort, but just statues
in general. Yeah, so that's some problem. I would say,
I'm not I'm not in love with this, But it's
(50:40):
also like I think the president kind of knows any
At this point, the court battle over whether or not
this is even legal um won't be settled before the election,
and it might know and it doesn't matter. He can
just say something. He will just say it, and it
doesn't matter if there's truth to it or if anything
he's or if said he says has merits. It's just
(51:01):
something he gets to say and people. Yeah, maybe presidents
shouldn't be able to do executive orders. Maybe maybe not.
I believe he railed against executive orders when the president
was Obama. I believe, I believe. I know that for
a fact. So like when there's like a president, you
(51:22):
like what they do with their powers good. When there's
a president you don't like, it's bad. Um, but presidents
are still good. Like that we have them. Is that
we're landing on, Like maybe like maybe we should just
not get rid of like not have presidents. It seems maybe, yeah,
that I would be okay with that. Or statues also,
let's get rid of them too, yeah, statues of anything. Ever,
(51:48):
So I don't know either. This is this is where
we are, This is where I am, um, I and
like there's so much I want to say, and part
of why it's kind of hard for me to put
this together. I'm trying to put together an article on
it and writing is really I find that after one
of these nights when it's like a serious, when it's
(52:08):
a when it it goes out like this, because it
will usually be sometimes six seven straight hours of violence, Um,
it's like a good forty eight to seventy two hours
before it's like actually I can actually write again. I
can put that too, um and not just right about um,
not just right about police violence, but like write about
(52:29):
anything like it's like it's it's it's physically difficult to
like focus my brain, which is part of why I'm
not out as often as because I have jobs to
do and they require me being able to write. Um. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, yeah, You've mentioned this a couple of times,
but uh, yeah, the toll on mental health and physical
(52:51):
well being with this kind of extended yeah, trauma, Uh,
it is very real. Uh. And it makes sense that
you have a hard time sitting down to write and
we're going anything. I mean, I think people are experiencing
that anyway right now. Uh. And this is is amplifies that. Yeah,
and it's I it's not normally it's not normally a
(53:16):
problem from me. I've i've like so for an idea
of just like the severity of this again, I've I've
covered real fucking worse and and this, um, this is
this is fucking me up. Um And it's not as bad.
Obviously no one has died, so clearly it is not
as bad. But in terms of the actual the physical
(53:38):
shock to the system. Um, you know, I'm interested in
what's actually happening to our brains from the sheer repeated
exposure to things like flash bangs at very that are
not meant to be fired into groups of people at
you know, at close range. Because one thing they found
from my soldiers in Iraq and stuff just from like
shooting the heavier weaponry rockets and stuff. Um, if you
(53:59):
do that enough, it does have it. It It causes
some like CTE like symptoms um And obviously again nothing
that we're being exposed to is quite that powerful, but
there's also so much of it. I wouldn't be surprised
if there is. I don't know what's happening to us basically,
and like that with all of these munitions. Even the
smoke that they like, the non tear gas smoke is
(54:20):
carcinogenic and you're breathing clouds of it. Like there's so
much ship that is being pumped into crowds that we
don't have any data on the long term effects of.
I mean also the tear gas. I don't know what
the studies are into it, but it's looking like it's
not great. You well, but tear gas specifically on women
and menstruation um and and what it does to your
(54:44):
body uh and affects your menstruation or if somebody happens
to be with child and all of that. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
there's a I yeah, there's a lot of research that
still needs to be done on how this ship is
affecting people. Um, before you shoot it on people. Yeah,
(55:07):
maybe before you shoot it on people. I don't know.
I'm a little bit of a not firing things into
crowds of people that we don't know how will affect
those crowds of people. Also, especially if like crowds at
their homes basically like this is their neighborhood. Yeah. Just
you like you're talking about like you've been you've been
war zones and stuff like that. Um, that was there's
(55:29):
something to be said about like the effect the psychological
effects something like that has on I'm going here to
cover this versus I'm going down the street from my
home to cover this. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like I'm
almost at a loss just because like it's it's it's
got you know. One of the things that's sucked it
up is that it's hard to talk about anything else.
(55:50):
It's hard to like maintain my relationships. Um, it's hard
to like be a person. Um. And like everyone I
know who's covering this is kind of deal with that
same problem. And like, I also feel kind of bad
about focusing on the journalist because this is obviously I
have great sympathy for the protesters, and they're all dealing
with in some ways an even worse version of this
because they don't have even the minimal protections the press enjoy. UM.
(56:13):
But it's just that's the crew I know the best,
right like part of you know, partly for their own protection.
I don't spend a huge amount of time talking to
individual protesters at these events because I don't know who
the fox monitoring my ship and I don't want to
like expose people to stuff. But I I talked to
all the journalists a lot, so you know, they're the
ones that I have the most detailed conversations about mental
health with um, and like we're all funked up at
(56:36):
the moment um. It's not great. Well, we appreciate you
and the work you're doing and are concerned for you,
but no, you are doing important stuff. But yeah, it's
it's complicated. Yeah m hm, well um, yeah, is that
(56:58):
it for us today? I think that's it for us today.
Thank you again, Robert for doing all of this. Yeah,
we're we're going to have in the in the notes
for this episode will have links to all of the
other Portland journalists that I recommend following if you want
to keep up on this. And they also all have
donation cash apps and whatnot. You know, most of them
(57:20):
are working independently, uh and and could use your money.
Um if you have extra two spare not made but
them will include all of their links. Um. And also
we will include a link to that article that um
my my stringers wrote about Trump's executive order. So yeah, okay,
check out all of those things you just mentioned. Also,
(57:41):
you can find us online at worst your pod, on
Instagram and Twitter and you'll see us there to our handles.
We don't need to push that, but you know, be cool, guys,
be cool. If if you need to chill out and
relax a little bit, maybe google a picture of Jay R.
(58:03):
Bolsaaro clearly dying. Um, it's so good. He's just he is.
You might need to put some dates in there too,
because every man in the world, it's unbelievable. He already
had coronavirus. Oh, he's on his like third or fourth
case of the rhona so far, just like completely depleted
(58:23):
like it looks it looked like a balloon that has
been let out like it's it's so unbelievable. Oh man, Yeah,
and enjoy that. We'll see you next weeks. Everything Still
(58:48):
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