Speaker 1: For most of the last decade, the city of Portland's
Speaker 1: national reputation was largely informed by the sketch TV series Portlandia.
Speaker 1: The show began airing in two thousand eleven, right at
Speaker 1: the start of the relevance of the word hipster, and
Speaker 1: portrayed Portland as something of a stereotypically loony liberal paradise,
Speaker 1: a place where people know the names of the chicken
Speaker 1: served in their restaurants. This image dogged the city until
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, in the beginning of the Trump Years.
Speaker 1: For millions of Americans, the first time they heard about
Speaker 1: Antifa or saw images of people in black block was
Speaker 1: from news footage of the street fights that grew increasingly
Speaker 1: endemic to Portland as the Trump Years wore on. But
Speaker 1: anti fascism has a long history in the City of Roses,
Speaker 1: one that goes back further than the reign of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Rose City Antifa is the oldest organization in the United
Speaker 1: States with Antifa actually in its name. It formed in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven as part of a local effort to
Speaker 1: stop a music festival from the neo Nazi Hammerskin Nation.
Speaker 1: The festival was supposed to be coming to Portland, and
Speaker 1: our Cier was successful in stopping it. The organization has
Speaker 1: continued up to the modern day. While its members do
Speaker 1: take place in street actions to counter fascist demonstrations, the
Speaker 1: bulk of their organization's work happens online, revealing and doxing
Speaker 1: white supremacists and other fascists. The history of anti fascist
Speaker 1: organizing an Oregon goes back a lot further than even
Speaker 1: our Cier, though, as we discussed an episode one, Oregon
Speaker 1: is the only state that was founded to be whites only.
Speaker 1: The Clan had an overwhelming presence here in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: In the early twenties, virtually every member of the Portland
Speaker 1: Police Bureau was a member. The first president of the
Speaker 1: Portland Police Association was a former member of German American Bund,
Speaker 1: an organization established by the Nazi Party. Oregon in particular,
Speaker 1: and the Pacific Northwest in general, has held a special
Speaker 1: place in the hearts of white supremacists for more than
Speaker 1: a century. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, the clan
Speaker 1: saw another surge, and Nazi terrorist groups like the Order
Speaker 1: carried out a string of successful attacks. White supremacist ideologus
Speaker 1: began floating the idea that the Pacific Northwest might be
Speaker 1: the perfect place for a white homeland. The idea was
Speaker 1: that since the PNW was already one of the whitest
Speaker 1: parts of the country, Nazis would have an easy time
Speaker 1: moving here and forcing non whites out through violence. This
Speaker 1: idea was most directly pushed by a man named Harold
Speaker 1: Covington with a now defunct Oregon based organization, Volksfront. Covington
Speaker 1: coined the term Northwest Imperative to describe the white supremacist
Speaker 1: drive to conquer the Pacific Northwest. As the Nazis flooded
Speaker 1: into Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, anti racists started organizing to
Speaker 1: oppose them. The group Anti Racist Action was formed in
Speaker 1: port in nineteen seven, and it's probably the most direct
Speaker 1: ancestor to Rose City Antifa and contemporary anti fascist groups.
Speaker 1: For years, the men and women of Anti Racist Action
Speaker 1: or a r A battled fascists in the streets. People
Speaker 1: were sometimes killed and often grievously wounded. Mike Crenshaw grew
Speaker 1: up in Illinois, but moved to Portland in nine He
Speaker 1: quickly got involved in anti racist organizing. At one of
Speaker 1: the high points for fascist violence in Portland, history, however,
Speaker 1: from not really seeing white folks at all unless they
Speaker 1: were in sec of authority to move into white communities
Speaker 1: where white people were definitely the majority. Um and not
Speaker 1: just in authority but also everywhere. So there were there
Speaker 1: were experiences I had when we lived in smaller towns
Speaker 1: in Illinois where we me and my brother would be
Speaker 1: like the only black kids in certain schools, you know, UM,
Speaker 1: and then Minnesota often being in a public ghost restore,
Speaker 1: are being in downtown, you know, you're one of very
Speaker 1: two black folks. So being by the time I was
Speaker 1: a teenager, you know, I remember going down tough like
Speaker 1: to visit people in Alabama and Mississippi and being afraid
Speaker 1: that that the clan was gonna get us, you know,
Speaker 1: being afraid that if we were out in the woods
Speaker 1: at night, that the clan was gonna get us, because
Speaker 1: that the racial terror that was a reality for our
Speaker 1: people in America was something that we had learned about,
Speaker 1: you know, and we had seen pictures of it in magazines, UM,
Speaker 1: and we or we might have even known some people
Speaker 1: directly are indirectly who've been killed, you know, as a
Speaker 1: result of racism and mob violence or or police rutality
Speaker 1: or something. So you know, there's always a sense of
Speaker 1: fear associated with this existing here, you know. And that said,
Speaker 1: being a teenager on the streets in Minneapolis, I understood
Speaker 1: that the clan, you know, since early childhood and being
Speaker 1: scared in the night and stuff like that. I understood
Speaker 1: a violent, racist, racist terror organs. So when I was
Speaker 1: in the hardcore punk scene, you know, as a black
Speaker 1: kid again one of the only people in that social scene,
Speaker 1: in that subculture that was black. UM, when I heard
Speaker 1: that neo Nazis were coming around, I had a very
Speaker 1: visceral reaction to it. I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: these people that hide behind mask and and where she
Speaker 1: you know, to consider there, I just see that have
Speaker 1: been lynching us for hundreds of years. These people feel
Speaker 1: comfortable being part of the community and being out front
Speaker 1: about it. So when I heard that I was I
Speaker 1: had a very like I had almost immediately, I had
Speaker 1: a militant reaction. I was like, oh, hell no, that's
Speaker 1: not that's not acceptable. And you know, being a young
Speaker 1: man um and hanging out on the streets, having already
Speaker 1: dealt with physical violence and being ostracized and lead and
Speaker 1: lead up, this is part of being growing up in Chicago.
Speaker 1: That's you know, um having the fight all the time
Speaker 1: and stuff I was. There was no way I was
Speaker 1: letting it go out. Mike had moved to town just
Speaker 1: a few years after probably the single most defining moment
Speaker 1: of the modern struggle against white supremacy in Portland, the
Speaker 1: nine eight murder of Mudlghetta Sara. Sara was a twenty
Speaker 1: eight year old Ethiopian immigrant who lived in an apartment
Speaker 1: complex at the intersection of Southeast thirty first Avenue in
Speaker 1: Pine Street. His building was adjacent to the building where
Speaker 1: Nick Heis, a member of the racist skinhead group east
Speaker 1: Side White Pride, also lived. On the night of November
Speaker 1: Sara returned from a party Nick Heis, Kenneth Miski, and
Speaker 1: a crew of other racist skinheads rolled into the same
Speaker 1: parking lot. They were drunk and their blood was up
Speaker 1: from a night of distributing white supremacist propaganda. The propaganda
Speaker 1: Miski and his friends had put up all night belonged
Speaker 1: to a group called White Ariyan Resistance or War, which
Speaker 1: was led by the recently deceased Nazi Tom Metzker. At
Speaker 1: this point, Tom lived in southern California, but over the
Speaker 1: last few years his organization had increasingly propagandized two disaffected
Speaker 1: young white men in Oregon. The goal of Metzger's propaganda
Speaker 1: was to promote racial violence, and on the night of
Speaker 1: November he succeeded. According to eyewitnesses, Miski and two other
Speaker 1: Nazis pulled their vehicle up in front of Sara's parked car.
Speaker 1: The nazis girlfriends were also in the vehicle, and they
Speaker 1: egged their partners on with cries of let's kill him,
Speaker 1: let's kill him, and that's exactly what they did. Miski
Speaker 1: hit Mulugetta from behind with a baseball bat and kept
Speaker 1: beating him after he dropped, while his fellow Nazis kicked
Speaker 1: the prone man with steel toed boots. Mulugetta Sara died
Speaker 1: of his injuries. His killers were convicted of murder. They
Speaker 1: pled guilty and never faced trial. Morris D's, head of
Speaker 1: the Southern Poverty Law Center, sued Tom Metzker in civil
Speaker 1: court and won a landmark judgment against him. The lawsuit
Speaker 1: established the legal precedent that someone like me Skar head
Speaker 1: what's called vicarious responsibility for Sara's death because Metzker had
Speaker 1: good reason to know that his actions and the propaganda
Speaker 1: he put out would lead to violence. The murder of
Speaker 1: Mula get A Sara was a galvanizing moment for the
Speaker 1: Portland anti racist community. By the time Mike Crenshaw showed up,
Speaker 1: everyone knew what the stakes were. I had a group
Speaker 1: of friends that I was hanging with, you know, and
Speaker 1: we were all firing with the anti racist skinheads element,
Speaker 1: as that's who we wanted to be. And so when
Speaker 1: we heard these neo Nazis had organized themselves with the
Speaker 1: leadership of the Plans women, into a gang called the
Speaker 1: White Knights, we decided that we were going to confront them,
Speaker 1: and we did it. We confronted him. We gave him
Speaker 1: an opportunity to their abuse. We said, are you guys
Speaker 1: white power? And they said yeah, And we said, look,
Speaker 1: the next time we see you, we're gonna ask you again,
Speaker 1: and if you are still white powers, then we're gonna
Speaker 1: suck you up. You know. That's what happened. Some of
Speaker 1: them change, some of them, some of them denounced it.
Speaker 1: A four of them actually detected. But before the one
Speaker 1: that getting of a long subtect speriod of violence, you know,
Speaker 1: a few years went byve where we were little fighting
Speaker 1: baily Um and it was it was, it was, it
Speaker 1: was heavy man. In addition to anti racist action, the
Speaker 1: group's Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice also confronted Nazis in the
Speaker 1: streets of Portland. The podcast series It Did Happen Here,
Speaker 1: not to be confused with my own podcast series It
Speaker 1: Could Happen Here, documents the story in more detail than
Speaker 1: we can afford to do here. But it's fair to
Speaker 1: say that the murder of mulugettas Sarah informs the tactics
Speaker 1: of many anti fascists in Portland to this day. The
Speaker 1: basic idea is that if you allow these people to
Speaker 1: organize and gather unopposed, they will commit murder. It's just
Speaker 1: a matter of time. In two seventeen, after a solid
Speaker 1: year of patriot prayer and proud boy gatherings in the
Speaker 1: attendant street fights they provoked, Jeremy Christian murdered two men
Speaker 1: on a Portland max Light rail train. This had an
Speaker 1: equally galvanizing effect down the city's anti racists. Things, of course,
Speaker 1: escalated further after Charlottesville, and the year two thousand eighteen
Speaker 1: in the city of Portland was one of the bloodiest
Speaker 1: years of fascist violence faced by any city in the
Speaker 1: United States. My colleague Garrison is going to take over
Speaker 1: here to give you an overview of how the street
Speaker 1: battles between fascists and anti fascists evolved from two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen on. As Trump ushered conservative nationalism into the mainstream,
Speaker 1: the vast mega movement brought street battles with their political
Speaker 1: enemies back into vogue. The most prominent of the far
Speaker 1: right groups that gathered in Portland was Patriot Prayer, led
Speaker 1: by self described street preacher Joey Gibson. Patriot Prayer formed
Speaker 1: alongside numerous other far right and neo fascist groups in
Speaker 1: to support the candidacy of Donald Trump. Throughout ten Patriot
Speaker 1: Prayer put on dozens and dozens of rallies throughout the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest, and especially Portland. While Patriot Prayer rarely numbered
Speaker 1: more than a few dozen members, they were capable in
Speaker 1: drawing in hundreds of people By allying with militias like
Speaker 1: the Three per Centers and street games like the Proud Boys,
Speaker 1: and also explicit white nationalist groups like Identity Europa. These
Speaker 1: street demos regularly escalated into violent brawls with police almost
Speaker 1: always taking this side of the far right and carrying
Speaker 1: out attacks on anti fascist demonstrators. Here's I was someone
Speaker 1: with the Youth Liberation Front explained their entry into activism
Speaker 1: and anti fascism. Reminder, we've redubbed the audio with a
Speaker 1: voice actor because these children are regularly threatened with murder. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think for me, it was definitely what was going
Speaker 1: on in my everyday life that kind of pushed me
Speaker 1: to get more involved in politics. I was, I was
Speaker 1: working in school, and then I heard about Jeremy Christian
Speaker 1: killing people on the Max I ride home and fucking
Speaker 1: then not like really consumed me and it was integral
Speaker 1: and to me, becoming like anti fascist and any racist
Speaker 1: and not just kind of pushed my growth into anarchism
Speaker 1: and ecology. So I think things happening in my world
Speaker 1: around me was the first thing that definitely pushed me here.
Speaker 1: Jeremy Christian attended multiple Patriot prayer rallies before he stabbed
Speaker 1: three people and killed two in a racially motivated attack
Speaker 1: on Portland's Max rail on. While Christian was eventually kicked
Speaker 1: out of a Patriot prayer rally for openly sig hiling
Speaker 1: the fact that Joey Gibson chose to hold a rally
Speaker 1: immediately after the murders suggests that many of their members
Speaker 1: may not have disavowed him as much as they claimed.
Speaker 1: The far right rallies that immediately followed Christian's stabbing spree
Speaker 1: grew ever more violent. Gibson and company used their new
Speaker 1: found notoriety to hold events in cities throughout the West Coast,
Speaker 1: many of which ended in brawls. Through it all, Gibson
Speaker 1: maintained a close relationship with the Portland Police Bureau, specifically
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Jeff Naia, the previous commander of ppb's Rapid Response Team,
Speaker 1: the very same team of quote riot police who would
Speaker 1: be responsible for suppressing BLM rallies. In in text messages
Speaker 1: from Lieutenant Naia to Gibson found via public records requests,
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Naia was showcased giving Gibson information about Antifa during
Speaker 1: rallies and instructing Gibson and other Patriot Prayer members on
Speaker 1: how to avoid being arrested themselves. At one point, Naia
Speaker 1: went so far as to tell Gibson that he and
Speaker 1: other officers were trying specifically not to arrest a violent
Speaker 1: right wing straight brawler Tiny Toast, who had outstanding arrest
Speaker 1: warrants at the time. Naia told Gibson, quote, just make
Speaker 1: sure he doesn't do anything which may draw our attention
Speaker 1: if he still has the warrant in our system. I
Speaker 1: don't run you guys, so I don't personally know the
Speaker 1: officers could arrest him. I don't see a need to
Speaker 1: arrest on the warrant unless there is a reason unquote.
Speaker 1: The texts were from seventeen to eighteen, but only released
Speaker 1: in February of twenty nineteen. Back in June, a rally
Speaker 1: that was originally planned to protest police violence turned into
Speaker 1: an anti fascist rally after Patriot Prayer announced they would
Speaker 1: show up to counter the original protest. After some brawling
Speaker 1: in the streets, the Portland Police Bureau arrested multiple anti fascists,
Speaker 1: but failed to arrest anyone on the right. This appears
Speaker 1: to have been done under orders from Lieutenant Naia. In
Speaker 1: live stream footage, officers are seen walking up to and
Speaker 1: telling Gimpson, quote, I just talked to Jeff Naia, and
Speaker 1: he asked me to tell you that he has probably
Speaker 1: cause to arrest a couple of the guys here. They've
Speaker 1: arrested the other side. So it's not singling you guys out,
Speaker 1: but it's time to go. If you guys can go home,
Speaker 1: there won't be any arrests. Two months later, at another
Speaker 1: opposing anti fascist patriot Prayer Slash Proud Boy rally, Portland
Speaker 1: police shot munitions at anti fascists as they ordered them
Speaker 1: to disperse. One of these munitions, a flash bang grenade,
Speaker 1: was launched at the head of a self described anti fascist,
Speaker 1: Aaron Anthony can To. The grenade split his skull open
Speaker 1: and embedded all the way through his bike helmet. Kento
Speaker 1: was treated at the scene by several volunteer street medics
Speaker 1: and eventually was taken to the hospital. He suffered a
Speaker 1: traumatic brain injury with severe hemorrhaging. Had he not been
Speaker 1: wearing that bike helmet, he would have most certainly died.
Speaker 1: Fast forward to the start of For the first two
Speaker 1: months of BLM protests in Portland, the far right was
Speaker 1: oddly absent. This was seen as strange by everyone on
Speaker 1: the ground. For years, far right demonstrators had shown up
Speaker 1: at every possible event to do violence, but as soon
Speaker 1: as tear gas and beatings started in May, those familiar
Speaker 1: fascist faces were nowhere to be seen. There were, however,
Speaker 1: constant rumors of quote Proud Boys circling the area unquote,
Speaker 1: and every once in a while a random local fascist
Speaker 1: would show up briefly. Also during the day, some would
Speaker 1: wave Blue Lives Matter flags in front of the j C,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, the right wing was mostly
Speaker 1: absent until August. August sixteenth start out like any normal
Speaker 1: day in Portland during the summer of By this point,
Speaker 1: the fed War was over, and there were small gatherings
Speaker 1: of protesters throughout the city at a different location each night.
Speaker 1: On the sixteenth, people were back at the Justice Center.
Speaker 1: During the afternoon, there were the standard speeches about police abolition,
Speaker 1: and as the afternoon turned into the evening, people started
Speaker 1: meandering around. At around ten pm, a small group who
Speaker 1: had appointed themselves as quote protest security attempted to aggressively
Speaker 1: escort out someone from the parks around the j C.
Speaker 1: For unknown reasons. Quote security led this person over to
Speaker 1: the nearby seven eleven, where they were more or less
Speaker 1: randomly jumped by someone else. We should say a bit
Speaker 1: here about the seven eleven near the Justice Center. Early
Speaker 1: in the summer, it had earned the nickname Comrade seven
Speaker 1: eleven because the workers inside repeatedly pulled in protesters to
Speaker 1: rescue them from police bull rushes and clouds of tear gas. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: as the summer wore on, the seven eleven became a
Speaker 1: gathering place for less savory individuals who coalesced at the
Speaker 1: fringes of the movement. Street fights, some involving people tangentially
Speaker 1: involved in the protests and others involving drunk people who
Speaker 1: just wanted to fight, became an almost nightly occurrence. It
Speaker 1: was not uncommon to see puddles of blood in the
Speaker 1: intersection leading to the seven eleven, so it was not
Speaker 1: super surprising that the person Quote Security pulled out of
Speaker 1: the protest got jumped near the seven eleven. After getting punched, chased,
Speaker 1: and tackled, he ran away, but Quote Security stayed out
Speaker 1: in front of the seven eleven. A woman nearby approached
Speaker 1: them and asked what was going on. The Quote Security
Speaker 1: then got aggressive with her. Other people near the seven eleven,
Speaker 1: whose affiliation is unclear, began stealing her stuff, a backpack
Speaker 1: and skateboard. She then chased people around and tried to
Speaker 1: pepper spray the people stealing from her. Videos filmed at
Speaker 1: the time suggests that most of the people involved in
Speaker 1: this fracas were very inebriated. While all this was going on,
Speaker 1: another person arrived at the seven eleven. He parked his
Speaker 1: truck outside and attempted to de escalate this tricky situation.
Speaker 1: A small crowd of around twenty people formed around the
Speaker 1: woman who had been attacked. Upon hearing this woman had
Speaker 1: quote maced people, the small group got aggressive, a few
Speaker 1: people through water bottles. Someone who had been caught in
Speaker 1: the pepper spray crossfire ran up and began punching this woman.
Speaker 1: Violence waxed and waned for several minutes, and then the
Speaker 1: man with the truck repeatedly tried to de escalate the situation. Eventually,
Speaker 1: he gave up and got into his truck again, which
Speaker 1: made a weird sound and lurched forward after he turned
Speaker 1: it on. One of the self appointed security people then
Speaker 1: walked up to the driver and began to hit him
Speaker 1: through the open window. A couple of people also began
Speaker 1: hitting the truck driver's girlfriend, who had walked around the
Speaker 1: truck toward the small crowd. While all this was going on,
Speaker 1: a much larger BLM demonstration was occurring a few blocks away.
Speaker 1: I was there at the time, and I didn't even
Speaker 1: know any of this was going on. But some BLM
Speaker 1: protesters noticed the commotion and wandered over to the seven
Speaker 1: eleven and tried to stop people from attacking the truck
Speaker 1: driver and his girlfriend. The driver, still under attack from
Speaker 1: his window, reft his engine a few times, and when
Speaker 1: the road was completely clear, he drove away, but he
Speaker 1: crashed about three blocks away from the seven eleven. The
Speaker 1: self appointed security people chased after on foot, and when
Speaker 1: they arrived at the crash site, one of the quote
Speaker 1: security people pushed the truck driver onto the ground and
Speaker 1: stopped him from leaving or walking around. The truck driver
Speaker 1: explained that he wasn't trying to hurt anybody, and this
Speaker 1: angered one of these so called security people, who then
Speaker 1: began punching and kicking the truck driver, who was already
Speaker 1: on the ground. The two other self appointed secure he
Speaker 1: tried to restrain this one security guy who was repeatedly
Speaker 1: hitting the truck driver, but this agitated security dude was
Speaker 1: able to break free and brutally kicked the truck driver
Speaker 1: in the back of the head, briefly knocking him out.
Speaker 1: Volunteer street medics rushed the scene from the protest a
Speaker 1: few blocks away to provide aid. This was a terrible, confusing,
Speaker 1: and profoundly avoidable series of events. It had very little
Speaker 1: to do with Portland's BLN movement, save that a small
Speaker 1: number of self appointed security had been present at the
Speaker 1: protest before this brawl started. This is not how it
Speaker 1: was presented in right wing media, which portrayed the whole
Speaker 1: situation as a mass BLM gang assault on a white
Speaker 1: man for no other reason than his skin color. Much
Speaker 1: of the disinformation came courtesy of the far right blogger
Speaker 1: and social media personality Andy No. No had gained popularity
Speaker 1: among the right in the past few years by writing
Speaker 1: about the dangers of Muslim immigrants and fear mongering about Antifa.
Speaker 1: In the past, No had also selectively live streamed and
Speaker 1: filmed Antifa and Patriot Prayer slashed prowdboy rallies. At one
Speaker 1: of these rallies, he was assaulted with milkshakes and punched
Speaker 1: and shoved several times. This was a little after no
Speaker 1: had been present to selectively film a right wing assault
Speaker 1: at a local left wing hangout that left a woman
Speaker 1: hospitalized with severe injuries. No had presented the scene to
Speaker 1: look like right wingers were defending themselves, but in actuality,
Speaker 1: they initiated this brutal attack, and it was later found
Speaker 1: out that No was actually at the planning of this
Speaker 1: violent assault. In some footage secretly filmed, No was seen
Speaker 1: laughing as Patriot Prayer members discussed beating up left wing
Speaker 1: activists and so called communists. After he was beat up,
Speaker 1: No raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and mostly stopped
Speaker 1: going to protests himself. Instead, he either embedded footage from
Speaker 1: actual on the ground journalists or used stolen footage from
Speaker 1: various far right accounts that download, edit, and repos most
Speaker 1: footage from protests. All the footage Andy No shares about
Speaker 1: this head kicking incident is heavily edited to make it
Speaker 1: unclear to his followers what is actually happening and to
Speaker 1: make nose twisted narrative more believable. No started posting about
Speaker 1: the truck driver assault by describing Portland as being quote
Speaker 1: occupied with BLM and Antifa rioters unquote, further saying that
Speaker 1: the man had simply crashed his car and that quote
Speaker 1: the mob had pulled him out of his vehicle and
Speaker 1: quote beat him senseless with No, there are always attempts
Speaker 1: to paint Portland as being full of quote Antifa mobs
Speaker 1: roaming the streets looking for anyone to beat up, with
Speaker 1: the police never actually showing up to stop these dangerous Antifa,
Speaker 1: which this is, of course, far from the truth. The
Speaker 1: police themselves quickly showed up to this very incident after
Speaker 1: the head kick and arrested the perpetrator as soon as
Speaker 1: they identified him. No continued to post other people's clips
Speaker 1: while describing quote rioters and quote the mob attacking this man.
Speaker 1: But in the videos he shares, it's almost entirely one
Speaker 1: person doing all of the violence, and other members of
Speaker 1: this quote mob trying to physically restrain this main person
Speaker 1: from hitting the truck driver. In a clip of people
Speaker 1: trying to provide first aid, and he describes quote rioters
Speaker 1: when no riot was actually declared that night, standing over
Speaker 1: the truck driver's unscious body after quote they beat him up.
Speaker 1: No also writes quote they pour water on him, as
Speaker 1: if people are just doing for fun. Now, water isn't
Speaker 1: actually poured on the person in the video No captions
Speaker 1: that on but in other videos you can see water
Speaker 1: being poured on his head to both clean out the
Speaker 1: wounds and to attempt to wake him up, and he
Speaker 1: then posts about the altercation that took place prior to
Speaker 1: the crash, saying that quote, the BLM mob is beating
Speaker 1: a blonde woman, referencing the truck driver's girlfriend. And just
Speaker 1: as before, the video actually shows two people from the
Speaker 1: crowd and from the seven eleven trying to hit the
Speaker 1: older woman as many of the people from the actual
Speaker 1: protesting crowd tried to protect her. No makes the post
Speaker 1: talking about the man that kicked the truck driver in
Speaker 1: the head, saying, quote, he's part of the marauding BLM
Speaker 1: security at the protests in Portland. These are the people
Speaker 1: protesters want to replace the police with. Now, this is
Speaker 1: simply an unverified and false claim. No one in Portland
Speaker 1: has ever talked about replacing the police with the random
Speaker 1: dudes that elected themselves as quote security during protests. In fact,
Speaker 1: many people at protests speak out against these self proclaimed
Speaker 1: security people, both before and after this incident. And of
Speaker 1: course no failed to mention that all this happened some
Speaker 1: distance away from the actual BLM protests that night. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I was there and I knew nothing about
Speaker 1: this until I got home. And checked Twitter. But no,
Speaker 1: what have you think that this is the BLM movement itself,
Speaker 1: not a mixture of random men who la past security
Speaker 1: and drunk people at seven eleven. When interviewed by local media,
Speaker 1: the truck driver's girlfriend is said that the people who
Speaker 1: attacked her and her boyfriend were not real protesters. For
Speaker 1: months leading up to this incident, the far right had
Speaker 1: seemed almost afraid to get involved in Portland's protests. Some
Speaker 1: of this was likely due to the terrifying police violence,
Speaker 1: but we suspect the larger factor was that over the weeks,
Speaker 1: Portland's BLM protesters had been hardened by that violence and
Speaker 1: grown skilled at standing up to it as a unit.
Speaker 1: Prior to the sixteenth, there had only been two truly
Speaker 1: noteworthy far right attacks on protests. One came courtesy of
Speaker 1: a former Navy seal who allegedly through an improvised explosive
Speaker 1: device at a small crowd of activists after a demonstration,
Speaker 1: and on August fifteen, a group of right wing protesters,
Speaker 1: including many former Patriot Prayer members, held a flag wave
Speaker 1: outside the Justice Center. Numerous attendees assaulted and maced left
Speaker 1: wing counter protesters. One attendee longtime far right rally or
Speaker 1: Skyler Journegan fired his handgun into the crowd. He failed
Speaker 1: to hit anyone and was arrested a few days later,
Speaker 1: but the incident presaged rising tensions that would break out
Speaker 1: into mass violence just a week later. Online rage over
Speaker 1: the assault outside of the seven eleven and long simmering
Speaker 1: anger over the BLM movement, which had seemed to capture
Speaker 1: the city's entire interest, inspired a coalition of different patriot
Speaker 1: groups to plan a rally for the twenty second. The
Speaker 1: attendees would turn out to be a serried milange of
Speaker 1: far right and outright fascist demonstrators. Members of the Proud
Speaker 1: Boys made up the backbone of the force that showed
Speaker 1: up in front of the j C on the twenty,
Speaker 1: but there were also Neo Nazis and militiamen. The individuals
Speaker 1: who showed up were only bound by two things performative
Speaker 1: support for police who assaulted leftists and a desire to
Speaker 1: do similar violence themselves. These men and women showed up
Speaker 1: ready to fight the war. Armor carried paintball guns with
Speaker 1: frozen paintballs, cans of bear mace, telescoping batons, knives, and firearms.
Speaker 1: The start of the demonstration was set for twelve noon.
Speaker 1: By the time Garrison and I arrived on scene, several
Speaker 1: dozen right wingers were already present. Standing across the street
Speaker 1: were less than half that number of anti fascists. The
Speaker 1: vibe was immediately tense, but not immediately violent. A pro
Speaker 1: BLM bicycle protests drove through the street in between both groups,
Speaker 1: followed by a crowd of several dozen bikers for Trump
Speaker 1: and men in trucks waving Trump and backed the Blue flags.
Speaker 1: While all this happened, more fascists and far right demonstrators
Speaker 1: continued to arrive. Their numbers hit a hundred than two hundred,
Speaker 1: while the forces countering them remained relatively small. At around
Speaker 1: twelve ten PM, a massive street fight broke out, as
Speaker 1: best I could tell, and started when a local activist
Speaker 1: in a wheelchair pulled up in front of one pro
Speaker 1: Trump biker. People surrounded both of them. Both sides collided,
Speaker 1: and then there were fist fights, mace and shoving. I
Speaker 1: can't even tell you who started it. David Willis, a
Speaker 1: local anti Semitic protester, threatened me in a number of
Speaker 1: other protesters with an a R fifteen style paintball gun.
Speaker 1: Loaded with paintballs that he had frozen in order to
Speaker 1: cause more damage. Willis had evidently spent quite some time
Speaker 1: listening to Portland protest live streams. He repeatedly threatened people,
Speaker 1: using a tone that I think was a deliberate imitation
Speaker 1: of the police. There was a brief low in the
Speaker 1: action after this initial explosion, but it did not last long.
Speaker 1: A violence commenced soon again. Right wing demonstrators pulled out
Speaker 1: tasers and beat sticks. Several of them formed up into
Speaker 1: a shield wall organized by a neo Nazi with a
Speaker 1: baton who attempted to lead them in the battle, and
Speaker 1: around twelve p m. The fighting waned again. Anti fascist
Speaker 1: reinforcement showed up and the two groups neared parody, with
Speaker 1: two or three hundred people on each side. There was
Speaker 1: a pause in the viol lens, but everyone in attendance
Speaker 1: knew it would not last. The police opted to stay away,
Speaker 1: although in the distance you could hear the l rat
Speaker 1: asking everyone to please stay nice. For a little over
Speaker 1: a half hour, relative peace reigned. More left wing demonstrators
Speaker 1: continued to show up, including Demitria Hester, who led the crowd,
Speaker 1: and chance of Black Lives Matter. Right wingers responded with
Speaker 1: less cohesive chance of their own, like hey, hey, ho ho,
Speaker 1: these violent rioters have got to go. Finally, a bit
Speaker 1: after one ten pm, a right wing demonstrator hupped a
Speaker 1: jug of o J over his shield wall and into
Speaker 1: the anti fascist ranks. This was followed by improvised flash bangs,
Speaker 1: and soon another general melee broke out. Things got incredibly ugly.
Speaker 1: Much of the violence centered around the BLM snack van,
Speaker 1: a common sight at local protests that did exactly what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. In this video, you can hear a
Speaker 1: crowd of several dozen charge a single man standing in
Speaker 1: front of the van. They mace him repeatedly and beat
Speaker 1: his arms and legs with batons. Brawls continued to break out,
Speaker 1: and a little after one twenty pm, as I rushed
Speaker 1: over to where a crowd of Proud Boys and other
Speaker 1: bright wingers were assaulting a person on the ground, beating
Speaker 1: them with sticks, a proud boy swung a baton at
Speaker 1: my camera hand, breaking it in two places. Numerous other
Speaker 1: people had bones broken by violent fascists that day. Most
Speaker 1: of these individuals will never make their names public. They
Speaker 1: showed up in black block to confront dangerous Nazis and
Speaker 1: other extremists who intended to harm people. Violence occurred throughout
Speaker 1: the next hour, with mass shield charges from the right
Speaker 1: wing that were repulsed only after significant injuries. The whole
Speaker 1: ugly event culminated around two pm, when an anti fascist
Speaker 1: old wall finally squared off with a fascist shield wall.
Speaker 1: This was the first time that both groups had confronted
Speaker 1: each other in a mass, unified way, as opposed to
Speaker 1: the dozens of scattered brawls and to be fair conversations
Speaker 1: that had characterized the early part of the day. The
Speaker 1: right hooped fireworks and insults at their opponents. Both groups
Speaker 1: kept their distance, throwing things and opposing each other with
Speaker 1: lines of shields. This stalemate lasted for a few minutes
Speaker 1: and was broken when a group of unarmed and unmasked
Speaker 1: BIPOC activists marched up to the right wing shield wall.
Speaker 1: Despite being unarmed, they were assaulted en masked by the
Speaker 1: crowd and repeatedly maced. Anti fascists had to run up
Speaker 1: and pull them back into the line in order to
Speaker 1: protect them. The sheer volume of mace deployed by the
Speaker 1: right wing worked against them, though unlike their opponents, who
Speaker 1: had spent the summer getting tear gassed. The right wing
Speaker 1: had very you gas masks your respirators. They blinded themselves
Speaker 1: with their own poisoned. Then one anti fascist hucked a
Speaker 1: firework into the middle of the half blind shield wall,
Speaker 1: and the entire line panicked and eventually broke and fled.
Speaker 1: They briefly ran to the nearby I. R. S Building,
Speaker 1: begging the federal agents inside for help. When they were
Speaker 1: denied help, the right wing crowd retreated and gradually dissipated.
Speaker 1: August would mark the largest confrontation between right and left
Speaker 1: in Portland during the summer, but it was not the deadliest.
Speaker 1: That title would be earned the next weekend, when a
Speaker 1: Trump cruise, which consisted of several thousand pickup trucks and
Speaker 1: other vehicles flying Trump and thin Blue line flags, rolled
Speaker 1: through the city of Portland and eventually through downtown Portland.
Speaker 1: There was violence at this event, but it was much
Speaker 1: less cohesive. Several groups of Trump supporters fired paintball guns
Speaker 1: and mason to crowds from moving vehicles. The crowd this day, however,
Speaker 1: was less extreme than the smaller crowd on the Some
Speaker 1: Trump supporters even went to the aid of people who
Speaker 1: were injured by other Trump supporters, and in general the
Speaker 1: overall group was much less ready to fight, at least
Speaker 1: in an organized way. But the site of thousands of
Speaker 1: pickup trucks blaring flags, and of course the assaults from
Speaker 1: a number of members of the Trump crews meant that
Speaker 1: anxiety was extremely high among Portland protesters, and of course
Speaker 1: contributing to this was the fact that the previous two
Speaker 1: weekends had involved heavy violence and gunfire. One individual had
Speaker 1: fired a handgun in warning during the protest on the
Speaker 1: twenty swod in addition to Skyler Journegan's shots into a
Speaker 1: crowd the week before. So understandably everyone was very amped up,
Speaker 1: and while the train of mounted Trump supporters eventually passed
Speaker 1: through town without serious life threatening violence, events at the
Speaker 1: periphery of the caravan would shortly lead to the first
Speaker 1: fatality of Portland's protests. The conflict occurred as two right
Speaker 1: wing demonstrators, both of whom had been present at the
Speaker 1: two were walking home. J Danielson and Chandler Pappas were
Speaker 1: regular Patriot marchers. Both carried handguns, batons, and mace. The
Speaker 1: exact sequence of events is unclear, but as best we
Speaker 1: can tell. From since released surveillance footage, Pappas and Danielson
Speaker 1: seemed to have attacked a pro BLM and anti fascist
Speaker 1: demonstrator named Michael Reinhold. Reinhold responded to their mace with gunfire,
Speaker 1: killing Danielson in nearly hitting Pappas. Renald ran and fled
Speaker 1: the scene, immediately disappearing into the city. For several days,
Speaker 1: his identity was unknown, and details around the shooting were
Speaker 1: completely obscured. This did not stop the right wing media
Speaker 1: and President Trump himself from turning Danielson into a martyr.
Speaker 1: Calls to brand Antifa a terrorist group reached a fever
Speaker 1: pitch when Reinold's identity was revealed. Much was made of
Speaker 1: the fact that he identified with both BLM and Antifa.
Speaker 1: The right wing disinformation ecosystem took this as evidence that
Speaker 1: Antifa and b l M were both part of some shadowy,
Speaker 1: organized plot to overthrow the United States government. The reality
Speaker 1: is that anti fascist act is UM and the goals
Speaker 1: of Black Lives Matter have always been deeply tied. As
Speaker 1: Max Smith attests, does that mean I'm part of an
Speaker 1: Antifa group? No? Am I an anti THI fascist? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: because how how can you not be right, that the
Speaker 1: only that only makes sense, um, And so I think
Speaker 1: it's it's it's again one of those things that gets
Speaker 1: like thrown into the media as a buzzword that doesn't
Speaker 1: actually mean anything, and that's only doubled down on by
Speaker 1: like our president and people like that who just continue
Speaker 1: to use words they don't understand because they think that
Speaker 1: they're explosive what in reality. In reality, the Antifa guys,
Speaker 1: you know, the Antifa, the Rose the City Antifa or whatever,
Speaker 1: are really like a bunch of like guys that do
Speaker 1: like research and stuff for the most part, against information.
Speaker 1: I've long used contacts to get like information like who
Speaker 1: is this gang? Who you know? What is this tattoo
Speaker 1: on this white supremacis I've been seeing over here. That's
Speaker 1: really what I've used them for. Um, you know the
Speaker 1: people that I know that identify as Antifa. But other
Speaker 1: than that, I mean, it's it's it's just an ideology.
Speaker 1: So it's it's weird to see people ask questions like
Speaker 1: are you Antifa? And I'm like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Or is BLM has been taken over by Antifa? And
Speaker 1: BLM even is one of those statements that again kind
Speaker 1: of like Antifa, it doesn't actually mean anything. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no a Black Lives Matter a chapter here, like
Speaker 1: like national chapter here that I'm aware of. And people
Speaker 1: always say, you know, like this stuff takes away from
Speaker 1: the spirit of a Black Lives Matter. But then they
Speaker 1: also turn around and say a Black Lives Matter as
Speaker 1: a Marxist organization run by you know, the g B
Speaker 1: t Q so and say that it's itself is you know,
Speaker 1: is a swoop. So there seems like there's like a
Speaker 1: lot of things that people have their ideas about these
Speaker 1: factions or groups or whatever, but in reality, these people
Speaker 1: aren't a part of any of that. We I mean,
Speaker 1: most of us are not a part of any actual
Speaker 1: a group of anything. We're just out here, you know,
Speaker 1: fighting for our rights and for the rights of our
Speaker 1: of our friends and neighbors. So all those labels are
Speaker 1: are kind of funny, like, you know, we're not in
Speaker 1: a gang. We aren't the proud Boys of the Patriot Prayers.
Speaker 1: They all have their names and clicks and groups and
Speaker 1: and and and and and nonprofits and all that that's
Speaker 1: not really our thing. So I think that they have
Speaker 1: a hard time. I think that people have a hard
Speaker 1: time of processing that in general, that's not the way
Speaker 1: that we're trained to think. We're kind of a train
Speaker 1: to think in the in the in the way of
Speaker 1: of clicks and groups and brands. You know, it's all
Speaker 1: about branding and how are you branding? And do you
Speaker 1: wear matching outfits and that kind of stuff. So people
Speaker 1: just see black block and they see a brand, and
Speaker 1: then they hear Antifa and they think of a brand,
Speaker 1: and then they just put it all together and they
Speaker 1: have this idea in their heads, but it's it's just
Speaker 1: not based in reality. Also had some complicated thoughts on
Speaker 1: the intersection of the anti fascism in the Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter movement. Um. It's complicated in the source of a
Speaker 1: lot of tension, uh, for sure in the city right
Speaker 1: now and kind of throughout this entire thing, um because
Speaker 1: you do have you know, marches and actions that claims
Speaker 1: to be you know, black Lives Matter, when a lot
Speaker 1: of the people there um are there for like quote
Speaker 1: unquote anti fascists, for purely anti copias ands. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's hard because you need bodies. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: because that's like that's some like person to days thinking,
Speaker 1: I feel like I know um, I feel like there's
Speaker 1: a lot you've learned about that and about I think
Speaker 1: direct action in general and protests in general. I think
Speaker 1: it actually is extremely important. Now It's always make really important,
Speaker 1: but now all I think it's really important, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are more aware of that. Disrect action
Speaker 1: or the protest or like the mutual aid UH reach out.
Speaker 1: I don't know has a defined like role or defines
Speaker 1: like this is you know, anti Baptist marks, this is
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter d A, this is you know, anti
Speaker 1: cop sweep or whatever. I don't think it has to
Speaker 1: be you know that always spelled out, but it needs
Speaker 1: to be clear and it needs to be you know,
Speaker 1: leadership in position that knows that role. And you know,
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, kind of that like thinking we
Speaker 1: need numbers of the person presented as and it kind
Speaker 1: of is that there's yeah, as you kind of learned,
Speaker 1: bigger d A and bigger actions. When she gets out
Speaker 1: of the tay wire, it's it's gonna be chaotic because
Speaker 1: there are so many people there who maybe they're there
Speaker 1: for the right reasons, but they're not like on the
Speaker 1: same age. And when everyone's not on the same age,
Speaker 1: it's really hard for an action or evidentially easy people.
Speaker 1: So like yeah, smaller, more concides, more focused. Now just
Speaker 1: talking about strategy, Um, but with the h the focus
Speaker 1: is important and you know all these all these things,
Speaker 1: I guess in terms of the relationship between I guess
Speaker 1: those two things. My perspective is black liberations, liberation for everybody.
Speaker 1: And I guess from my perspective the goal I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's gold, but the the through line from
Speaker 1: me personally is black lives matter, at least, like from
Speaker 1: looking at it linearly standpoint, if if we really are
Speaker 1: considering black lives matter, if we get to the point
Speaker 1: in our country where black lives are mattering, then there
Speaker 1: will probably be less fascists or we will have done something,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. If the entire country is
Speaker 1: like that black, that's a country where at least fascists
Speaker 1: aren't in government. And that's a country where at least, um,
Speaker 1: there's probably if not abolish police, less police presidents or
Speaker 1: police starts spects black people and police sent their respect
Speaker 1: black people. Clearly at least if there are steck black
Speaker 1: people their respect everybody. So for me throughline and like
Speaker 1: that's also an evidence, But that's what started all this.
Speaker 1: Um is black livesn't matter. And I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: not happy. There's like sub factions or there's kind of
Speaker 1: these multiple ideas existing within a movement about the goals.
Speaker 1: But that is the reality of the we live in
Speaker 1: and I can only work together because we do all
Speaker 1: have common rules. Um. Yeah. The actual nuance in the
Speaker 1: discussion was lost in the national reaction to Jay Danielson's death.
Speaker 1: As soon as Michael Ryanal admitted to the shooting, claiming
Speaker 1: self defense and a Vice video, a man hunt ensued
Speaker 1: to bring him down. The U. S. Marshals caught him
Speaker 1: in early September, and Michael was gunned down near where
Speaker 1: he'd been hiding in Washington. Initial reports spoke of an
Speaker 1: exchange of gunfire, but later evidence revealed that Michael had
Speaker 1: not fired while officers shot dozens of times at the
Speaker 1: vehicle he was in. In mid October, at a campaign
Speaker 1: rally ahead of the November election, President Trump bragged that
Speaker 1: he had used the U. S. Marshals as more or
Speaker 1: less a death squad, saying we sent in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Marshals the fifteen minutes it was over fifteen minutes it
Speaker 1: was over. We got him. I knew who he was
Speaker 1: and didn't want to arrest him. In fifteen minutes. That
Speaker 1: ended at all, But then they called themselves peaceful product
Speaker 1: right wing rallies and violence would continue throughout the remainder
Speaker 1: of the year. It was, however, notably lower key than
Speaker 1: it had been before. Several hundred Proud Boys rallied on
Speaker 1: the weekend of September twenty six, but both sides were
Speaker 1: kept largely apart. Less than a week before the event,
Speaker 1: Eugene ANTIFA had released a set of leaked chat logs
Speaker 1: from a group called Patriot Coalition who would help plan
Speaker 1: events on August as well. The chats, which I reported
Speaker 1: on alongside Jason Wilson for Bellancat and the UK Guardian,
Speaker 1: included threats to shoot members of the a c l
Speaker 1: U and legal observers, as well as embryonic plans to
Speaker 1: kidnap the governor of Oregon over the state's COVID nineteen lockdown.
Speaker 1: The governor convened a press conference after these reports and
Speaker 1: threatened to use the state's long dormant anti paramilitary laws
Speaker 1: if there was mass violence by the Proud Boys on September.
Speaker 1: Police kept anti fascists and fascists apart. A number of
Speaker 1: Proud Boys did do violence, assaulting several members of the
Speaker 1: press who came to cover their event, but no mass
Speaker 1: thousand person street fight ensued this time. In fact, after
Speaker 1: the six far right street activities seemed to ebb for
Speaker 1: several months. There were small back the Blue rallies which
Speaker 1: often involved right wingers masonencounter protesters and threatening them with firearms,
Speaker 1: and of course involved anti fascists doing things like breaking
Speaker 1: the windows on their cars, but mass violence failed to ensue.
Speaker 1: It seemed for a while as if the far right
Speaker 1: had spent itself in August of This would turn out
Speaker 1: to be untrue. Of course, we're recording this episode just
Speaker 1: two weeks after the capital of the United States was
Speaker 1: sieged and occupied briefly by hundreds of far right, fascist,
Speaker 1: and white nationalist demonstrators on January six. This event was
Speaker 1: signposted by an attack by far right insurrectionists on the
Speaker 1: city of Salem, Oregon's capital, just a few days earlier.
Speaker 1: The whole chain of events further reinforced Oregan's reputation as
Speaker 1: something of a national bell weather for far right violence,
Speaker 1: with the anti fascists of the Rose City endured in
Speaker 1: the late summer, came home to the capital of the
Speaker 1: entire country just a few months later. Uh where the
Speaker 1: grandpops and couldn't fathom the obamasis, I don't hate America,
Speaker 1: just to me, And she keeps the promises tens looking
Speaker 1: like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide deja pu. What
Speaker 1: my people post to do? Go to schools named after
Speaker 1: the clan founder. We're around town, isa, I don't see
Speaker 1: why we're frowning Native American students forced to learn about
Speaker 1: when o'pella Sarah, How is that fair? Bro? Some Euros
Speaker 1: unsung in some monster's getting monuments built for them. But
Speaker 1: it ain't be all a little bit of monster. We
Speaker 1: crooking him