Speaker 1: The NFL is back and the NFL app has you covered.
Speaker 1: So get ready for football all season long and just
Speaker 1: tap into the NFL app NFL maybe if app. Just
Speaker 1: tap in to watch your local and primetime games all
Speaker 1: season now from Super Bowl fifty to get up to
Speaker 1: the minute news videos, highlights, stats and more on all
Speaker 1: your favorite teams and rookies to watch. Then downloads to
Speaker 1: your mobile device today at NFL dot com, Slash Mobile
Speaker 1: or in your app store. Certain restrictions and data rates
Speaker 1: may apply. You can watch the NFL playoffs like a fan,
Speaker 1: or you can prep like a scout if you listen
Speaker 1: to the award winning Move the Sticks podcast. The show
Speaker 1: is hosted by me, Daniel Jeremiah and my partner Bucky Brooks.
Speaker 1: The two of us are bringing the knowledge from a
Speaker 1: career as NFL talent scouts to the podcast world so
Speaker 1: fans can watch and understand the nuances of the game
Speaker 1: like never before. We'll break down film from the professional
Speaker 1: and college game to get you ready for the Super Bowl,
Speaker 1: the Draft, and kick off next fall. Subscribe now and
Speaker 1: listen to the Move the Sticks podcast asked on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back the
Speaker 1: hit podcast How Men Think, and that's good news for
Speaker 1: anyone that is confused by men, which is basically everyone.
Speaker 1: It's real talk, straight from the source to How Men
Speaker 1: Think podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out.
Speaker 1: It's going to be fun and formative and probably a
Speaker 1: bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the
Speaker 1: minds of men. Listen to How Men Think on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. At around ten thirty pm on a crowd
Speaker 1: of more than a thousand people gathered in North Portland's
Speaker 1: Peninsula Park and marched downtown to the Justice Center, headquarters
Speaker 1: of the Portland Police Bureau. The direct inspiration for the
Speaker 1: march were the murders of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor.
Speaker 1: Many in attendance also had a strong desire to express
Speaker 1: solidarity with protesters in Minneapolis. That's what brought Chris Wise,
Speaker 1: volunteer protest medic out into the streets that first night. Initially,
Speaker 1: I came out because as an African American, you know,
Speaker 1: it was that that straw that broke the Camel's back
Speaker 1: on just like one death too many. We are murdered
Speaker 1: by police and other law enforcement agencies at a rate
Speaker 1: of three to one when compared to the average white American,
Speaker 1: And those numbers get a little funky because you know,
Speaker 1: obviously more white people die a year than black people
Speaker 1: in police related shootings, but there are also you know,
Speaker 1: six times as many white people, ah then black people. Tristan,
Speaker 1: another Black Portlander, didn't go out that night, but he
Speaker 1: watched everything that happened on the live streams. Honestly, like,
Speaker 1: my my first um impression was that it probably wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be much, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: didn't expect it to blow up the way it did.
Speaker 1: I kind of felt like because I've I've seen it
Speaker 1: happen in the past where you know, there's will be
Speaker 1: some kind of like something happening like nationwide or another
Speaker 1: city in Portland will kind of like you know, show
Speaker 1: up and solidarity for it, and it might become something,
Speaker 1: but usually it's kind of like a one off. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of what I was expecting, and so I
Speaker 1: was pretty surprised to see like how quickly it grew
Speaker 1: and then also how like how the police were responding
Speaker 1: like in like a very tear guys kind of way.
Speaker 1: Mariah is a photo journalist and a lifestyle photographer. She
Speaker 1: was out at Peninsula Park for the very start of
Speaker 1: the march. Was beginning to you know, something that not
Speaker 1: a lot of us new we're going to get into,
Speaker 1: you know, but gosh, I remember being at Peninsula Park
Speaker 1: and it was really great to see everyone there, and like,
Speaker 1: it just reminds me of some uh. I hate that
Speaker 1: it's like a routine thing for us, because it's you know,
Speaker 1: while we're still fighting, and while we've been fighting so strong.
Speaker 1: But you know, when someone gets killed by you know,
Speaker 1: via police brutality, everyone meets up. You know, maybe we
Speaker 1: protest for a few days and like, you know, quote unquote,
Speaker 1: we go back to like normal life. But you know,
Speaker 1: we already haven't been a normal life since it's been
Speaker 1: a pandemic this whole freaking year. But it was really
Speaker 1: beautiful to see all the people and all the signs
Speaker 1: and the speeches. The sidewalks bordering Peninsula Park were filled
Speaker 1: with different slogans and exhortations written in chalk. One of
Speaker 1: the most striking statements was make the moment count As
Speaker 1: it turned out, the city of Portland took that to heart.
Speaker 1: The crowd at Peninsula Park marched nearly five miles to
Speaker 1: downtown Portland. There they merged with a crowd that had
Speaker 1: gathered around the Justice Center. The moment both groups met
Speaker 1: was powerful. You could taste to the energy in the air.
Speaker 1: Portland Black Lives Matter protests had actually started several days
Speaker 1: earlier before that mass gathering on the twenty nine, A
Speaker 1: handful of activists of color had begun occupying the steps
Speaker 1: of the Justice Center immediately after George Floyd's murder. One
Speaker 1: of them was Tracy Molina, an indigenous Portland or better
Speaker 1: known as Kloska. Well. I remember it wasn't not long
Speaker 1: after the George Floyd's story broke. A lot of us
Speaker 1: wanted to do something here, but I think most of
Speaker 1: the regular organizers kept saying wait, you know, let's wait,
Speaker 1: let's wait for this, let's wait for that, and then finally, um,
Speaker 1: then Danielle James, I think she's a pretty prominent black
Speaker 1: activist in this community and sit up against Patriot Prayer
Speaker 1: and Proud Boys and other white supremases for years. Um.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a spark for that you know.
Speaker 1: She was said like, we shouldn't wait in the night.
Speaker 1: Supporter I said, I don't think we should wait either.
Speaker 1: I think we should do something now. And so we
Speaker 1: ended up the seven ten thirty all meeting at I
Speaker 1: and starting to protest there, and then we moved. Um,
Speaker 1: sometime after midnight we moved over to the Justice Center
Speaker 1: and slept on the steps there and planned to to
Speaker 1: occupy it as long as we could. And so we
Speaker 1: stayed there and then um there was only maybe like
Speaker 1: four of us that slept on the steps, and then
Speaker 1: the next day, like at ice, we had about thirty
Speaker 1: or forty people. And then the next day, after we
Speaker 1: stayed on those steps, I would say there was about
Speaker 1: forty or fifty people that showed up in the afternoon
Speaker 1: and they did a direct action or we blocked off
Speaker 1: the streets and in front of the steps of the
Speaker 1: Justice Center, and I think they did it also did
Speaker 1: it die. And that night there was also impromptu direct
Speaker 1: action or so people some young women sat on sat
Speaker 1: in the doorway at the Justice Center and they brought
Speaker 1: riot police out for that, and there was at that
Speaker 1: time there was only about twenty of us and only
Speaker 1: like six people participating in the sit in, but they
Speaker 1: still brought riot police out and they were violently removed.
Speaker 1: That made the news because one of the women, one
Speaker 1: of the women that was hit with the tongue, was
Speaker 1: she was actually pregnant, a black woman. And the only
Speaker 1: way us the way I know that for sure is
Speaker 1: because after she was in the ambulance, she came. I
Speaker 1: don't know if she went to the hospital, but after
Speaker 1: she was in the ambulance, she returned paperwork from the
Speaker 1: and proving that she was pregnant and was, you know,
Speaker 1: showing some of the police officers that were still standing around.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's how the first few days went. And
Speaker 1: then um, then then we we all, um, we're going
Speaker 1: to have a rally at UM in Insula Park. And
Speaker 1: then I read to part of the opening and when
Speaker 1: I was there, more and more people kipt coming, and
Speaker 1: I was surprised. There are so many, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe a thousand people that there was a lot, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people there. Was surprised, and it just
Speaker 1: kept getting bigger and bigger. The now merged crowd, which
Speaker 1: numbered at least a couple of thousand people, marched back
Speaker 1: to the Justice Center for a few minutes, they stood outside,
Speaker 1: chanting George Floyd's name. The police were nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 1: While most of the crowd stood out in the street,
Speaker 1: A hundred or so people gathered in front of the
Speaker 1: windows of the Justice Center. They started spray painting slogans
Speaker 1: on the glass. A few people peeed on the doorway,
Speaker 1: someone lit a small fire out in front, and then
Speaker 1: quite suddenly one person broke a window. The first broken
Speaker 1: windows set off a frenzy, and soon people were using
Speaker 1: their feet, rocks, and any tools they could find to
Speaker 1: shatter every exposed piece of glass on the building. With
Speaker 1: the windows shattered, protesters ran into the Justice Center, ransacking
Speaker 1: police offices and setting small fires. The Portland police arrived
Speaker 1: a little bit later and began showering the crowd with
Speaker 1: tear gas and flash band grenades. Though no one knew
Speaker 1: it at the time, events had just been set into
Speaker 1: motion that would lead to more than a hundred consecutive
Speaker 1: knights of protests and tear gas. The Portland Uprising had begun.
Speaker 1: We should probably start by talking a bit about the
Speaker 1: definition of a riot. Legally, anything the cops declare a
Speaker 1: riot is a riot. May twenty nine is generally referred
Speaker 1: to as Riot Knight, because after the crowd was dispersed
Speaker 1: from the Justice Center, hundreds of people ran through the
Speaker 1: streets of Portland's luxury shopping district, smashing up high end
Speaker 1: chain stores while the police chased after them. It certainly
Speaker 1: felt like a riot, but a number of of folks
Speaker 1: that we interviewed actually disagreed. Alan Kessler, a Portland based lawyer,
Speaker 1: pushed back on that description. I guess I disagree that
Speaker 1: even the first night was a real riot. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were some shops scott Burg Old there were there
Speaker 1: were something stolen. Um, there was a fire in the
Speaker 1: in the I j c um. I'm not sure that that.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know the intent there right Like
Speaker 1: looking at the fire, looking at the Piddie fire as
Speaker 1: I've seen, I don't know if anybody means to burn
Speaker 1: the buildings down or to Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Uh,
Speaker 1: it didn't seem like it. It doesn't seem it. If
Speaker 1: I were going to burn down the building, I would
Speaker 1: use a hell of a lot more accelerant. Then it
Speaker 1: seems like people are using. Um. I don't know. Uh.
Speaker 1: I was struck by even on even on that night
Speaker 1: I was struck by uh, excuse me, Oh yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a lot more context. Yeah, please don't when Kessler says, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trusting you, all the freedoms in your hands straight
Speaker 1: to Andy. So Um. Now, even that night I was
Speaker 1: struck by Commissioner Fritz, who I have absolutely no love for, uh,
Speaker 1: who seemed just horrified that that goocy got robbed and
Speaker 1: uh and I didn't seem able to put that in
Speaker 1: any kind of context. Um, Yeah, I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't see that as a riot. I
Speaker 1: didn't think that people, uh, I wanted to just break shit.
Speaker 1: I think even then it was it was still political.
Speaker 1: It was it was a protest and it you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't recommend that people break stuff, for steal stuff,
Speaker 1: for set stuff on fire. But I understood the upset,
Speaker 1: and I, yeah, I just didn't see in those terms. Um,
Speaker 1: it didn't seem like. I don't remember that anybody died.
Speaker 1: I'm sure somebody was hurt, but I don't remember that
Speaker 1: it was particularly severe that evening, Like, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't remember that as a as a violent knight. I
Speaker 1: remember it as a night of property damage. Yeah, I uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I wasn't making a legal distinct. There was more
Speaker 1: of a moral argument, like I think people put a
Speaker 1: moral import behind riot and it I don't think it
Speaker 1: was that. I don't think it was I don't think
Speaker 1: it was a breakdown in civilization. I think it was
Speaker 1: a extremely heartfelt frustration with a system that wasn't meeting
Speaker 1: people's needs. Max Smith, a Portland based act to best
Speaker 1: in live streamer, called it a riot light. I called
Speaker 1: like a riot light that night. I think I was like,
Speaker 1: that seems like a little kind of a riot light.
Speaker 1: They broke a couple of windows, you know, they sacked
Speaker 1: the Apple Store. Of course, you know, some opera students
Speaker 1: are gonna, you know, take that opportunity if something is,
Speaker 1: if things are getting broken, someone's gonna rob the Apple Store.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's dumb because you're gonna get caught, but
Speaker 1: go ahead and rob the Apple Store. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what I thought of it, Like some
Speaker 1: stuff is gonna get broken. That's what happened. And I
Speaker 1: actually thought the police, you know, I thought that and
Speaker 1: actually thought there was going to be some change, which
Speaker 1: we saw a couple of things, like they started talking
Speaker 1: about you know, canceling the the DVRT and the cops
Speaker 1: in schools and things like that, and uh and since then,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's been fairly tame, and we haven't seen
Speaker 1: a whole lot of progress, so, you know, I felt
Speaker 1: like it worked a little bit. The point Mac made
Speaker 1: is one that a lot of activists would agree with.
Speaker 1: Property damage, they argue is not nearly in the same
Speaker 1: moral realm is injuring your killing human beings. Mac himself
Speaker 1: was not out on the twenty nine, but he was
Speaker 1: most directly inspired to start protesting because of something else
Speaker 1: that happened that day. Hundreds of miles south of Portland
Speaker 1: in San Jose, California, there was a guy named Derek
Speaker 1: Sanderland in San Jose and he was protesting before you know,
Speaker 1: he was purchasing against the murder of George Floyd in
Speaker 1: solidarity with Minneapolis. And I remember waking up and getting
Speaker 1: on my phone and kind of just flicking through things
Speaker 1: and seeing that this man had been shot in the
Speaker 1: testicles with a rubber bullet and it like required like
Speaker 1: emergency surgery and he's probably never gonna have kids. And
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this dude and he's like twenty seven
Speaker 1: years old. He's like a black dude. He's got dreads,
Speaker 1: he wears glasses, he's got a scrappy gas beard like mine,
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm looking at this guy like a
Speaker 1: man that would have been me. And then I keep
Speaker 1: reading and he was like he was like a teacher.
Speaker 1: He taught the police about like not targeting people or whatever,
Speaker 1: like you know, de escalation tactics or whatever. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're telling me they shot a dude that that trains them,
Speaker 1: Like this has got to be one of the craziest
Speaker 1: things I've ever heard in my life. And he could
Speaker 1: have died from this, you know, And that just made
Speaker 1: me so mad. And I was like, it's even if
Speaker 1: it wasn't you know, it wasn't me, It could have
Speaker 1: been me, if I would have been out there, And
Speaker 1: so I was just like, that's insane, Like this should
Speaker 1: not be a thing at all. This shouldn't this just
Speaker 1: this can't be really. Many protesters and some journalists will
Speaker 1: argue that most of the riots Portland's saw this summer,
Speaker 1: we're not cases of protesters rioting, but we're instead cop riots.
Speaker 1: After all, if people breaking windows and louding an Apple
Speaker 1: Store is a riot, then police driving into ouds, throwing
Speaker 1: grenades at random and tear gas and hundreds of innocent
Speaker 1: motorists probably counts as a riot, too righted riot We
Speaker 1: crooked when P. T. Barnum's Great American Museum burned to
Speaker 1: the ground in eighteen sixty five, what rose from its
Speaker 1: ashes would change the world? Welcome to Grim and Mild Presents,
Speaker 1: an ongoing journey into the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating.
Speaker 1: For our inaugural season, we'll be giving you a backstage
Speaker 1: tour of the always complex and often misunderstood cultural artifact
Speaker 1: that is the American Side Show. So come along as
Speaker 1: we visit the shadowy corners of the stage and learn
Speaker 1: about the people who were at the center of it
Speaker 1: all in a place where spectacle was king. We will
Speaker 1: soon discover there's always more to the story than meets
Speaker 1: the eye, So step right up and get in line.
Speaker 1: Listen to Grim and Mile Presents now on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: Learn more over at Grim and Mild dot com. Slash
Speaker 1: presents What's Up, Guys, I'm a shop Bloud and I
Speaker 1: am Troy millions and we are the host of the
Speaker 1: Earn Your Leisure podcast, where we break down business models
Speaker 1: and examine the latest trans and finance. We hold court
Speaker 1: and have exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names
Speaker 1: of business, sport, and entertainment, from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban,
Speaker 1: Rick Ross and Shaquill O'Neil. I mean our alumni list
Speaker 1: is expansive. Listen to as our guests reveal their business models,
Speaker 1: hardships and triumphs, and their respective fields. The knowledge is
Speaker 1: in death and the questions are always delivered from your standpoint.
Speaker 1: We want to know what you want to know. We
Speaker 1: talked to the legends of business, sports and entertainment about
Speaker 1: how they got their start and most importantly, how they
Speaker 1: make their money. Earn Your Leisia is a college business
Speaker 1: class mixed with pop culture. Want to learn about the
Speaker 1: real estate game? Uncleassed how the stock market works. We
Speaker 1: got you interested in starting a truck and company or
Speaker 1: vendor machine business? Not really sure about how taxes or
Speaker 1: credit work? We got it all covered. The Earnie Leisure
Speaker 1: podcast is available now. Listen to Ernie Leisure on the
Speaker 1: Black Effect podcast Network, I Heart Radio, app, Apple Podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Roxande Gay,
Speaker 1: host of The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the Bad Fominist Podcast
Speaker 1: of Your Dreams. Now what is the Roxanne Gay Agenda,
Speaker 1: you might ask, Well, it's a podcast where I'm going
Speaker 1: to speak my mind about what's on my mind, and
Speaker 1: that could be anything. Every week I will be in
Speaker 1: conversation with an interesting person who has something to say.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books,
Speaker 1: and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. I started
Speaker 1: each show with a recommendation, Really, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: share with you a movie or a book, or maybe
Speaker 1: some music or a comedy side something that I really
Speaker 1: want you to be aware of and maybe engage with
Speaker 1: as well. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The Roxanay Agenda,
Speaker 1: The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams, every Tuesday on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcast. May was not the first night of
Speaker 1: Portland's Bill and protests, but it was the night that
Speaker 1: set the tone for the next hundred plus nights. There
Speaker 1: was tear gas, flash bangs, armored cops fighting demonstrators who
Speaker 1: were armed with in the beginning, cardboard signs and water bottles. Now,
Speaker 1: we're going to cover a lot of ground in this series,
Speaker 1: and it's probably best to kick this off by giving
Speaker 1: everyone an overview of what exactly happened in Portland from
Speaker 1: late May to the end of September, because the mainstream
Speaker 1: media only really showed a portion of this story. Late
Speaker 1: on the night of the twenty nine, the people of
Speaker 1: Portland learned that their mayor, Ted Wheeler had actually been
Speaker 1: out of town visiting his mother. His first response to
Speaker 1: what had happened was a tweet that started with the
Speaker 1: word enough in all caps and ended with a promise
Speaker 1: that he was coming back now now was also in
Speaker 1: all caps. City Commissioner joe Anne Hardesty, who was acting
Speaker 1: president in the mayor's absence, declared a state of emergency
Speaker 1: and enacted a curfew from eight pm until six am.
Speaker 1: At this point, Portland was in the same boat as
Speaker 1: many other American cities, including New York and Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: In Portland, the curfew was not enough to clamp down
Speaker 1: on unrest, quite the opposite. In fact, local activists like
Speaker 1: d s A member Olivia Cutty Smith were inspired. I
Speaker 1: just thought that it was it was not like anything
Speaker 1: I've ever seen before. I've never seen that level of
Speaker 1: um destruction happened at a protest before. It was exciting.
Speaker 1: I was like, we're going to start. This is huge,
Speaker 1: this is going to take off all across the country.
Speaker 1: Its happening in Portland, it's having in Minneapolis, like this
Speaker 1: is the start of a revolution. Um, you know, and
Speaker 1: even knowing that that might not be true, that that's
Speaker 1: the feeling that I had. That night, several thousand people
Speaker 1: gathered again and on the thirty feet nearly ten thousand
Speaker 1: Portlanders marched to the Justice Center. We actually sort of
Speaker 1: organized the protests behind the scenes um and got like
Speaker 1: ten thousand people across the bridge with this offer UM.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was just it felt like the sky
Speaker 1: was a limit at that point, Like I can't believe
Speaker 1: there are ten thousand people showing up every single night,
Speaker 1: like this has never happened before. We have to turn
Speaker 1: this into something. Both times police eventually dispersed the crowd
Speaker 1: with indiscriminate tear gas use in liberal clubbing with truncheons.
Speaker 1: Thousands of protesters were gassed, but so were hundreds of
Speaker 1: motorists who happened to be out on city streets and
Speaker 1: dozens of houseless individuals who were gassed in their tents
Speaker 1: for no apparent reason. The curfew was rescinded in early June.
Speaker 1: It clearly hadn't helped. Next, the city began to build
Speaker 1: what would become a massive fence around the Justice Center.
Speaker 1: The protest movement started to splinter between a large group
Speaker 1: of demonstrators who engaged in daily marches that avoided police contact,
Speaker 1: and a smaller group who repeatedly confronted police at the fence.
Speaker 1: At first, Portland police would gas and grenade any group
Speaker 1: of people that drew close to the fence, along with
Speaker 1: any motorists who happened to be driving nearby. Protesters started
Speaker 1: calling at the sacred fence because law enforcements seemed to
Speaker 1: value it more than the physical well being of Portlanders.
Speaker 1: The first fence war between protesters and police lasted most
Speaker 1: of June. There were occasional protests at other police buildings
Speaker 1: like the p p A, headquarters of the Portland Police Union,
Speaker 1: and the North Precinct. Smaller groups of activists also engaged
Speaker 1: in what was briefly a nationwide practice of pulling down
Speaker 1: statues of famous white supremacists. On June eighteenth, a small
Speaker 1: number of mostly teenage Portlander's toppled a statue of George Washington.
Speaker 1: This prompted President Trump to create an executive order to
Speaker 1: protect statues, monuments, and federal property. He sent dozens of
Speaker 1: federal age into Portland to enforce this new order. The
Speaker 1: first time the Feds made a large appearance was on
Speaker 1: July four. That night was a turning point for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons, after weeks of declining numbers. More than
Speaker 1: a thousand Portlanders showed up outside the Justice Center to
Speaker 1: shoot commercial grade fireworks at its windows. They fired a
Speaker 1: few with the adjacent Federal courthouse as well. The police
Speaker 1: l rad a car mounted loudspeaker started warning everyone not
Speaker 1: to shoot the courthouse, so, of course, the entire crowd
Speaker 1: swarmed around the building and continued shooting it with fireworks. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: wooden hatches opened up on the front of the fortress
Speaker 1: like building, and the federal agents inside began tossing out
Speaker 1: tear gas grenades and shooting impact munitions into the crowd.
Speaker 1: For a few minutes, the scene resembled a cross between
Speaker 1: an acid trip in a medieval siege, with protesters bombarding
Speaker 1: the courthouse with fireworks while the Feds inside pumped out
Speaker 1: gas and riot munitions. Yeah, Friday night, everybody. Eventually the
Speaker 1: fight spilled out into the street, and for several hours,
Speaker 1: Portland Police and Department of Homeland Security agents engaged in
Speaker 1: a running battle with hundreds of protesters. Fireworks provided the
Speaker 1: activists with their first weapon that could disrupt a police
Speaker 1: riot line, while law enforcement responded by escalating physical violence
Speaker 1: even further. I was walking up from the j C
Speaker 1: Up towards the park blocks, and there was a person
Speaker 1: who was essentially having an asthma attack and a cloud
Speaker 1: of tear gas, and they had one buddy with them,
Speaker 1: and it was just such an impossible project for that
Speaker 1: one buddy to sort of haul them out of tear
Speaker 1: gas while they're having an asthma attack and like a
Speaker 1: panic attack and really having her off time. Everything got
Speaker 1: more serious after the fourth the federal agents started responding
Speaker 1: to protests downtown more often than the Portland Police Bureau.
Speaker 1: A week later, federal agents almost killed a protester named
Speaker 1: Donovan Labella by shooting him in the forehead with a
Speaker 1: less lethal round. Slowly, the mainstream media began to realize
Speaker 1: that something strange and terrifying was happening. In Portland. The
Speaker 1: national interest was ly peaked a few days later when
Speaker 1: camo clad Feds in a rental van started kidnapping people
Speaker 1: off the streets. In early July, the fourth accepted most
Speaker 1: nightly protests only numbered a few dozen to a hundred
Speaker 1: or so protesters, but national media and the specter of
Speaker 1: federal snatch fans panicked Portland's liberal majority. By mid late July,
Speaker 1: thousands upon thousands of protesters were showing up in the
Speaker 1: street every night. The time between July thirty, dubbed the
Speaker 1: Fed War, is the stuff most Americans saw from Portland
Speaker 1: in the news. Moms and dad's, veterans, doctors, chefs, and
Speaker 1: students gathering in front of the Federal courthouse, chanting demands,
Speaker 1: banging on doors, setting fires, ripping off plywood covering the windows,
Speaker 1: and repeatedly tearing down that massive fence. Whenever the federal
Speaker 1: agents came out, a shield wall of protesters would form,
Speaker 1: deflecting metal tear gas canisters and flashbags up into the air.
Speaker 1: People armed with leafblowers directed gas back at the Feds.
Speaker 1: In response, the Feds started using experimental new weapons, including
Speaker 1: a pest a side sprayer, Jerry rigged di spew poison gas,
Speaker 1: seeing the police attack people, especially the FEDS when the
Speaker 1: Feds came, when they came started attacking people like like
Speaker 1: in the smoke. After I got like a gas mask
Speaker 1: and started going into the smoke, you know, and seeing
Speaker 1: what was going on in there, I was pretty I
Speaker 1: was pretty uh disturbed by seeing the way that they
Speaker 1: were like beating people under the under the cover of
Speaker 1: tear gas. That was, um, that was a surprise for me.
Speaker 1: I'd heard people saying, I've got my ask kicked in there,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know it was going down like that.
Speaker 1: As July came and went, so did the visible federal
Speaker 1: presence downtown. Most of the more liberal types packed it up,
Speaker 1: calling the protests a success. But while the days of
Speaker 1: walls of camouflaged Fed's head temporarily ended despite reports of
Speaker 1: their withdrawal, federal presence in Portland lingered on for weeks.
Speaker 1: Dedicated activists were not fooled by the faux withdrawal. They
Speaker 1: knew the work was far from over. Throughout August, protesters
Speaker 1: gathered in front of police precincts, city buildings in Portland's
Speaker 1: ice facility. Sometimes they engaged in property damage, but more
Speaker 1: often they just stood in the street yelling at the
Speaker 1: cops until they were inevitably charged by riot lines. It
Speaker 1: was in August that Portland first saw right wing counter protests,
Speaker 1: generally framed as back the Blue or MAGA gatherings. Sometimes
Speaker 1: these escalated into street brawls between Proud Boys and left
Speaker 1: wing activists. On several occasions, Proud Boys and other right
Speaker 1: wing vigilantes through home made explosives and shot paintball guns
Speaker 1: into crowds. Live rounds were even fired into the air
Speaker 1: and into crowds. The escalation continued until a Trump caravan
Speaker 1: of vehicles waving flags drove through Portland in late August.
Speaker 1: Several Trump supporters fired paintball guns and mace into the
Speaker 1: crowds as they drove by. The whole awful day ended
Speaker 1: with a member of the right wing street gang Patriot Prayer,
Speaker 1: being shot and killed by a white BLM activist after
Speaker 1: charging him with a can of mace. Throughout all this,
Speaker 1: Portland's BLM marches occurred every single night right up an
Speaker 1: till late September, when a series of devastating wildfires overwhelmed
Speaker 1: Oregon and blanketed the city of Portland in a thick
Speaker 1: haze of poison, the nightly marches were halted, and the
Speaker 1: various mutual aid organizations that had started up to service
Speaker 1: the protests turned their efforts to meeting the needs of evacuees. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: right wing activists blamed the fires on Antifa and spent
Speaker 1: several days setting up a legal arm checkpoints and threatening
Speaker 1: people with rifles. When the rains came in the air cleared,
Speaker 1: the protests started up again. There were no longer nightly affairs,
Speaker 1: but they've remained regular occurrences ever since. And all of
Speaker 1: this begs the question why Portland, all fifty U s
Speaker 1: States hosted Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of
Speaker 1: Many cities saw mass demonstrations, and while nine of BLM
Speaker 1: protests were considered peaceful, numerous cities saw rioting, exchanges of gunfire,
Speaker 1: and even had buildings burnt down. But no city in
Speaker 1: the United States had as many continuous nights of protests
Speaker 1: as Portland. No city saw thousands of its citizens lay
Speaker 1: a long siege of a federal courthouse, no city experienced
Speaker 1: a thousand persons street fight between right and left wing demonstrators.
Speaker 1: Perhaps most importantly, no city earned the ire of President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump in the same way as Portland. It seems
Speaker 1: bizarre that this all would happen in Portland, a small
Speaker 1: city of about six hundred and fifty three thousand people.
Speaker 1: How did it grow to become one of the most
Speaker 1: active front lines in a national battle for black lives
Speaker 1: and against white supremacy. It actually makes a lot of
Speaker 1: sense once you scratch beneath the surface a bit. Here's
Speaker 1: Tristan again. Oregon was kind of um I found it
Speaker 1: as like something of like a white utopia, you know,
Speaker 1: like a place for the the white man to really
Speaker 1: like find his destiny right and like conquer this you know,
Speaker 1: this continent. And I think that's just kind of like
Speaker 1: it's just like baked into the culture here where even
Speaker 1: like even like the love of the outdoors isn't like
Speaker 1: isn't like a love of um like keep like keeping
Speaker 1: the environment like healthy and like bounce. It's just like
Speaker 1: a very like commodified like we deserve this, you know,
Speaker 1: we deserve to live in this beautiful place, and we're
Speaker 1: the only ones who know how to take care of it.
Speaker 1: And obviously that's like mellowed out a little bit over
Speaker 1: the you know, decades. But I think that's still basically
Speaker 1: like what what like Um, it's like the undercurrent, you know,
Speaker 1: that's like behind most of what cosan in Oregon. You
Speaker 1: can learn a lot of what you need to know
Speaker 1: about Oregon's history of racism by studying one of the
Speaker 1: state's founders, Peter Hardman Burnett. As a young man in Tennessee,
Speaker 1: he murdered a black person with a booby trap is
Speaker 1: revenge for petty theft. In three he helped organize the
Speaker 1: first great wagon train of white people that headed to
Speaker 1: the Oregon Territory. He was elected to the Provisional Legislature
Speaker 1: and served as the territory's first Supreme Court justice. In
Speaker 1: eighteen forty four, he worked to pass what became known
Speaker 1: as Burnett's Lash Law. This stated that all black people
Speaker 1: were required to leave Oregon under penalty of being whipped
Speaker 1: in public not less than twenty or more than thirty
Speaker 1: nine stripes. This punishment was to be repeated every six
Speaker 1: months until they moved. The law did include a grace
Speaker 1: period three years for black women and two years for
Speaker 1: black men. Burnett also pushed to ban Chinese immigration into Oregon.
Speaker 1: While there are no documented instances of the Lash laws
Speaker 1: being used. It's set a clear tone for the state.
Speaker 1: Burnett's lash law reflected the values of the first white
Speaker 1: people who moved to Oregon. They were abolitionists and that
Speaker 1: they hated slavery, but they only hated slavery because they
Speaker 1: were revolted by the thought of living near black people.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty eight, the Oregon Territorial government passed a
Speaker 1: law that banned any quote negro or mulatto from living
Speaker 1: in Oregon. In eighteen fifty, the Oregon Donation Land Act
Speaker 1: gave whites and half breed Indians their quote, six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty acres of land from the government. All other
Speaker 1: people of color were banned from the land grants. Oregon
Speaker 1: was finally made a state in February eighteen fifty nine.
Speaker 1: Under its constitution, quote, no free negro or mulatto not
Speaker 1: residing in this state at the time of the adoption
Speaker 1: of this Constitution shall ever come reside or be within
Speaker 1: this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract,
Speaker 1: or maintain any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall
Speaker 1: provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers
Speaker 1: of all such free negroes and mulatto's and for their
Speaker 1: effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of
Speaker 1: persons who shall bring them into the state or employer
Speaker 1: harbor them therein. Oregon remains the only state in the
Speaker 1: Union that ever banned black people from living there. Now
Speaker 1: things have gotten better since eighteen fifty nine, but better
Speaker 1: is a low bar. In Portland remains the whitest metropolitan
Speaker 1: area in the United States. Seventy of the population is white,
Speaker 1: less than six is black. Today, Portland's owns the distinction
Speaker 1: as one of the most gentrified cities in the United States.
Speaker 1: Oregon continues to report some of the worst graduation rates
Speaker 1: for black students in the nation, and the wealth gap
Speaker 1: between white and black oregon Ians over the last fifty
Speaker 1: years has whitened, not shrunk. I moved to Portland like
Speaker 1: like five and a half six years ago, I think,
Speaker 1: and from where I definitely I did from northern California
Speaker 1: Bay Area. Um, and I didn't really I didn't have
Speaker 1: a idea of what the city was per se, Like
Speaker 1: I've never seen an episode of port Land here, for instance.
Speaker 1: I just kind of moved up here that would be
Speaker 1: closed a family and and yeah, and when I when
Speaker 1: I kind of first got here, it was like, you
Speaker 1: know that hang out with a bunch of hippies, a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who loved trees and too right bikes
Speaker 1: and go hiking, and it's like, oh, they love the
Speaker 1: environment and they love progressive you know politics, and you know,
Speaker 1: and everything's just chill within. Like the longer I stayed here,
Speaker 1: the facade started to like fall away, and and it's
Speaker 1: I mean like I've been here for you know, almost
Speaker 1: six years now, and I still I don't quite know
Speaker 1: what to make of it still, you know, but like recently, um,
Speaker 1: like with the passage of or like with the most
Speaker 1: recent election, you know, like the local measures that passed
Speaker 1: and didn't pass. It's like like Oregon loves to have
Speaker 1: a black friend. That's what they like. They like to
Speaker 1: have somebody they can point to and be like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not racist, but they don't. They're not interested in
Speaker 1: actually like challenging the like white supremacists like power structures
Speaker 1: that actually like benefit them and and if you like,
Speaker 1: if you agitate them on that, they just you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's when like the Pacific Northwest, like passive aggressiveness
Speaker 1: like kicks in and they just like kind of like
Speaker 1: try to ignore you, but secually they're totally fucking piste
Speaker 1: off that you dare to like insinuate their racist um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's like it's a really complicated thing and
Speaker 1: I still quite haven't figured out like what makes white
Speaker 1: people take here, but it's, you know, it's messy. Another
Speaker 1: activist we interviewed, Courtney, is an indigenous Hawaiian person who
Speaker 1: moved to Oregon when she was seventeen. She recalls being
Speaker 1: stunned by how white her school was. Ended up going
Speaker 1: to Oregon City High School, which was like insane. I
Speaker 1: was the only non Hispanic person that was that that school. UM,
Speaker 1: and nobody talked to me through really long time, and
Speaker 1: I just was kind of like it was a culture
Speaker 1: shock because there were so many white people that I
Speaker 1: had never seen this many white people in my entire
Speaker 1: life because everyone in hahaitis like mixed races, the majority
Speaker 1: of them are Asian or Polynesian. So um, I definitely
Speaker 1: was nobody really talked to me for a while, and
Speaker 1: I kind of like found my little niche of people
Speaker 1: to hang out with. UM. But yeah, like just even
Speaker 1: living in that area, I would get a lot of
Speaker 1: weird looks and um yeah, just not the most friendly
Speaker 1: people to to be around. Um yeah, that's basically it's
Speaker 1: just a culture shock to just be how white organ is.
Speaker 1: I just I didn't expect it at all. I didn't
Speaker 1: and I was like, I knew that they were going
Speaker 1: to be like Hispanic people, but I just didn't realize that.
Speaker 1: Um I thought maybe I would see more like black people.
Speaker 1: And especially living in a city, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: from what you you're like Sportland is just like a
Speaker 1: major city in the United States, and then coming here
Speaker 1: and not really seeing the mix of cultures was just
Speaker 1: kind of shocking. Tristan described the racism in Portland as
Speaker 1: unique in a subtle way. It's just it's very it's
Speaker 1: very covert or you know, it tries to be very covert.
Speaker 1: Um and it's very like like well, part part of
Speaker 1: what it is is that for a very long time now,
Speaker 1: there's barely been any people of co here at all. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of the widest states in the country.
Speaker 1: It's why it's major city in the country, and so like,
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, people are I don't actually know
Speaker 1: what like like what like a microaggression is or what
Speaker 1: that would be like, you know, I had to experience um,
Speaker 1: like just like a year, year and a half ago,
Speaker 1: maybe I was out with this group um these like
Speaker 1: forest offender type people. Every year they go out post
Speaker 1: this big camp out and you know, like go out
Speaker 1: into the woods and do like surveys and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: try to collect data they can use to to fight
Speaker 1: temper companies and ship and like someone us drop the
Speaker 1: N word like there's five ft for me, there's like
Speaker 1: in casual conversation, and then I had to like address
Speaker 1: the camp like at breakfast, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so just just don't don't say that word. Like there's
Speaker 1: no like like like even if you're just telling a
Speaker 1: story that there's no appropriate context for a white person
Speaker 1: to say that. And and that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why I don't go to those fucking campouts anymo. But
Speaker 1: like it's like that, it's like they just don't they
Speaker 1: haven't been around black people or people of color in general,
Speaker 1: and they just don't know what to do. And of course,
Speaker 1: the racism that pervades Portland's is present in the Portland
Speaker 1: Police Bureau. Despite black people making up again less than
Speaker 1: six percent of the population. Portland police use force on
Speaker 1: black people more often than people of any other race.
Speaker 1: Portland police are five to fourteen times more likely to
Speaker 1: shoot impact munitions at and to forcibly restrain black residents.
Speaker 1: At one point in the late sixties, black Portlander's accounted
Speaker 1: for nearly half of p PBS arrests. Portland's black community
Speaker 1: has been fighting against this kind of racist violence for decades.
Speaker 1: Here's Max Meth again for me. The battle with the
Speaker 1: police began, you know, in the hip hop field. Um.
Speaker 1: There was an event here in Portland that happened maybe
Speaker 1: six or seven years ago. UM. That happened at a
Speaker 1: venue called the Blue Monk, And it was a pretty deal.
Speaker 1: And I was there and I had friends who were
Speaker 1: performing at the show, and the police essentially came under
Speaker 1: the guise of a capacity violation and brought like a
Speaker 1: seven cars and twenty something officers and shut the whole
Speaker 1: street of Belmont down And and that bar eventually actually
Speaker 1: ended up a closing shortly after that. Um, And it
Speaker 1: was a huge deal. They made a huge deal about
Speaker 1: a small thing, and it went like into like national news.
Speaker 1: And even prior to that, we had been really combating
Speaker 1: the efforts of the police to kind of shut down
Speaker 1: or stifle hip hop events in the city. Every time
Speaker 1: we wanted to have a hip hop event, it became like,
Speaker 1: you know, like a world war um, to the point
Speaker 1: that it ended up actually being a protest about the
Speaker 1: hip hop community here. And so that was a fight
Speaker 1: that we had as far as hip hop music and clubs,
Speaker 1: as far as hip hop events, as far as live music. Um.
Speaker 1: They really just used the city's resources that the police,
Speaker 1: the fire marshals and the o l c C To
Speaker 1: really like shut down hip hop and and and really
Speaker 1: any black lead events. Lawyer Allan Kessler has done a
Speaker 1: lot of digging into the early history of the Portland police.
Speaker 1: His research has revealed a century long history of Portland's
Speaker 1: police involvement with hate groups, most particularly the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1: I think it was last Memorial that I spent the
Speaker 1: whole weekend in the Oregonian Archives basically living through World
Speaker 1: War two. It wasn't fun, uh and it's outrageous, Like
Speaker 1: the clan was on there was a front page column
Speaker 1: talked to a klansman every day for like a week, uh,
Speaker 1: and then every other day they had the clan on
Speaker 1: the front page anyway, but that you know, that was like, um,
Speaker 1: it was, yeah, it was incredible. Um. During the war, Uh,
Speaker 1: basically everybody, every adult white dude had a little star badge.
Speaker 1: They the police would basically deputize anybody or people just
Speaker 1: don't be badges made, so everybody in town had a badge.
Speaker 1: There were lots of articles in that time frame about um,
Speaker 1: fake police officer pulls over so and so and they sue.
Speaker 1: In ninety three, a Portland Telegram article reported that the
Speaker 1: Portland Police Bureau was quote full to the brink with klansmen.
Speaker 1: The police bureau actually deputized a hundred klansmen handpicked by
Speaker 1: the local Grand Dragon and designated them Portland Police vigilantes.
Speaker 1: This was before the p p A existed, but the
Speaker 1: tradition lives on. In two thousand ten, Portland police officer
Speaker 1: Mark Krueger was suspended for erecting a memorial to five
Speaker 1: deceased Nazi soldiers on city property. The p p A
Speaker 1: successfully sued for him to be reinstated and given an apology.
Speaker 1: When he quit in early he was the highest paid
Speaker 1: police officer on the force. I asked Maria, a lifelong
Speaker 1: Portland resident, her earliest memory of the police was here's
Speaker 1: what she told me. I would say it was when
Speaker 1: I was a child. Honestly, Um, I've had some some
Speaker 1: family stuff and a family member have to go to
Speaker 1: way to to prison. So I remember some like vaguely
Speaker 1: stuff like remember then as far as like police brutality wise. Um,
Speaker 1: the very first like murder I remember was Kindred James. Um,
Speaker 1: that will happen like a mile from my house. And
Speaker 1: I want to say I was like ten at the time.
Speaker 1: Kindred James was a twenty one year old black mother
Speaker 1: of two. She was killed under suspicious circumstances during a
Speaker 1: traffic stop. Her killer, officer, Scott McCallister, fired a single
Speaker 1: shot when James attempted to drive away from the traffic
Speaker 1: stop after the motion of the vehicle caused him to fall.
Speaker 1: A number of the statements he made in court were
Speaker 1: inconsistent with physical evidence required from the shooting, and we
Speaker 1: don't really know exactly what happened. Among other things, the
Speaker 1: police argued in court that Portland police were trained to
Speaker 1: quote shoot as they fall aslee f the police is
Speaker 1: how I grew up. My dad is a huge like
Speaker 1: Tupac fan, so like I would grow up on hearing
Speaker 1: tupac lyrics all the time, goal threw the police and everything.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I know, screw yeah, I know. That's how
Speaker 1: I like grew up. Yeah, um is to like not
Speaker 1: interact with them. Yeah, I've I've grown up. You know
Speaker 1: how a lot of us, you know, people who are black,
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, when we're being followed, profiled all that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got profiled to dance in a store
Speaker 1: like it's it's still happened. It's been going on since
Speaker 1: a kid. I don't know if I don't know when
Speaker 1: it will stop. That you know, still goes on. Officer
Speaker 1: McCallister was acquitted in federal court. He got to keep
Speaker 1: his job, but even if he had been fired for
Speaker 1: the shooting, the firing might not have stuck. Nationwide, of
Speaker 1: police officers fired from his conductor reinstated because of union
Speaker 1: mandated appeals over the years, this has included an officer
Speaker 1: who challenged a handcuffed man to a fist fight for
Speaker 1: his freedom, and a copper sexually assaulted a young woman
Speaker 1: in his patrol car. In any cities, the number of
Speaker 1: police reinstated by union appeals is much higher than of
Speaker 1: fired san Antonio officers are reinstated because of union appeals.
Speaker 1: The number is six for Philly cops and for Minneapolis cops.
Speaker 1: This is part of why the people of Minneapolis burnt
Speaker 1: the Third Precinct to the ground after George Floyd's murder.
Speaker 1: They knew from experience that it was extremely likely Derek Chauvin,
Speaker 1: Floyd's killer, would not just avoid prison, but would soon
Speaker 1: be back on the street with a badge. In fact,
Speaker 1: as soon as Derek Chauvin and the other officers responsible
Speaker 1: for George Floyd's death were fired, police union head Bob
Speaker 1: Kroll started fighting to have them reinstated. He was concerned
Speaker 1: that they had been quote terminated without due process. Kroll
Speaker 1: was oddly unconcerned that the same thing was true of
Speaker 1: Mr Floyd. The fact that police officers are extremely difficult
Speaker 1: to fire even when they commit murder or rape on
Speaker 1: the job is a national problem. But it is a
Speaker 1: national problem that TRACE's act to a single place where
Speaker 1: else the city of Portland, Oregon, and more specifically to
Speaker 1: the Portland Police Association. We make sure to check out
Speaker 1: Drink Champs, your number one music podcast on the Black
Speaker 1: Effect Podcast Network. Host n O. R. E and D
Speaker 1: j E. F N sat down with artists and icon Yea,
Speaker 1: which Vulture called one most significant interviews. I literally had
Speaker 1: to go like Danos and I don't want to have
Speaker 1: to be the villain. But when I went and did
Speaker 1: the Donda thing, he returned and anybody had to sit
Speaker 1: back and watch the real leader. Check out Drink Champs
Speaker 1: conversation with Yea and many more legendary artists each and
Speaker 1: every Friday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
Speaker 1: or where ever you listen to your favorite shows. From
Speaker 1: Cavalry Audio, comes the new true crime podcast The Shadow
Speaker 1: Girls always wanted of it felt like to kill somebody
Speaker 1: and started laughing. Prosecutors described him as a serial killer,
Speaker 1: surt kicking up these girls, getting him in a position
Speaker 1: of vulnerability. When he got hold of their neck, that
Speaker 1: was it. I'm Caroline Asia, a journalist and lifelong resident
Speaker 1: at the Pacific Northwest. I grew up near the banks
Speaker 1: of the Green River and in the shadow of the
Speaker 1: killer that bears its name. How many times did you
Speaker 1: bring the camera? One of time? Just one time. He
Speaker 1: started fantasizing about having sex with his mother, and he
Speaker 1: fantasized about killing her. But this podcast isn't only about
Speaker 1: tracking down the killer. It's about the victims. We stayed
Speaker 1: in the woods. He always liked to go in the woods.
Speaker 1: All of the kind of strange, you know how it
Speaker 1: feels about prostitutes. Listen to The Shadow Girls on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. The Black Effect Presinks features honest conversations
Speaker 1: and exclusive interviews, a space for artists, everyday people and
Speaker 1: listeners to amplify, elevate, and empower black voices with great conversations.
Speaker 1: Make sure to listen to The Black Effect Presents podcast
Speaker 1: on I Heart Radio, Apple podcast or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcast. The Portland Police Association or p p A
Speaker 1: is Portland's police union, and in a way, it's the
Speaker 1: police union because the p p A is actually the
Speaker 1: oldest functioning police union in the United States. Police had
Speaker 1: attempted to unionize several times before the p PA was
Speaker 1: established in nineteen forty two, but Portland was the first
Speaker 1: city to get it right, and the p p A
Speaker 1: has served as a model for the rest of the
Speaker 1: nation's law enforcement ever since. Every other police union in
Speaker 1: the United States is based off of the Portland Police Association,
Speaker 1: and one of the many trends that pp A set
Speaker 1: was in suing to reinstate fired officers. This story starts
Speaker 1: on the night of March twelfth, nine, when two Portland
Speaker 1: Police officers from the North Precinct dumped four dead possums
Speaker 1: in the doorway of the Burger Barn, one of Portland's
Speaker 1: few black owned businesses. The use of the word possum
Speaker 1: as a derogatory term for black Americans dates back as
Speaker 1: far as eighteen thirty. The owner of the Burger Barn,
Speaker 1: George Powell, called the Police Commissioner to report the incident
Speaker 1: and claimed that it was only the latest example of
Speaker 1: police harassment his business had faced. An internal investigation was
Speaker 1: opened and the officers responsible, Ward and Galloway, admitted their
Speaker 1: guilt immediately. Their identity was initially kept hidden thanks to
Speaker 1: a clause in the pp A contract with the city
Speaker 1: that protected officers from having their names disclosed during disciplinary proceedings.
Speaker 1: This is another one of the innovations that the Portland
Speaker 1: Police Association brought to police departments nationwide. By the way,
Speaker 1: the possum incident happened at an awkward time for the
Speaker 1: Portland Police, several officers had just been fired and convict
Speaker 1: did a faking evidence and using illegal drugs on the job.
Speaker 1: Nearly a hundred criminal cases had to be thrown out
Speaker 1: because of falsified evidence. Public opinion of the police bureau
Speaker 1: was low, and when Portland or started marching and demonstrating
Speaker 1: to demand that officers Ward and Galloway by fired, the
Speaker 1: police commissioner was only too happy to oblige them. Enter
Speaker 1: Stan Peters, the most powerful union president Portland has ever had.
Speaker 1: Peters took to every local news show in town. He
Speaker 1: circulated petitions. He even organized a massed protest march made
Speaker 1: up of Portland police officers and their families. He forced
Speaker 1: the city government into arbitration, which ended with both officers
Speaker 1: being rehired and given back pay. There's actually a book
Speaker 1: about the Portland Police Association, Pickets, Pistols and Politics. Alan
Speaker 1: Kessler informed us of its existence. Here's what it says
Speaker 1: about the court case that resolved the Possum incident. Quote.
Speaker 1: The City of Portland versus Ward and Galloway case is
Speaker 1: still the leading police discipline case in the United States
Speaker 1: and in labor laws. Circles is the arbitration decision referred
Speaker 1: to the most often it's legal nomenclature is simply City
Speaker 1: of Portland. And so in the end, it really isn't
Speaker 1: that odd that the City of Portland wound up as
Speaker 1: ground zero for a battle against white supremacy and police
Speaker 1: brutality and a battle for black lives. It's actually been
Speaker 1: that for a very, very long time. As much as
Speaker 1: people have just kind of started to contextualize how Antifa
Speaker 1: has been fighting against these shuds here for years, you know,
Speaker 1: it actually isn't just the last couple of years where
Speaker 1: it's been in the news. It has been going off
Speaker 1: for decades in Portland. There's always been a level of
Speaker 1: especially in southeast of Portland, has always been like even
Speaker 1: like in the eighties has been like, you know, these
Speaker 1: white skinhead groups and the sharps, has always kind of
Speaker 1: been like a race war between the white folks in Portland,
Speaker 1: especially in the southeast. Over the course of the summer,
Speaker 1: of Portland's wounds were exposed to the world after George
Speaker 1: Floyd's gruesome murder accelerated long brutal unrest across the country
Speaker 1: and even the globe. The Northwest's liberal bastion was forced
Speaker 1: to reckon with its own deeply anti black traditions, while
Speaker 1: also becoming an unlikely epicenter in a movement for black
Speaker 1: lives that had taken the world by storm. Thousands took
Speaker 1: to the streets in a battle that would be fought
Speaker 1: against a corrupt police force, Trump's federal agents, right wing vigilantes,
Speaker 1: and even at times between protesters themselves. Through it all,
Speaker 1: people banded together to support each other and build the
Speaker 1: infrastructure that would propel the city to a hundred plus
Speaker 1: days of protests that even the strongest tear gas couldn't end.
Speaker 1: In the next episode, we will delve into how a
Speaker 1: disorganized crowd of angry Portlanders turned themselves into a movement
Speaker 1: that could stand up to the worst violence the Trump
Speaker 1: administration could throw at it. Uh or the grand Pops
Speaker 1: who couldn't fathom the obamacist hate America just to mean
Speaker 1: she keeps the promises looking like the sixties. It's crazy
Speaker 1: a nation wide days are what my people posted, Dove
Speaker 1: go to schools and aimed after the clan founder we're
Speaker 1: around town is you don't see why were frowning Native
Speaker 1: American students forced to learn about when o'pellah Sarah? How
Speaker 1: is that fair? Bro? Some hero's unsung in Some monsters
Speaker 1: get monuments built for them, but it ain't be all
Speaker 1: a little bit of monster. We crook it. Man, Your
Speaker 1: heroes are worthless and man can show private. Only God
Speaker 1: gives purpose to crook it. This is Roxanne Gay, the
Speaker 1: host of The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the bad feminist podcast
Speaker 1: of your Dreams. Each week I talked to an interesting
Speaker 1: person about feminism, race, writing in books, and art, food,
Speaker 1: culture and yes, politics, we can't escape politics. Listen to
Speaker 1: the luminary original podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda every Tuesday
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you could your podcasts. What Girls in the Forest, our
Speaker 1: imagination and our family bonds. The forest is closer than
Speaker 1: you think. Find a forest near you and discover the
Speaker 1: forest dot Org brought to you by the United States
Speaker 1: Forest Service and the AD Council. Look for your children's
Speaker 1: eyes and you will discover the true magic of a forest.
Speaker 1: Find a forest near you and start exploring it. Discover
Speaker 1: the Forest dot Org brought to you by the United
Speaker 1: States Forest Service and the AD Council.