Speaker 1: Business declared Riley Broom Groom broken out windows of vultable
Speaker 1: businesses in alloy in district members and also drawn projectile
Speaker 1: to believe must impiately leave the area bail You're to
Speaker 1: adhere to this order MA subtrict due to a roust,
Speaker 1: citation or crowd control agents, including but not limited to
Speaker 1: tread and or impact weapon, leave the area immediately. A
Speaker 1: phrase you'll hear thrown around often at Portland protests is
Speaker 1: diversity of tactics. It's a civil revolt organizing principle that
Speaker 1: dates back to at least around the nineteen sixties and
Speaker 1: was popularized by people like Malcolm X. Diversity of tactics
Speaker 1: emphasizes making periodic use of force for defensive or disruptive purposes,
Speaker 1: stepping beyond the limits of non violence, but also stopping
Speaker 1: short of militarization. It's about promoting solidarity between those who
Speaker 1: practice peaceful protests and those who are more militant. As
Speaker 1: Malcolm X put it, our people have made the mistake
Speaker 1: of confusing the methods with the objectives. As long as
Speaker 1: we agree on objectives, we should never fall out with
Speaker 1: each other just because we believe in different methods or
Speaker 1: tactics or strategy to reach a common goal, Taking their
Speaker 1: cues from Malcolm X. Younger and more militant Black liberation
Speaker 1: activists increasingly supported this approach, with Gloria Richardson of the
Speaker 1: Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee declaring in nineteen sixty four
Speaker 1: that the federal government would only be compelled to intervene
Speaker 1: on behalf of integration only when matters approached the level
Speaker 1: of insurrection. While support for a diversity of tactics was
Speaker 1: foundational to struggles throughout the later half of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: the phrase itself was popularized by the protests against the
Speaker 1: Republican National Convention and Saint Paul Minnesota. In two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: a broad coalition of labor, anti war, anti globalization, liberal
Speaker 1: and leftist groups drafted the Saint Paul Principles, which read
Speaker 1: as follows. Number one, our solidarity will be based on
Speaker 1: respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of
Speaker 1: other groups. Number two. The actions and tactics used will
Speaker 1: be organized to maintain a separation of time or space.
Speaker 1: Number Three. Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to
Speaker 1: the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow
Speaker 1: activists and events. And number four, we oppose any state
Speaker 1: repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption, and violence. We
Speaker 1: agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.
Speaker 1: The principles were a rough compromise, the common ground that
Speaker 1: most of the ten thousand protesters who gathered in the
Speaker 1: Twin Cities to face down heavily militarized police could agree to.
Speaker 1: Twelve years later, spurred on by the murder of George
Speaker 1: Floyd in Minneapolis, the national Uprising of would grapple with
Speaker 1: those same debates over acceptable and useful tactics. They would
Speaker 1: find no easy answers. Here's Garrison in Portland. There has
Speaker 1: been even further distinction between peaceful protests i long preplanned
Speaker 1: marches with speeches and no property damage, and non violent
Speaker 1: protests where people aren't physically harmed but protesters do engage
Speaker 1: in property destruction for various reasons. It's often said when
Speaker 1: these different types of protests can happen simultaneously, both a big,
Speaker 1: more liberal one and a smaller radical one, that's when
Speaker 1: you can get the most reforms. As the Wilife explains here.
Speaker 1: Note the audio is re dubbed. I do think that's important,
Speaker 1: Like if if we have to work inside the system
Speaker 1: and are not able to outright destroy it, that is
Speaker 1: definitely an important aspect because it gives it basically gives
Speaker 1: the people in charge in this case, will say Ted Wheeler,
Speaker 1: there are two options you can go with in his mind,
Speaker 1: the violent rioters wanting to destroy everything, or you can
Speaker 1: go with the with the peaceful ones. He's left with
Speaker 1: two options, and he's always going to take like the
Speaker 1: peaceful liberal marches. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's not nothing because they're still out there, demand of
Speaker 1: school resource officers out of schools, the gang Task Force gone,
Speaker 1: and so it basically makes them choose. And I guess
Speaker 1: if we're working in the system, any progress is good.
Speaker 1: Despite police and the media's insistence, vandalism and violence are
Speaker 1: not the same thing, but there still is a public
Speaker 1: perception that anarchists, protesters, and rioters are quote destroying the
Speaker 1: city unquote. Tristan notes how violence and vandalism are misconstruted
Speaker 1: and exaggerated in press coverage. I think the kind of
Speaker 1: the most damaging thing or like the worst kind of
Speaker 1: counter um like narrative is basically just around the like
Speaker 1: vandalism that goes on and like uh really kind of
Speaker 1: blowing that out of proportion and and and trying to
Speaker 1: act like that is going to uh like you know, ok,
Speaker 1: it's distracted, Like there's this you know, narrative going around
Speaker 1: that that's like distracting from the real purpose of the
Speaker 1: move man that it's you know, like white anarchists like
Speaker 1: trying to take the the attention away from like black
Speaker 1: folks and as usually being pushed like really conservative black people,
Speaker 1: and like you know, the kind of people who they
Speaker 1: have a lot of influence with. You know, they'll see
Speaker 1: like mainstream like in the VCP here in Portland, who
Speaker 1: has always been tight with the mayor's office, really pushing
Speaker 1: that narrative hard, and lots of other folks you know,
Speaker 1: coming up to back them up. Yeah. So I guess
Speaker 1: one thing that I've also seen is that there's this
Speaker 1: conflation of like you know, they'll say like downtown is
Speaker 1: deserted because of these protests because all the violence, but
Speaker 1: downtown is deserted because of the pandemic and also despite
Speaker 1: the plague and a record number of businesses shutting down
Speaker 1: due to COVID downtown Portland is unfortunately quite active at
Speaker 1: the moment. It is in fact not destroyed nor taking
Speaker 1: enough appropriate COVID precautions, you know, And that's not like
Speaker 1: that's like the most disingenuous thing anyone could possibly say.
Speaker 1: And it's so it seems so patently obvious that it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, like a red herring, but then people are
Speaker 1: still like buying into it and to a certain degreer,
Speaker 1: like echoing that sentiment, and it's just this is not
Speaker 1: the case. And it's like and there's also this like
Speaker 1: desire for for them to like they kind of say
Speaker 1: that it's all white anarchists, but there's no way to
Speaker 1: that for you to prove that because most of the
Speaker 1: people who are doing this show are all blocked up.
Speaker 1: And it's like so there's also this like kind of
Speaker 1: subtext that they what they really want for these people,
Speaker 1: They want to know who these people are, you know,
Speaker 1: partially to like like you know, gratify themselves are trying
Speaker 1: to be right, but also just so the fucking cops
Speaker 1: from now them. You know. It's like it's like undercurrent
Speaker 1: of like respectability, like if you know, they really cared,
Speaker 1: they would like show their faces or something like that,
Speaker 1: like I don't know. The vast majority of Portland protesters
Speaker 1: do not partake in any political violence or even vandalism,
Speaker 1: even at the riots that end in destruction and violence.
Speaker 1: At almost every one of these protests, physical violence is
Speaker 1: started and further escalated by law enforcement. Entire crowds get
Speaker 1: punished for the actions of a few individuals. The more
Speaker 1: rare alternative to this is quote unquote targeted arrests, that,
Speaker 1: despite its name, are often not actually targeted at specific
Speaker 1: individuals and instead just end up targeting people wearing black
Speaker 1: clothes and those that don't run away fast enough from
Speaker 1: riot cops. The people arrested in these targeted arrests often
Speaker 1: get charged with a mix of small misdemeanors and sometimes
Speaker 1: agregious felonies, most of which end up getting dropped due
Speaker 1: to lack of evidence. When the arrests are specifically targeted,
Speaker 1: it's usually for such quote unquote crimes as standing and
Speaker 1: protesting on the driveway of the Ice building at one am.
Speaker 1: The validity of property destruction has faced a lot of
Speaker 1: criticism from pundance, politicians and even many protesters. For the
Speaker 1: summer of twenty there was actually very little property destruction
Speaker 1: save for the first riot night, as people were mostly
Speaker 1: trying to repeat the occupy the areas around boarded up
Speaker 1: police buildings. But as the summer turned into fall and
Speaker 1: tactics evolved alongside the smaller crowd sizes, broken windows became
Speaker 1: more common. Critics say that it is not strategic because
Speaker 1: it does not help grow the movement, gain public support,
Speaker 1: or by itself be enough pressure for instituting change. That
Speaker 1: much is arguably true, but that assumes those were the
Speaker 1: goals of the action in the first place, which is
Speaker 1: usually not true. In a recent interview, local political consultant
Speaker 1: and former activist Gregory McKelvey said this about the purpose
Speaker 1: of vandalism such as breaking windows. Quote, Honestly, I think
Speaker 1: in some cases the goal has been explicitly revenge for
Speaker 1: night after night of tear gas beatings, disparate policing and
Speaker 1: PPBS protection of the ice detention centers. However, again, we
Speaker 1: must put ourselves in the minds as someone who probably
Speaker 1: rightfully believes the world is ending, or at a minimum
Speaker 1: is on the brink of being unrecognizable with incredible amounts
Speaker 1: of death, pain, and climate chaos. If the world is ending,
Speaker 1: some people are going to act like it. It's amazing
Speaker 1: to me that liberal Democrats really do believe that we
Speaker 1: are on the brink of something like armageddon and then
Speaker 1: are shocked that some people behave like it. What did
Speaker 1: you picture armageddon to look like? Public testimony unquote vandalism
Speaker 1: like graffitia, breaking windows also serves as a demanding of attention,
Speaker 1: while also symbolizing a direct attack on racism, class divides, capitalism,
Speaker 1: or this datus quote itself. For years, people have tried
Speaker 1: just asking nicely. Over the summer here in Portland, there
Speaker 1: were thousands of people peacefully demanding a fifty million dollar
Speaker 1: budget cut from p PPS two hundred and forty five
Speaker 1: million dollar budget to then reinvesting community services. The minus
Speaker 1: fifty million would bring the police budget down closer to
Speaker 1: their twenty sixteen budget of only a hundred and ninety million.
Speaker 1: Other demands include wholly abolishing and replacing the Portland Police Bureau,
Speaker 1: dropping all charges for civil rights protesters, and that Mayor
Speaker 1: Ted Wheeler resigned with none of those demands meant, and
Speaker 1: politicians all but ignoring the peaceful demonstrations. People are angry,
Speaker 1: so windows get broken, and this seems to be the
Speaker 1: only thing that gets attention anymore and keeps the dialogue
Speaker 1: about police violence active. Here's Tristan again. That's like I said,
Speaker 1: I definitely feel like that kind of like vandalism should
Speaker 1: be engaged with and like, uh, let's say a productive
Speaker 1: kind of way. I don't necessarily think it's wrong, but
Speaker 1: if it if you can't see, yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is a hard depart because I mean, it's totally valid
Speaker 1: to be able to speak madness smash it. And I
Speaker 1: guess in terms of like small businesses, um, I mean,
Speaker 1: well I guess, okay, so one way that it's if
Speaker 1: I think fully justified even if it is like a
Speaker 1: small business, if they're like cop friendly, if they're like
Speaker 1: cop adjacent, and like if they got like a Blue
Speaker 1: Lives matter of fighting the window, like gloves off, I
Speaker 1: don't give a ship. But you know, if it's just
Speaker 1: like a random business, like probably don't you know, because
Speaker 1: I mean, the cops are gonna they're gonna come at
Speaker 1: you anyway, you know, whether you like break a window
Speaker 1: or like you know, burn a cop car, right, they're
Speaker 1: gonna arrest you. And they're probably arrest you even if
Speaker 1: you don't do that. And so it's really just a
Speaker 1: matter of like, which of those two acts is actually
Speaker 1: going to like materially deprived the police of the ability
Speaker 1: need commit for Here's another quote from Gregory in his
Speaker 1: recent interview at the will Emit Week quote for generations
Speaker 1: like mine and the one after. Gregory is in his
Speaker 1: late twenties. By the way, we have been told our
Speaker 1: entire lives that the world is about to end if
Speaker 1: nothing is done immediately, and that all of the evils
Speaker 1: of our world, climate, chaos, racism, the ills of capitalism,
Speaker 1: and more are all inexplicably linked. In my mind and
Speaker 1: in the minds of protesters, these things are objectively true.
Speaker 1: So if the young person has told the world is
Speaker 1: ending and then told to sign up to testify or
Speaker 1: go vote, that does not meet the urgency of the moment.
Speaker 1: Destruction is a natural reaction to feeling desperate, helpless, and
Speaker 1: an imminent doom. The solution to all this would involve
Speaker 1: actually addressing the legitimate issues that are killing us all
Speaker 1: with the urgency that's necessary. The politicians who are acting
Speaker 1: like everything is fine as the world literally burns, or
Speaker 1: say they care about these issues but don't actually do
Speaker 1: anything to fundamentally to fix them are only making the
Speaker 1: problems worse and people's desperation worse. And then when both
Speaker 1: liberals and conservatives alike make more of a fuss about
Speaker 1: a broken Starbucks window than the literally hundreds of people
Speaker 1: beaten and gassed in the streets by the cops afterwards,
Speaker 1: that only further proves the protesters point. We pro it
Speaker 1: would be remiss to talk about tactics without mentioning the
Speaker 1: influence Hong Kong's protests have had on the Portland Uprising
Speaker 1: and BLM protests in general. The militant protests in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong sent shock waves across the world months before the
Speaker 1: COVID pandemic. Hong Kong protesters used tennis, rackets and umbrellas
Speaker 1: to deflect police projectiles, and traffic cones and water bottles
Speaker 1: to contain and diffused here gas grenades. All of these
Speaker 1: tactics were adapted at various points throughout the Portland protests.
Speaker 1: At a PPB press conference back in July, the Deputy
Speaker 1: Chief featured an infographic describing the different rules protesters took
Speaker 1: up in the Hong Kong uprising. P PB also tweeted
Speaker 1: out the graphs saying, quote, we have seen all of
Speaker 1: this demonstrations in Portland, unquote knowingly or unknowingly, the PPB
Speaker 1: had aligned themselves with the Hong Kong police and their
Speaker 1: crackdown on the Hong Kong protests, arguably the most widely
Speaker 1: accepted and praise protest movement of the last decade prior
Speaker 1: to the George Floyd protests. Here's Deputy Chief Chris Davis
Speaker 1: introducing the graphic at his July eight press conference. So
Speaker 1: now I want to talk just a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of the in in broader terms, some of the
Speaker 1: tactics that we're saying. We'll make this available as a
Speaker 1: PDF for you. This is not sacred information here. This
Speaker 1: we got this off the internet. Um, this picture popped
Speaker 1: up a lot on social media and on the internet
Speaker 1: right as events began. I'm not sure exactly what the
Speaker 1: origin of this is. We're still working on trying to
Speaker 1: figure this out. But this is not our diagram. We
Speaker 1: got this off of off of the internet. The graphic
Speaker 1: that he showed was originally based on the Hong Kong
Speaker 1: protests and designed to assist protesters. It outlines the anatomy
Speaker 1: of a typical protest laying out the different protest rules
Speaker 1: that people can take on to achieve their goals. It's
Speaker 1: important to note that one person doesn't need to be
Speaker 1: stuck with a single purpose for one day. The rules
Speaker 1: people take up and the actions they do can be
Speaker 1: semi fluid. The graphic gave each of these rules kind
Speaker 1: of silly names and well designed based on a different struggle.
Speaker 1: Each of these rules was represented in some form in Portland. First,
Speaker 1: our support rules that people can do from home if
Speaker 1: they are unable to attend in person. These include graphic
Speaker 1: designers who make posters, banners, and infographics, and people who
Speaker 1: work online comms listening to police scanners and signaled usting
Speaker 1: information about police activity and location from on the ground
Speaker 1: sources and then distributing the information via apps like Telegram,
Speaker 1: Signal and Twitter. Moving on to at the actual protest
Speaker 1: in the back, barricaders people who build barricades out of
Speaker 1: usually found objects. In Portland, we've seen these have two
Speaker 1: main purposes. One to help prevent vehicular attacks on the
Speaker 1: crowd and too quickly erect obstacles as police are chasing
Speaker 1: the crowd to hopefully slow the police down. Up Next,
Speaker 1: medics and people who help with tear gas or pepper
Speaker 1: spray exposure. Medics all have different skill ranges, and in
Speaker 1: Portland have had to deal with minor medical issues like
Speaker 1: tear gas, but also broken bones, head trauma, seizures, and
Speaker 1: gunshot wounds. They often stay towards the back of a
Speaker 1: protest to both have a safe place for treatment and
Speaker 1: in cases where an ambiliance has to be called in
Speaker 1: closer to the middle. We have people that were playfully
Speaker 1: referred to in the Hong Kong graphic as fire squads
Speaker 1: and range soldiers. Fire squads are protesters who used water
Speaker 1: and traffic cones to suppress and extinguished tear gas canisters.
Speaker 1: Portland police even began collecting and confiscating city traffic cones
Speaker 1: so that they wouldn't be used this way. Another anti
Speaker 1: tier gas measure we've seen is simply heat resistant gloves
Speaker 1: used to chuck tear gas back at cops or away
Speaker 1: from crowds. Hockey sticks and lacrosse sticks have also been
Speaker 1: used to relocate tear gas canisters. During the Fed War,
Speaker 1: this group also came to include people with leafblowers who
Speaker 1: did a really good job at keeping gas at bay.
Speaker 1: Range soldiers are protesters who throw water bottles, paint, balloons,
Speaker 1: and other random trash to help inhibit police from advancing
Speaker 1: beside them are light mages and fire mages. Light mages
Speaker 1: use lasers and flashlights to obstruct surveillance cameras, drones, and
Speaker 1: stop police from being able to aim and identify protesters.
Speaker 1: While effective when used in the large numbers seen in
Speaker 1: the Hong Kong protests, isolated lasers did very little to
Speaker 1: obscure cameras or disrupt police surveillance, although the FEDS and
Speaker 1: PPB officers did report some ice strain due to the
Speaker 1: laser targeting. Portland police have even described being quote unquote
Speaker 1: struck with objects including lasers. For example here in this
Speaker 1: audio courtesy of local street reporter Jasper Florence, jets, models,
Speaker 1: borders and lasers. These objects are hard and traveling at
Speaker 1: high rates of speed. With these strike officers inter believed
Speaker 1: to be coming up shots. Fire mages are protesters who
Speaker 1: are prepared to set fires. Often these are two barricades
Speaker 1: and dumpsters. Although Portland's months of protests saw extensive use
Speaker 1: of fireworks and at least four molotov cocktails, half of
Speaker 1: which actually hit fellow protesters, Thankfully, no one was permanently
Speaker 1: injured by Molotov's in Portland during now closer to the
Speaker 1: front piece the protesters who make up the bulk of
Speaker 1: any marcher action and could also include people who don't
Speaker 1: want to fight but join hand in hand with the
Speaker 1: front liners and conservist human shields. During the fight with
Speaker 1: the federal forces, thousands of Portlanders made up of the
Speaker 1: peaceful crowds, while the Wall of Moms acted as a frontline,
Speaker 1: often protecting people who were throwing tear gas canisters back
Speaker 1: at the Feds. Another role showcased on the graphic is
Speaker 1: what's referred to as a flag bearer. Their job is
Speaker 1: to signal and warn when riot police are approaching. In
Speaker 1: Hong Kong this was done via flags and signs, and
Speaker 1: in Portland this was done by someone with a sports whistle. Then,
Speaker 1: of course we have front liners people up at the front,
Speaker 1: some ready to take various direct action and others with
Speaker 1: umbrellas to guard against projectiles and cameras. And then at
Speaker 1: the very front, shield soldiers or shield bearers with shields
Speaker 1: made out of foam would or sometimes umbrellas. In July,
Speaker 1: Portland got pretty famous for its shield wall. But like
Speaker 1: everything else, needs to be a tactic that's carefully applied
Speaker 1: under certain conditions, or it can actually be a hindrance.
Speaker 1: In theory, shield walls serve two main purposes to deflect
Speaker 1: against projectiles and offer a first line of defense from
Speaker 1: charging enemies or people attacking with batons. Shields are effective
Speaker 1: at stop immunition fire, but when facing bullrushes, shields are
Speaker 1: grabbed by police and used to gain leverage on protesters
Speaker 1: to push them onto the ground or destabilize them so
Speaker 1: they can be attacked and arrested. One element of a
Speaker 1: truly effective shield wall, whether you're advancing or simply holding
Speaker 1: your ground, is people behind the shield wall throwing projectiles,
Speaker 1: because often merely a shield wall alone isn't enough to
Speaker 1: deter people, which is why when law enforcement brings out
Speaker 1: their shields, they also have people behind them shooting grenades
Speaker 1: to your gas at pepper balls. Another advantage of the
Speaker 1: shield wall projectile combo is that shields can be used
Speaker 1: to visually obstruct the police from seeing who is throwing objects,
Speaker 1: making them targeted arrests more difficult. But you better be
Speaker 1: confident in your throw or you might hit your friends.
Speaker 1: Although even having a shield in the first place makes
Speaker 1: you more of a target for arrests, and if you
Speaker 1: touch an officer with your shield, let's say, by an
Speaker 1: officer charging directly at you at full speed, you can
Speaker 1: get charged with assaulting a police officer. Probably the most
Speaker 1: effective shield wall we've seen in Portland was not used
Speaker 1: against the PPB or the Feds, but the Proud Boys
Speaker 1: and other street fascists. On August two, all these different
Speaker 1: elements came together in a rare instance, a strong, tight,
Speaker 1: interlocking network of shields with support from behind, enough to
Speaker 1: stop incoming attackers and folks behind the wall throwing rocks,
Speaker 1: water bottles, and fireworks. Altogether, it was enough to break
Speaker 1: the far rights more disorganized and individualistic shield wall. And also,
Speaker 1: of course, the Proud Boys don't have arresting powers, so
Speaker 1: people are more free to push back with their shields.
Speaker 1: Other consideration for shields depend on what your objective is
Speaker 1: and what tactics do you use to achieve that objective.
Speaker 1: In the fall, as crowds thinned and protests began to
Speaker 1: move faster, the large, bulky shields were largely abandoned by
Speaker 1: some protesters in favor of umbrellas. Shields can be heavy
Speaker 1: and awkward to move with. Plus there's getting the shield
Speaker 1: to the action, carrying it around, and then figuring out
Speaker 1: what you want to do with it afterwards. These are
Speaker 1: all added considerations, particularly if you want to leave a
Speaker 1: protest more covertly. As great as it may be to
Speaker 1: have a wooden, foam or plastic shield in the moment
Speaker 1: as you're deflecting grenades or pushing off someone, it may
Speaker 1: not be worth all those extra tradeoffs, especially if an
Speaker 1: umbrella can suffice in your immunitions shielding needs. Umbrellas are
Speaker 1: more of a multi use tool that can adapt to
Speaker 1: different situations and even be concealable, especially collapsible ones. While
Speaker 1: not as sturdy as a shield, umbrellas are generally less
Speaker 1: suspicious than huge wooden shields. A reinforced banner can also
Speaker 1: provide some protection from unitions while also sending out a message. However,
Speaker 1: some places have legal restrictions on what banners can be
Speaker 1: made of. Throughout the summer, nightly actions focused on direct confrontation,
Speaker 1: with police often returning to repeatedly confront the same riot line.
Speaker 1: By August, while protest tactics remained largely unchanged, the Portland
Speaker 1: police tactics began to change PPB alternated between knights of
Speaker 1: brutal bul rushes and physical violence with only few arrests,
Speaker 1: and other knights where they conducted mass arrests of entire crowds.
Speaker 1: There are By fall, smaller crowd sizes and less frequent
Speaker 1: actions required protesters to change up tactics as well. Repeated
Speaker 1: direct confrontation with riot lines was in many ways a
Speaker 1: habit picked up from the days of mass mobilization at
Speaker 1: the fence, and such confrontations took arrests for granted. Protesters
Speaker 1: were being treated as disposable. When Portland had been the
Speaker 1: focus of national news, facing down police lines reliably generated
Speaker 1: front page coverage of police brutality, But by early fall
Speaker 1: Portland was no longer the focus of attention, and over
Speaker 1: time the shock and awe of footage showcasing police brutality
Speaker 1: wears off, even as people keep getting hurt. By October,
Speaker 1: nighttime actions began to involve smaller crowds of people on
Speaker 1: Black Block smashing the windows of banks, real estate firms,
Speaker 1: and Starbucks coffee shops and then attempting to vanish into
Speaker 1: the night. These actions raised familiar objections from the more
Speaker 1: moderate sectors of the movement. And fit the right wing
Speaker 1: narrative of the destructive antifa boogeyman. But as we touched
Speaker 1: on earlier, these actions were not to gain good optics,
Speaker 1: but instead to vent frustration that the previous demands for
Speaker 1: change had not been met and to create an economic
Speaker 1: cost for the city in maintaining the status quo. These
Speaker 1: marches echoed the black block snake marches of the nineties
Speaker 1: anti globalization movement, and to a lesser extent, the b
Speaker 1: water mantra of the Hong Kong protests. Though in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong crowds routinely targeted civil infrastructure, this shift in tactics
Speaker 1: resulted in less arrests on average. The smaller crowd size
Speaker 1: made the diverse rules the larger demonstrations impossible, and the
Speaker 1: prevalence of vandalism meant that those who were arrested could
Speaker 1: face some harsher charges. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has admitted
Speaker 1: to the difficulty of combating such attack and disappear actions, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: they pop up wearing black from head to toe, They
Speaker 1: go down streets relatively quickly, then they disappear into the wind.
Speaker 1: Those tactics have evolved to agree where we now find
Speaker 1: the law enforcement tools we have in place are dated.
Speaker 1: Since the summer of seventeen, the image of black clad
Speaker 1: Antifa militants has loomed large in the nation's imagination. The garb,
Speaker 1: which Wheeler describes as black from head to toe, is
Speaker 1: of course black. Block counter surveillance tactic, which originated in
Speaker 1: Europe in the nineteen eighties and was first popularized in
Speaker 1: the United States during the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. Traditionally,
Speaker 1: block serves to protect the identity of individuals involved in
Speaker 1: militant action, and people in block provide a defensive front
Speaker 1: line in larger protests, specifically in confrontations with police and
Speaker 1: the far right. Theoretically, blocks should make it difficult to
Speaker 1: identify a wars gender, race, and age. This has led
Speaker 1: to activists and block being glossed over as young white anarchists,
Speaker 1: which Costa takes issues with people keep hearing that and
Speaker 1: believing in it does kiss off some people of color
Speaker 1: to hear that, but it's not true. There are there's
Speaker 1: plenty of people of color that are in block, and
Speaker 1: there's plenty of people in color. I would say the
Speaker 1: only people that are the main people that whose ideas
Speaker 1: are listened to are people of color. Given the prevalence
Speaker 1: of both CCTV and phone cameras in protest settings, even
Speaker 1: the small details can be uniquely identifying. At a Seattle made,
Speaker 1: a action in one activist was ultimately identified by his shoes.
Speaker 1: As such, modern block often includes removing logos and other
Speaker 1: recognizable elements from clothing. This also means that moral patches
Speaker 1: or more tactical looking gear can also be used to
Speaker 1: identify the wear. Block is a tactic, not an organization,
Speaker 1: uniform or identity. Here's an indigenous participant in the Wall
Speaker 1: of Moms describing how she shifted from black block as
Speaker 1: the protests continued. Yeah, I show up in block. I
Speaker 1: just like started just I just went out with like
Speaker 1: a shirt and a yellow shirt and some like black pants.
Speaker 1: And now I'm like cool block, like with everything. I
Speaker 1: have a bulletproof stuff I was provided to me. Um. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: and transition has been crazy just a small amount of
Speaker 1: lens yeah so. Um It's just I'm really big on
Speaker 1: being autonomous, um and not really having any leaders or
Speaker 1: things like that, and um, as I just want to
Speaker 1: be another face in the crowd. I don't and I
Speaker 1: don't I want to be unrecognizable. UM, so I think
Speaker 1: that like that's by block block is so important, and
Speaker 1: also don't want to be targeted UM, and I want
Speaker 1: to be able to like protect other people around me.
Speaker 1: It's my responsibility to make sure that, UM, I am
Speaker 1: unrecognizable to like my other protesters and my friends, because
Speaker 1: if something happens to me, um, you know, one wrong
Speaker 1: move or getting docks or something like that can really
Speaker 1: affect everyone around me. So that's why it was really
Speaker 1: important for me to kind of transition into a block block. UM.
Speaker 1: I've just been seeing so many of my friends and
Speaker 1: comrades just kind of like getting docs, um, just being
Speaker 1: recognized by like small things, even if they're in block blox.
Speaker 1: So UM, it's just it's I just feel like it's
Speaker 1: my responsibility. If I'm going to be out there, then
Speaker 1: I need to be um like unnoticeable or unrecognizable. For
Speaker 1: obvious reasons, block is only protective in groups and draws
Speaker 1: the attention of law enforce mint. Another aspect of wearing
Speaker 1: block is bringing extra clothes and figuring out when and
Speaker 1: where you should take off your black block or d block,
Speaker 1: as you probably don't want to get snatched up and
Speaker 1: arrested while leaving. In action in Portland on January one,
Speaker 1: people were arrested on a sidewalk after a protest many
Speaker 1: blocks away just because they were still wearing black block
Speaker 1: and in doing so much the supposed description of people
Speaker 1: who vandalized a building I also wearing black clothes. Lots
Speaker 1: of people actually wear normal clothes under their block, making
Speaker 1: d blocking a little easier, but people still need to
Speaker 1: choose a time and discrete place to take off their
Speaker 1: black outer garments. Besides shields, umbrellas and block, the other
Speaker 1: gear people have acquired and brought to the protests also
Speaker 1: helped set Portland apart. James from Portland Action Medics describes
Speaker 1: how the gear their organization provided mirror the evolution of
Speaker 1: the movement. The summer got really really wild and um,
Speaker 1: you know, first we we we had respirators, some of
Speaker 1: us who are more seasoned protestmetics. Um, but they weren't
Speaker 1: widely used because the thing about tear gases, like if
Speaker 1: there's just a little bit of it, you can just
Speaker 1: walk away and like it will burn your eyes, but
Speaker 1: like if you just go down wind or upwind, but
Speaker 1: it's fine most of the time. But that's not true
Speaker 1: if they're using extraordinary quantities of it such that entire
Speaker 1: parks are just full of gas. Right. UM. So we
Speaker 1: went from the situation where UM, respirators were kind of
Speaker 1: this niche like gear head thing to an absolute necessity,
Speaker 1: basically overnight. UM. And then we learned a lot about
Speaker 1: what kind of cartridges filter out COVID versus what kind
Speaker 1: of cartridges filter out tear gas, and how to combine
Speaker 1: them with each other. And then we were like making
Speaker 1: little like tear gas canister snack packs for people that
Speaker 1: are like these sandwich bags contain both together and you
Speaker 1: should just plug them right in. We preassembled them for you.
Speaker 1: Here's your gas mask. And then I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what if we get full face gas masks that have
Speaker 1: included ice shields. Um, that should probably happen because we're
Speaker 1: in a pandemic. Portland Action Metics and others distributed hundreds
Speaker 1: of respirators and began using three D printers to make
Speaker 1: gas masks inserts for eyeglasses, as glasses are notoriously incompatible
Speaker 1: with full face masks. As police violence continued and violence
Speaker 1: from the far right escalated, James says, additional gear became necessary.
Speaker 1: I think it has mostly been in response to um
Speaker 1: far right fighters coming into Portland that we have really
Speaker 1: been um a lot more worried about gunshots intentionally being
Speaker 1: fired at people, potentially in a mass way. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: like all police come with guns and so that's always
Speaker 1: a possibility. But like we have yet. We saw some
Speaker 1: brandnshing of firearms at people from the Feds over the summer,
Speaker 1: but we have yet to my knowledge to see police
Speaker 1: fire live rounds on protesters. Um. But the far right
Speaker 1: like constantly run the round of the internet saying they're
Speaker 1: going to shoot us just every day. And so you know,
Speaker 1: depending on how seriously take um, it's reasonable to prepare
Speaker 1: for sutras thing and so um, especially over the summer
Speaker 1: as the rhetoric from the far right increased in extremeness. UM.
Speaker 1: Plus the I mean basically, like someone's firing projectiles at
Speaker 1: crowd inscriminately, then it makes sense to wear a helmet NFS,
Speaker 1: regardless of who those people are. UM, And it's hard
Speaker 1: to distincue it doesn't matter whether it's a cop or
Speaker 1: a fascist that is not wearing uniform doing that, right. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's that like throughout the summer, or people were
Speaker 1: like I need ballistics. I need heavier ballistics. I need
Speaker 1: a helmet, I need a better helmet. I need goggles.
Speaker 1: I need better goggles. I need shadow proof goggles because
Speaker 1: we've got seeing people just get really badly fucked up
Speaker 1: by projectiles. Um, so there was that. But then yes,
Speaker 1: specifically when it comes to gunshot wounds, we did a
Speaker 1: lot of preparations, especially binding out to the election, frankly,
Speaker 1: because the rhetoric about what people wanted to do was
Speaker 1: really scary, and it's it's always impossible basically to tell
Speaker 1: how seriously to take these people. Other necessary gear is
Speaker 1: ear protection for flash bangs. This can be little film
Speaker 1: ear plugs or more bulky noise canceling headphones. Air protection
Speaker 1: became very important during the Fed War, as flash banks
Speaker 1: from the Feds are way more powerful and damaging than
Speaker 1: the ones Portland police use. Here's Donovan Smith tear gas.
Speaker 1: It was used almost every night and the more than
Speaker 1: one days of protests in Portland, both by local police
Speaker 1: and then repped up again during the federal occupation. But
Speaker 1: what exactly was this so called gas that was filling
Speaker 1: the streets of Portland each night anyways? Well, turns out
Speaker 1: it's a wartime chemical band. By the nine Geneva Convention
Speaker 1: following the First World War, a protocol and nixing the
Speaker 1: use of poisonous gases during warfare was adopted, including some
Speaker 1: lethal compounds like chlorine and hydrogen gas. And while its
Speaker 1: name sounds like something that would make you feel similar
Speaker 1: to cutting up onions at dinner, a deeper look into
Speaker 1: its true effects began to open up a much clearer
Speaker 1: picture on why it's been banned as a tool of
Speaker 1: warfare for decades. Turns out, tear gas isn't even a
Speaker 1: gas at all. It's sort of a chemical explosion, one
Speaker 1: where a chemical powder gets heated up really quick and
Speaker 1: mixed with the solvent and finally released as an aerosaw
Speaker 1: and waila tear gas. It's sole purpose from there is
Speaker 1: to induce pain. Dr Anita Randolph explains its effects here.
Speaker 1: She let a research paper on the effects of tear gas,
Speaker 1: commissioned by Don't Shoot Portland's publish in late June, just
Speaker 1: weeks after the uprisings begin. Tear gas is actually a
Speaker 1: solid um, that's why they're packed in that canister um.
Speaker 1: So there's a few chemical reactions that have to happen
Speaker 1: to convert it to a gas like substance. So when
Speaker 1: you're out there and you're getting tear gas, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like this white mist or white powder everywhere. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's because it has to be heated up to
Speaker 1: be able to um be dispersed, right, and then once
Speaker 1: it disperse, you have to zig and then it just
Speaker 1: allows it to spread over a larger radius. I think
Speaker 1: in the paper UM, from our research, we showed that
Speaker 1: one canister tear gas can reach like a four squared radius,
Speaker 1: which is like a one loop around a track, which
Speaker 1: is law cards right, because once you stretch it out,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a lot of areas that it can cover. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's also like very potent to penetrate glass. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's why people were dressing in layers too. Right.
Speaker 1: Even me, I was like, oh man, when I learned that,
Speaker 1: I was like dressing in layers, you know, people getting
Speaker 1: tear gas or like shedding layers outside because it just
Speaker 1: it just goes through and it just wants it's on
Speaker 1: your skin, especially when you're sweating and those glands are open.
Speaker 1: It's just very painful. UM. I can honestly say I
Speaker 1: don't I don't. I'm not too motivated to get tear gass.
Speaker 1: The pain isn't just exclusive to humans. Similar reactions are
Speaker 1: caused in animals too, even causing death at certain levels
Speaker 1: of the exposure. A twenty nineteen protests in Hong Kong
Speaker 1: saw a nearby veterinary clinic forced to evacuate all its
Speaker 1: feline patients after police began shooting the so called riot
Speaker 1: control agents into the crowd of nearby demonstrators. Not all
Speaker 1: the cats could be moved in time, though in one case,
Speaker 1: an eighteen month year old cat reportedly began clawing at
Speaker 1: its eyes after inhaling the gas. While there's little documentation
Speaker 1: on how tear gas affected the critters of Portland's they
Speaker 1: certainly wore a feature of the protests, with one standout
Speaker 1: being a three hundred and fifty pound llama named Caesar.
Speaker 1: His owner, a Central Oregan man, says he bought Caesar
Speaker 1: to the demonstrations to boost morale and would quickly depart
Speaker 1: with him when munitions began sounding off. And while Caesar
Speaker 1: went unscathed, we cannot say the same with certainty for
Speaker 1: all our other furry friends. Another possible victim of Portland's
Speaker 1: bouts of chemical warfare was one of the city's pride
Speaker 1: and joys its environment. Early in the protests, concerned eyes
Speaker 1: turned towards the Lambt River, the de facto divider between
Speaker 1: the city's east and west side. The thirteenth largest north
Speaker 1: flowing river in the United States, The will LAMTT also
Speaker 1: shares the distinction of being a Superfund site, meaning it's
Speaker 1: been pegged by the FEDS as one of the most
Speaker 1: toxic sites in the entire country and not so distant
Speaker 1: relic of the heavy industrial activity, particularly along a ten
Speaker 1: mile stretch spanning from the Burnside Bridge to Sylvie's Island
Speaker 1: and short the bollamt is no stranger to abuse, but
Speaker 1: some began to wonder if all the cs gas and
Speaker 1: pepper spray runoff was furthering those harms as clean up
Speaker 1: crewise powerwashed the residue into storm drains leading to the river.
Speaker 1: The city's Bureau of Environmental Services began vacuuming tear gas
Speaker 1: residue from the drains surrounding the downtown Justice Center in
Speaker 1: August during the FED occupation to prevent any toxic carms.
Speaker 1: But despite a wealth of research on the effects of
Speaker 1: tear gas, little seemed to be known on both its
Speaker 1: short and long term effects on the environment, so the
Speaker 1: move came as a bit of a preventative shot in
Speaker 1: the dark. According to the Bureau. At the very least,
Speaker 1: the gas was an illegal discharge as no other substances
Speaker 1: besides rain water are allowed down the drains. Morgan from
Speaker 1: the Mutual a protest clean up group Team Raccoon, so
Speaker 1: they could feel the remnants in the air returning to
Speaker 1: ground Zerial every morning. Basically, we we got a little
Speaker 1: bit of money from Mutually donations and we were wondering
Speaker 1: what because part cleans are pretty low cost, you know,
Speaker 1: trash bags, trash grabbers, doesn't cost a lot of money
Speaker 1: to maintain that. So we were wondering, like, what do
Speaker 1: we do with this money that will really help our community.
Speaker 1: And we were noticing the air quality in Loudsdale and
Speaker 1: Chapman getting worse and worse and worse because of the
Speaker 1: tear gas and the chemical munitions every night. Even just
Speaker 1: walking through there during the day, you wanted to put
Speaker 1: your respirator on. At the end of July, the move
Speaker 1: led to a mass mobilization of respirators and on the
Speaker 1: ground research into the gas Morgan continues, so we we're
Speaker 1: connected to some researchers who wanted to keep a certain
Speaker 1: level anonymity, and we decided the best way to do
Speaker 1: that was through us. We could accept filters from the
Speaker 1: protest community, and we could give them to the researchers.
Speaker 1: The researchers could conduct their studies and the privacy that
Speaker 1: they want, and we could use mutual aid money to
Speaker 1: facilitate that. Meanwhile, city bureaucrats began running their own tests
Speaker 1: on the sediments collected from the nearby drains to test
Speaker 1: for the primary chemicals associated with tear gas, hexa villa, chrarium,
Speaker 1: pe joliot, barium, and sinai. The following month, the Barreau
Speaker 1: released its finding, saying that while there were higher levels
Speaker 1: of toxins at the source of the storm drains, by
Speaker 1: the time they hit the river levels were pretty much normal.
Speaker 1: The results only accounted for the August round of chemicals
Speaker 1: found in the river. B As officials insisted, however, that
Speaker 1: the testing was thorough as an accounted for the build
Speaker 1: up of chemicals that have been deployed since of George
Speaker 1: b uprisings in late May. This didn't stop five environmental
Speaker 1: groups from teaming up to launch a lawsuit against the
Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security, alleging they were out of compliance
Speaker 1: with the National Environmental Policy Act by not conducting an
Speaker 1: assessment on the impacts of their gas ahead of using it,
Speaker 1: breaking federal law. Represented by the a c l U,
Speaker 1: the group seeked a complete savage and federal usage of
Speaker 1: tear gas. DHS ended up pulling out before the ruling
Speaker 1: was made, but the question continued to loom. What exactly
Speaker 1: were the long term effects of tear gas. It's a
Speaker 1: question that's further complicated when considering the findings of Chemical
Speaker 1: Weapons Research Conservatorium, who say during the FEDS occupation, a
Speaker 1: mix of CS gas and toxic chemical smoke grenades made
Speaker 1: Hexa chlor thane or HC gas. HC is a toxic
Speaker 1: compound band by the US military for its severe health effects,
Speaker 1: but was deployed repeatedly by federal agents against the people
Speaker 1: of Portland's easily identifiable by the way the canisters glow red,
Speaker 1: continuously spouting dents opaque smoke for a minute or more.
Speaker 1: Juniper Seminists, who helped lead the research team, explains its
Speaker 1: effects here. Um I saw a number of people that
Speaker 1: had basically chemical burns, the chemical miss burns UM that
Speaker 1: they had never had with other gases. UM, the UH
Speaker 1: stomach set of symptoms. So if you ingest it, which
Speaker 1: you would do through gulping UM or just having your
Speaker 1: mouth I'll been walking through gas UM, that will cause vomiting, UM, nausea, UM,
Speaker 1: and that whole kind of set of symptoms. Because your
Speaker 1: body wants knows that zinc is bad, it wants it
Speaker 1: out UM in your lungs. However, UM, what happens is
Speaker 1: UM zinc chloride is really corrosive because of the chlorine.
Speaker 1: Among the complications, a number of protesters reported having prolonged
Speaker 1: regular menstal cycles, sometimes bleeding for weeks after exposure to
Speaker 1: the gas. Oregon Public Broadcasting and spoke with twenty six
Speaker 1: people attended the protests and self reported changes in their bodies.
Speaker 1: Effects reported included trans people who would cease taking testosterone shots,
Speaker 1: beginning to menstruate again. Others reported pain so uncomfortable they
Speaker 1: had to take a trip to the hospital and one
Speaker 1: month alone. Others reported multiple cycles for a long time,
Speaker 1: especially right now with COVID. We it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to tweez out. If somebody has a long term
Speaker 1: symptom that's gonna linger for a while. I think due
Speaker 1: to the pandemic, it's going to confound a lot of
Speaker 1: these things, a lot more. Is gonna make it a
Speaker 1: lot more difficult to tweez out one from the other definitively,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, But I do think it needs to
Speaker 1: be investigated. I hope people don't forget about it, especially
Speaker 1: what the unhoused. You know, Portland has a really high
Speaker 1: number of unhoused individuals, and my heart broke for them,
Speaker 1: like every day because you know, we back up and
Speaker 1: go home, but you know, we're we're in their space essentially.
Speaker 1: So if it's getting tear gas every single night constantly,
Speaker 1: they're actually the ones that's getting exposed the most and
Speaker 1: have the highest frequacy of exposure. Um. But for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: it's not too many people advocating for them in this space.
Speaker 1: So I just really wanted to throw that out there. Well,
Speaker 1: no definitive links have been made yet between tear gas
Speaker 1: and the regular cycles. The string of complaints made for
Speaker 1: yet another worry as protesters hit the front lines each night,
Speaker 1: facing off with the police force armed with the band
Speaker 1: war chemical whose true effects may not be known for
Speaker 1: years to come. About a week after George Floyd's murder,
Speaker 1: Don't Shoot Portland's lost a class action lawsuit against the
Speaker 1: City of Portland's alleging indiscriminate use of tear gas an
Speaker 1: excessive force at the hands of the Portland Police Bureau.
Speaker 1: Shortly thereafter, U S District Judge Marco Hernandez ruled in
Speaker 1: their favor, placing a two week restraining order on the
Speaker 1: bureau until further court ruling. However, there was a catch.
Speaker 1: In his ten page ruling, the judge wrote the following quote.
Speaker 1: In addition, tear gas you shall be limited to situations
Speaker 1: in which the lives are safety of the public or
Speaker 1: the police are at risk. This includes the lives and
Speaker 1: safety of those housed at the Justice Center. Tear gas
Speaker 1: shall not be used to disperse crowds where there's little
Speaker 1: or no risk of injury. End quote. That little or
Speaker 1: no risk left a lot up to interpretation for the
Speaker 1: Portland Police Bureau. Governor k Brown signed a bill that
Speaker 1: had banned tear gas following Hernandez's ruling that followed similar
Speaker 1: directors in July, tear gas was banned only into the
Speaker 1: police declare riot loudly. Police had already been loosing their
Speaker 1: existing directors for when and when not to use tear gas.
Speaker 1: Up until then, the only thing preventing thousands from being
Speaker 1: draped in wartime chemicals was officers on the ground declaring
Speaker 1: the gatherer a quote unlawful assembly. After that, you'd have
Speaker 1: to hear something like this a few times, the youth
Speaker 1: of tear gas, crowd control agent of or impact button.
Speaker 1: Once this request for dispersal was given over the loudspeaker
Speaker 1: a few times, it was up to the incident commander
Speaker 1: to give the green light on firing the gas into
Speaker 1: the crowd. After the so called temporary band, things pretty
Speaker 1: much continued to follow this pattern from the police chief
Speaker 1: to the mayor. Officials at the city continued to argue
Speaker 1: that tear gas was a key tool, and the cops
Speaker 1: arsenal to this first protesters, but despite the questionable use
Speaker 1: of ports preaching the First Amendment, the gas often encroached
Speaker 1: on those who weren't even on the front lines of
Speaker 1: the demonstrations. Tear gases grip loomed across the city, and
Speaker 1: in the case of Demesia Smith, it followed her family
Speaker 1: home and all of a sudden they've seen flashing lights
Speaker 1: and looked outside and the whole p p A building
Speaker 1: was lined with riot officers. And uh, the last time
Speaker 1: we had protested, I don't remember the exact day. We
Speaker 1: were downtown and it was the day it made news
Speaker 1: that the police had tear gas. Like, um, there was
Speaker 1: a group of protesters that weren't a part of like
Speaker 1: a group of three thousand people, but the police like
Speaker 1: tear gas everybody was that was down there. My son
Speaker 1: was caught in the middle of that. So he's like
Speaker 1: already been like on edge about police. So he called
Speaker 1: me freaking out that the riot police were all front
Speaker 1: of the building, in front of my mom's house, and
Speaker 1: he was like crying, like hysterically, like he didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going to happen, and he was just telling
Speaker 1: me to be careful. And there was no protesters. There
Speaker 1: was just old police, but like their presence I had
Speaker 1: him freaked out and crying. So I'm leaving work and
Speaker 1: when I come home, so I can't park there, can't
Speaker 1: even get through to there because at that time, now
Speaker 1: the protesters have made it to the p p A
Speaker 1: building as well as the riot officers. So I'm like
Speaker 1: circling around, circling around, and I couldn't park anywhere close enough.
Speaker 1: So I parked my car at home and walked all
Speaker 1: the way through because I'm trying to get to my kid.
Speaker 1: So I'm walking through and uh, everybody, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you just start seeing smoke whatnot. But again I'm in
Speaker 1: mom mode and like, that's my house. And again I
Speaker 1: already the police aren't. I've just witnessed the police not
Speaker 1: acting right there in protests. Are like no, they're trying
Speaker 1: to push me back, and I'm like, I've lived right here.
Speaker 1: You guys can see my ID. One days in, crowds
Speaker 1: continued to show up, and cops continued to guess. To Mr.
Speaker 1: Ender lives just off the Ventura Park in East Lane.
Speaker 1: On a hundred night of protests, he found his neighborhood
Speaker 1: blanketed in tear gas and I was like, oh jeez.
Speaker 1: So then at that point, we make our way past
Speaker 1: tear gas again and uh basically climbed our little fence
Speaker 1: and jump over that to get inside our house and
Speaker 1: make sure all the windows were closed, and then we
Speaker 1: put towels under the the two kids rooms. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have a at that point. We had a one
Speaker 1: month old child, two month old child, and a two
Speaker 1: year old child, and uh, it's incredibly scary to have
Speaker 1: tear gas deployed. Um. It was more than one canister
Speaker 1: of tear gas that was deployed in front of our house. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know have anywhere to go, So the police
Speaker 1: are on all sides of my house. Um, there's loud speakers, UM,
Speaker 1: loud noises, Uh, tear gas being deployed. I mean the
Speaker 1: streaming from my house was a war zone. Um. The
Speaker 1: police turned it into a war zone. And the response
Speaker 1: was over the top. Um it was, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: meant to chill speech. And UM. I mean we don't
Speaker 1: have gas mass in our house, and they don't make
Speaker 1: a gas mask for a two month old child, and
Speaker 1: so our options is limited. I mean it's if it
Speaker 1: was a private individual doing this, I could defend my house. UM,
Speaker 1: but I don't have that luxury when it's the government
Speaker 1: doing it. A member of Team Raccoon have been cleaning
Speaker 1: up trash and spent munitions at protests throughout the summer.
Speaker 1: After the ongoing gassing of neighborhoods, they shifted to supplying
Speaker 1: families with respirators for their children. What we found was
Speaker 1: that the best situation was three M respirator for ages
Speaker 1: about seven and up and younger than that. What we
Speaker 1: do is we get something called the Bart system, which
Speaker 1: is a pressure positive hood that also has a straw
Speaker 1: and a sippy cup, and it's made for young children.
Speaker 1: And the pressure positive hood helps so they don't have
Speaker 1: to have anything strapped to their face. And UM, the
Speaker 1: motor keeps it keeps filtered air moving through the hood,
Speaker 1: so it never um, it never stops moving out and
Speaker 1: that's how they keep the tear gas away from children.
Speaker 1: For infants, we weren't really able to find something that
Speaker 1: was super affordable and um easy to get, So for
Speaker 1: infants we basically suggest, UM what people do when UM
Speaker 1: they are trying to keep tear gas out of their homes,
Speaker 1: roll up a towel and put it under the door. UM.
Speaker 1: Try to get as far away from windows or any
Speaker 1: exit points as possible if you need to evac, you know,
Speaker 1: try to make sure that you get too safe air
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible. But there aren't a lot of
Speaker 1: answers when you're talking about infant impact and tear gas
Speaker 1: or prevention from getting tear gas in infants lungs. As
Speaker 1: the smoke from September wildfire settled over, Portland's Mayor Wheeler
Speaker 1: issued a ban on CS gas. Wheeler's police bureau pushed back.
Speaker 1: Both the police chief and their union had publicly rallied
Speaker 1: against him, with the Portland Police Association launching a full
Speaker 1: on petition railing against the band. Then the smoke cleared.
Speaker 1: Just days after Wheeler's ban, a familiar scene formed outside
Speaker 1: the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Building, with calls by protesters
Speaker 1: to abolish ICE. A group of about a hundred gathered
Speaker 1: outside the facility and were met not by PPB but
Speaker 1: federal agents shortly after nightfall tear gas and sued alongside
Speaker 1: pellets and smoke bombs. Wheeler and Police chief level were
Speaker 1: quick to announce that their bureau wasn't responsible for the
Speaker 1: night's chaos, which ended with nearly a dozen arrests. Protests
Speaker 1: continued in much this way in the days following the
Speaker 1: wild fires, direct actions around town at night drawing out
Speaker 1: a few dozen people who would be met with police
Speaker 1: force and arrests, and while the police force had yet
Speaker 1: to cease the use of tear gas, had come to
Speaker 1: a halt since the mayor's ban. In the weeks leading
Speaker 1: up to the election, much of the city's downtown corps
Speaker 1: was boarded up, businesses feared of broken windows. At the
Speaker 1: local level, an unpopular mayor and police commissioner was set
Speaker 1: up for re election, with many constituents divided over whether
Speaker 1: or not to vote for his self described every day
Speaker 1: Antifa opponents Sarah Yanerone and a community led ride in
Speaker 1: campaign for Don't Shoot Portland's founder Teresa Rayford, who came
Speaker 1: in third in the primaries. This and other key council
Speaker 1: races had many on edge for the future of the city.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the decidedly blue Portland, which had
Speaker 1: just seen a fatal clash of Trump caravans and BLM protesters,
Speaker 1: waited to see if the forty five president who just
Speaker 1: occupied the city would occupy the seat for four more years.
Speaker 1: Wheeler eaked out a win against his opponents, receiving less
Speaker 1: than the combined votes of Yann Eronne and the riding's
Speaker 1: but enough to secure his seat again to the lament
Speaker 1: of many activists. Trump lost to Biden. Protests ensued later
Speaker 1: that November. Yet another tear gas related suit was filed,
Speaker 1: this time by inmates of the Justice Center. While the
Speaker 1: use of gas had come to a halt, their class
Speaker 1: action suit turned its finger at the Moultnoma County Sheriff's office,
Speaker 1: alleging that from the first day of the protests, those
Speaker 1: caged at the Justice Center were left to suffer as
Speaker 1: gas from the outside seeped into their cells. More than
Speaker 1: three inmates joined in the suit, many of them had
Speaker 1: yet to be convicted and were awaiting trial. The suit
Speaker 1: described a number of alleged incidents of inmates coughing, wheezing,
Speaker 1: and kneeling over in agony in the weeks of protest.
Speaker 1: They were stuck in their cells, and some repeated a
Speaker 1: familiar refrain, one that sparked global uprisings, I can't breathe.
Speaker 1: Tear gas continues to be a tool used by most
Speaker 1: urban police departments across the country. The nightly chemical warfare
Speaker 1: that police enacted on Portland streets, along with other munitions,
Speaker 1: turned the city both into a battlefield and a testing ground.
Speaker 1: The true mental, physical, and environmental effects of the gassing
Speaker 1: may not be realized for years to come, but from
Speaker 1: Portland to Hong Kong, one thing remains clear. While protest
Speaker 1: tactics may adapt over the years, the response of governments
Speaker 1: remains largely the same, suppress and silence dissent. Portland's continued
Speaker 1: to push back imperfectly, but with more skill. Some broke windows,
Speaker 1: while others simply claim their streets. Grabbed a bullhorn for
Speaker 1: the first time and demanded to all who could hear
Speaker 1: that without justice, there would be no peace. From optics
Speaker 1: to effectiveness, some on the so called left were split
Speaker 1: on which roads best aided in the liberation of black lives,
Speaker 1: and while diversity of tactics got sticky at times, many
Speaker 1: will argue that the norm most protesters rail against is
Speaker 1: more insufferable. We quoted Malcolm X at the beginning of
Speaker 1: this episode. One of the most popular phrases he's known
Speaker 1: for is by any means necessary. As we reflect on
Speaker 1: the lessons of the ongoing movement for Black lives and
Speaker 1: the months of protests that took over Portland, will leave
Speaker 1: you with a more full version of that quote he
Speaker 1: gave during a speech at the founding of the Organization
Speaker 1: of Afro American Unity in nineteen sixty four. We declare
Speaker 1: our right on this earth to be a human being,
Speaker 1: to be respected as a human being to be given
Speaker 1: the rights of a human being in this society, on
Speaker 1: this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring
Speaker 1: into existence by any means necessary. Last episode, you may
Speaker 1: remember us speaking with junior perseminists about chemical communitions used
Speaker 1: by the FEDS and local law enforcement during the protests.
Speaker 1: We wanted to offer a correction about some of the
Speaker 1: statements issued during that last episode. Juniper Sminis is in
Speaker 1: fact Dr Juni per Siminus, with fifteen years under their
Speaker 1: bill as a quantitative conservation biologists and the research we
Speaker 1: said they helped lead with chemical weapons research Concertorium on
Speaker 1: hex chlorothane gas or HC gas, there is so much
Speaker 1: as help lead, but in fact spearheaded the effort with
Speaker 1: the assistance of some volunteers. There's in fact a why
Speaker 1: ranging array of research and science regarding HC gas an
Speaker 1: tear gas out in the world, some dating bad decades,
Speaker 1: but even today researchers continue to unearth more understanding about
Speaker 1: what the real impacts of these chemicals are on humans,
Speaker 1: animals in wildlife, and the environment at large. Another thing
Speaker 1: is scientists are sort of constant skeptics. So when we
Speaker 1: say that no definitive links have been drawn when it
Speaker 1: comes to research, especially in the world of science. It's
Speaker 1: almost an oxymoronic statement. Everything can be challenged to gain
Speaker 1: better understandings of the floating rock we live on and
Speaker 1: everything else beyond it. What we do know for sure
Speaker 1: is that the countless munitions unlesha on Portland's left, scores
Speaker 1: of protesters ailing as scientists continue to unearth new research
Speaker 1: on these chemicals. The Uprising team would like to offer
Speaker 1: our apology for the errors reported in that last episode.
Speaker 1: Uh where the grandpops who couldn't fathom the obamasis, I
Speaker 1: don't hate America just to me? And she keeps the
Speaker 1: promises teens looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide
Speaker 1: deja who what my people post to do? Go to
Speaker 1: schools named after the clan founder we're around town? Is?
Speaker 1: I don't see why we're frowning Native American students forced
Speaker 1: to learn about wind o'pellah Sarah? How is that fair? Bro?
Speaker 1: Some Euros unsung in some monsters get monuments built for them.
Speaker 1: But it ain't be all a little bit of monster.
Speaker 1: We crook it