Speaker 1: A year before his death, and one of his most
Speaker 1: revered speeches, Martin Luther King Jr. Named three main evils
Speaker 1: plaguing America racism, poverty, and war. Decades later, the fight
Speaker 1: for Black Lives unfolded into Portland streets in a fashion
Speaker 1: few could have imagined, transforming small city blocks into daily
Speaker 1: battle grounds. As the fed wars continued, protesters, fortified numbers
Speaker 1: swelt in Portland grabbed the nation's attention. Out of state
Speaker 1: media flew into town searching for juicy headlines. Likewise, a
Speaker 1: network of opportunists live streamers traveled to Portland, hoping to
Speaker 1: capture what many activists dubbed riot porn video of police gassing, snatching, rushing, beating, berating,
Speaker 1: and arresting Portlanders. And alongside all this less obvious but
Speaker 1: much more impressive, an infrastructure of resistance began to grow. Angry,
Speaker 1: chanting signs and tearful demands were augmented by mutual aid.
Speaker 1: More than a month then, Portlanders learned that if they
Speaker 1: were going to last against the paramilitaries of both the
Speaker 1: president and the mayor, they were going to have to
Speaker 1: take better care of each other. For the cops, things
Speaker 1: had gotten pretty routine at this point, stop criminal activity,
Speaker 1: protect property, but federal escalation begged the question would Portland's
Speaker 1: back down? Despite grievous bodily harm, unmarked federal snatch fans,
Speaker 1: and overwhelming use of riot munitions, Portlanders continued to fill
Speaker 1: the streets past the fiftieth straight day of protests, and
Speaker 1: the answer to the question will Portland back down became
Speaker 1: increasingly clear. No, here's my colleague in getting exposed to
Speaker 1: chemical weapons Elaine Kinchen to continue the story. The battle
Speaker 1: against Trump's Feds gained Portland nationwide notoriety in the summer
Speaker 1: of but many longtime activists on the scene, like Max Smith,
Speaker 1: considered the whole fight to be at best something of
Speaker 1: a distraction, a fight and fence that wasn't what we
Speaker 1: were here for. You know. The fence was like some
Speaker 1: ship that kind of it was like to call at
Speaker 1: the Grand Theft autos aside mission like this is, this
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with what we're supposed to be
Speaker 1: doing right now, but we have to complete this to
Speaker 1: get back in the game, you know. And it was
Speaker 1: really weird, and I think at that moment I really
Speaker 1: realized that the distraction was intentional and that this was
Speaker 1: all getting just diverted to become like a like a
Speaker 1: Trump campaign at you know, he's gonna come through and
Speaker 1: support these police unions and this is his big commercial
Speaker 1: for it. So it was a very uh, I felt
Speaker 1: like it was a frustrating part of the protest because
Speaker 1: a it was really a dangerous and people were really
Speaker 1: getting hurt and kidnapped and all that kind of weird stuff.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, it wasn't the fight
Speaker 1: that I wanted to, you know, to be fighting, but
Speaker 1: it was. But it's the fight that brings out a
Speaker 1: lot of people. So a very contrasting and confusing time.
Speaker 1: For sure. Thousands would attend each night, and the atmosphere
Speaker 1: began to resemble a strange nightly festival, ending in the
Speaker 1: wee hours of the morning with a halts by federal
Speaker 1: officers and clouds of poison gas. A man with a
Speaker 1: gas mask and hockey stick showed up one night to
Speaker 1: knock canisters away. Teams of people with lacrosse sticks followed.
Speaker 1: When lines of federal agents pushed forward, launching gas grenades,
Speaker 1: walls of protesters would now regularly toss the rounds back
Speaker 1: into and behind the fedlines. As protesters behind them used
Speaker 1: leafblowers to direct the gas back at the courthouse, and
Speaker 1: squads of medics and the re retreated people as they
Speaker 1: rotated in out of the front lines. The Federal Courthouse
Speaker 1: had many of the windows of its facade destroyed by
Speaker 1: fireworks and projectiles, and the clouds of gas rendered the
Speaker 1: bottom seven stories of the building uninhabitable. Assaults on the
Speaker 1: fence were an integral part of nightly protests. Erected at
Speaker 1: a cost of two hundred thousand dollars and later reinforced
Speaker 1: with concrete barriers, it was repeatedly dismantled by protesters and
Speaker 1: piled in front of courthouse doors. The city, too wanted
Speaker 1: the fence gone. It was blocking a bike lane without permits.
Speaker 1: City attorneys sent a cease and desist letter to the
Speaker 1: federal government. Portland's City Commissioner, Chloe you Daily, stated the
Speaker 1: fence is an abuse of public space and the threat
Speaker 1: to the traveling public, and that this illegal action will
Speaker 1: not be tolerated in our community. You Daily leveled the
Speaker 1: fine of five hundred dollars against the federal government for
Speaker 1: every fifteen minutes that the fence remained on city property,
Speaker 1: or forty thousand dollars a day. By August, the fines
Speaker 1: topped five hundred thousand dollars. Protest regular cramberly describes the
Speaker 1: new turn in the protests as resembling a festival. I
Speaker 1: think like night is what it made it go from
Speaker 1: life this is interesting to like, this is a full
Speaker 1: blown night, the actual spectacle um, the actual spectaclog. But
Speaker 1: it was huge, and I don't know it was I
Speaker 1: about all the stuff having much fun. It was so
Speaker 1: much fun, honestly, the nice like it was no there
Speaker 1: was some scary traumatic ship that happened, and I was
Speaker 1: genuinely scary for my whole last life a couple of times.
Speaker 1: But like I don't know, if I tell everybody felt
Speaker 1: like a succestival where you also thought cops. Did that
Speaker 1: make sense because if you were just like at the
Speaker 1: j C, you could see the fact the j C
Speaker 1: courtous like el right, ever is you know something? You
Speaker 1: know what I mean? You walk by you just send
Speaker 1: people do oh? Ship? Is that I was drugs? So
Speaker 1: it really felt like a music festival and there was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun um you know, I guess it's
Speaker 1: also scary the energy and the tension, you know, super
Speaker 1: high as a fence. The fence period is like early
Speaker 1: fence days were like we're shaking the fence. That specifically
Speaker 1: my favorite serious just because everyone which is so I
Speaker 1: raid at that point, like why of a fence? And
Speaker 1: it came back to like lawnmower or not more sleep flowers.
Speaker 1: They came back to leaf blowers and knows what night
Speaker 1: I saw like multiple people of circular songs and I
Speaker 1: just really loved the enginuity of great type of shield
Speaker 1: walls of a great time someone through Uh do a
Speaker 1: cheer gap and answer back across. Yeah, Uh, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be me talking to my kids in that fifty years.
Speaker 1: One of the things that became clear early into the protests,
Speaker 1: even before the Feds came, is that if you didn't
Speaker 1: have a gas mask, you were going to need one.
Speaker 1: COVID had already given the world a bit of a
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic feel between the looming danger of the virus
Speaker 1: and everyone being behind masks, but the growing number of
Speaker 1: respirators that actions accentuated that the immense quantity of gas
Speaker 1: that the federal forces used made respirators and gas masks
Speaker 1: unnecessary piece of equipment, and as the summer dragged on,
Speaker 1: protesters began mobilizing to get respirators into the hands of
Speaker 1: all that needed them. Sixteen year old Ariana Moorehead says
Speaker 1: that she's got her first gas mask over the summer,
Speaker 1: I just died through mutual aid, you know, the community,
Speaker 1: bringing everything, everybody together. Um, we probably from Freedom actually
Speaker 1: had a couple gas masks donated to them, so that's
Speaker 1: where I got mine from. Uh. The helmet I got
Speaker 1: from another group by organized with which is our Streets PDX,
Speaker 1: And then I forgot working on my goggles from but yeah,
Speaker 1: just you know, the community. After a few bouts with
Speaker 1: police and right Ring militiaman, her uniform had graduated. Now
Speaker 1: every night she went out, she was ready from head
Speaker 1: to toe in an outfit she never expected she would need.
Speaker 1: The first couple of nights was really bad tear gas
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, mom, mune system can't do this.
Speaker 1: Like I just had milk to save my eyes from
Speaker 1: you your gas. But now I had goggles, a helmet,
Speaker 1: a gas mask. Uh, and a lot of people have
Speaker 1: been wanted to get me a bullet for the but
Speaker 1: I haven't gotten one yet, you know, just in case,
Speaker 1: because I'm pretty known by a lot of white supremacis.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of triggering for me. Um, Like I said,
Speaker 1: I've got not sent to my house, like God, We're
Speaker 1: not like God like still like I'm gott to be
Speaker 1: sent to my house. But I've gotten some through my
Speaker 1: go fund me. I've had some sent to my number.
Speaker 1: I had to change my number and everything. I've had
Speaker 1: some saying over email, social media. It's crazy. So I
Speaker 1: just need to be you know, safe at all times.
Speaker 1: But yeah, right, it gives like helmet goggles, face masks.
Speaker 1: Max Smith describes needing to get better gear as the
Speaker 1: violence from federal forces grew more intense. The first thing
Speaker 1: was like, oh, ship, I need equipment. I got a
Speaker 1: helmet in the face shield and got shot in the
Speaker 1: face like a day later. So you know, I saw
Speaker 1: on video I was watching a Dre's when he got
Speaker 1: hit in the head um with a gas canister. H
Speaker 1: at last ready to skull. So I started seeing like, oh,
Speaker 1: people are getting hurt out here. I had actually saw
Speaker 1: I was his name of Chris the taser face. I
Speaker 1: had seen him the day before he got beat and
Speaker 1: I was with the buddy of my world that that
Speaker 1: guy is huge who was this guy over here? We
Speaker 1: were like just talking about how big this guy was.
Speaker 1: And the next day I see him on the news
Speaker 1: getting his ass bet, you know, and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: Like they're really beating everybody up out here. And there
Speaker 1: were thousands of people out there, and people were like
Speaker 1: just being massively, just beat in mass and that's the thing.
Speaker 1: And people didn't have masks or anything. We were just
Speaker 1: getting tear gas and going to the corner and walking
Speaker 1: to sixth Avenue and getting our faces flushed out and
Speaker 1: walking back down again. You know, I remember the solid
Speaker 1: at Deity being crazy, but I also remember thinking, this
Speaker 1: is not what the hell we're here for. Another activist
Speaker 1: also describes the process of gearing up. The first night
Speaker 1: that I went up to the Justice Center at you know,
Speaker 1: the original fence, I had on a her jeans, boots,
Speaker 1: a sweatshirt, and a hat. And you know, that went
Speaker 1: from that night when it was raining, and then on
Speaker 1: my birthday actually, which is June, um my dad texted
Speaker 1: me and said that he spotted me on a live
Speaker 1: stream because I was wearing like a plaid shirt and
Speaker 1: a pair of light colored jeans. And then that was
Speaker 1: kind of when it clicked for me. They're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is why people are consistently wearing black down here,
Speaker 1: Like you don't want to be recognizable, even though I've
Speaker 1: never you know, thrown anything or let anything on fire,
Speaker 1: tagged anything, like, you know, just not being able to
Speaker 1: spot someone is you know, it has its values, um
Speaker 1: and it went from you know, jeans and a sweatshirt
Speaker 1: to needing a respirator and goggles, and then to needing
Speaker 1: a vest, a bulletproof vest, helmet, you know, all the
Speaker 1: different gear that we've needed to make sure that we
Speaker 1: just protect ourselves. It's not about us weaponizing. It's not
Speaker 1: about us buying a bunch of guns when we're you know,
Speaker 1: to carry around when we're down at the protests. It's
Speaker 1: not about that. It's about making sure that we don't
Speaker 1: die and then we don't get hurt. And I was
Speaker 1: there the night that Donovan was shot, Like I was
Speaker 1: the person that ran across the park to go get
Speaker 1: the medics. And that was a huge awakening moment, Like
Speaker 1: I saw a brain fluid come out of his nose,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's a that's a big moment to know, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we should probably make sure that that doesn't happen to
Speaker 1: a bunch more of us. Keeping people breathing became integral
Speaker 1: to the protesting and at the end of July, as
Speaker 1: the gas intensified, Team Raccoon work to get filters to
Speaker 1: the protesters that needed them. We got a little bit
Speaker 1: of money from mutually donations and we were wondering what
Speaker 1: because part cleans are pretty low cost, you know, trash bags,
Speaker 1: trash grabbers, doesn't cost a lot of money to maintain that.
Speaker 1: So we were wondering, like, what do we do with
Speaker 1: this money that will really help our community. And we
Speaker 1: were noticing the air quality and Loudsdale and Chapman getting
Speaker 1: worse and worse and worse because of the tear gas
Speaker 1: and the chemical munitions every night. Even just walking through
Speaker 1: there during the day, you wanted to put your respirator on.
Speaker 1: At the end of July, so we we're connected to
Speaker 1: some researchers who wanted to keep a certain level of anonymity,
Speaker 1: and we decided the best way to do that was
Speaker 1: through us. We could accept filters from the protest community
Speaker 1: and we could give them to the researchers. The researchers
Speaker 1: could conduct their studies and the privacy that they want
Speaker 1: and we could use mutual aid money to facilitate that.
Speaker 1: So that's how it started. UM. We were able to
Speaker 1: locally sourced respirators through a local company UM and to start,
Speaker 1: I think we got about four cases of filters and
Speaker 1: then started getting respirators after the fact to kind of
Speaker 1: like both keep people safe and promote like the Filter Exchange.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a respirator, now you do. Now
Speaker 1: you can participate in the filter Exchange later on, and
Speaker 1: then there's another data point for our scientists. So we
Speaker 1: were already set up doing the respirators, doing the Filter
Speaker 1: Exchange program. We had a lot sitting around and on
Speaker 1: the hundred Days and Ventura Park. It was a big
Speaker 1: event and I was not there that night, but I
Speaker 1: did watch it from the live streams and it was horrifying.
Speaker 1: As Trump's troops catapulted Portland into the national spotlight, cameras
Speaker 1: descended on the city. For more than a month, the
Speaker 1: protests had been covered by a small group of local reporters.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the New York Times, the Washington Post, and every
Speaker 1: major news network were crowding around the Federal courthouse on
Speaker 1: a nightly basis. Right Around the time the Fed War started,
Speaker 1: a federal judge passed the temporary Restraining Order banning federal
Speaker 1: agents from attacking marked press. Whether this stopped any brutality
Speaker 1: is up for debate. The press freedom trackers statistics suggests
Speaker 1: the Portland press were assaulted more often than press in
Speaker 1: any other city in What the restraining order did was
Speaker 1: explode the number of people who went out with cameras
Speaker 1: to live stream and film. The sheer number of people
Speaker 1: with cameras became an issue for many activists. At times,
Speaker 1: it was physically challenging just to maneuver around the courthouse,
Speaker 1: so much space was being taken up by people marked press.
Speaker 1: All this documentation also caused a problem for protesters taking
Speaker 1: a legal direct action against federal agents and property. The
Speaker 1: flood of cameras amounted to constant live surveillance from every
Speaker 1: conceivable angle. Black block and umbrellas helped to shield people,
Speaker 1: but there was no perfect solution. Direct action was hampered.
Speaker 1: Midway through the Fed War, The Oragonian, a local paper,
Speaker 1: was able to get a journalists inside the Federal courthouse.
Speaker 1: They took a picture inside the command center, which featured
Speaker 1: a large computer monitor showing numerous live stream feeds of
Speaker 1: the protests. This convinced many committed activists that streamers were
Speaker 1: their enemy, and the fact that live stream footage was
Speaker 1: used in federal charging documents seemed to support that. However,
Speaker 1: the matter was not that simple. Early live streams of
Speaker 1: police violence had played a major role in getting thousands
Speaker 1: of Portlander's out into the streets. Over and over again,
Speaker 1: we heard stories from activists who first learned how to
Speaker 1: handle tear gas or who were radicalized to start coming
Speaker 1: out because they watched streams. Federal law enforcement clearly used
Speaker 1: live streams for intelligence as well, but it's also very
Speaker 1: possible they made certainly Oregonian took a picture of their
Speaker 1: wall of live streams because they saw the streams as
Speaker 1: a major avenue by which protesters recruited more numbers and
Speaker 1: built public sympathy. Whatever the truth, that Oregonian article convinced
Speaker 1: several members of the press to stop live streaming and
Speaker 1: to move to more carefully posting short videos of the action.
Speaker 1: As a result, live streaming was increasingly done by new
Speaker 1: bees who had flooded into Portland's seeking easy cash. The
Speaker 1: streamer apocalypse would continue as people brought gimbals and started
Speaker 1: plugging their cash app every five minutes on stream. It
Speaker 1: should be noted there were also a number of Portlanders
Speaker 1: who slapped press onto their helmet in the hope that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't get beat up as much, which some might
Speaker 1: call a damning indictment of the state's use of force
Speaker 1: as the FED war raged on. One local critic was
Speaker 1: especially vocal about the optics of the protests. In double
Speaker 1: A CP Portland's chapter president, Pastor E. D. Mondane, described
Speaker 1: the protests as devolving into white spectacle. In a widely
Speaker 1: circulated Washington Post op ed quote from the article what
Speaker 1: are Antifa another leftist agitators achieving for the cause of
Speaker 1: black equality? The mall of Moms, while perhaps well intentioned,
Speaker 1: ends up redirecting attention away from the urgent issue of
Speaker 1: murdered black bodies, he stated, before asking Portlanders to vacate
Speaker 1: the streets and instead to begin fighting at schools, city councils,
Speaker 1: and other governments now. While he also called for the
Speaker 1: Feds to leave, Pastor Mondane's call for Portlanders to pull
Speaker 1: out of the streets drew the ire of many organizers
Speaker 1: on the ground. It also earned Mondane airtime on national
Speaker 1: news outlets, which only ended when a lengthy expose later
Speaker 1: that fall revealed that he had been alleged of engaging
Speaker 1: in sexual, mental, and emotional abuse by nearly a dozen
Speaker 1: members of his church. Now since the fourth of July,
Speaker 1: one of the regular and most revered sites at the
Speaker 1: protests was Riot Ribs, a free pop up barbecue food cart.
Speaker 1: Riot Ribbs was so beloved in Portland that even local
Speaker 1: politicians who had been negative about the protests were hard
Speaker 1: pressed to say a single bad word about them. The
Speaker 1: restaurant had started operations the night of July four, thanks
Speaker 1: to a former Black panther named Lorenzo, Riot Ribbs quickly
Speaker 1: became a large scale operation, feeding protesters and helping the
Speaker 1: local homeless population. After a couple of weeks, the operation
Speaker 1: expanded into clothing donations, a large medical tent, resume help,
Speaker 1: and haircuts. The Ribs made local dining news, and protesters
Speaker 1: would often wait in line through clouds of tear gas
Speaker 1: to get them. They were pretty darn good. Volunteers cleaned
Speaker 1: the park and supplied equipment to protesters and again to
Speaker 1: the local house. Was Population Morgan, currently with Team Raccoon,
Speaker 1: who volunteered at Riot Ribs describes some of the work
Speaker 1: that they would do well. So the park clean itself
Speaker 1: m for volunteers was basically just UM show up. We
Speaker 1: have trash grabbers. You get to keep a pair of
Speaker 1: gardening gloves, UM, so you have something to protect your hands.
Speaker 1: We have sanitizer masks, anything that anybody would need, and
Speaker 1: that would just focus on picking up litter around the park.
Speaker 1: But myself and a couple of UM people that were
Speaker 1: doing with Riot Ribs every day we took the the
Speaker 1: biggest hits on the bathrooms. UM. Even at one point
Speaker 1: UM like during cart cleans, I would have volunteers picking
Speaker 1: up litter and picking up trash. But one thing I
Speaker 1: would go and do is I would get cat litter
Speaker 1: and put cat litter down behind the bathrooms, which is
Speaker 1: where people were peeing usually. UM. It was getting to
Speaker 1: be a sanitation issue. So what we were doing was
Speaker 1: we were putting cat litter down and then scooping it
Speaker 1: away when I got used, and then putting fresh litter down.
Speaker 1: So myself in a couple of people from Riot Ribs
Speaker 1: were really doing the majority of that dirty work UM
Speaker 1: and volunteers were UM doing basically litter clean up and
Speaker 1: just general maintenance beds, however, had a different view of
Speaker 1: the operation well. The rain of tear gas and munition
Speaker 1: seemed largely indiscriminate. Volunteers at Riot Ribs were regularly pelted
Speaker 1: with rubber bullets and even arrested. An early morning sweep
Speaker 1: at Chapman and Loundesdale Squares even saw least booting houseless
Speaker 1: people from the respective parks, seizing all of Riot Ribbs equipment,
Speaker 1: and arresting nine people, some of whom had helped run
Speaker 1: the cart. During the raids, Federal forces would pepper spray
Speaker 1: the grills and ruined donated equipment. In response, volunteers would
Speaker 1: dutifully take the ruined lit grills and dump them over
Speaker 1: the fence around the Federal Courthouse. One night, during a
Speaker 1: federal rush, all of the donated medical supplies were sprayed
Speaker 1: with mace, as of course, ruined them. Every time Riot
Speaker 1: Ribbs was targeted and its crew arrested, its equipment destroyed,
Speaker 1: more donations would come in, new people would come over
Speaker 1: to volunteer, and new equipment would be you know, provided.
Speaker 1: In just a couple of weeks, the effort, which had
Speaker 1: started as just a one man operation, had raised more
Speaker 1: than three hundred thousand dollars to keep going. But just
Speaker 1: as quickly as the love came, there were new questions
Speaker 1: about the group's operations. In fact, both Wall of Moms
Speaker 1: and Riot Ribs soon faced sharp growing pains as new
Speaker 1: money and spotlights of attentions bred creeping suspicion among some
Speaker 1: in the activist community, and even doubts about safety. Courtney,
Speaker 1: who had started out protesting with Mall of Moms, described
Speaker 1: the night out with them that convinced her to quit.
Speaker 1: So um. That night, in particular, I know that that
Speaker 1: was the first night that actually mom got arrested. There
Speaker 1: was one mom in particular that like she got arrested,
Speaker 1: but then she also got her head Like I don't
Speaker 1: know if they shot her directly in the head, but
Speaker 1: that's when she had her head busted open. So throughout
Speaker 1: that night I was like, this is just not that,
Speaker 1: this is just not right. Like I don't understand they
Speaker 1: have like this these Facebook pages and these twitters and
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff to like communicate things with people,
Speaker 1: and nothing was communicated in a way for like to
Speaker 1: mentally prepare these women when they show us UM. And
Speaker 1: so that just throughout the night I was just so
Speaker 1: annoyed with all of that, and I was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, Like I'm not gonna wear out. Towards the
Speaker 1: end of the night, my friends and I actually had
Speaker 1: shirts on underneath, and we like literally took our shirts,
Speaker 1: our yellow shirts off, and we're like, we're not doing
Speaker 1: this anymore. Most fed war nights followed a similar pattern.
Speaker 1: Huge crowds would gather. They would yell and throw things
Speaker 1: over the fence or damage the fence until the Feds
Speaker 1: came out and force and pushed the crowd back. Then
Speaker 1: the Feds would go back inside, the crowd would reform,
Speaker 1: and the cycle would repeat itself until there was no
Speaker 1: one left. Midway through all of this, Portland Mayor Ted
Speaker 1: Wheeler went out and stood in the tear gas with protesters.
Speaker 1: On national media, his tear gassing was portrayed as bravely
Speaker 1: standing with his city against federal overreach. The people actually
Speaker 1: protesting in downtown Portland felt very different. Ted was heckled constantly,
Speaker 1: his bodyguard had to keep people away from him, and
Speaker 1: as he was leaving, horribly tear gassed activists dumped bags
Speaker 1: of spent riot munitions that Wheeler's cops had fired at them.
Speaker 1: Onto the ground in front of him. More than anything,
Speaker 1: Most protesters seemed to enjoy watching Ted suffer after he
Speaker 1: had caused such pain for all of them. Courtney continues
Speaker 1: on about that night. So the next night was the
Speaker 1: night that Ted came out, and we ended up deciding
Speaker 1: like we weren't going to come with Wall of Months
Speaker 1: anymore because there had been already like some in fighting
Speaker 1: on their pages or whatever, and so um, we just
Speaker 1: wanted nothing to do with it anymore at that point
Speaker 1: because of the miscommunication or I mean lacks of communication
Speaker 1: that there was. And so when Ted came out, that's
Speaker 1: when like it's definitely the numbers had multiply multiplied from
Speaker 1: Wall of Moms. And again I don't think that they've
Speaker 1: prepared anyone for what was going on. I mean I can't,
Speaker 1: you can't, like that's not probably as I don't know
Speaker 1: how accurate I am with that. But I had still
Speaker 1: remained on the Facebook pages and has been like looking
Speaker 1: at things and checking to see if anybody was like
Speaker 1: communicating what to expect. So then when they showed up,
Speaker 1: there was like so many of them, and then Ted
Speaker 1: was there and then throughout like the are the speeches
Speaker 1: that were going on and things like that. They I
Speaker 1: guess somebody that was speaking on the night had told
Speaker 1: of to tell the moms to go home because they
Speaker 1: didn't want to have a photo opportunity to or opportunity
Speaker 1: with Ted, So it wasn't communicated enough to the hundreds
Speaker 1: of moms that were there. And then while Ted was out,
Speaker 1: that's when they started gassing everybody. Well, apparently they had
Speaker 1: told the moms to leave, but there were like hundreds
Speaker 1: of moms left behind, had like no nothing. They had
Speaker 1: like things from like hydration station and the medics and
Speaker 1: like you know, some swimming goggles and you know, paper
Speaker 1: masks and things like that they didn't have, like they
Speaker 1: weren't prepared obviously for like with full face like gas masks,
Speaker 1: the respirators and things like that. And so she basically
Speaker 1: had abandoned all of these moms and had posted a
Speaker 1: video on the Facebook things saying while of momsinique to leave,
Speaker 1: like we're not giving Ted Wheeler the opportunity to take
Speaker 1: a photo of us. Immediately after that's when they started gassing.
Speaker 1: And there were hundreds of months screening running around Chapman
Speaker 1: Square and they're like leader Bed just left them, and
Speaker 1: so the rest of the protesters were there like taking
Speaker 1: care of the women that were frontlining it, while like
Speaker 1: that had dipped out and had gone. And so that's
Speaker 1: when it kind of like started. The downfall of Wall
Speaker 1: of Moms was because later on people didn't realize because
Speaker 1: nobody's like checking their Facebook while they're out there like
Speaker 1: waiting to get gasped by the Feds, and like the
Speaker 1: next when they get home, they see that like that
Speaker 1: had told everyone to leave. Dmitria Hester started taking to
Speaker 1: the streets during the FED War. She explains her perspective
Speaker 1: on what happened with the all of moms. Um, it
Speaker 1: was beautiful. Um it was with the um Wall of Moms.
Speaker 1: But um, the person who created Wall of Mom she
Speaker 1: was a white privileged um mom and she tried to
Speaker 1: use black women to um to pro right on our
Speaker 1: backs about promoting herself and for it to be some
Speaker 1: kind of promotion and not for Black lives matter. It
Speaker 1: was all for a photo shoots and to be popular.
Speaker 1: And the moms were so disgusted by how she was
Speaker 1: trying to create them instead of being down there to
Speaker 1: fight for Black lives matter. And the moms saw that.
Speaker 1: So when they saw that she was trying to capitalize
Speaker 1: on Black lives matter. Also they were disgusted. So me,
Speaker 1: being a part of who I am, I took all
Speaker 1: the moms that we're not white supremacy moms trying to
Speaker 1: be the saviors and made moms united for Black Lives
Speaker 1: um because of the fact that the person betom she
Speaker 1: was trying to capitalize on black lives she didn't care
Speaker 1: about black lives or the mom. She just wanted to
Speaker 1: do it for a photo of She thought she was
Speaker 1: gonna come down there and save the day. So it
Speaker 1: was beautiful um for me to see so many people
Speaker 1: out for black lives better, But it was so disgusting
Speaker 1: to see that what we've been fighting for that um
Speaker 1: their vitam came in and try to capitalize on that.
Speaker 1: But we had to quickly turn that around. The Wall
Speaker 1: of Mom's founder Beth Barnum claimed to have the blessings
Speaker 1: of the seasoned activist group Don't Shoot Portland's her early
Speaker 1: from lings lead Don't Shoot to step in and help
Speaker 1: guide both Wall of Moms and Riot Ribs in mid July.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately, what had been purely positive stories nose dived
Speaker 1: into something more muddled. Riot Ribbs disbanded before a full
Speaker 1: transfer of leadership could even happen, and the story of
Speaker 1: this is very complicated. There were allegations from of abuse
Speaker 1: from a former member of Riot Ribs, one of the
Speaker 1: people who helped cook there, and the whole situation left
Speaker 1: a lot of people scratching their heads. The center of
Speaker 1: the rift seems to have focused around an impostor who
Speaker 1: started claiming to represent Riot Ribs in order to draw
Speaker 1: donations to himself. This person reportedly threatened several members of
Speaker 1: Riot Ribs and several other protesters with a firearm on
Speaker 1: multiple occasions. The situation grew so messy and so violent
Speaker 1: that the old Riot Ribs staff departed, using the money
Speaker 1: that they had raised to buy several vans and go
Speaker 1: deliver Ribs to protests around the country. The impostor Riot
Speaker 1: Ribs continued to operate and continued to threaten people with
Speaker 1: deadly weapons on occasion. The situation with Wall of Moms was,
Speaker 1: if not a little more normal than at least involved
Speaker 1: less of an armed coup. After Don't Shoot was given
Speaker 1: control of the group, they gave Dimitria hester Admin control
Speaker 1: of the organization's now massive Facebook page and Don't Shoot.
Speaker 1: Portland's Wall of Moms even entered into a joint lawsuit
Speaker 1: against the Department of Homeland Security for their use of
Speaker 1: excessive force, their violations of free speech, all of the
Speaker 1: terrible stuff that they'd been doing. Shortly after this suit
Speaker 1: was announced, what had seemed to be a strong united
Speaker 1: front fell apart. Wall of Mom's founder Bev Barnum began
Speaker 1: filing paperwork to register the group as a nonprofit. This
Speaker 1: move set up a series of alarms, leading Don't Shoot
Speaker 1: to question if the move was to profit off of
Speaker 1: the Black Lives Matter movement. Bev pushed back Her goal,
Speaker 1: she said was to protect protesters from federal agents, not
Speaker 1: the BLM movement. For her, while of Moms was something
Speaker 1: of a business, a line was drawn. Don't Shoot split
Speaker 1: from the two week old Wall of Moms and founded
Speaker 1: a new black lead group called Moms United for Black Lives,
Speaker 1: this one led by Demitria Hester. We know the whole
Speaker 1: situation is very confusing, and trust us, no one who
Speaker 1: was there at the time had a super great understanding
Speaker 1: of what was actually happening with either the Wall of
Speaker 1: Moms or with Riot Ribs. It was a confusing time,
Speaker 1: and everything that happened there was was very muddled, not
Speaker 1: just by all of the different people involved, but by
Speaker 1: the constant clouds of tear gas and trauma that enveloped everything.
Speaker 1: As the city tried to present a united front against
Speaker 1: Trump's agents and the Portland Police Bureau, the growing rifts
Speaker 1: internally among protesters threatened to derail resistance altogether. A question
Speaker 1: began to loom above the clouds of gas. Had the
Speaker 1: fight become more about Donald Trump and his agents than
Speaker 1: the movement for Black lives? The answer would become critical
Speaker 1: in the unfolding days of the protest. The FED War
Speaker 1: reached its conclusion. In the closing day days of July,
Speaker 1: Oregon Governor Kate Brown entered talks with the White House
Speaker 1: to negotiate reducing the presence of federal troops on the ground.
Speaker 1: Things had fallen into yet another pattern. In the afternoon,
Speaker 1: a crowd would gather around the Justice Center and court
Speaker 1: House to sing and listen to speeches. As night fell,
Speaker 1: thousands would surround the court House waiting for the Feds
Speaker 1: to inevitably begin shooting people. One of the last really
Speaker 1: big FED Nights was July. Over a thousand people marched
Speaker 1: all the way from North Portland to the courthouse, where
Speaker 1: there were already thousands of people gathered. The site upon
Speaker 1: arrival was a familiar one. Moms and yellows standing behind,
Speaker 1: people with shields deflecting canisters and pepper balls, leafblowers pushing
Speaker 1: gas back behind the fence, and people with heat resistant
Speaker 1: gloves tossing canisters over the barrier like a sport. At
Speaker 1: this point, Portland was getting very good at counteracting tear gas.
Speaker 1: In fact, they'd almost perfected the art. Some Feds got
Speaker 1: dumped with pink paint early in the night and they
Speaker 1: retreated back into the courthouse, and with the absence of
Speaker 1: the Feds, people were more free to tamper with the fence.
Speaker 1: Occasionally there would be sparks from an angle grinder slowly
Speaker 1: removing supports on the steel barricade. While the Feds were inside,
Speaker 1: they'd shoot tear gas from the roof and pepper balls
Speaker 1: out of murder holes as people shook the fence back
Speaker 1: and forth. Fireworks were launched up at the roof, but
Speaker 1: the Feds would not stay on the roof for the
Speaker 1: rest of the night, with a mix of vigorous shaking
Speaker 1: rope ties and liberal use of angle grinders. Port leaders
Speaker 1: finally toppled over the concrete reinforced steel fence. The Feds
Speaker 1: were not happy, as they continued to shower the streets
Speaker 1: with tear gas fired from the roof. Squads of federal
Speaker 1: agents busted out of the courthouse door, launching Stunn grenades
Speaker 1: and taking aim within four rifles. Protesters shield walls quickly
Speaker 1: surrounded a large portion of the fence that had been
Speaker 1: knocked over. Fed shot more and more munitions into the crowd,
Speaker 1: and protesters tossed back canisters of tear gas and fireworks
Speaker 1: into the federal lines. All the while the red laser
Speaker 1: sight on an automatic rifle burned through the clouds of
Speaker 1: smoke and gas, swiveling across the chests of people in
Speaker 1: the crowd. Eventually, the gas was too much, even for
Speaker 1: more than a dozen leafblowers. Some in the crowd of
Speaker 1: protesters around the fallen fence had to pull back or suffocate.
Speaker 1: At this point, our old friends, the Portland Police Bureau
Speaker 1: arrived to declare a riot and warn everyone that tear
Speaker 1: gas was about to be used, which it had been
Speaker 1: used for hours at that point. As thousands of people
Speaker 1: started to retreat west under heavy grenade fire. The FEDS
Speaker 1: in the Portland police took the streets to inflict violence
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk. Medics treated people with giant gashes on
Speaker 1: their face from metal canisters and foam tipped riot rounds.
Speaker 1: Multiple people were shot in the face, just like Donovan
Speaker 1: Labeland in all those weeks prior. On July twenty nine,
Speaker 1: Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced that the White House, DHS
Speaker 1: and her office had come to a deal. The next day, July,
Speaker 1: the Feds were leaving Portland. Of course, that was something
Speaker 1: of a lie. The same day that Kate made her announcement,
Speaker 1: Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf contradicted her claim, saying on Twitter,
Speaker 1: as I told the governor yesterday, federal law enforcement will
Speaker 1: remain in Portland until the violent activity towards our federal
Speaker 1: facilities ends. We are not removing any law enforcement while
Speaker 1: our facilities and law enforcement remain under attack now. Trump
Speaker 1: also challenged Brown's announcement, tweet that she must clear out
Speaker 1: the anarchists and agitators and that if she doesn't, the
Speaker 1: federal government will do it for her. We will not
Speaker 1: be leaving until there is safety cape Brown then clarified
Speaker 1: that the federal removal would be instead a phased withdrawal
Speaker 1: of federal agents from the Portland downtown area. Their presence
Speaker 1: would be replaced by Oregon State Police. Brown tweeted that
Speaker 1: our local Oregon State Police officers will be downtown to
Speaker 1: protect Oregonians right to free speech and to keep the peace.
Speaker 1: The number of Feds were reduced, but they never actually
Speaker 1: left Portland. Into August, there were still hundreds of additional
Speaker 1: federal agents from Customs and Borders Patrol, the Federal Protective Service,
Speaker 1: and the U S Marshals. One law enforcement official told
Speaker 1: op B Oregon Public Broadcasting there has been a small
Speaker 1: army in Portland, and multiple law enforcement sources told op
Speaker 1: B that they expected additional federal forces to remain in
Speaker 1: the city up and through the general election, with the
Speaker 1: DHS officials saying to O p B, my guess is
Speaker 1: that the protest climate isn't going to change much between
Speaker 1: now and the election. The department is reluctant to wrought
Speaker 1: down drastically in a way that would leave us vulnerable.
Speaker 1: All the Feds really did was become less visible. They
Speaker 1: did temporarily stop responding to protesters, leaving that job to
Speaker 1: the Oregon State Police and the Portland police, but they
Speaker 1: were still in town, and smaller groups of Portland protesters
Speaker 1: would occasionally meet these Feds whenever a protest was held
Speaker 1: at the local ice facility. The night of July was
Speaker 1: the first night without tear gas and weeks with both
Speaker 1: FEDS and Oregon State Police just watching from inside the courthouse.
Speaker 1: This convinced many exhausted Portland's that the Feds had actually left,
Speaker 1: and the following days numbers started to dwindle. The mass
Speaker 1: of liberals that assembled to fight off Trump's Feds called
Speaker 1: the effort of victory, putting their newly acquired gas masks
Speaker 1: in the closet and moving on. This turn of events
Speaker 1: was predictable for some of the more seasoned activists. Here's coolca.
Speaker 1: I saw so many patterns I saw, and Sandy Rock
Speaker 1: has been repeated not just here but in other pipeline
Speaker 1: movements and in other other movements. And I thought the
Speaker 1: exact same same thing happening in Portland. And so I
Speaker 1: was telling how I kept saying that it's going to
Speaker 1: turn it into burning Man in like ten more days,
Speaker 1: and and then it kind of was a little bit
Speaker 1: circusy for a while. But it sucks that, um that
Speaker 1: all the you know, mainstream Americans or mainstream people in
Speaker 1: the United States thought it was just the Feds doing
Speaker 1: that to us, and if we just get rid of
Speaker 1: the feeds, everything will be fine. But they didn't get
Speaker 1: rid of the FITS. They only got rid of that unit.
Speaker 1: The rest of the FITS stayed, and we're still suffering
Speaker 1: the same amount of the same amount of violence. It's
Speaker 1: just not covered. And and it was also disgusting to
Speaker 1: me because, um, you know, there were all these um,
Speaker 1: you know, hearings about it and and press about it,
Speaker 1: about this extreme violence from these federal lobsters. But we were,
Speaker 1: like Portland's police were using the exact same tactics and
Speaker 1: violence on us. You know, for years they've in doing
Speaker 1: that same thing. The disappearance of the liberal majority suggested
Speaker 1: that many who showed up for the Fed War were
Speaker 1: more interested in standing up against Trump than four black lives.
Speaker 1: Olivia Cutty Smith, co chair of the Portland d s A,
Speaker 1: gives her feelings on the subject. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: how we see a lot of other struggles that because
Speaker 1: Trump is the face of it, Uh, liberals will turn
Speaker 1: out to protest these things in ways that they wouldn't before. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, keeping kids in cages at the border. The
Speaker 1: vomited that. UM. I think that it's actually beneficial to
Speaker 1: our movement that Trump is now so visibly violence and hateful,
Speaker 1: because it's it takes the mask off UM and it
Speaker 1: radicalizes a lot of people. UM. I think that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we saw an incredible amount of people. UM, Mom's dad
Speaker 1: labor and amazing labor contingent showed up to protests against
Speaker 1: the federal officers being here. Um because Trump sent them.
Speaker 1: I mean Obama sent federal officers to Baltimore to fergusons
Speaker 1: the Standing Rock. We did not see this same sort
Speaker 1: of mobilization from liberals that we are now seeing because
Speaker 1: it was Trump. The Fed War was a tremendous story
Speaker 1: of tragedy and hope. Thousands of liberal moderates took to
Speaker 1: the streets in a semi militant way for the first time.
Speaker 1: Huge numbers of people were directly exposed to the concept
Speaker 1: of mutual aid and got a glimpse of the power
Speaker 1: that thousands of assembled human beings can hold. But most
Speaker 1: of that power and potential disappeared when the Feds did
Speaker 1: the spectacle of federal violence, the military body armor and
Speaker 1: the tear gas clouds, the size of buildings that all
Speaker 1: overshadowed the original purpose of the BLM movement. But it
Speaker 1: was not all as hopeless as it might seem. For
Speaker 1: every protester who stopped going out because the Feds left,
Speaker 1: there was another person who had grown more commit into
Speaker 1: the cause than ever before. Many of them were only
Speaker 1: halted and continuing to show up due to physical injury
Speaker 1: or emotional trauma. The end of the Fed war would
Speaker 1: bring the last of Portland's truly massive twenty twenty protests,
Speaker 1: but it did not mark the end of the uprising.
Speaker 1: For Portland's committed activists, the fight was far from over.
Speaker 1: Uh where the grand pops who couldn't fathom the obamasist,
Speaker 1: I don't hate America just to me, and she keeps
Speaker 1: a promisess looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide
Speaker 1: dejah pu what my people post to do go to
Speaker 1: schools named after the clan founder were around town? Is
Speaker 1: I don't see why we're frowning Native American students forced
Speaker 1: to learn about when o'para Sarah? How is that fair? Bro?
Speaker 1: Some Euros unsung in some monster's get monuments built for them.
Speaker 1: But ain't be all a little bit of monster. We
Speaker 1: crug you