Part One: Oregon is a Bastard: The History of a White Supremacist State

Of course, my guest is My name is Marie L. Eaton, and I've lived in Portland for fourteen years and I do many different things here, including quite a bit of activism, quite a bit of activism. My main effort is with sexual and relationship violence prevention and victim advocacy, and I've done activism around that for about a decade now, and I am a victim advocate both in the university setting

as well as independent organization setting. And you've also done quite a bit of anti fascist action in the street during which you you were photographed, uh and have become sort of a figurehead of anti fa for CNN's reports on the matter. So we're officially is officially an interview with Antifa. That's the Fox News chiron that would go across. So we're gonna be talking about Oregon, your lovely home state, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Uh and also way more racist historically, at least than most people would give it credit for based on Portlandia and currently. Yeah, it's not just macrobiotic burritos. And uh, I'm trying to think of something else. Hippie ash cars that run on garbage. Garbage, Yeah, yeah, garbage cars. It's it's it's a little bit deeper than that. So that's what we're gonna be getting into the day today. The bastard is the state of Oregon, which you know, Sorry, Oregon, I do love you, but let's get into it. So

Peter Hardeman Burnett was born in eight no seven. He started out as a self educated which I think in eighteen o seven just means uneducated owner of a general store in Clear Creek, Tennessee. As a young man, Peter Burnett came to suspect that an enslaved black person was drinking from his stores whiskey barrel at night, so he set up a booby trap, a rifle that was rigged to fire when the windows shutter was opened. His trap wound up killing the poor man when the guy tried

to break into his house. Burnett expressed remorse, but was not charged with any crime because it was eighteen o seven and that sort of thing wasn't really a crime in Tennessee back then. In eighteen forty three, Burnett helped organize and lead the first great wagon train to Oregon. So he was one of the pioneers who first discovered

this territory Oregon Trail. You could say is a game about Peter Burnett, murderer and uh soon to be politician, because he was quickly elected to the provisional Legislature of Oregon. Now this before Oregan was a state, so it was still a territory, and he served as the territory of Oregon's first Supreme Court justice, chief Supreme Court Justice. So I'm guessing his qualifications were let a wagon train and was a murderer. So in either like you're our judge,

you're you're in charge of this state right now. Um, So eighteen forty four, Peter Burnett was instrumental in passing what came to be known as the Burnett Lash Law. You heard of the Burnett Lash Law from you? Okay, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that we've talked this. Uh. I had not heard and not remembered that. I'm sure I've heard it, but I have not remembered that until you brought it up. It's

a little bit famous, um it. Uh. It's essentially stated that all black people were required to leave Oregon County under penalty of being whipped quote not less than twenty or more than thirty nine stripes. Uh. This punishment was to be repeated every six months until they left the state. So one of the interesting things about Peter Burnett is that he's a classic example of someone winding up on the right side of a historical issue for tremendously wrong reasons.

Because Peter Burnette was an outspoken abolitionist, not because he believes slavery was wrong, but because he was just that racist and he thought that if there was slavery, there would be people who weren't white in the country. That was his whole issue, which is there's a whole like chunk of the abolitionist movement which were just people who were too racist to own slaves. Um. It's kind of a little historical angle. It gets left out a lot

of the time, but bizarre. So Burnett's law did include a grace period three years for black women and two years for black men, so we gave him some time to get out of the state. Burnett also pushed against Chinese migration to Oregon. He tried to ban it um. He later went on to become the first governor of the state of California, so he's my state's first governor as well. And of course his first action and governor of the state of California was I'm pretty sure you

can guess he tried to ban all black people. Yeah, yeah, what do you know? And then he tried to ban all Chinese people from California. Peter Burnett was a consistent man, if nothing else. Uh. And I got a picture of him, and he looks like we'll put it up on the site behind the bastards dot com. But he looks like the guy you would cast to play a generical Look at that four. That's a five head, Yes, that is

maybe even a seven. I mean it is. It just keeps going and those little curls on the side the curls. I'm not going to go against them for the curls. I mean that's he seems like he might have. That's the only redeeming quality. And I mean it's a weird cravat. He looks like someone in a story who would like take off his cravat and his head would fall off in an old fable. Yeah, it doesn't look like a

very happy person. No, no, he does not. He looks a little bit like the painting of the guy Vigo and Ghostbusters to the bad guy who's trying to steal that baby's body. Yeah, he's got that, he's got his eyes are doing that sort of thing. So you really owe it to yourself to look at a picture of Peter Burnett, a guy who looks like his goal in life was to ban people who aren't white from multiple states. Yeah, so Burnett's lash law did not last long, which is

kind of hard to say. Ten times fast law did not. I'm not even going to attend it fair enough. So now the good news is that no black people are recorded to have been lashed under. It apparently was not used even in the eighteen forties in Oregon, and people were like, this seems a little bit too racist. That said, we're talking Oregon in eighteen forties. Who knows what happened, especially rural areas where the rural law was even less

than it was in Portland. Whether or not it was used, the law reflected the values of the first white people who settled in the territory of Oregon. They wanted their state to be slave free, but because that was the only way to ensure the state had no black people at all, in eighteen forty eight, the Oregon Territorial government passed a law that banned any quote negro or mulatto from living in Oregon. In eighteen fifty, the Oregon Land Donation Act gave quote whites and half breed Indians six

and fifty acres of land from the government. All other people of color were banned from receiving land grants. So Oregon was founded as a whites only state. It was seen as this is going to be just white people in this chunk. So that was the Pacific Northwest from the get go, almost two hundred years ago. Yeah, and there's this we'll be talking about. There's some people who still think that ought to be the way things work. Yes, So from the beginning, Oregon was a very rough place

to be anything but a very very white person. There were some extraordinarily brave black pioneers who did try to make a life out here. In eighteen fifty one, one of them was Jacob Vanderpool. He was a former sailor. I think he came from the Caribbean Islands, but I don't think we know exactly, But he came to own

a saloon, restaurant and boarding house in Oregon City. And a white guy named Theophilius Magruder, which is a name, quite a name in the name you would expect of a guy who's about to do or who did what we're about to talk about him doing, reported him for the crime of being black in Oregon Um and he was given thirty days to leave the state. Now, Magruder also owned a hotel and a bar in the same town, so it's entirely possible that his motive was as financial

as it was racist, if not more so. But Jacob Vanderpool was forced to leave and forced to give up his business. In eighteen fifty seven, Oregon wrote a state constitution that enshrined its exclusion of black people into law. Quote no free negro or mulatto not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this Constitution shall ever come reside or be within the state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain

any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such free Negroes and Mulattos, and for their effectual exclusion from the state, and from the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ them or harbor them therein. Yeah, so that's the initial law that Oregon is founded under eighteen fifty seven. In eighteen fifty nine, Oregon Territory finally becomes a state. It was the only

state in the Union that was officially whites only. So this is the only time that this happened. You know, as much racism as there is in the history of the United States, We're going the only state to try to do this. So that's a fame. I guess. Texas has the Alamo and which is also pretty racist as kind of. I grew up in Texas and they always kind of smoothed over why the Texans were rebelling against Mexico a lot to do with the So they wanted

to own people in Mexico. Didn't like people owning people. Yeah, yeah, they really hid that fat yeah always yeah. So, while Oregon initially ratified the fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which gave citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves. This is why we have birthright citizenship. It was they were trying to figure out a legal solution too. We've got all these people that were forced to be here and now they've got to

be citizens. Yeah. So Oregon initially ratified the fourteenth Amendment, but then it almost immediately rescinded the ratification of the amendment. I guess people got angry. Oregon is also one of only six states that refused to ratify the fifteenth Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote. So fortunately Oregon eventually got it shipped together enough to finally ratify the fifteen Amendment. Do you want to guess when that happened. I've known this before, but I can't think of it.

It was eight or nineteen fifty nine. Nineteen fifty nine, they were like, all right, we'll ratify the amendment. That let's black guys vote, just black guys. Uh. Yeah. It did not reratify the fourteenth Amendment until nineteen seventy three. Yes, yeah, I definitely remember that date. I think it's important when we talk about like why this stuff still lingers, because it didn't. It's not we're not talking about like, you know,

a hundred eighteen sixty five. Really isn't that long ago when you talk about generations because the last Civil War widows pension just stop getting paid like three years ago. Absolutely. Um, but we'll say that all the time, like, oh, racism is done, slavery is over. Okay, interesting, let's talk about redlining. Oh well that was a long time ago too, we will be talking about Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, Oregon ratified the amendment that gave birthright citizens ship to people fifteen

years before. I was not that long. Disco might have been a thing. I don't know when that. I think that may have been a thing. Yeah, it's about as old as disco. It's about as old as disco. Although that does feel that that does feel old now. Disco actually feels older than white supremacy in orger Absolutely so. Um, it's probably not hard to see why the state of Oregon has stayed so white even though after eighteen sixty eight there was nothing legally the state authorities could do

to keep black people out of Oregon. So again, it's not whites only after that point. By eighteen ninety there were only around a thousand black people in the entire state. By nineteen twenty, there were just two thousand. Now, the nineteen twenties would have been a rough time to be a black person in Oregon because Oregon was the highest per capita membership of the Ku Klux Klan of any

state in the Union. They marched in, Yeah, they gathered in Portland proper all the time, thousands of them, thousands of the thousands. They're Claverns, I think, Yeah, that's the name. They're Grand Wizards, Burnings cross Burns Center in the city. Yeah, I prefer to it's easier to focus on the ridiculous names. But yeah, it was cross burnings and murders and yeah, yeah, we have to talk about that now, No, I mean we can. That's what we're here for, Yeah, that is

what we're here. So Democrat Walter Pierce was elected governor in nineteen twenty two after receiving the enthusiastic endorsement of the Oregon Ku Klux Klan. In fact, it may have been why he won, According to an article in The Guardian quote photos in the local papers show the Portland Chief of Police, sheriff, District Attorney, U s Attorney, and mayor posing with klansmen, accompanied by an article saying them

in we're taking advice from the clan. So again, really not weird that it took until the seventies to ratify the fourteenth raified it. Yeah, So World War two is when things really started to change demographically in Oregon. This was the first time that a large number of black people began to move to the state. And it was because America was in this whole war thing, and we need to build a shipload of boats. And if there's one thing Portland's great at, it's being a place to

build a shipload of boats. You guys, we got our boats. If I ever need to build a navy, this is the city. I'm gonna build that navy and go for it. Yeah, we're here. I'm gonna crowdfunded like a like a like a go fundmate, but instead of for medical bills, for like a battleship or three. What are you going to use it for? I don't know. You'll sail around like what Elron Hubbard did, just sail around for eight or nine years. Podcasting, podcasting, podcast boat, a podcast boat, a podcast,

cult boats podcast. I was going to say, uss past us, that's more catchy than mine, exactly catchy than mine. I'm not the namer in this well, in fairness, I'm not the name or either somebody else figured that out there. No, I I feel your pain. So, by the end of World War two, more than black people had moved to Oregon. Many of them resided in Vanport, a small city between Portland and Vancouver, Washington, calling it a city at first

at least, yeah, small town, small town it was. Most of it was temporary housing that was built because they had so many workers coming in and they needed the ability to host them in. Portland was a very tiny city at this point. Still, here's how the Smithsonian described the creation of Vanport quote completed in just a hundred

and ten days. The town, comprised of ten thousand, four fourteen apartments and homes, was mostly a slipshod combination of wooden blocks and fiber board walls built on marshaland between the Columbia Slough and the Columbia River. Vanport was physically segregated from Portland and kept dry only by a system of dikes that held back the flow of the Columbia River. So a little bit of foreshadowing there. This is built and basically the worst location you could build a town

to keep it dry. Years later, Manly Maven, who grew up in Vanport, would describe it this way. Quote the psychological effective living on the bottom of a relatively small area dyked on all sides to a height of fifteen to twenty five ft was vaguely disturbing. It was almost impossible to get a view of the horizon from anywhere in Vanport, at least on the ground during the lower level apartments, and it was even difficult from upper levels,

which I can't really imagine this. It sounds like almost something you'd see in like a dystopian movie, where these people just have these dikes rising like they're walled in on all sides. And this is the hub of you know, the black community in Portland. You know for the first time that it really has any size at all. Um So, yeah, the idea was that once folks had settled into Vanport and you know, worked at their jobs long enough and earn some cash, they would be able to rent your

by homes elsewhere. It was not intended to be a permanent development, but discriminatory housing policy made it nearly impossible for black people to uh, you know, live anywhere else in the city. Um So, once the war ended, the Mayor of Portland wrote a newspaper article telling the black people of Vanport that they were no longer welcome in the state. Uh. This is the Mayor of Portland has basically put up a letter saying like, Okay, thank you

for building the boats. You can go. You can go now. Yeah. The housing authority discussed tearing the town down. A nineteen forty seven Oregon Journal article described local attitudes to Vanport this way, too many Oregonians, Vanport has been undesirable because it is supposed to have a large colored population. Of the some twenty three thou inhabitants, only slightly over four

thousander colored residents. True, this is a high percentage per capita compared to other Northwestern cities, but as one resident puts it, the colored people have to live somewhere, and whether the Northwesterners lie it or not, they're here to stay. I think there's a lot to dig into in terms of the phrasing. They're both that this this journalist rather than being like kind of confronting the racism, is like, well,

they're not entirely accurate. It's only a quarter color. And then also, yeah, whether whether the Northwesterners like it or not, they are here to stay. That's the attitude in nineteen seven. So today you know Vanport as Delta park. Um. That's a sort of the land that it's that's on now because very little of Vanport City still remains um. In ninety eight, it started raining very hard on Memorial Day,

Residents of Vanport woke up to driving rain. In this letter from the Housing Authority of Portland, the HP, Remember dikes are safe at present. You will be warned if necessary, you will have time to leave. Don't get excited. I do feel like if the government's sending you all caps notes that they don't get excited, she'd probably get excited. To get pretty excited. Should get pretty side it, I mean. And what happened next is uh horrendous, Yeah, horrendous and

very predictable. The dikes did not hold. A hole opened up shortly after four pm, and roughly one day Vanport, Oregon's second largest city at the time, was completely wiped out by floodwaters. Eighteen thousand, five hundred people, sixty three hundred of whom were black, were displaced. Hundreds died, but we don't know how many, because it really seems like the HP may have secretly disposed of hundreds of corpses um.

Even even with the predictability that you were mentioning, people often will trust authority figures, and even if it seems predictable in hindsight, at the time, it probably didn't. They probably really trusted that that they were safe. Oh yeah, and I was sorry. I was not trying to say that people bandports should have predicted it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The city shaded on something. They didn't give a ship with this place that was basically built underwater with the water held in by walls, and then the walls start getting flooded with water. Absolutely. Um, there's a rumor that four fifty seven dead people were shipped to Japan for some reason. There's a bunch of weird rumors around what that's very god Yeah, it's it's it's kind of hard to dig into. I heard they recover ups. I hadn't heard that. It seems like a reasonable guests would be

somewhere between four and SI. But it's it's very hard to say. Yeah, let me see that cycle repeating itself with Puerto Rico. Yeah, where it's it's weird how things rhyme all of the time in history. Ye all, the speaking of rhyming, it's time for an ad break. That was a bad plot. But do you have any products and or services you'd like to plug before we get to the ones that paid us? Uh? So it gets

to just kind of be anything anything you want. I usually pick random objects on the table because I just love advertising. All Right, I'm going to say that everyone should read Man Search for Meaning by Victor frankpl Oh. That is much more meaningful than the plug. I was going to go, so, yeah, read Man Search for Ye well, I was going Vino daily moisturizing lotion. Only daily moisturizing

lotion currently on this table of it. Let's uh, let's let's move over to the products indoor services that actually paid us for. We're back. We're back back, and we're talking about racism Oregon. Now for something completely different. Well, I mean compared to your sponsors. Oh, yes, very different, because none of our sponsors support racism in Oregon for sure. Yeah, pretty sure. I mean, like they make belts like Croup six. I don't see how a belt could be racist. Depends

on where they're made. Should I be saying this? Should I be talking about consumerism under capitalism? Well, yes, I mean we do. It's one of those things we uh, this is the ocean that we live in. So you can't do anything but swim, but you can't try to pick products that you feel don't add to the problems as long as you're not sponsored by Amazon. We're not sponsored by Amazon, and I do believe that it's a general good to keep people's pants up. Yeah, let's get

back into us. Continue. So there's a lot more to say in terms of Portland's history being terrible to the

black people who lived there. There was the time when voters in nineteen fifty six approved the construction of an arena that necessitated the destruction of four hundred and seventy six films, half of which were black people's homes, And of course black people made up like less than two percent of the city at this point, so we're not talking about a proportional sort of Yeah, and the expressway

as well. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm about to say. Well, actually, no, I was about to go into a completely different time

that they did that. There's yeah, there was the time also in fifty six when the city of Portland used federal funds to expand a local hospital by bulldoz in seventy six acres black owned homes and businesses at the junction of North Williams Avenue and Russell Street, which at that point was considered Portland's black main street, which if I'm keeping track, is at least the third black main street in a city in the United States that was destroyed.

Although since Portland didn't bomb their's, which is what happened in a couple of other states, I guess it's yeah, better than the air Force, I suppose. Yeah, I mean it's not it's hard to tell better from worse. Slow deprivation is not always Yeah, I was reaching for a little bit of levity in a situation that doesn't deserve it. So tell us about this expressway, which I did not include it here. Yeah, So Anyone who's in Portland knows

exactly what I'm talking about. But for people outside, there is this very long freeway project that goes past and around the Memorial Coliseum, which you just mentioned that was built the arena, and this expressway was initially going to be in the west portion of Portland. Anyone who knows Portland knows that the will Lambite River bisects east from west, and so it was initially going to be on the

other side of the river. But then people over there were saying, oh no, like, we don't want that over here. And it was you know, predominantly white people who were saying that, and so they decided, yeah, exactly, and nimby, nimby, and so instead got placed right wrapped around right next to the Memorial Coliseum and resulted in the destruction of many, many, many many more homes and displaced people there. So it

just goes straight around northeast Portland and up north. But I'm gonna guess most of those homes were upper middle class, you know, Caucasian, right, because that's most of that part of port Let me check hold on a second, No, really, yeah, are you surprised, racist? Racist? Oh my gosh, that doesn't sound like we're about to continue talking about Oh wait, I thought we were back to the sponsors. We're back to belts. No, we're not talking about we're not talking

to milds. So yeah. Really kicking off in the nineties, seventies and eighties was a process called redlining. This is basically banks colluding to refuse mortgage loans to qualify black applicants. Would be the quick way to sort of sum up

both of that process. An investigation published by The Oregony in nineteen ninety journalism found that Portland banks were granting loans to black Oregonians at roughly one tenth the rate they were granting them to white people, um and one tenth the rate that they were supposed to be granting them. And for those who don't know, it's literal red lines drawn on a map, very specifically placed. And that's something that I think a lot of people are not aware

of that it is. It really refers to red lines that were written on maps. Yeah, and they're resentally saying we want to keep black people out of its neighborhoods, we want to allow them to buy houses here. And it's not like that we're really granting a lot of loans to the black neighborhoods either, but like, yeah, they were basically trying to hymn them in. It was kind of like the zoning version of Kettling a little bit. Yeah.

So there were also a series of police shootings of black men in the nineteen seventies and Portland's and in the nineteen eighties, and investigation revealed that the local Portland police had been running over possums and leaving the corpses in front of black owned restaurants, which don't even know

what to say. It's a thing that happened. So given all of that, it's probably not much of a surprise to listeners that for much of the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, Portland became known in the punk community as a haven for neo Nazi skinheads. Racist skins would be I think the I listened to a lot of that kind of punk music. Yeah, but yeah, there's a whole lingo here. I saw the movie Green Room. It's a fine film about Nazi skins in Oregon. Scary, scary. I

left feeling all sorts of feels. That's how you're supposed to feel that's how you're supposed to feel real good racist. Yeah. That was quite close to home. Yeah, yeah, but I was going to say the possum imagery stayed really would still. You would still see people refer to possums in coded language even through the nineteen eighties, from racist skinheads. They would say keep the possums out. Yeah, it was still utilized. I did not have that. I just need that the

police were doing this, have no idea. I thought they just like being dix and there were a lot of dead possums in Portland. But there's a racial element to the tape. Fascinating. Yeah, it was still used as a symbol of terror and racism. Wow, So from the cops to the punks. That's not usually how that goes. I know one thing about I'm not supposed to talk to cosh but yeah, yeah, but these are the these are the Nazi skinheadpots. They like to win. The cops were

being racist. Yeah that's the thing they want cops doing. Yeah. So on about a month after I was born, well lamb It Weekly published Young Nazis Portland's New Breed of Racists about the growing population of young fascists in the city. Reporter Jim Retten interviewed several of these guys and their Southeast Portland apartment and credit words due this was not like the New York Times profile and the Nazi next door thing like it was an important that was covering it.

He seems to have done it a good job of doing it, at least from what I've read. He asked them about an assault on a guy named Sam Chin, a twenty seven year old Portland resid and originally from Singapore. Three skinheads had confronted Chin's family, beat up and stomped on him, and read and brought this up to the Nazis. I'm gonna read a quote from the article. Although they denounced the media's focus on violence, they are not unwilling

to completely reject it. While they say the assault on Chin was not representative of their beliefs, they repeatedly stressed that they are willing to fight for their cause. We wouldn't beat up someone for no reason at all, says Kay, a tall male with a tattoo of a heavily booted skinhead on his left bicep. But we're ready to defend ourselves. Which I picked that quote because you can put those

words in the mouth of patriot prayers. Joey Gibson. Absolutely, who's the guy running the rallies that have been fights recently. That's the same sort of sentiment that comes from oath keepers, three percenters, all of them. Yeah. So next we're going to talk about what happened on November when Muata Sarra, a twenty eight year old Ethiopian immigrant student at PSU and a father of one, was dropped off in the

parking lot of his apartment complex by some friends. He was about to head into his apartment when a vehicle holding three racist skinheads and their girlfriends pulled up. And these guys have been drinking and handing out racist flyers from an organization called White Area and Resistance. Get a little bit more into that. A second one of the skins who I was originally going to use names because I usually do, but I do like your attitude of not giving these guys the benefit of their names. So

I'm not going to name the skinheads. Yeah, but anyone who's curious can get the book. A hundred Little Hitlers. That's a good title. Yeah, that's a real good title. And so I'm all for community education learning about people. But there is a distinction of putting out the names and repeating them out loud over and over and over again, and forgetting the names of victims and heroes who have stepped in. Yeah, I agree, that's that's that's yeah, so Chips, Sorry,

the things you can we'll bleep out. Yeah, we'll bleep that out. The bleep you heard was a name that we're not going to say. One of these skins lived in the same block of apartments all and I think one of the scripts I heard from a police officer was they could have strung tin cans on strings and talk to each other. They lived that close together. So yeah, the Nazis had been drinking heavily and putting up white

supremacist posters around town. They shouted at Sara and his friends, and then while their girlfriends shouted for them to kill him, the Nazis jumped Mulaghetta Sarat. One of them hit Mulaghetta in the back of the head, I believe with a baseball bat, and there was no ball er mit in the car. They did not have that for baseball. No, they had it for me for Nazi reasons. The reason the Nazis carry based bats and he had the initials of the organization carved into the back. Really, so he

had war carved in them. I don't think he had war. I think it was their own group, because they had their own Yeah. So this was a batmant for doing exactly what he did with committing violent assault and in this case, murder, because they continued to hit mulu Getta when he fell to the ground, and they also continued to stomp on him with steel toed boots. He died

that night from blood force trauma. So they went to prison. Um. At the time, a big deal was made about the fact that one of them, the kid with the bat, was the frontman of a popular local band and also an actor who had worked with Gus Van Sant. Sort of a bunch of articles they were talking about this talented young actor and the terrible thing. It's like, well, he murdered a guy, doesn't matter that he was good

at acting, right about that? And they still do that too. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like I said, it's not hard to the way that perpetrators of various crimes depending on their race makes a big difference in the headline. Yeah, you see it every time there's a marked difference of what happens when one of these people commits a crime in the way that their report on them, or even if you are a young black boy like Tamir Rice a child and people are saying, oh, he was a big scary,

he was manlike, it's horrifying yea. And yet then we see these white men committing crimes who actually did something and the way that they're painting and it is absolutely ridiculous. Well, and there's really old history to that. I remember reading. We did an episode where we talked about through the U. S. Occupation of the Philippines, and there was an island that the there's a massacre in the U. S. Military base where a bunch of US soldiers got killed, and then

in response, they massacred. And the language they used was they killed all of the men over ten, which you're not a man at eleven, not a man at twelve, not a man at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, maybe seventeen. But like it doesn't matter. I mean, massacring is wrong, but like just the language used any man over ten is like, I feel like you're not a man till twenty. But that's just my view. I think it usually takes more like maybe before I'll let you know when I

hit that point. I'm at thirty right now, and I don't feel all the way there now. Mulgato Sura's murder led to a legal case against Tom Metzker, a shriveled little testicle of a man and the founder of White areaan Resistance or War. You can see a documentary of him made after this point with Louis Threw where he spends several days with him, and you get the feeling that he's a ridiculous kind And I think this is

a problem. This caused a problem because I think that a lot of these people were covered that way as sort of like, look at this ridiculous. He's racist, and he's the things he says are terrible, but he's really just a crazy old thing. He's kind of cute. Look

at this little guy. Yet, Now, what Tom had been doing is sending his son up to Portland and sending a significant amount of written propaganda up there that was not just propaganda on you know, not national socialism or whatever, but was specifically advocating violence and talking about ways to commit violence. I believe, you know, a little bit more

about this than I do. Yeah, so War his white Arian resistance group had these newspapers they would give out that we're overtly, horrifyingly racist, and the cartoons that they would have on the covers were just absolutely disgusting. And they would send up stacks to Portland for these young groups of men who previously, we're not organized. They were just going around and they would get drunk and they would talk about being arian and racism and all that.

Not to say they shouldn't have been taken seriously at all, but they weren't organized at that point. And it wasn't until Tom Medsker and his son stepped in that they began to have tools. They began to have these newspapers, flyers, they would pass out fake welfare applications that they would pass out to women of color and humiliate them and

attempt to humiliate them. And it wasn't until that point that they actually had these tools and these means of propaganda to pass out that they began to feel organized. And this is where we're get into something that's really interesting me. It's a little bit difficult to talk about. Are you familiar with the concept of the fewer principle. UM. I don't think I've heard specifically about it, but I imagine it has to do with having a leader to

organize you. That's an aspect of it. It was the idea, this was like the central idea behind the original nazis an individual can embody and electrify at people and bring them up and sort of use them as a tool

almost that and that that desirable and good. And obviously that's silly when you start talking about like nations, but there's a little to it when you talk about something like you've got these disaffected kids in Portland who have no sort of organizing principle, and a guy like Tom Metzger who has just enough charisma, just enough vision to get them united behind a purpose, and then they become dangerous.

And I think that you're seeing something similar with a guy like Joey Gibson, who has I watched his speech, is a good amount of personal charisma. He's good at speaking, he's good at organizing. UM. And these people, the people who show up these patriot prayer rallies, just like the people who murdered Mulugeta Sara, we're doing shitty, racist things in their personal lives beforehand, but it took a leader

coming in and then they're a cohesive Yeah. Absolutely, So I think that's where it's important to understand that concept because that do you think it embodies something? Not that like the Nazi said that this was how everything worked. I don't think it's how everything work, but I think it's how Nazis work across time, and whether or not they call themselves Nazis or patriots or whatever, it's howies were.

Um so digression um yeah. Even though Tom Metzger had not specifically ordered the Skinheads to commit that particular murder, he was seen as having vicarious liability for indoctrinated kids with racist ideology, publishing information on how to commit violent crimes, and sending people up to talk to them. So he was ordered to pay like twelve and a half million dollars in damages. Yeah, and he wound up with losing complately bankrupted him. He had to sell his house. He

lost his house. Yeah. I had to pay amounts every single months. Yeah up to today, at age like eighties something. And they sold his house to a Hispanic family. Yes they did they or no, the I think it was it was Sara's family right who, No, it was not. Was it the A C l U who got it? Or Southern Poverty Law Centered was the one to sue them, if that's what you're asking. Yeah, And the neighbors were

extremely happy to see the new family move in. They didn't like Tom Metzker really because gosh, what a likable guy he was. He seemed like he had a lot on the ball. Sure he's a bad neighbor, you're saying, Yes, I would imagine weird how nazis. Yeah, it's like neighbors don't like when a bunch of skinheads come in and out of somebody's own Yeah, okay, keep that in mind. Yeah. You know what else I'll keep in mind is these products and services that are about to support our show,

and we're back, and we're back. You didn't hear it because what we just said will not be in the thing. But we just did a great plug for Microsoft that we're not going to repeat. No, absolutely not, you know, in our hearts, in our hearts. So let's get back into racism in Oregon. Soura Is murdered. His funeral is obviously a very big deal, very emotional time. A lot of activists come out for it, and there are rumors that before the funeral that three Nazi skinheads might show

up to protest. This did not wind up happening, but in spite of the increased visibility of the city hate problem, Portland's racist skinhead problem only got worse during the nineteen nineties. In a two thousand seventeen article for The Guardian, reporter Jason Wilson quote cr And Malloy, a union organizer and anti fascist activist who was active during this period. In the nineteen there were multiple gangs and three hundred Nazis in a city of three hundred thousand. The anti racist

youth were intimidated and isolated. The Nazis were just openly hanging out on the streets down in a Pioneer Courthouse Square. They would just gather and sit around, and people knew to avoid that entire block. Yeah, and then there's talk, especially talk from racists about the quote unquote no go zones in places like London rear Paris, which do not exist, and a lot of reporting on establishing that they're not real. There were no go zones in Portland for people of

color in this period of time. Pioneer Square would have been one of them. Siern malloy added, quote, it's not hyperbolic to call it a war. There was intense fighting. So again, the street fighting that we're seeing right now in Oregon, that might happen literally the day after we record this podcast is nothing new. But fighting between racist and anti racist skinheads in Portland earned it the nickname Skinhead City during the nineteen nineties, which is a cool nickname.

Beats it does beat Portlandia. Yeah, yeah, you guys are going to be carrying that right. I'm sorry what people out from l A keep doing. The nice cities in the Northwest. They destroyed Bend too. But I will say about Skinhead City, it's at least accurate, which is a heavy thing to say. But the whole Portlandia most you know, there's some truth to that show, But that show is for getting a very large portion of our population and culture.

Part of what I wonder, depending on how all of this increased political violence goes, is how twenty or thirty years, if that show will just make no sense to people, I hope. So, yeah, well not in that way, oh ye, well yeah, if you're if you're going Okay, I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. I was just hoping that we'll win this fight against Joey Gibson and then first Culture will actually be celebrated for the first time in Portland. Yeah. That would be nice. That

would be nice. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. Yes. So. Um. Now, the Nazi skins who infested Portland and who degree still invests both Portland and Oregon were obsessed with an idea that still holds much traction among the fascist right, the Northwest Imperative. The basic reasoning behind the Northwest Imperative is that, since Oregon is already super white and filled with fascists,

why not try and turn it into a white ethno state. Um. From a Nazi point of view, the last two hundred years of Oregon history have already done a really good job of laying the groundwork for this. Oregon is currently the whitest state, in Portland the whitest big city in the United States. Yeah. There is today an organization called the Northwest Front dedicated to making the dream of the Northwest Imperative a reality. The about section of their website

sums them up this way. Quote the Northwest Front is a political organization of Arian men and women in the United States and Canada of all ages and social backgrounds, who recognize that an independent and sovereign white nation in the Pacific Northwest is the only possibility for the survival of the white race on this continent. So that's the rhetoric, that's what they're angling for. The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies eighteen different hate groups in the state of Oregon.

An outside of explicit hate groups, Oregon still has a lot of its old problems with hate. A two thousand eleven audit found that six of landlords and leasing agents in the city discriminated against black and Latino renters, giving them higher rents, forcing them to pay larger deposits, and

levying additional fees against absolutely that's nuts. And with gentrification as well, the neighborhoods that have been most chicken shaken, chicken, chicken, chicken, most chicken they got shipped real good yes by gentrification in uh recent times are the same neighborhoods like I'll buy a neighborhood that we have seen a lot of the history you've talked about of pushing people of color to that center are now gentrified with huge condos and

entirely unrecognizable. Yeah, it's uh, I mean, and this is the I mean, you can trace some of that back to Portland, to be honest. So black students in Portland are suspended and expelled at a rate four to five times higher than that of their white peers. And this brings us more or less to the modern era where we are today. Portland is a city with a lot of left wing political activism now and definite reputation is being quote woke. It's seen as a hippie to be

sort of place. But you know, we've as we've covered, there's a very long history of discrimination and a very long history of racist organizing. Over the last two years, though Oregon has entered what maybe a different era. The fighting in the streets is bigger and bloodier than it has ever been before. The group behind it, Patriot Prayer and to a lesser extent, the Proud Boys, is harder to place and harder to get the mainstream to condemn than a man like Tom Metzger and an organization like

White Arian Existance. Newspapers know what to do when you call yourself white or Area Resistance your Patriot Prayer, you're covered an American flag, you say you don't support hate, or if you're the Proud Boys and you're punching each other in naming cereals like it's harder for especially casual Yeah. Yeah, So that's where we are now, and that's what we're going to get to in the next episode, the coming of Patriot Prayer, the story of Joey Gibson and the

bloodshed that has gone with it. But before we close out today, I would like to talk with you a little bit about one of what I think is the most promising attempts to kind of fix this problem that's very deep problem in Oregon of racism and Oregon, of of you know, white supremacy in Oregon. The rural organizing projects.

You want to tell me a little bit about them. Absolutely, Well, first I want to just close out our conversation about absolutely with a lot of the viewpoints that people think that people in Portland have, and Portland's think that they themselves have. They have let a lot of this just go entirely under the radar, and I think it's because a lot of people in Portland, particularly white people, and I don't mean just particularly I'm talking specifically about white people.

They are silent about this oppression. They think if they put a Black Lives Matter sign in their yard that they've done racial justice work. And that's just not how it's gonna solve all this. And so people need to get involved in organizations. They need to educate themselves, they need to read more about the history of Oregon, listen to podcasts like this, and uh change things. Yes, right, I did that just for you. I appreciate Rural Organizing Projects.

So I haven't personally organized with Rural Organizing Project, and I want to say that upfront because I really think that getting a representative from their organization would be wonderful. But basically Rural Organizing Project focuses on underrepresented rural areas and Oregon that have been disenfranchised and ignored. Because a big reason why we see this current uprising and problem

with these groups like the Oathkeepers. Three per centers in groups like Patriot Prayer will have this kind of sentiment in their mission statements that poor white people, especially poor white men, are not being properly represented. They feel like things are being taken away from them, and they feel like the right wing propaganda that they are getting radio stations they listen to, podcasts they listen to, and websites

that they go on frequently. They feel like they are getting accurate information when they oftentimes are getting very tainted and biased information that is not telling the whole story of why we have gotten to this point within our hyper capitalistic system. And so Rural Organizing Project really tries

to bring representation back to those areas. They try to organize with legislators to ensure that we are focusing energy and resources to make sure that people are not being left out in cold quite literally, um, not being left out um to just rely on these groups to take them in, but to instead feel like they are part of the Oregon community and that they are valued and that you don't have to be in a city to

get those resources. And through that they are able to educate people on the dangers of these groups like oath keepers,

three percenters, etcetera. And so the work that they do is so important because it is very true that we cannot ignore rural areas in our communities, not just to fight racism, but because they are human beings that deserve resources and deserve care, and rural areas have been hit hard by this hyper capitalistic automation and um jobs have been stripped away over the course of history, and so people have been just seeing jobs go away, and instead

of being given the proper information of oh, the reason why these jobs have changed is for these reasons, they instead are told by somebody, Oh, you know why, It's because of that immigrant, it's because of of women wanting to enter the workforce, It's because of this and that, and so then they hold tight to these traditional ideas of what it is to be an American, which were never accurate to begin with if we really look at our history. But that is how they're able to be radicalized.

So Rural Organizing Project takes that on and I am very proud to have them in Oregon. And it's it's my opinions as a journalist that low key and low key because it hasn't been covered enough. One of the most important stories going on in the country right now is the disintegration of society and rural parts of the United States. For example, cattle wrestling is the highest it's been in more than a hundred years. Cattle wrestling, agricultural theft is the highest it's been in quite a long time.

You are seeing rising rates of poverty and a lot of chunks of rural America. What you're saying is a breakdown of social order in these places. And all of these things are number one, major contributors to the growth of fascist movements, major contributors to the growth of racist movements, and on a human lovel just terrible for the people there. And we most people listening to this probably live in city. It is important to pay attention to what happens out there.

But because they're your fellow citizens, and because when their lives get worse, your lives get worse. Absolutely the way it works in a society. So listeners, if you've enjoyed this episode, if you find this compelling, please donate some bucks to the Rural Organizing Project absolutely look come up, yeah, look come up online. Will include the link to the website on ours So yeah, check that out, check out

all of our sources behind the bastards dot com. And uh, you know, open up your wallet strings if you have a couple of extra bucks to give. And if you're in Oregon, volunteer, Yeah, volunteer with Rural Organizing Project absolutely uh. And if you're in Oregon in general, be more active. There's some stuff going on, this stuff going on going on.

The only thing that will make it get better is the people who aren't, i'll say charitably on the shitty side of things, getting active or at least supporting the people who are being active in the streets, because that's really important too. So well, I'm working on a project to help make that easier for people to have access to what is needed in the area, and I'll send

that to you once I have something awesome. Well, you got anything else you wanna you wanna pitch blood Man search for Meeting, Right yeah, Victor Frankel read Man, Search for Meeting Victor Frankel, Holocaust survivor, right yes. Check it all out. You can check out this podcast on our

website behind the Bastards. You can check out all the sources, and of course tomorrow we will be talking about Patriot Prayer, Joey Gibson, and the most dangerous street gang in America that you probably haven't heard of, Patriot Prayer, So all of that coming up next in the week. Have fun with it. Check it out and you can find us on Instagram and Twitter at Bastard's pod and that's that's that's all I got for you. Go go do something

positive for the world. Goodbye, And I love statistically about of you.