Damage around the courthouse. Up up until July, there was relatively little on a national level that separated Portland's b l M protests from the ones happening everywhere else. A few shots of tear gas walls had gone viral in the mainstream media, and live streams of Portland protests were popular among a certain set, but as far as the big networks were concerned, Portland was just another city convulsed with riots in the summer of That all changed in July.
It started with the siege of the Federal Courthouse on July four. While that was going on in the streets of the Rose City up north in Seattle, an activist named Summer Taylor died that night after a car plowed through a b l M march. On the eighth. Activists in Portland staged a memorial vigil for Taylor. This was disrupted by a small squad of federal agents who hit the crowd with flash bangs and impact rounds as they
lit candles. Feelings were raw, but the crowd gathered near the Justice Center that night numbered less than a hundred. You could be forgiven for thinking that the Battle of July four had been the last gasp of a dying movement. Outside of the attack on the vigil, the rest of the week followed the same pattern established in June, tiny groups of ragged activists being horribly beaten by riot lines of cops. It was exactly one week later, on July eleven,
that everything changed. That night, a twenty six year old protester named Donovan Labella was shot in the head at close range by a U S marshal armed with an impact weapon. His skull was shattered. Donovan nearly died. Video of the unprovoked attack went viral nationwide. Our own Garrison Davis, was standing just a few feet behind Donovan when he
was shot. Here's how Garrison recalls that night. So I got downtown around nine pm, kind of just a regular time to arrive Usually that's like a bit before action starts. But when I got there, the streets around the courthouse and Justice Center were already filled with tear gas. Um, there was already feds out in the streets. Um, it was unclear what got them out. Um it turns out it's just because people were on the were on like
the courtyard. So there's already already people in the streets and stuff and Feds in the streets by the time I arrived. And then the Feds got pushed back into uh into like the courtyard by a small group of activists UM on like fourth Avenue. And then they started when when the Feds were on the courtyard, they just started shooting like canisters from their grenade launcher. So, yeah, this is like I don't know, I've only been there like ten minutes at this point. All this is happening
very very quickly. UM, and the Feds shoot off like five canisters in a row that are all like duds, they don't actually do anything. UM. And one of them lands underneath the car, and a young man holding a boombox kind of like kicks it out from under the car because it was like sparking, but it wasn't like doing anything. It wasn't like exploding or shooting off any gas.
And then after he after he get kicked it out of the out of under the car, he picked up just to boombox and was standing in the standing on the sidewalk across the street from the courthouse. I was like five feet was right, and then he just got shot in the head. Um. After Yeah, it was just just standing there with the boom box and he collapsed claps on the ground. I remember hearing. I mean I
heard that the shot, and I heard the fall. I didn't see him fall, and but by the time I looked over, um, she was on the ground, bleating out of his head. And you know, very quickly people came over and grabbed him. The thing, the thing that sticks out most is when when they when they grabbed him and pulled him away, just how limp his body was like, it was a very lifeless body. His head was like
bobbing everywhere, which probably wasn't you know, it wasn't great. Um. You should you know, when you're picking someone up like that, you should try to make sure that doesn't happen. Um. But yeah, it was, it was, it was. He was just so lifeless. Um in that in that moment um they took him into the into the park, semitics started, you know, people, people yelled, medic medic. Medics came over started to you know, try to stop the bleeding, and
an ambiliance came about like ten fifteen minutes later. But like it, it felt it felt a lot longer. You know, it felt like they were taking forever to arrive. Um, but there's a lot, a lot of blood on the sidewalk, a lot of a lot of blood in the park. The grass was like soaked. Donovan very nearly died from his injuries. As we write this episode in December, he's just recently been released from the hospital following another round of treatment for the infections caused by his injuries. He
has suffered permanent cognitive damage. The brutality with which Donovan was assaulted enraged Portlanders, even those would not previous e been active in the streets. Rage was further stoked by poor coverage by local mainstream sources like The Oregonian, who responded to this brutal attack on a young man wielding a boom box by grenade launcher wielding FEDS with an article full of expert analysis on why it had happened.
Those experts included a retired commander with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department who insisted the shot, which was taken from about thirty feet away, had to have been an accident. Quote. Nobody anywhere in the world that I am aware of, is taught to aim for the head unless deadly forces also authorized in this particular case, there was no rational
way to say that deadly force was authorized. Overall, the article was crafted to leave the reader with the opinion that Labella's injuries must have been a tragic accident in the heat of the moment, rather than an angry and undisciplined federal agent choosing to permanently injure a twenty six year old armed with speakers. The good news is that no one bought it. Portlanders were outraged by what happened
to Donovan. More protesters began to trickle into the nightly demonstrations out side the Justice Center, which switched their attention to the adjacent Federal courthouse. Conor O'sha had gotten his start attending Rose City justice marches. He switched over to attending the nightly confrontations against the police after he got bored of marches that seemed to go nowhere. They'd be like, wait, what's going down by the Justice Center and what's happening
over there? I want to go over there? Why is everybody going back home? Like the sun is still out?
Like this is I want to go see what's happening over there, And then started doing that and then was like, yeah, this feels right this feels like you know, like not not to say like that, um, you know, having h march during the day with like speeches like like you know, all the protesting is valid, but I was definitely attracted to like showing up at the sources like the biggest, the gnarliest symbols of what what people are protesting against.
Connor watched as the protest dwindled, and he saw how the introduction of heavily armed federal agents and the outrage over Donovan's injury started drawing more people out into the streets. Before the Feds showed up, Um, it really felt like we were losing a lot of not necessarily momentum. But just like people showing up, numbers were kind of coming
down a little bit is to be expected. But yeah, when they did make an appearance, like aggressive appearances, it totally it was it totally served as a catalyst for further like like when when they shouldn't know by now, like when they show up, uh you know, cops and feds. Um, when they when they show their face, it's like almost always worst um like in terms of like a crowd response, um, which I kind of love. UM. So so when they showed up. It was like like almost immediately everyone was
like turning turning back up UM in huge numbers. So that was it was just so funny to me that they that they kind of kept doing what they were doing UM when the crowd response was just getting amplified by their presence. Many in the movement were rejuvenated by the fact that protest numbers were growing again. After so many nights of watching Tinier and Tinier groups get brutalized by the Portland police, it was stirring to feel like
people cared again. Mark Pettibone's first night out had been June one, and like Connor, he'd been dismayed as numbers fell off throughout that month. He kept coming out though, and he was out protesting near the Federal Courthouse with Connor when the night of July fourteenth turned into the early morning of July. It was actually a relatively uneventful
night in terms of sho between protesters and the cops. UM. The uh PPB showed up i think once to kind of remove some barricades that people have set up in the street in front of the UM the courthouse, and the Feds made a really kind of quick uh they came out of the building to um, if you're facing the Justice Center, that came out the building to the
right briefly and then retreated back in. And so honestly, that night I spent what I remember from uh early in the night was I was playing frisbee with people in the park. We were just hanging out. Um. There wasn't much too kind of be angry at um, at least visibly, the Feds weren't out and about. Uh So Mark and I were like, all right, this has been good. It's been fine, I guess, um, not much going on. Let's get out of here. We've got to work tomorrow.
We just we had just gotten out of work a couple hours before, so, like midnight or one clock rolls around and we're leaving, and as we're walking back to his car, we kind of get stopped by some protesters on the corner of the street there just a couple of blocks away, and uh they warned us that they had seen or that people had seen unmarked vans kidnapping people. Um. And so we're we're looking around, and sure enough, right then a van pulls up right in front of us,
seemingly out of nowhere. Um, and a bunch of guys in military fatigues jump out. I look in it. I'm like, oh, they're probably FEDS. I don't know. It's a it's a fucking minivan full of guys and fatigues. Cameo fatigues. Uh. They opened the doors. Everybody but the driver it's out. They start they start just walking straight towards us. Uh, and we're like, what what the what? What? What the fuck?
And there's you know, there's traffic behind us. UM. I remember Mark and I like almost getting hit by a car that had to stop because we're like, oh, I think we need to run. So we all take off in different directions. You know, there's no no identification, um visually and also audibly. You know, they didn't say stop, we are you know so and so it was just immediate and uh so we we kind of you know, we ran for our lives. And they ended up the people and the fatigues who ended up being the FEDS.
They chased me down, one one chased me down on foot. UM. So I ran, I'll see west and made it a few blocks, took a turn and heard the van kind of accelerating up the hill cut me off. And so I dropped to my knees and I asked why, UM several times. That was all I could form. Honestly, I wasn't like why, why is this happening? And am I being detained? It was just why? And uh So they lifted me up, UM, off my knees, put me in the van, UM, pulled my beanie over my head, patted
me down. UM asked if I had weapons, and you know, I said no. Uh. And at this point, I I it was kind of this weird you know, people always talking about these out of body experiences and I, you know, I had no experience with any of that until this happened. Mark booked it. Um west, I went south. I was kind of running next to somebody for a minute, uh, like you know, maybe fifteen ten seconds, and then I cut up another kind of a block web. After I
got one block south. I think the FED that was the FED or FEDS that were after me and this person, Like I think they either went after that person or like they forgot about me or something. Maybe it was just because I was able to run faster. I huck my sign that I've been carrying, got it back the next morning. That was cool. UM hucked my sign that I was carrying, and UM running up another block. UH, fucking like scared for my life, I was able to
be like, I just don't talk to these people. UM. At this point I was pretty sure that it was the FEDS, UM, and it wasn't some kind of rogue, you know, militia group. And I figured the best thing for me to do at that point it was just to shut up and um and get through and asked for a lawyer when the time comes. UM. At that point, I hit a dark street and I see what is either that same van or a different van cut across in front of me going north. I think that was
they were trying to find Mark. And at that point I looked looked over and saw I forget what the name of the it was another courthouse, of course, because there's like a d down there. UM. I I look at this like concrete um railing whatever you wanna call that, um out front of this courthouse. And I'm like there and okay, yeah there, I'm going to jump this. I sprint across once the van gets out of sight, because
they started to loop back around the block. Yeah, sprint jump over it, jump over the little barricade and UM. At this point I didn't I was sure they were going to get me. UM. The only thing I could think to do was to shut my phone off, which I now no can still be traced, which is also horrific. But I have a Faraday bag for that now, so that's great. UM. But I shut my phone off. I hear more like another banner to assume, UM driving by like very kind of erratically, like gunning it and then
slowing down. I heard like that. I think that was them. I'm not positive. I heard someone in in like boots with some jingling going on walk past. UM. I just like tucked up against this barricade, UM and was just like as quiet as I could be for I don't know how long, half hour, an hour, until I was able to get in touch with a friend. They booked
it across the river. They showed up. I they opened the back door of this car, jumped in, stayed laying on my back like I don't I don't think we covered me up with anything, but it was like, yeah, it was terrifying enough to be like, I don't know why why they targeted at us, So yeah, I got out of there and then get a call from Mark relatively quickly after I got to the other side of the river. I was like, like, because we we friends were texting, I think like Emily and and another friend
of ours. Like we were like, they were like, we can't, we can't get in touch with Mark. We think they got him. They did have Mark, but thankfully he'd broken absolutely no law. The agents who had snatched him had probably hoped that he'd be rattled enough by the whole experience to answer whatever questions they asked. When he refused to talk without a lawyer present, they had no choice but to let him go. The whole thing took about
two hours, maybe even less. And uh so I was released with one other person, and I believe it was one of the protesters that I had been standing next to um in the street when the vans first pulled up. Um. I think they ended up picking them up as well. So they released the two of us at the same time. And you know this is after they read me my rights once I was shackled and in a cell um and asked if I wanted to waive them UM, and
I said no, I want to talk to the lawyer. UM. So after that they came by again and said, okay, you're free to go. That same night, a local activist filmed federal agents and camouflage and military gear snatching another black clad protester and dragging him into an unmarked rental van. The video was horrifying, the kind of blatantly dystopian police state ship that couldn't not provoke a national response, and it did. Within a day, the video had been viewed
millions and millions of times. The story broke nationwide in the seventeen when The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and basically every major news source reported on Portland's federal snatch fans. Now we have some video that was posted to Twitter from last night. The Post says that federal officers rushed up and arrested someone for no reason. Unmarked police vehicles they're not even they're not police vehicles, they're just vehicles. They're
rentable vans. They're like consumer rentable vans filled with guys in paramilitary gear who are supposedly federal policemen. Unmarked vans of unleashed tear gas into crowds, rounded up and detained protesters, and even shot one man in the head with a non lethal round, causing serious injury. Their presence and their tactics have raised questions about the use of federal agencies to police cities, even when local authorities don't want them there.
We Ddovan LaBelle Is shooting had enraged people, but it was the federal snatch fans that would finally radicalize thousands of Portland's liberal majority to take to the streets. It was on the night of the first group of what would become the Wall of Moms showed up to protest the Feds. We'll talk about them in a second, but first here's Garrison to explain another important action that occurred the same night. The militarized FEDS had captured Portland's imagination.
But as the Quote fed war started to ramp up, protesters who had been fighting the police for weeks didn't want people to forget the reason all of this had happened in the first place. They organized a rally simply titled Quote Abolished the Police for June eighteenth at Peninsula Park in North Portland. The event was boosted by groups such as the YLF and Direct Action Alliance, people who
were generally trusted within the community of veteran activists. The last time a protest had been held at Peninsula Park was June. The crowd had marched to the Portland Police Association building, which had been surrounded by dozens of armed cops. Police quickly pushed the crowd away using Truncheon's, grenade launchers and tear gas. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that the crowd of several hundred who showed up on the eighteenth
came expecting a fight. Banners at the front of the march included quote, Chad Wolfe listens to Nickelback, mocking the acting DHS director, who had just visited Portland a few days prior and also spoke with the p p A. Other banners read de colonize and mourned the dead fight like hell for the living. One banner read Quantas Hayes was only seventeen years old. In February seen Portland police shot and killed Quantas Hayes, an unarmed, teenage black Portlander.
When they shot Kawanas, he was on his knees ten to fifteen feet away from officers, aiming guns and shouting contradictorary commands. Officer Andrew Hurst, who was providing quote long cover with his air fifteen fired three shots at the teen when Kuanas reportedly moved his hands from above his head. At the same time Kuanas was shot from moving his hands, other officers were ordering him to get face down on
the ground with his hands by his sides. The Portland Police use of force investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of Officer Andrew Hurst. He still walks around with a badge and a gun today. The lead use of force investigator on that case was Detective Eric camemer but Portland protesters might know him better as the notorious Officer sixties seven. Speaking as a journalist who has watched the Portland Police riot team and action, officer Camemra is quite
possibly the most violent man I have ever met. All of this was on the mind of the press in attendance. When the crowd departed Peninsula Park at around eight pm, we suspected they would head straight for the Police Union building, but that's not what happened. The people at the front of the march headed in that direction at first, but as the crowd got close to the union building, they made a sudden turn, confusing the police and probably some protesters.
The march went on southward for about half an hour, chanting along the way. Soon enough, the crowd arrived at the surprise destination, the Portland Police North Precinct. Only a handful of officers were present when the group of marchers approached the building, and said officers quickly moved inside. As they did, hundreds of people chanted quit Your Job protesters hung out in the precinct parking lot for almost an hour.
Officers had been so surprised by their arrival that a police car was left sitting unattended in the middle of the crowd. It was tagged with graffiti and a bananappeal was placed on its hood, but nothing else. As was inevitable, The police el red eventually arrived and ordered the crowd to leave under threat of arrest and tear gas. On previous evenings, the crowd would have just stood around, defiant and waiting to get all beaten up and gassed, But
tonight was different. As the el rad blared threats, people in the crowd yelled b water, echoing a Hong Kong slogan, and the crowd began to move once again back to North mL. Cable of art fether to follow this direction, based up a que to arrest. The citation are used
of more, including crowd control munitions. The tactical decision to move after the el Rad's warning apparently bamboozled the police, as the nearly five hundred protesters were able to swiftly march north to the completely unguarded p p A building. Dumpsters were overturned to block the street, and protesters in black block assembled a makeshift battering ram out of random materials nearby. No one said anything, but the crowd knew what was about to happen. People were going to enter
the Police Union building. Dumpster fires were started to block the police from seeing what was happening. In due time, the el Red arrived and an audibly nervous El Red operator ordered people not to enter the p p A police He visit the redial area. We noticed criminal activity occurring in this crowd at the office. You'll be study to arrest or support them, to include crowd control munitions. But for the Portland police it was too little, too late.
People had already broken through the front door of the Police Union building and lit a small fire inside. As soon as the riot police arrived, the crowd began dispersing. People had no desire to fight the cops. This night, they'd achieved their goal and now it was time to run. Like how police chase the crowd for a few blocks, shooting off tear gas, tackling and arresting anyone they could
get their hands on during bullrushes. As the dwindling group of protesters entered residential side streets, it was more difficult for the police to follow and easier for small affinity groups to break off and disperse. It was in these residential streets that the vast majority of protesters successfully lost not only the cops, but also the small group of
journalists who were jogging to keep up. When we interviewed some folks with the y LS, the Youth Liberation Front, they mentioned this night as a sort of turning point for some protesters. Newer people realized what could be done by a crowd that was cunning and disciplined and committed to not getting the pists beaten out of them by the police. Here's the y LS as a reminder, we redubbed the audio due to the constant death threats against
these literal children. I think eventually people just got burnt out and realized like something had to change. And we did start like making Twitter threads suggesting some changes, and
so maybe that push things in that direction. And I think people have started to have been sizing up the opponents more realistically and finding cops may have worked in like the first few days of the uprising, but we honestly like in the protests that are happening now, they don't have enough resources to like effectively push them back, and the cops have a bunch of experience with crowd controls.
So yeah, and I think I think now, like since all this time has passed, there's enough points that you can point to and see this was an effective tactic in reference to being water, like the first time p PA was set on fire, the way people were able to move in and out, and I don't remember how many people got arrested that night, but it was it was definitely, I mean, it was definitely less than the
normal amount. And I think that was the big first instance of people being able to point this tactic used in Portland and be like see effectiveness this worked. That's got people home safe to an extent. We mentioned quote being water a few times now. This was a term for a tactic used during the Hong Kong uprising. It derives its name from a famous Bruce Lee quote that Hong Kong activists repurposed as a guide for how to
move in situations where police are chasing you. The quote reads like this, be like water making its way through the cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find your way around it or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid outward, things will disclose themselves empty. Your mind be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, and it becomes the bottle.
You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or can crash? Be water, my friend. Here's how the Wire Left describes Portland's process of learning to be water. To some extent, it was being exposed to the tactics of the Hong Kong protest, but a lot of doctrines weren't really adopted. But I think also there has been a lot of trial and air because people have tried a lot of stuff that didn't work
and they got their ship fucked. And I just think that has been the best way to learn what works, especially in our unique conditions. I think a big part of people embracing becoming water that as a tactic was getting fed up with getting her kicked out of them well like like I mean, okay, I mean staying and fighting the police is usually not the right tactical decision because in Portland we have an extremely militarized police force and they're always going to be better equipped than us.
That's is how it's going to be. And so you have to think about, like what am I What is the risk versus the reward of staying and fighting this cop versus just disappearing in the night to fight another day. And I think that goes hand in hand with the decentralization of the movement when like you know, when it had like when there were marches with people leading with megaphones walking around and then suddenly the police show up
and you have your conflict. People didn't have the agency or their own agency to really disappear into the night and move on from that, like people felt obligated to follow somebody. So I definitely think that played a role in Portland moving towards decentralization also played a role in that. Now my colleague, Beatrix is going to explain what happened in downtown Portland in front of the Justice Center in the Federal Courthouse at the same time as the rally
at the Portland Police Association. While about five hundred people had gathered in North Portland don ight, around a thousand had gathered downtown at the Justice Center and the adjacent Federal Courthouse. Signs reading Unquelled referenced the statement by President Ump days earlier that Portland had been out of control
and that federal presence had very much quelled it. On the six, Homeland Security Director Chad Wolfe had made national headlines when he visited Portland and referred to protesters there as violent anarchists sixty times. In a single press statement discussing the use of fireworks by protesters on ly four, Wolfe declared, perhaps prophetically, a federal courthouse is a symbol
of justice. To attack it is to attack America. Quick historical footnote here in September of federal judge rule that Chad Wolfe was likely unlawfully serving as acting Director of Homeland Security during the entirety of his tenure in that position. We during Wolf's visit Mayor Wheeler had said that he and all city officials would refuse to meet with the
DHS head if invited. However, the day after Wolf's visit, the Portland Mercury reported that Darryl Turner, the head of the Portland Police Association, had met Chad Wolf without approval from either the mayor or the police chief. Chief level would not say definitively whether any officers had met with DHS, but photos showed uniformed PPB officers speaking to Chad Wolf
during his visit. The action targeting the Portland Police Association's union headquarters in North Portland was one response to these events. The protests downtown, likewise, were driven by anger over Donovan Labella, federal overreach, and the federal snatch fans. While the North Portland crowd was made up of mostly experienced activists, the folks of the Justice Center represented a broader cross section
of Portlanders. Several images from the eighteenth went viral, both nationwide and locally, and would bring more of the city's liberal majority out into the streets. One such video showed a fifty three year old Christopher David surrounded by tear gas approaching armored federal agents. According to mister David, a Navy veteran, he wanted to ask the men how they
felt about violating their constitutional oath. Instead, the video shows one of the agents gripping his baton two handed like a baseball bat, and smashing it into David's arms and legs five times. Another agent then steps forward and maces David in the face as he stands motionless. He walks away after the attack, middle fingers raised on his broken hands. As of this recording, video of the assault has been
viewed more than fifteen million times. Another viral moment came when a group of about forty people calling themselves Moms against police brutality and dressed in white or horribly tear gassed by federal agents. Videos of the attack incensed thousands of Portlanders and led to the creation of the famous Wall of Moms. Courtney is an indigenous Hawaiian Portlander. She's one of the moms who came out on July eighteenth.
Here's what she recalls. It was like a smaller It wasn't as big as like the after when it started to really take off. It was probably like twenty left at that point, and definitely didn't know what I like I had no idea what to walk into. What I was walking into. I mean, I've been protesting before, especially for like land rights and things like that and what, but not like anything against police brutality and things like that.
So I'm like, just, you know, we roll up and then not even not probably like two or three hours later, but like the fads come out and just start shooting at us. And that was and I was like the frontline then because I didn't know what I was walking into. I just didn't know like what, I had no idea what was going to happen. I had seen the videos the night before, but like I you know, I just didn't know what to expect. I didn't think it was
going to be as violent as it was. Um So, yeah, that night, like they guessed the ship out of everyone as always, but that they actually got hit by like rubber bullets that night. I still have a scar from like a pepper ball like on my shoulder from the first night that I want to out and oh yeah that was my that was my first night out. Corney recalls being struck by the extremity of the violence, how sudden and overwhelming it all was. I honestly like just
did expect. Um. I didn't expect the close range shooting. First of all, I didn't expect like the amount of
gas that they were using on people. Um. I just you know, it's different when you're like watching it on like a stream versus like actually being there in person, especially if there was like the line that we were standing in the first night that I was there, there was probably like seven of us, and they there were like ten Feds just shooting at all of us just standing there like trying to like guard yourselves behind an umbrella.
And they clearly knew that there were like moms out there because that was the night where we're all like wearing yellow and like we were standing out and it was majority of us were just females standing there, and they just did not get like if they just they just did not care. It didn't matter, it didn't matter, and um, so that was shocking. I definitely, like I don't think that I've processed really anything that's gone on, um and just like check it away for another day.
But yeah, it's I just I didn't expect the like the extremity of it. Within hours of the first major gassing by federal troops, a DHS memo was leaked to The New York Times revealing that the Feds in the courthouse had not been properly trained with any of the riot control munitions they were using. Instead, the DHS officers had been responding to unarmed protesters with military tactics rather
than mere dispersal. The goal was shock and awe, to shatter all resistance with a display of overwhelming violence that would leave its targets frightened and broken. Instead, as Costco describes, Portland took away a very different message. I felt it felt disgusting to me. It felt they mean, even though I knew they worked at military, they felt like the military,
because they all looked like the military. They're all to me all looked really young too, and they were very uh, They're very aggressive and very quick to act in violence. To me, they seem more afraid about us than like Portland police were you ever seemed afraid of us? And so I think I don't know if that made them react and fear more, but they were definitely more aggressive, and I knew it was going to turn into a circus.
The following night, July, well over one thousand people filled Chapman in Loundesdale the two parks in front of the Federal Courthouse and the Justice Center. The group of moms, now in matching yellow t shirts and helmets, numbered in the hundreds. It was easily the largest crowd since the
end of the Rose City Justice daytime marches. Medics came through, handing out tear gas wipes and eye flash bottles and the mom's linked arms before moving to form a living wall facing the fence recently erected around the mark O. Hatfield's Courthouse. Many of the people who came out that night were new to the confrontation downtown. As Dmitria Hester describes it, they were greeted as welcome reinforcements because we
knew all was coming. As black people, we know the torture and the abused that the police give us, so we were very prepared. We had respirators, we had math, we had helmets. We made sure that all the mom had equipment and everything they needed to get through the night. From the open doors of the courthouse, agents and battle dress could be seen moving into position in the darkened lobby as the Feds very own el rad warned against attempts to damage then behind the wall of moms in yellow.
The rest of the crowd was also getting into position, and a chant of Feds go home was taken up by hundreds of voices. Unlike the enormous daytime rallies from June, this crowd had not come to march. After more than an hour of chanting and singing, answered by scattered pepper balls and flashbangs from the Feds, a few sections of the fence were removed by protesters, and soon the whole fence came down. That night, the crowd fell back under
the ensuing tear gas barrage. Federal agents advanced through the park and protesters retreated, but slowly and with a smattering of shields and umbrellas blocking some of the federal munitions. The night of Lounsdale and Chapman were an unbroken sea of thousands. People worked their way across the park with buckets of rubbers, squeaky pigs. Speeches echoed over the p a from the steps of the boarded up Justice Center under the words fed goons out of PDX, projected in
letters five ft high. The wall of Moms was joined by a self described wall of Dad's, wearing safety orange and equipped with leafblowers to disperse tear gas. Here's Demetria again. The das came with the leaf blowers. I mean they came with protection. They guarded us and disprotecting each other. The shields, too had multiplied, made out of plywood, foam,
and fifty gallon plastic drums. The boards over the courthouse doors and windows had been fitted with small hatches, in an echo of the PPB strategy from the days of the Justice Center fence. This time, when the first tear gas grenades came through the hatches, the crowds surged forward. This rush of activity was followed by a long, tense slow for two hours. The crowd sang and danced, yellow clad moms forming a kick line where the fence had
stood only a day earlier. The mood was celebratory and fierce. Using sections of chain link, fence, lumber, and other debris, members of the crowd wedged shut some of the doors and hatches covering the front of the Federal Courthouse. Some people tore at the plywood covering the courthouse door with their bare hands. There was no coherent strategy to this, but the sentiment was unmistakable. Portlanders were no longer on
the defensive against the federal occupation. When federal agents finally emerged from the building, it was less a clean charge and more a series of shoves. After a scuffle with protesters, one agent responded by drawing his side arm and pointing it at eye level into the crowd. Protesters backed up, but few people actually left. Instead, they fell back slowly.
Images of that night are surreal men in camouflage and plate carriers pointing rifles at the chest of teenagers and tank tops and respirators as smoke bombs from the crowd mixed with clouds of tear gas and HC smoke. The Feds never formed a coherent line and many people remained in the park throughout the first push. I the bulk of the crowd waded back into the gas and smoke
blanketing Loundsdale Park. A shield wall formed up in the middle of Southwest Main Street and held Elaine remembers it this way and then the first time actually seeing that on the ground um federal l eos coming into shoot at people and the shield wall forming up and just holding ground, And it was amazing to see how the federal forces didn't seem to know how to what to do with people just standing their ground and protecting themselves, and so they just were shooting and shooting and shooting,
and there was this incredible moment where suddenly I heard this like it was the farting sounds of their peat ball guns that they were shooting pepper balls and rubber balls at the protesters. Was just running out of air because the shield wall was holding and people were keeping it together and protecting the people behind them. Despite the fact that many of the federal agents on the line
were armed within four rifles. Those holding the shield wall along Southwest Main Street lobbed back gas canisters and glass bottles at the officers. Then the shield walls started moving forward to the repeated lines fuck you, I won't do what you tell me from Rage against the Machines, Killing in the name. Shockingly, almost miraculously, the Feds started falling back. After about ten minutes, the shield line advanced to the end of the block and the Feds withdrew to the
steps of the court House. On July seventeenth, Chad Wolf had declared via tweet, we will never surrender to violent extremists on my watch now. At about one am, after one of the most intense nights of federal violence thus far. Lonsdale Park was full of people and Chad Wolf's Federal agents had scrambled back inside their fortress, low on ammunition and clearly rattled. Several DHS agents tried to prop close a door that had been shattered by enraged moms and
teenagers with skateboards. Others attempted to fire out of murder holes, only to be stymied in this by teenagers hucking dozens of bottles at their gun hands. The fedgs would push out again that night, but federal charges no longer provoked protesters into automatic retreat. Portland had gotten a taste of what it felt like to face down the violence of federal agents, and they even seemed to like it. For the next several weeks, the city would begin to treat
fighting the Feds as a citywide pastime. In our next episode, we'll talk about how this dystopian side mission became the setting for a national media spectacle, how an armed coup took over a rib restaurant, and so much more. Uh where the grand pops who couldn't fathom the obamacist I don't hate America, just to me and she keeps the promises looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide deja what my people post to do go to schools named
after the clan founder were around town? Is I don't see why we frown in etive American students forced to learn about wind o'parah Sarah. How is that fair? Bro? Some heroes unsung in some monsters get monuments built for them. But it ain't be all a little bit of monster. We crook it