We Do This Every Night

riot over the protests after George Floyd's death. This has more to do with the way that Portland police declare riots than the objective standard of unrest, and now many months later, Portland police still declare riots on a fairly regular basis. It seems that Portland is set on having the first and last riot of the protests. So what happened that turned relatively normal BLM actions in Portland, which were happening in every major American city into a movement

that still draws out crowds today. I'm Robert Evans and this is Uprising, a guide from Portland. My partners in this series are a team of local Portland journalists Garrison Davis, Donovan Smith, b Lake, and Elaine Kitchen. We wrote this series together and they'll be handling most of the narration. For this episode, you'll be hearing more from me too, as we've embedded audio from several of the live streams I recorded during cop riots. Right now, I'm going to

hand the mic off to Donovan Smith. He's reported on politics and social justice for a wide variety of local publications, and he helped produce a documentary on gentrification. Here's Donovan. After the first night of quote unquote rioting in Portland's, a state of emergency was declared and a curfew was imposed from eight pm to six am, with the express

interests of cracking down all mass gatherings of protesters. When asked if the curfew will be enforced if someone was, for example, to go grocery shopping, the Mayor's office replied, quote, the city is not interested in citing people who are lying about their business, causing no harm and uninvolved in criminal conduct. Quote. But it didn't require property destruction or criminal conduct for the police to start attacking and arresting

protesters on Saturday. Even before the curfew. That Saturday, thousands gathered outside the Justice Center, which had to become tradition in Portland. People march around downtown and occupied the street in front of the j C, the casual name given to the Justice Center. Police came out a few times throughout the day to try and get people off the street,

with mixed results. This culminated with the police and riot gear tear gassing the streets and city parks around the j C while bashing people in the head with truncheons, all in broad daylight, hours before the curfew was said to begin. Look at this top hitting with this. Look at the look at this. Throughout downtown, some white vans targeted the largest crowd of protesters they could find, launching tear gas and stunt grenades into the crowd of people.

Regular city traffic was engulfed in clouds of gas on streets which had not even been closed. Houses Portland are sleeping intents were woken by flashbangs, gas and impact grounds. As a clock struck eight pm. After telling and gassing protesters for the better part of two hours, cops kettle protesters onto a bridge, surrounding and arresting the entire crowd for being out past curfew. A total of forty eight

arrests were made that night. Portland Mayor Tet Wheeler, upon his return from visiting his sick mother extended the curfew for yet another day. On Sunday, May one, the largest crowd yet, ten thousand strong, marched across the burn Side Bridge into downtown. As the marchers approached the end of the bridge, cops were waiting on the other end, blocking their path. Once the sheer size of the crowd became apparent, the police turned tail and ran high, telling it back

to the Justice Center. The crowd followed them there and attends hours long standoff allowed. Eventually, the crowd thinned out enough that police were able to tear gas and flash band grenade protesters into dispersing. That night was one of the most terrifying evenings of the entire uprising, with the officers hanging off of riot evans and grenading passers by seemingly at random. Mayor Wheeler extended the curfew for yet

another day. At a press conference announcing his ascension, Wheeler doubled down on his law and order stance, this time with the help of Governor Kate Brown. I want to be very clear that there are open lines of communications between myself and the Governor personally, as well as between our offices. There is coordination with the Superintendent of State Police as well as the leadership of the National Guard UM. I spoke to the Governor three or four times yesterday.

I did make the request on all three of those occasions for support from the National Guard. The Governor had alternative strategies that she suggested, including deploying more state police resources. We subsequently asked for additional tools that could be used

in the field. That was agreed to by the Governor and supported UM Based on last night, however, I agree with what the U. S. Attorney has said, and I agree with what my colleagues in the Portland Police Borough have just confirmed with me, which is we do need more resources. Come Monday, June one, there was a shift in Portland protests. Instead of meeting at the Justice Center, another crowd of thousands gather on the east side of Portland's across from the river downtown at an aptly named

concert venue Revolution Hall. After some speeches, the crowd began to march west toward downtown. The crowd near Defense with a line of riot cotts behind the chain link. A young black woman at the head of the march asked an officer of the march to the j C. The police said no, Eventually, the huge march headed back to Revolution Hall and no tear gas was used. Now you have to understand at this point a lot of the crowd had just been the last three days getting horribly

tear gas, beat up and chased by the police. The thought of doing a protest and march without being assaulted by the cops felt like a nice change compared to the last three nights. But that all changed the next day, the day that would become infamously known as tear gas Tuesday.

Tear gas Tuesday sucked. Well. I had a full asthma attack. Um. I had never been subjected to tear gas before, and so I saw a cloud of tear gas, and I saw a man fall down in the cloud of tear gas, and he was struggling to get up, and so I ran in and I kind of picked him up by his shirt and then grabbed my eyes on and pulled him out of there. And then I immediately had an asthma attack. Um, and my buddy picked me up and yeah,

that's both out of there. That's Chris, a volunteer protests medic and tear Gas Tuesday was actually his second night out the brutality. He witnesses what got him to decide to dedicate his whole summer to helping people in the streets. I saw a girl get hit in the face with trapnel and that was not okay. And then everybody's getting tear gas and it was a mess. And it was

the infamous tear Gast Tuesday. And after that, I just kind of decided that I needed to start coming out with medical supplies because how that was handled, what people were doing to provide medicine in that moment wasn't up to a standard that I knew that I could provide. But let's take a step back. Tear Gast Tuesday was a noteworthy shift for Portland protests for a multitude of reasons.

It was the first day since Riot Night with no curfew, with city officials even publicly admitting to the curfew being in effective now, and it was the first day that

the protests noticeably began to splinter. Just like Monday the day before, thousands sparks from Revolution Hall towards the fence, which at this point surrounded several city blocks, including the Justice Center, the Federal Courthouse, and Chapman in Loudesdale, the two city parts which faced those buildings, only this time just have the crowd turned back to Rev Hall, but the other half set on chanting at the police behind

the chain link fence. The Portland Police issue repeated warnings over louds because that protesters were not to touch defense under threat of right munitions as might be predicted. The santity of PPB sacred fence became an immediate source of ridicule. Even as police followed through on their threats and as members of the crowd dared to touch the fence, the PPB once again deployed an outrageous amounted tear gas. And it wasn't even the mounted teer gas that was fired

off that night, but how they fired it. Several times Police rushed in multiple directions, all while firing off more tear gas, eating a massive cage of poison. Police are boxing and crowded on several sides and deploying munitions into the crowd, flashbags and gas to see the antashes flag here.

Two other things stick out from tear gas susan, the first of which was just how many motorists driving through downtown were tear gas by Portland police them everywhere from the rooftops hall side pump gas in County gas into the crowd, shooting gas. Look, there's fucking tear gas. They're sucking tear gas in the middle of traffic. That was just fired from someone up on a rooftop into the

middle of traffic. Multiple times, people who are blinded by gas while driving panic and lost control of their vehicles, nearly hit people as they drove into crowds. Protesters were water bottles and medical supplies render aid to drivers who had crashed into the curves. Here, we have how many cards there are here? All of these people are about to get tear gas. Oh boy, they're just started arcing them down at us from God and us where baby on the roofs. They're just coming down from the sky.

People was trying to traffic coming them, trying to pick them away, trying to stop them from gassing traffic. The other thing that sticks out is the crowd's resilience was growing. Protesters started adopting Tati scene in the Hong Kong Uprising, like placing traffic cones over tear gas canisters and pouring water through the top of the cone to get the Bernie caranister out. We see people actually very effectively to polling on tactics here to stop these tear gas grenades

from dropping brock Co tusters and from gassing vehicles. A chance that became popular in the Whist to Come was walked don't run, reminding people in times of panic often the safest way out. It's just by walking calmly. More experienced organizers are walking calmly through the crowd, putting hands on people and saying do not run. Do not run, because the thing that hurts people in situations like this

is panic. It's scary, but it probably won't seriously harm you if you don't panic, and the police aren't going to take any steps to try to avoid a stampede, so the only way to avoid a stampede is again for the crowd to take care of itself. We have seen people get so much better at reforming the crowd after being gassed. That started to really improve on Sunday night. And look, most of the people are still here, still organized,

still marching, still many thousands of people. This is the first time we've seen the best job of the crowd staying together and really showing commitment and endurance uh in the face of police brutality. So this has been a very important and a very impressive night from the activists and the citizens of Portland, Oregon. Chris will acquire a gas asked the very next day sums of his feelings

about tear gas Tuesday like this. It was such an odd response to see the police respond to a protest about um police violence and brutality with police violence and brutality. After tear gas Tuesday, things in Portland started to fall into a pattern. During the day, there'll be massive peaceful marches starting from Revolution Hall led by a new group

called Royal City Justice. At night, about a thousand protesters would gather at the Sacred Fence, which now only surrounded the Justice Center and the adjacent federal buildings, to inevitably get tear gas and attacked by police for quote tapering with the fence. Photo journalists and photographer Mariah says some of her favorite moments of the protests were at the massive march is organized by Royal City Justice in early June.

I would say, like in the early days, UM really is some stuff that really is memorable to me, especially with a lot of my UM favorite photos from this whole um UM movement has come from the earlier days, Like there was a moment I want to say it was that Burnside Bridge when everyone was like laying down for eight minutes and forty six seconds, and Um, I got some good pictures of that, and it was just

really great to capture. UM. I think that the moment when Damian Lillard came out, you know, everyone like you know, had like this slub moment in this and I got it. And at the moment actually when he came out, I didn't even know he was out there, and so I checked my photos later and I was like, oh, snap,

UM got him and stuff. Activists and live streamer Max Smith attended both the larger daytime protests on the East Side and the night protests at the j C. Here he explains how he became a popular speaker at the Portland protests and the interesting effect of having both the

daytime march and a nighttime action on the public. I want to say it was the second or the third that I actually got out in the streets um doing the work with the security stuff and helping out with the larger marches on the East Side, the Revolution Hall things and all that. So I was kind of doing playing a couple of rolls over there with helping with the Guardian folks and doing some you know, political education at the same time, and it's it kind of just

came natural. I just started talking to people and people started listening to what I'm saying, and um, on the night of the five, I got arrested downtown at the j C um or near the around the area of the j C. At least I got arrested down there. And so that weekend I ended up giving a speech at Irving Park and that's kind of where things started ended up being like streamed on the news locally. So that's where things kind of started changing for me at that point. And can you talk to me about the

night you were arrested? Yeah, just kind of as much detail as you're because you're interested in going in. Yeah, that's fun my, you know, it was just a basic arrest. Um. I was actually out there with a couple of people. We had been going down a couple of nights to see what was going on at the Justice Center because you know, I have been you know, if you're just watching the news, all you see is, you know, it looks like one big march, right, Like it's one huge march.

It starts in the daytime and all of a sudden it descends into madness at night. But quickly I realized that there's there's multiple things that are going on. If you leave your house, you know, you get the TV, it's a lot that's going on in the streets. So I started, you know, going out to see different things. And we were down at the j C and things

got really gassy. It was one of the nights. So again it was the first like you know, a few days of gassing, and I had been down there before, and this time I brought a couple different people that were like, you know, I'm trying to see it, but I'm scared. I was like, just come with me. I'll show you what's going on. It's not that big of

a deal. But we ended up um catching up with some other people down there and kind of had like a little group and we were and there were a lot of like teenagers down there, and so we were actually making sure a lot of people got out because there were cops everywhere, like circling and pulling people over and stopping people and arresting him. So we were like kind of helping folks navigate their way out and then um, as it got late, there were a bunch of people

that were suffering from tear gas. And so myself in a medic and I have like a first day to training basic stuff, and so that those first nights I was out there with like you know, milk or the baking soda and water solutions and whatever else, just helping folks out. And so we were following the groans of people, you know, coughing and and being into tear gas, and the cops just rolled up with like four cars and eight officers hopped out and I got snatched up and

it's got snatched up by that. I got grabbed by the hair, got young to the ground, bruised my elbow. You know, I had to creeck on my neck for a few days. But they arrested me. They drove me around a squad car for like fifteen twenty minutes. They picked up some other guy, Um, you know, they accused him of drawing on a drawing on a window with a sharpie or something, and he's like what and they were like, you know, they were trying to charge him with a felony. All of our charges got dropped. No

one got charged with anything. I got charged with obstructing the police. He got charged with something else. As Mac was inside the police car, he was also able to get a sneak peek of how the police were targeting people for a rest behind the scenes. I thought it was crazy because they had this like thing in their car, like this like a heads up display like a HUT and it it it had like it had an airy o view of this of the downtown grid and it

had like it was able to track people. And I thought that was it was like a call of duty to display like when you're like using like you know, the helicopter or whatever. It was like that, and like you could see like the people and they were like I represented like as lights a kind of there was like a light on them. It was like a it was like a black and white display and you could see the things that are moving. But then like with people, it basically lit them up with like lights and circles.

It would a circle us um if we were in groups, and when the group's got small enough and they would like a turn green and the cops were just to go and rest people. The group of protesters gathered at the fence were quick to make a distinction between quote peaceful protests and non violent protests. While the massive Rose City justice marches remained peaceful, the crowds have to j C would engage in nonviolent actions such as shaking, tearing down,

and cutting apart the chain link fence. Most of what people did at the j C was just standing in the street in parks while channey demands and slogans. But it didn't require people to tamper with the fence or throw a half drunk water bottles for the police to respond with force. As this protester can attest, I was downtown and it was back at the original fence, and you know, there was probably I probably estimate like five people there and everyone was really spread out, and um,

there was no police on the ground. It was raining that night, and they had their floodlights like pointed at us. Um. And one shot got fired from one of the like the little balcony areas, the one that's farther to the right, and it hit me in the leg. It was just one shot and it hit me at the like the very top of my left thigh. And I was just standing there with a group of ends like I had.

There was a beach ball in the crowd that night and it said don't gas me bro, And I picked it up and I started writing on it, and one shot got fired and it hit me in the leg. And that was what I would consider to be at least like protests related my first encounter with the Portland Police Bureau. No one was doing anything, No one was, you know, pushing on the fence or knocking on it, and they just fired a shot into the crowd and it hit me. Next you're going to hear from Garrison Davis.

He was just seventeen in Portland's vehle and protests started, and for weeks he was out virtually every night, filming some of the most intense police violence and posting some of the most viral videos of the entire uprising. Here's Garrison. Every night. The fence at the Justice Center seemed to grow larger. The city doubled up some sections of the chain link and stacked pieces offense on top of one another. Eventually, concrete barriers were added to make it harder to knock

over the fence. The divides between protesters began to widen as well. Some of the more radical leftist BLM activists in Portland criticized Rosity Justice and their insistence on quote peaceful protest over direct action that might damage police property. Gregory McKelvey, vice chair of organ DEM's Black Caucus and former organizer, pushed back on some of that criticism. Gregory was also organizing on a new front, now as Protest

Gain Steam. He was in the home stretch of leading a grassroots style campaign for political newcomer Sarah I on our Own to take down incumbent Mayor Ted Wheeler. Many Portlanders felt Wheeler had failed on his promise to deliver fundamental change on issues of housing and please reform. Instead, Wheeler became a symbol of big money in politics more of the same. Gregory's candidate I on our Own ran to the left of Wheeler, dubbing herself and quote everyday

anti fascist. So you know, uh, we had a situation where tens of thousands of people were marching every day. And if you're at those events, they're just beautiful, and yeah, they're way more liberal, they're way more moderate. Um, but those people are being marched along pun intended towards a more radical place. And you know, Malcolm X said more eloquently than me that basically, UM, you know everything, you know,

there was a point where you didn't UM. And so these people are on their journey just as everybody else. And just because they're not anarchists yet does not make them agents of the state. UM. And I really think that those protests are what effectively got us the UM the twenty million defunded from the police. I mean, we had a moment where they were mass protests and Damian Lillard was at the front of a protest UM that

was in capturing the entire city. Now, if you're wondering, yes he's talking about that, Davian Lillard, five time NBA l Star and Portland's Trailblazers superstar point guard day mean Lillard, Yeah, he was out there too. Yeah. They weren't burning stuff down, um. And also some of their rhetoric was not, you know, as far left as maybe I would like or and and certainly that some people at the Justice Center would like.

But I actually do think those protests were more effective and they certainly have far more support from the broad public. And we were getting people at these protests who had never protest before. Like I don't think the Justice Center protests should have stopped. And I don't think that they're ineffective per se um, but I think there's certainly much more effective if in tandem. There's also the other protests

going on. So if I'm at home watching UM like Chanel two, six, eight or twelve, which I had to watch a lot for my job, UM, they're not making a difference between which protesters are which protesters. They're just saying protesters merged and Damian Lillard joined them. Later in

the night, protesters were gased and beaten. Right that that UM way of explaining things is really helpful for all the protesters because um, they see that protests with Damian Lillard and they're like, oh, I support this, And then they see what they think is the same people getting gas that night, and they're like no, no, no, no no, And that helps us move the conversation towards the funding once those massive protests go away and we only have

protests that Damian Lillard is never going to be seen at now. Uh now they have no support from the broad public. Early June is also when most of Portland's police reforms were achieved under large pressure both locally and from the nationwide BLA movement. The Portland's Public schools superintendent decided to end the school resource officer program, opting instead for an increased spending on social workers, counselors and culturally

specific mentors for students, also historically racist. Portland's police unit was also disbanded. Here's more on that from Gregory. We got rid of some of the specialty units, including the Gang Enforcement Unit are formerly known as the Gang Enforcement Unit, which kept a list of mostly black individual tolls that they thought were gang members. Um and it really was a circle of our injustice car strol system um and

was really abhorrent and racist. And they switched their name to the Gun Violence Production Team and a branding effort, but still had the same mandate. We got rid of that specialty unit. We defunded twenty something million dollars from the police, which, um sounds like a lot, but we were defunding from a lot of different bureaus because of the pandemic in the budget shortfall in general. Alongside those small reforms in early June, Portland also saw some negative

change on the road to police accountability. The officers responding to protests were told they were allowed to cover both their nametag and badge number amid fears officers would be quote docked. Lawyer Alan Kessler explains this in greater detail. So, um, there's a directive that says that the police shall display their name on their uniform unless they get special dispensation

from their their command or to not do it. Um. And the police are supposed to give you a business card if you as they're supposed to identify themselves, are supposed to give a business card which has their name and badge number on it. Right there. It's not supposed to be a secret police force. And the directives are there are several directives that are kind of about that

uh interaction with the public. It turns out that very early in the in the protests, there was a an email that was sent out that told police that it's okay for them to cover their badge and then replace it with their It's called their personnel number or perner um spelled either PRNR or p E r N r H. And it's a it's a weird choice, like the only the only thing it was used for before that was payroll.

It's in their accounting system. Oh and so historically it's been used in the on some internal investigations of police officers alike in internal review reports. Um. But the reason they picked it, like, uh, I kind of guess this at the time, but it was suit too silly to be true. Was there is a There aren't a ton of things that are exempt from the public records lot Oregon, but one thing that is exempt is UH numbers on an I D badge. Um. So somebody thought this through.

Somebody who is really familiar with the public records thought this through and said, Okay, if we use the number from the I D badge as the cops badge number, then if anybody asked for the list, we'll say, no, those are secret numbers. That are you know, we have to keep them secret for the for the cops protection, which is nuts because they're wearing it out in public on their chest. But but there's like no way to trace it back in a digital for in, no way

for us to for sure. The early marches had been absolutely enormous, but almost everyone there fell into the simple category of protester. There were some very overworked medics, but Portland's lacked the sheer variety of specialties among the activists that allowed Hong Kong's protest movement to persist for so long. That changed over the first few weeks of the uprising, as people who never thought of themselves as particularly radical

fell into new rules. There were no longer just street medics, but shield bearing front liners, people armed with traffic cones and water to douse tear gas. Other activists provided food and equipment, and a handful of Portlanders began learning the trade of the conflict journalist, while Portland's professional press got used to packing body armor alongside their camera notebook. As an any mass movement, there was bound to be disagreements

and in fighting. People had different opinions on everything from looting to dumpster fires, to how much fence shaking was acceptable and the usefulness of large marches that stayed completely peaceful. Despite those differences, people did keep coming out day after day, night after night, for the entire first half of June. Some of those people are still coming out even now. Yeah.

I was six kind of personally expecting just for people just to be maybe be protesting a week to you know, not not much and then you know, quote unquote back to normal life. But you know, yeah, and then it's been now five months, um at it so yeah, and I kept going because my I just felt really strongly to keep going, and especially with um what I was doing, um as for photographing at all, I just had this passion that I was like, Okay, I gotta keep going.

So yeah, I've I haven't stopped. As June wore on, the number of people out at nightly demonstrations began to drop. Crowds of thousands became crowds of hundreds. A certain mania took over the increasingly hardened core of the Portland BLM movement, who seems to feel the need to confront police every single night without pause. It exhausted many protesters and journalists. Cosca describes the feeling, well, um, yeah, I mean it was it was every night, and it was it was NonStop.

And I remember once, um when they when they when they had the double fences up in front of the Justice Center. I remember when some people walking away from it and they were telling me that the protest was canceled, and I said, there's no such things. Is canceling this? I was like this to me, I was I even said it on one of my videos and sound kind of cheesy, but I was like, this feels like the energy for this rebellion is coming from some some unknown place.

Like like I said, it's felt almost supernatural because it was pushing people on their human limits. Like for me, I'm not the kind of person that will, you know, interrupt my sleep schedule for almost anything. But I didn't really sleep or eat or drink as you're supposed to do for almost two months because us so wrapped up in yeah, what was happening. And then I didn't know

that for a while. I didn't know that other cities were still protesting for a long time because I you know, I didn't even have time to check the news because it would take me. You know, since I'm older, it takes me longer to recover from that of the whole you know what, I would be recovering the whole time, not protesting while I was not protesting, to be recovering from protesting. That pretty much all I did for almost

two months. Looking back on the early days of the uprising, you can see all the little things that happened in order to transform this into more than just a regular protest every day. The brutality from the previous night rekindled people's desire for change. Repeated tear gassings forced the crowd to get good at reforming after being dispersed. As the days turned into weeks, protesters started mirroring Hong Kong tactics. More and more established activist groups provided support for new

activists with new ideas. On June seventeenth, inspired by Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, Portland protesters announced plans for an autonomous zone of their own. This a Z was limited to a single city block in front of Mayor Ted Wheeler's luxury condo, where protesters set up tents, eight pizza, and played dance music late into the night. The Portland police ousted the occupation early the following morning, but protesters

were clearly learning valuable lessons. Drinks, pizza, medical support, and a speaker system arrived within the first hour of the occupation. Barricades went up soon after, followed by the arrival of the Autonomous zones very own porta potty. By the time the police swept through in the early morning, a surprising amount of infrastructure had been set down in a very

short amount of time. That action ultimately failed, but as protests continued through the city, infrastructure would spring up again and again. Throughout the first half of June, a framework was put in place that would transform Portland's Black Lives Matter protests into a movement that could hold on and dig in for more than half a year. Uh Where the grandpops who couldn't fathom the obamacist? I don't hate America just to man, she keeps the promises twenty teens

looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide deja wo what my people post to do? Go to schools named after the clan founder. We're around town, isa, I don't see why we're frowning Native American students forced to learn about wind o'pellah 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. Man, Your heroes are worthless and man can show private only God gives purpose. You crook it.