Why Portland?

Initially I came out because as an African American, you know, it was that that straw that broke the camel's back on just like one death too many. We are murdered by police and other law enforcement agencies at a rate of three to one when compared to the average white American. And those numbers get a little funky because you know, obviously more white people die a year than black people in police related shootings, but there are also you know,

six times as many white people, uh then black people. Tristan, another Black Portlander, didn't go out that night, but he watched everything that happened on the live streams honestly, like my my first um impression was that it probably wasn't going to be much, you know what I mean. I didn't expect it to blow up the way it did.

I kind of felt like because I've I've seen it happen in the past, where you know, there's will be some kind of like something happening like nationwide or another city in Portland will kind of like you know, show up and solidarity for it, and it might become something, but usually it's kind of like a one off. So that's kind of what I was expecting, and so I was pretty surprised to see like how quickly grew and then also how like how the police were responding like

and like a very tear guys kind of way. Mariah is a photojournalist and a lifestyle photographer. She was out at Peninsula Park for the very start of the march was the beginning to you know, something that not a lot of us knew we were going to get into, you know, but gosh, I remember being at Peninsula Park and it was really great to see everyone there, and like, it just reminds me of some I hate that it's like a routine thing for us because it's you know,

why we're still fighting. And while we've been fighting so strong, but you know, when someone gets killed by you know, via police brutality, everyone meets up. You know, maybe we protest for a few days and like you know, quote unquote, we go back to like normal life. But you know, we already haven't been a normal life since it's been a pandemic this whole freaking year. But it was really beautiful to see all the people and all the signs

and the speeches. The side walks bordering Peninsula Park were filled with different slogans and exhortations written in chalk. One of the most striking statements was make the moment count. As it turned out, the city of Portland took that to heart. The crowd at Peninsula Park marched nearly five miles to downtown Portland. There they merged with a crowd that had gathered around the Justice Center. The moment both groups met was powerful. You could taste the energy in

the air. Portland's Black Lives Matter protests had actually started several days earlier before that mass gathering. On the twenty nine, a handful of activists of color had begun occupying the steps of the Justice Center immediately after George Floyd's murder. One of them was Tracy Molina, an Indigenous portland Er better known as Colsca. Well. I remember it wasn't not

long after the George Floyd's story broke. A lot of us wanted to do something here, but I think most of the regular organizers kept saying wait, you know, let's wait, let's wait for this, let's wait for that. And then finally, um, then Danielle James, I think she's a pretty prominent black activist in this community and stood up against Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys and other white supremacist for years. Um, it was kind of the spark for that. You know.

She was said like, we shouldn't wait in the night, supporter, I said, I don't think we should wait either. I think we should do something now. And so we ended up the seven ten thirty all meeting at I and starting to protest there, and then we moved. Um, sometime after midnight, we moved over to the Justice Center and slept on the steps there and planned to to occupy

it as long as we could. And so we stayed there and then um, there was only maybe like four of us that slept on the steps, and then then next day, like at ice, we had about thirty or forty people. And then the next day after we stayed on those steps, I would say there was about forty or fifty people that showed up in the afternoon and they did a direct action or we blocked off the streets in front of the steps of the Justice Center, and I think they did it also did it die.

And that night there was also impromptu direct action or some people, some young women sat on sat in the doorway of the Justice Center and they brought riot police out for that. And there was at that time there was only about twenty of us and only like six people participating in the sit in, but they still brought riot police out and they were violently removed. That made the news because one of the women, one of the women that was hit with a baton, was she was

actually pregnant, a black woman. And the only way us the why I know that for sure is because after she was in the ambulance, she came I don't know if she went to the hospital, but after she was in the ambulans, she returned paperwork from the as proving that she was pregnant. And was, you know, showing some of the police officers that were still standing around. But yeah, that's how the first few days went. And then um, then we we all, um, we're going to have a

rally at um and Insula Park. And then I agreed to do part of the opening. And when I was there, more and more people kept coming, and I was surprised at there are so many. I don't know, maybe a thousand people that there was a lot, there was a lot of people there. Was surprised, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. The now merged crowd, which numbered at least a couple of thousand people, marched back to the Justice Center. For a few minutes, they stood outside

chanting George Floyd's name. The police were nowhere to be seen. While most of the crowd stood out in the street, a hundred or so people gathered in front of the windows of the Justice Center. They started spray painting slogans on the glass. A few people peered on the doorway, someone lit a small fire out in front, and then quite suddenly, one person broke a window. The first broken windows set off a frenzy, and soon people were using their feet, rocks and any tools they could find to

shatter every exposed piece of glass on the building. With the windows shattered, protesters ran into the Justice Center, ransacking police offices and setting small fires. The Portland police arrived a little bit later and began showering the crowd with tear gas and flash band grenades. Though no one knew it at the time, events had just been set into motion that would lead to more than a hundred consecutive nights of protests and tear gas. The Portland Uprising had begun.

We should probably start by talking a bit about the definition of a riot. Legally, anything the cops declare a riot is a riot. May nine is generally referred to as riot night, because after the crowd was dispersed from the Justice Center, hundreds of people ran through the streets of Portland's luxury shopping district, smashing up high end chain stores while the police chased after them. It certainly felt like a riot, but a number of the folks that

we interviewed actually disagreed. Alan Kessler, a Portland based lawyer, pushed back on that description. I guess I disagree that even the first night was a real riot. I mean, there were some shops goot burg Old, there were there were something stolen. Um, there was a fire in the in the j c. Um, I'm not sure that that. I don't. I don't know the intent there right, like looking at the fire, looking at the Piddale fire as I've seen, I don't know if anybody means to burn

the buildings down or to y. Yeah, I don't know. Uh, it didn't seem like it. It doesn't seem it. If I were going to burn down the building, I would use a hell of a lot more accelerant. Then it seems like people are using. Um, I don't know. Uh. I was struck by even on even on that night, I was struck by uh, excuse me, Oh yeah, that was a lot more context. Yeah, please don't. Alvin Kessler says, I'm trusting you all the freedoms in your hands straight

to Andy. So Um. Now, even that night, I was struck by Commissioner Fritz U, who I have absolutely no love for, h who seemed just horrified that that goocy got robbed. And uh, and I didn't seem able to put that in any kind of context. Um, Yeah, I don't, I don't. I didn't. I didn't see that as a riot. I didn't think that people, uh I wanted to just break shit. I think even then it was it was

still it's political. It was it was a protest and it you know, I wouldn't recommend that people break stuff, for steal stuff, for set stuff on fire. But I understood the upset and I yeah, I just didn't see in those terms. Um, And it didn't seem like I don't remember that anybody died. I'm sure somebody was hurt, but I don't remember that it was particularly severe that evening, Like I don't. I don't remember that as a as a violent knight. I remember it as a night of

property damage. Yeah. Yeah. And I wasn't making a legal distinct. There was more of a oral argument, like I think people put a moral import behind riot and it I don't think it was that. I don't think it was I don't think it was a breakdown in civilization. I think it was a uh, extremely heartfelt uh frustration with a system that wasn't meeting people's needs. Max Smith, a Portland based activist in live streamer, called it a riot

light I called like a riot light that night. I think I was like that seems like a little kind of a riot light. They broke a couple of windows, you know, they sacked the Apple Store. Of course, you know, some opera students are gonna, you know, take that opportunity if something is, if things are getting broken, someone's gonna rob the Apple store. It's it's it's dumb because you're gonna get caught, but go ahead and rob the Apple store. But you know, that's kind of what I thought of it, Like,

some stuff is gonna get broken. That's what happened. And I actually thought the police, you know, I thought that, and actually thought there was going to be some change, which we saw a couple of things, like they started talking about, you know, canceling the the d v R T and the cops in schools and things like that, and uh and since then, it's it's it's been fairly tame, and we haven't seen a whole lot of progress, So you know, I felt like it worked a little bit.

The point Mac made is one that a lot of activists would agree with property damage, they argue is not nearly in the same moral realm as injuring or killing

human beings. Mac himself was not out on the twenty nine, but he was most directly inspired to start protesting because of something else that happened that day, hundreds of miles south of Portland in San Jose, California, there was a guy named Derek Sanderland in San Jose and he was protesting for you know, he was prochasing against the murder

of George Floyd in solidarity with Minneapolis. And I remember waking up and getting on my phone and kind of just flicking through things and seeing that this man had been shot in the testicles with a rubber bullet and it like required like emergency surgery and he's probably never gonna have kids. And I'm looking at this dude and he's like twenties seven years old. He's like a black dude. He's got dreads, he wears glasses, he's got a scrappys beard like mine, you know. And I'm looking at this

guy like, man, that could have been me. And then I keep reading and he was like he was like a teacher. He taught the police about like not targeting people or whatever, like you know, de escalation tactics or whatever. And I'm like, you're telling me they shot a dude that that trains them, Like this has got to be one of the craziest things I've ever heard in my life. And he could have died from this, you know, And

that just made me so mad. And I was like, it's even if it wasn't you know, it wasn't me. It could have been me if I would have been out there, And so I was just like, that's insane, Like this should not be a thing at all. This shouldn't this just this, this can't be realized. Many protesters and some journalists will argue that most of the riots Portlands saw this summer, we're not cases of protesters rioting,

but we're instead cop riots. After all, if people breaking windows and looting an Apple store is a riot, then police driving into crowds, throwing grenades at random, and tear gassing hundreds of innocent motorists probably counts as a riot too, right. Riot we Broke was not the first night of Portland's bill and protests, but it was the night that set

the tone for the next hundred plus nights. There was tear gas, flash bangs, armored cops fighting demonstrators who were armed with in the beginning, cardboard signs and water bottles. Now we're going to cover a lot of ground in this series, and it's probably best to kick this off by giving everyone an overview of what exactly happened in Portland from late May to the end of September, because the mainstream media only really showed a portion of this story.

Late on the night of the twenty nine, the people of Portland learned that their mayor, Ted Wheeler had actually been out of town visiting his mother. His first response to what had happened was a tweet that started with the word enough in all caps and ended with a promise that he was coming back now. Now was also in all caps. City Commissioner joe Anne Hardesty, who was acting president in the mayor's absence, declared a state of emergency and enacted a curfew from eight pm until six am.

At this point, Portland was in the same boat as many other American cities, including New York and Los Angeles. In Portland, the curfew was not enough to clamp down on unrest, quite the opposite. In fact, local activists like d s A member Olivia Cutty Smith were inspired. I just thought that it was it was not like anything I've ever seen before. I've never seen that level of um destruction happened at a protest before. It was exciting.

I was like, we're going to start. This is huge, this is going to take off all across the country. It's happening in Portland, it's having in Minneapolis, like this is the start of a revolution, um, you know, and even knowing that that might not be true, that that's the feeling that I had. That night, several thousand people gathered again and one nearly ten thousand Portlanders marched to

the Justice Center. We actually sort of organized the protest behind the scenes um and got like ten thousand people across the bridge, which was offer um. And yeah, it was just it felt like the sky was a limit at that point, like I can't believe there are ten thousand pep while showing up every single night like this does never happened before. We have to turn us into something. Both times, police eventually dispersed the crowd with indiscriminate tear

gas use and liberal clubbing with truncheons. Thousands of protesters were gassed, but so were hundreds of motorists who happened to be out on city streets and dozens of houseless individuals who were gassed in their tents for no apparent reason. The curfew was rescinded in early June. It clearly hadn't helped. Next, the city began to build what would become a massive

fence around the Justice Center. The protest movement started to splinter between a large group of demonstrators who engaged in daily marches that avoided police contact, and a smaller group who repeatedly confronted police at the fence. At first, Portland police would gas and grenade any group of people that drew close to the fence, along with any motorists who

happened to be driving nearby. Protesters started calling at the sacred fence because law enforcements seemed to value it more than the physical well being of Portlander's The first fence war between protesters and police lasted host of June. There were occasional protests at other police buildings like the p p A, headquarters of the Portland Police Union, and the North Precinct. Smaller groups of activists also engaged in what was briefly a nationwide practice of pulling down statues of

famous white supremacists. On June eighteenth, a small number of mostly teenage Portlanders toppled a statue of George Washington. This prompted President Trump to create an executive order to protect statues, monuments, and federal property. He sent dozens of federal agents to Portland to enforce this new order. The first time the Feds made a large appearance was on July four. That night was a turning point for a number of reasons,

after weeks of declining numbers. More than a thousand Portlanders showed up outside the Justice Center to shoot commercial grade fireworks at its windows. They fired a few with the adjacent Federal courthouse as well. The police l rad a car mounted loudspeaker started warning everyone not to shoot the court house, so, of course, the entire crowd swarmed around

the building and continued shooting it with fireworks. Suddenly, wooden hatches opened up on the front of the fortress like building, and the Federal Allegiance inside began tossing out tear gas grenades and shooting impact munitions into the crowd. For a few minutes, the scene resembled a cross between an acid trip in a medieval siege, with protesters bombarding the courthouse with fireworks while the Feds inside pumped out gas and

riot munitions, Yeah, everybody. Eventually the fight spilled out into the street, and for several hours, Portland police and Department of Homeland Security agents engaged in a running battle with hundreds of protesters. Fireworks provided the activists with their first weapon that could disrupt a police riot line, while law

enforcement responded by escalating physical violence even further. I was walking up from the j C Up towards the park blocks, and there was a person who was essentially having an asthma attack and a cloud of tear gas, and they had one buddy with them, and it was just such an impossible project for that one buddy to sort of haul them out of tear gas while they're having an asthma attack and like a panic attack and really having

her off time. Everything got more serious after the fourth the federal agents started responding to protests downtown more often than the Portland Police Bureau. A week later, federal agents almost killed a protester named Donovan Labella by shooting him in the forehead with a less lethal round. Slowly, the mainstream media began to realize that something strange and terrifying was happening in Portland. The national interest was finally peaked a few days later when camo clad Feds in a

rental band started kidnapping people off the streets. In early July, the fourth accepted most nightly protests only numbered a few dozen to a hundred or so protesters, but national media, in the specter of federal snatch fans panicked Portland's liberal majority. By mid late July, thousands upon thousands of protesters were showing up in the street every night. The time between July thirty, dubbed the Fed War, is the stuff most

Americans saw from Portland in the news. Moms and dad's, veterans, doctors, chefs, and students gathering in front of the Federal courthouse, chanting demands, banging on doors, setting fires, ripping off plywood covering the windows, and repeatedly tearing down that massive fence. Whenever the federal agents came out, a shield wall of protesters would form, deflecting metal tear gas canisters and flash bangs up into the air. People armed with leafblowers directed gas back at

the Feds. In response, the Feds started using experimental new weapons, including a pesticide sprayer jerry rigged di spew poison gas. Seeing the police attack people, especially the FEDS when the Feds came, when they came started attacking people like like

in the smoke. After I got like a gas mask and started going into the smoke, you know, and seeing what was going on in there, I was pretty I was pretty uh disturbed by seeing the way that they were like beating people under the under the cover of tear gas. That was, um, that was a prize for me. I'd heard people saying, I've got I ask it in there, but I didn't know it was going down like that. As July came and went, so did the visible federal

presence downtown. Most of the more liberal types packed it up, calling the protests a success. But while the days of walls of camouflaged Fed's head temporarily ended despite reports of their withdrawal, federal presence in Portland lingered on for weeks. Dedicated activists were not fooled by the faux withdrawal. They knew the work was far from over. Throughout August, protesters gathered in front of police precincts, city buildings in Portland's

ice facility. Sometimes they engaged in property damage, but more often they just stood in the street yelling at the cops until they were inevitably charged by riot lines. It was in August that Portland first saw right wing counter protests, generally framed as back the Blue or MAGA gatherings. Sometimes these escalated into street brawls between Proud Boys and left

wing activists. On several occasions, Proud Boys and other right wing vigilantes through home made explosives and shot paintball guns into crowds. Five rounds were even fired into the air and into crowds. The escalation continued until a Trump caravan of vehicles waving flags drove through Portland in late August. Several Trump supporters fired paintball guns and mace into the

crowds as they drove by. The whole awful day ended with a member of the right wing street gang Patriot Prayer, being shot and killed by a white BLM activist after charging him with a can of mace. Throughout all this Portland's BLM marches occurred every single night, right up until late September, when a series of devastating wildfires overwhelmed Oregon and blanketed the city of Portland in a thick haze

of poison. The nightly marches were halted, and the various mutual aid organizations that had started up to service the protests turned their efforts to meeting the needs of evacuees. Meanwhile, right wing activists blamed the fires on Antifa and spent several days setting up a legal arm checkpoints and threatening people with rifles. When the rains came and the air cleared, the protests started up again. There were no longer nightly affairs,

but they've remained regular occurrences ever since. And all of this begs the question why Portland all fifty U s States hosted Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of Many cities saw mass demonstrations, and while of b l M protests were considered peaceful, numerous cities saw rioting, exchanges of gunfire, and even had buildings burnt down. But no city in the United States had as many continuous nights of protests as Portland. No city saw thousands of citizens

lay a week's long siege of a federal courthouse. No city experienced a thousand persons street fight between right and left wing demonstrators. Perhaps most importantly, no city earned the ire of President Donald Trump in the same way as Portland. It seems bizarre that this all would happen in Portland, a small city off about six hundred and fifty three thousand people. How did it grow to become one of the most active front lines in a national battle for

black lives and against white supremacy. It actually makes a lot of sense once you scratch beneath surface a bit. Here's Tristan again. Organ was kind of um, I found it as like something of like a white utopia, you know, like a place for the the white man to really like find his destiny right and like conquer this you know,

this continent. And I think that's just kind of like it's just like baked into the culture here where even like even like the love of the outdoors isn't like isn't like a love of um like keep like keeping the environment like healthy and like bounce. It's just like a very like commodified like we deserve this, you know, we deserve to live in this beautiful place, and we're the only ones who know how to take care of it.

And obviously that's like mellowed out a little bit over the you know, decades, but I think that's still basically like what what like um, it's like the undercurrent, you know, that's like behind most of what cos in Oregon. You can learn a lot of what you need to know about Oregon's history of racism by studying one of the state's founders, Peter Hardman Burnett. As a young man in Tennessee, he murdered a black person with a booby trap as

revenge for petty theft. In eighteen forty three, he helped organize the first great wagon train of white people that headed to the Oregon Territory. He was elected to the Provisional Legislature and served as the territory's first Supreme Court justice. In eighteen forty four, he worked to pass what became known as Burnett's Lash Law. This stated that all black people were required to leave Oregon under penalty of being whipped in public not less than twenty or more than

thirty nine stripes. This punishment was to be repeated every six months until they moved. The law did include a grace period three years for black women and two years for black men. Burnett also pushed to ban Chinese immigration into Oregon. While there are no documented instances of the Lash laws being used, it set a clear tone for the state Burnet's Lash law reflected the values of the

first white people who moved to Oregon. They were abolitionists in that they hated slavery, but they only hated slavery because they were revolted by the thought of living near black people. 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 Donation Land Act gave whites and half breed Indians their quote, six hundred and fifty acres of land from the government.

All other people of color were banned from the land grants. Oregon was finally made a state in February eighteen fifty nine. Under its constitution, 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 this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract,

or maintain any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall prove by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such free negroes and mulatto's, and for their effectual exclusion from the state and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state or employer harbor them there in. Oregon remains the only state in the Union that ever banned black people from living there. Now things have gotten better since eighteen fifty nine, but

better is a low bar. In Portland remains the whitest metropolitan area in the United States. Seventent of the population is white, less than six percent is black. Today, Portland's owns the distinction as one of the most gentrified cities in the United States. Oregon continues to report some of the worst graduation rates for black students in the nation, and the wealth gap between white and black Oregonians over

the last fifty years has widened, not shrunk. And moved to Portland like like five and a half six years ago, I think, and from where I definitely I did from northern California, got a Bay area, um, and I didn't really I didn't have a idea of what the city was per se, Like I've never seen an episode of

Portland here, for instance. I just kind of moved up here would be closed with a family and and yeah, and when I when I kind of first got here, it was like, you know, that hang out with a bunch of like hippies, a bunch of people who love trees and to ride bikes and go hiking, and it's like, oh, they love the environment and they love progressive you know politics,

and you know, and everything's just chill within. Like the longer I stayed here, the facade started to like fall away, and and it's I mean, like I've been here for you know, almost six years now, and I still I don't quite know what to make of it still, you know, but like recently, um like if the passage of or like with the most recent election, you know, like so the local measures that passed and didn't pass. It's like like Oregon loves to have a black friend. That's what

they like. They like to have somebody they can point to and be like, look, I'm not racist, but they don't. They're not interested in actually like challenging the like white supremacists like power structures that actually like benefit them and and if you like, if you agitate them on that, they just you know. That's that's when like the Pacific Northwest like passive aggressiveness like kicks in and they just

like kind of like try to ignore you. But secually they're totally fucking piste off that you dare to like insinuate their racist um. But yeah, that's like it's a really complicated thing and I still quite haven't figured out like what makes white people take here, but it's, you know, it's messy. Another activist we interviewed, Courtney, is an indigenous Hawaiian person who moved to Oregon when she was seventeen. She recalls being stunned by how white her school was.

I like ended up going to Oregon City High School, which was like insane. I was the only non Hispanic person that was at that school. Um, and nobody talked to me for a really long time, and I just was kind of like it was a culture shock because there were so many white people that I had never seen this many white people in my entire life because everyone in Hawaii is like mixed races, majority of them

are Asian or Polynesian. So um, I definitely was nobody really talked to me for a while, and I kind of like found my little niche of people to hang out with. Um. But yeah, like just even live in that area, I would get a lot of weird looks and um, yeah, just not the most friendly people to be around. Um. Yeah, that's basically it's just a culture shock to just see how white organ is. I just I didn't expect it at all. I didn't and I was like, I knew that they were going to be

like Hispanic people, but I just didn't realize that. Um. I thought maybe I would see more after like black people, and especially living in a city, you know, in sport when you're from what you're like, Portland is just like a major city in the United States, and then coming here and not really seeing the mix of cultures was just kind of shocking. Tristan described the races of in Portland as unique in a subtle way. It's just it's very it's very covert, or you know, it tries to

be very covert. Um and it's very like like well, part part of what it is is that for a very long time now they're barely when any people of co here at all. Like, you know, it's one of

the widest states in the country. That's why it's major city in the country, and so like to a certain extent, people are they just don't actually know what like like what like a microaggression is or what that would be like, you know, I had to experience um, like just like a year, year and a half ago, maybe I was out with this group um these like forest offender type people and every year they go out post this big camp out and you know, like go out into the

woods and do like surveys and stuff like that, try to collect data they can use to fight timber companies and ship and like someone us drop the N word like just five ft from me. There's like in casual conversation, and then I had to like address the camp like at breakfast. I was like, okay, so just just don't don't say that word. Like there's no like like like even if you're just telling a story that there's no

appropriate context for a white person to say that. And and that's one of the reasons why I don't go to those fucking campouts anymore. But like it's like that, it's like they just don't they haven't been around black people or people of color in general, and they just don't know what to do. And of course the racism that pervades Portland's is present in the Portland Police Bureau.

Despite black people making up again less than six percent of the population, Portland Police use force on black people more often than people of any other race. Portland police are five to fourteen times more likely to shoot impact munitions at and to forcibly restrain black residents. At one point in the late sixties, black Portlanders accounted for nearly half of p p b's arrests. Portland's black community has been fighting against this kind of racist violence for decades.

Here's Max Smith again. For me, the battle with the police began, you know, in the hip hop field. Um. There was an event here in Portland that happened maybe six or seven years ago. UM. That happened at a venue called the Blue Monk, and it was a pretty

big deal. And I was there and I had friends who were performing at the show, and the police essentially came under the guise of a capacity of violation and brought like a seven cars and twenty something officers and shut the whole street of Belmont down And and that bar eventually actually ended up a closing shortly after that. Um. And it was a huge deal. They made a huge deal about a small thing, and it went like into

like national news. And even prior to that, we had been really combating the efforts of the police to kind of shut down or stifle hip hop events in the city. Every time we wanted to have a hip hop event, it became like, you know, like a world war um, to the point that it ended up actually being a protest about the hip hop community here. And so that was a fight that we had as far as hip hop music and clubs, as far as hip hop events,

as far as live music. Um. They really just used the city's resources that the police, the fire marshals, and the o l c C to really like shut down hip hop and and really any black lead events. Lawyer Allan Kessler has done a lot of digging into the early history of the Portland police. His research has revealed a century long history of Portland police involvement with hate groups, most particularly the Ku Klux Klan. I think it was lost Memorial Day. I spent the whole weekend in the

Oregonian Archives basic living through World War two. It wasn't fun uh and it's outrageous, like the clan was on there was a front page column talked to a klansman every day for like a week, uh, and then every other day they had the clan on the front page. Anyway, but that you know that was like, um, it was yeah, it was incredible. Um. During the war, Uh, basically everybody,

every adult white dude had a little star badge. Uh. They the police would basically deputize anybody or people just don't be a badge is made, so everybody in town had a badge. There were lots of articles in that time frame about um, fake police officer pulls over so and so and they sue. In a Portland Telegram article reported that the Portland Police Bureau was quote full to

the brink with klansmen. The police bureau actually deputized a hundred clansmen handpicked by the local Grand Dragon and designated them Portland Police Vigilantes. This was before the p p A existed, but the tradition lives on. In two thousand ten, Portland police officer Mark Krueger was suspended for erecting a memorial to five deceased Nazi soldiers on city property. The p p A successfully sued for him to be reinstated and given an apology. When he quit in early he

was the highest paid police officer on the force. I asked Maria, a lifelong Portland resident, what her earliest memory if the police was. Here's what she told me. I would say it was when I was a child. Honestly, Um, I've had some some family stuff and a family member have to go to way to to prison. So I remember some like vaguely stuff like remember then as far as like police brutality wise. Um, the very first like murder I remember was Kindred James. Um, that will happen

like a mile from my house. And I want to say I was like ten at the time. Kindred James was a twenty one year old black mother of two. She was killed under suspicious circumstances during a traffic stop. Her killer, officer, Scott McCallister, fired a single shot when James attempted to drive away from the traffic stop after

the motion of the vehicle caused him to fall. A number of the statements he made in court were inconsistent with physical evidence required from the shooting, and we don't really know exactly what happened, Among other things, The police argued in court that Portland police were trained to quote shoot as they fall aslee as the police is how I grew up. My dad is a huge like Tupac fan, so like I would grow up on hearing tupac lyrics all the time. Will screw the police and everything. So yeah,

no screw Yeah. Now that's how I like grew up. Yeah, um is to like not interact with them. Yeah, I've I've grown up. You know how A lot of us, you know, people who are black, feel like, you know, when we're being followed, profiled all that. I mean, I got profiled to dance in a store like it's it's still happened. That's been going on as the kid. I don't know if I don't know when it will stop, that you know, goes on. Officer McCallister was acquitted in

federal court. He got to keep his job, but even if he had been fired for the shooting, the firing might not have stuck. Nationwide, of police officers fired from his conduct are reinstated because of union mandated appeals. Over the years. This has included an officer who challenged a handcuffed man to a fist fight for his freedom, and a copper sexually assaulted a young woman in his patrol car.

In many cities, the number of police reinstated by union appeals is much higher than sevent of fired San Antonio officers are reinstated because of union appeals. The number is sixty for Philly cops and fifty from Minneapolis cops. This is part of why the people of Minneapolis burnt the Third Precinct to the ground after George Floyd's murder. They knew from experience that it was extremely likely Derek Chauvin, Floyd's killer, would not just avoid prison, but would soon

be back on the street with a badge. In fact, as soon as Derek Schaubin and the other officers responsible for George Floyd's death were fired, police union head Bob Kroll started fighting to have them reinstated. He was concerned that they had been quote terminated without due process. Kroll was oddly unconcerned that the same thing was true of Mr Floyd. The fact that police officers are extremely difficult to fire, even when they commit murder or rape on

the job is a national problem. But it is a national problem that traces back to a single place where else the city of Portland, Oregon, and more specifically to the Portland Police Association. The Portland Police Association or p p A, is Portland's police union. In a way, it's the police union because the p p A is actually

the oldest functioning police union in the United States. Police had attempted to unionize several times before the p PA was established in nineteen forty two, but Portland was the first city to get it right, and the p p A has served as a model for the rest of the nation's law enforcement ever since. Every other police union in the United States is based off of the Portland Police Association, and one of the many trends that pp

A set was ensuing to reinstate fired officers. This story starts on the night of March twelfth, nineteen one, when to Portland police officers from the North Precinct dumped four dead possums in the doorway of the Burger Barn, one of Portland's few black owned businesses. The use of the word possum as a derogatory term for black Americans dates

back as far as eighteen thirty. The owner of the Burger Barn, George Powell, called the police commissioner to report the incident and claimed that it was only the latest example of police harassment his business had faced. An internal investigation was opened, and the officers responsible, Ward and Galloway, admitted their guilt immediately Their identity was initially kept hidden thanks to a clause in the pp A contract with the city that protected officers from having their names disclosed

during disciplinary proceedings. This is another one of the innovations that the Portland Police Association brought to police departments nationwide. By the way, the possum incident happened at an awkward time for the Portland Police. Several officers had just been fired and convicted of faking evidence and using illegal drugs on the job. Nearly a hundred criminal cases had to

be thrown out because of falsified evidence. Public opinion of the police bureau was low, and when Portland started marching and demonstrating to demand that officers Ward and Galloway be fired, the police Commissioner was only too happy to oblige them. Enter Stan Peters, the most powerful union president Portland has ever had. Peters took to every local news show in town. He circulated petitions. He even organized a massed protest march made up of Portland po last officers and their families.

He forced the city government into arbitration, which ended with both officers being rehired and given back pay. There's actually a book about the Portland Police Association, Pickets, pistols and Politics. Alan Kessler informed us of its existence. Here's what it

says about the court case that resolved the Possum incident. Quote, the City of Portland versus Ward and Galloway case is still the leading police discipline case in the United States, and in labor law circles is the arbitration decision referred to the most often. It's legal nomenclature is simply City of Portland. And so in the end, it really isn't that odd that the City of Portland wound up as ground zero for a battle against white supremacy and police

brutality and a battle for black lives. It's actually been that for a very very long time. As much as people have just kind of started to contextualize how Antifa has been fighting against these studs here for years. You know, it actually isn't just the last couple of years where it's been in the news. It has been going off

for decades. In Portland. There's always been a level of especially in southeast of Portland, has always been like even like in the eighties, has been like, you know, these white skinhead groups and the Sharps has always kind of been like a race war between the white folks in Portland, especially in the southeast. Over the course of the summer of Portland's wounds were exposed to the world after George Floyd's gruesome murder accelerated long brewing unrest across the country

and even the globe. The Northwest's liberal bastion was forced to reckon with its own deeply anti black traditions while also becoming an unlikely epicenter in a movement for black lives that had taken the world by storm. Thousands took to the streets and a battle that would be fought against a corrupt police force, Trump's federal agents, right wing vigilantes,

and even at times between protesters themselves. Through it all, people banded together to support each other and build the infrastructure that would propel the city to a hundred plus days of protests that even the strongest tear gas couldn't end. In the next episode, we will delve into how a disorganized crowd of angry Portlander's turned themselves into a movement that could stand up to the worst violence the Trump

administration could throw at it. Uh where the grandpops who couldn't fathom the obamacist, I don't hate America just to me, And she keeps the promises teens looking like the sixties. It's crazy, a nationwide deja fo. What my people post to do go to schools named after the clan founder we're around town is I don't see why we're frowning. Native American students want to learn about when o'parah sarah. How is that fair? Bro? Some heroes unsung in some

monster's 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