Probably Media

Thoughts on Kenosha

Had some thoughts to get off my chest regarding the Kenosha murders last night.

This is yet another reason why I simply can’t find it in myself to condemn (most of) the property damage protesters are doing—not to mention the fact that those doing it are only a small fraction of the protesters, despite the disproportionate and indiscriminate response from the police. Make no mistake, despite what some politicians (even Black politicians) have been saying, these protests are still about Black Lives Matter. They are being led by Black folx, and they are fighting for their right to simply exist. They want what everyone wants: not be beaten or murdered for simply going about their lives, by either their fellow citizens or—I can’t believe I have to say this—by the very people sworn to protect them. Just like any other group, Black folx are not a monolith; some support these methods and some don’t. In fact, polling shows that the dividing line seems to be age, rather than race; on average, young folx approve, older folx don’t.

Thing is, they have tried “peaceful” means for decades and been either ignored or actively suppressed at every turn. Kneel or raise their fist during the national anthem? Accused of being anti-American. Organize the vote? Voter-ID laws and gerrymandering that disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters. Host massive, peaceful demonstrations or even run for office? Told that “now is not the time,” and then ignored for decades by both parties, with one barely starting to half pay attention centuries after they both should have. As MLK said, riot is the language of the unheard. And yet, as the privileged group, we have almost universally refused to listen. Property damage seems to be the only thing that gets us white folx to pay attention. Yes, some people will be turned off by this, but others will finally hear what they have been trying to say.

And what they are saying is this:

The police, here and nationwide, have shown themselves to be on the side of hate and violence against minorities, and anyone else who opposes them. This is more than a few bad apples; it is a rotten tree that needs to be excised and replaced. Those that do not participate in the bigotry and violence are complicit in the culture that has fostered it. Now, I’m sure there are some who would like to speak out, but are afraid. As we’ve seen in the few cases where someone speaks out, they are often ostracized, fired, and even prosecuted. Thing is, given the seriousness of the crimes committed by police—moral crimes, at the least, even if their egregious actions are sometimes legal—that fear does not excuse them from responsibility. After all, we still call a complicit Nazi a Nazi. By targeting police stations, police unions, and detention facilities, they are forcing the police to expend more resources. Furthermore, the police themselves are helping the protesters’ cause; that they respond to minor provocations like water bottles, paint balloons, and the occasional firework with disproportionate and indiscriminate force against peaceful and disruptive protesters alike shows that they care more about dominating and silencing the protesters then protecting the protesters’ rights, as they are sworn to do.

We must listen. We must change. We must act, or as risk continuing to be complicit in the very hate and violence many of us claim to oppose.

Black lives matter, y’all. Have a pleasant day.

Portland Police Watch Musings

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I’m thinking about ending this column, at least for now.

When I started just over two months ago, I was surprised by how little comprehensive coverage there was. There were plenty of excellent reporters out on the street, both assigned and independent, but I was struggling to get a sense of the overall picture each night without scrolling through the snapshots of perspective depicted on their dozen or so Twitter feeds. The Portland Mercury ran a live feed for the a few weeks, but eventually ran out of money; kinda hard to fund robust nightly protest coverage when you’re a weekly alternative. I figured others were having the same struggle, so I took up the figurative pen and decided to do it myself.

Now, though, multiple outlets, including some on the national level, are doing detailed analyses, featuring interviews with everyone from protesters on the street to the people directing these moves in the highest echelons of government. They are out there every night and are working with the indy journalists who have been there from the beginning to provide the comprehensive coverage that was so lacking. It’s still not perfect, but it’s miles better than it was. In the face of that, I don’t know how much my column really adds.

I want to be clear, this is not me giving up on this movement, or believing that it is no longer newsworthy. Far from it. The fight for the sanctity of Black and brown lives will be important as long as Black and brown lives are being devalued. Nor should this be taken as an opinion that the protests are petering out following the semi-withdrawal of the feds. While they have shrunk back down, they are still very much happening each and every night. Rather, this is me looking to find a better way that I can support the promotion of the ideals behind this movement, ideals that I strongly believe in. As I stated in my preamble every day, I felt that informing the public, even the comparatively few of you who read this, was the best way I could do this. I was filling a niche that few, if any, were, even if it was only for a few dozen people, at most. Given the ample coverage that now exists, there are others that fill that niche more expertly than I, even if they don’t have as good of jokes. As such, it seemed like my energy would be better focused elsewhere within the movement.

I don’t yet have a plan on where I will go next, and I may well come back to this if the coverage starts to slack again. I’m going to take a few weeks to think about it, and see where to go from there.

Above all, though, remember that Black lives matter. Don’t just be non-racist, be anti-racist. Care deeply about civil rights, and continue to fight in support of them.

I know I do, and I know I will.

Portland Police Watch Special Edition: Journalistic Objectivity

Note: These observations are on tonight’s abuses by the Portland Police. These abuses, of course, come in response to the protests over racial discrimination and police brutality spurred by the murder of George Floyd. While I believe these abuses are important to document and do play a part in the overall narrative of the protests, they should not overshadow the larger message fighting racial inequity. Along with donating and promoting the voices of BIPOC, they are simply how I feel I can be most actively useful given the health conditions that prevent me from participating in the demonstrations during this damn pandemic.

If you’ve been finding my reports useful, and have the means to do so, consider throwing a few bucks my way. I’m spending five to eight hours every night watching these protests, doing research, and communicating with protesters and reporters on the ground, and while I’m happy to contribute in the small way that I can and will continue to do so regardless of donations, it’s quite draining work. Additionally, with most forms of acting cancelled for the foreseeable future, my finances have taken a severe hit, and soliciting voluntary donations allows me to dedicate more time and energy to providing the in-depth coverage this movement needs. Alternately, consider donating that money to either the journalists I’ve been citing or to one of the nonprofits supporting the protests, like Don’t Shoot PDX or the Black Lives Matter group, itself.

Donate to Don’t Shoot PDX [1] Donate to Black Lives Matter—Portland Chapter [2]

Venmo: @theburgerboy Cash App: $theburgerboy

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I’m objecting to the objectionable objective of objectively objectifying this object.

Welcome back to Portland Police Watch!

In keeping with my new schedule, today’s report is about the story surrounding the protests, rather than about the protests themselves. If you’re just interested in info on last night’s demonstrations, I recommend The Oregonian’s rundown [3]. They continue to earn back some of my respect due to their largely excellent coverage of this movement over the past few months.

I wanted to spend today writing about something I have been grappling with a lot recently as a n00bie reporter: the concept of journalistic objectivity. This is a bit of a departure from last week, when I wrote about the fall of two groups actively involved in the protests. I was unable to find a comparable story for this week, so I decided to pull the trigger on this article. It’s not as directly tied to the protests as previous Special Editions—although it certainly influences coverage of them—but I think it’s an important concept to understand as news consumers in the so-called Post-Truth landscape that we currently find ourselves in.

Before we get going, we should establish a shared definition of ‘journalism.’ Journalism, according to the American Press Institute, is “the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information” [4]. It’s purpose is “to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments” [5]. To do this, it must have “an obligation to the truth…a loyalty to its citizens” (i.e. put the public interest first), “a professional discipline for verifying information…journalistic independence” (i.e. giving every source a fair shot regardless of personal ideology), and it must serve as an “independent monitor of power” [6]. Those may seem obvious, but they are what make a free press essential to a functioning democracy. More to the point of this article, though, they establish a baseline for this discussion.

Much more difficult is establishing a shared definition of ‘objectivity’ as it relates to journalism. This is, in fact, the crux of the concept I want to explore today: journalists are largely expected to be ‘objective,’ but what exactly does that mean?

The idea of ‘objectivity’ in journalism first started gaining traction in the 1920s. At the time ‘realism’ dominated the newsroom, the idea that readers would be more likely to believe something if you made a particular event “seem real” [7]. The problem with realism, according to Tom Rosenstiel, the Executive Director of the American Press Institute, is that it “invited true fiction.” Just because something seems real, doesn’t mean it happened that way, and just because something seems surreal, doesn’t mean it didn’t. How many times, especially over the last four years, have you seen a news story and thought some version of the famous Mark Twain quote, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is required to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t”? Or, to borrow a phrase popular in my house, “How did we get in this timeline?”

In the context of its emergence in journalism, ‘objectivity’, according to Rosenstiel, “meant something like the pursuit of truth using objective method” [8]. Much as science had done a few centuries prior, journalists had a collective reckoning with the fact that, as humans, they could never be perfectly objective in their coverage—after all, the very collection and distribution of such knowledge takes the perspective that access to information about the events being covered is good—but they could establish a methodology that would add objectivity to their subjective accounts.

Unfortunately, the common understanding of that definition has changed in recent decades. According to Vox’s Sean Illing, “…the obsession with ‘objectivity’ in particular has led to an obsession with ‘balance’ or ‘fairness’” [8]. This has made it all too easy for “bad-faith actors to get away with pushing falsehoods.”

Perhaps no example of this has been more prominent than coverage of climate change, especially in the first decade of this century. Despite an overwhelming consensus from climatologists for the existence of human-caused climate change (often referred to by the misnomer “global warming” back then), the issue became a political one, and so news stations seemingly felt compelled to interview people on both sides, and present them as equally valid so as to let their viewers decide the truth, rather than stake out a position themselves based on the facts. Doing so, in their view, might have opened them up to criticism of being biased in favor of the liberal position—a perspective they had struggled with behind the scenes for decades, which came to the forefront with the emergence of Fox News in 1996. In this way, newsrooms came to sacrifice the pursuit of truth in favor of the pursuit of balance. The focus on the APPEARANCE of objectivity in the eyes of their audience came to be an enemy of the ACTUAL objectivity they sought.

And who was that audience they sought to cater to? White people, for the most part, which brings us to the present moment. Just as they did in the 1920s, newsrooms in the 2020s are grappling with the meaning of ‘objectivity’, and how it impacts their reporting, especially on issues surrounding race. As multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wesley Lowery put it in a recent must-read editorial for the New York Times, newsrooms still “habitually focus on predicting whether a given sentence, opening paragraph or entire article will appear objective to a theoretical reader, who is invariably assumed to be white…Instead of telling hard truths in this polarized environment, America’s newsrooms too often deprive their readers of plainly stated facts that could expose reporters to accusations of partiality or imbalance” [9]. “In coverage of policing,” he says, “adherents to the neutral objectivity model create journalism so deferential to the police that entire articles are rendered meaningless.” Ergo, since white people’s views tend to be more conservative on racial issues than others, newsrooms have sought to play to this by writing from a more racially conservative perspective. Lowery again: “Black journalists are hired and told—sometimes explicitly—that we can thrive only if we don’t dare to be our full selves. Frequently, when we speak out about coverage that is inaccurate or otherwise lacking, we are driven from newsrooms—which results in fewer experienced black candidates in the room when it comes time to hire for senior editorships.” The whole thing has become a vicious cycle: mostly white editors catering to a mostly white audience drive out Black and brown reporters who call out coverage for lacking context their lived experiences have provided them, which leads to fewer Black and brown reporters becoming editors.

That is starting to change, though. Like much of society these days, Black journalists are beginning to demand a reckoning on issues of equity and inclusion [10], and some newsrooms are facing uprisings in the face of decades of ignoring them. In an internal Slack discussion obtained by NPR, LA Times film reporter criticized the paper for focusing some much attention on looting. “One of the responsibilities of the job is to state the facts and tell it true,” she wrote [11]. “There's so much implicit bias in those few sentences alone. And it's alienating the viewers we're trying to attract. As well as the [people of color] journalists like me who contribute so much to this paper and then have to read stories like this that oversimplify our struggles and realities.” Similarly, some journalists have seemingly become more willing in the past year or so to call out President Trump’s racism and lies for what they are: racism and lies.

Where does this leave ‘objectivity’? Striving to get back to where it was when the idea first emerged. As Lowery puts it, “instead of promising our readers that we will never, on any platform, betray a single personal bias—submitting ourselves to a life sentence of public thoughtlessness—a better pledge would be an assurance that we will devote ourselves to accuracy, that we will diligently seek out the perspectives of those with whom we personally may be inclined to disagree and that we will be just as sure to ask hard questions of those with whom we’re inclined to agree.” To put it another way, Lowery is calling for truthful reporting, rather than merely factually-accurate reporting.

What’s the difference, you may ask?

As Rosenstiel puts it, “Factually accurate reporting is necessary but insufficient. Something can be factually accurate and substantially untrue at the same time…If I quote Neo-Nazis saying a bunch of stuff that is technically accurate (meaning they actually said it), but a total distortion of reality, then I’ve quoted them accurately telling their lies. A strictly factual journalism can muddy the truth, in other words.” Truthful reporting requires context, even if that context offsets the balance toward one side of the other. To bring back the example of climate change, you can report what the side denying it is saying and be factually accurate, but to do so without putting it in the context of the abundant evidence or scientific consensus would be untruthful (not to mention irresponsible).

For me, I think Lowery and Rosenstiel’s approach is the right one. It is not the job of the press to be neutral, or balanced; it is our job to be truthful. I, personally, am not neutral. Not only do I take on the journalistic perspective that people should have access to accurate information about current events—a perspective our President doesn’t seem to share—but I believe that BIPOC deserve to be treated equally to white folx. Radical, am I right? More radically, I believe that the actions of the police toward BIPOC have been so morally reprehensible, and that the evidence shows that such moral rot is so widespread as to be almost intrinsic to our current model of policing, that any attempt to usher in change within the current institution would simply perpetuate the inequalities they are facing. Those opinions are going to inform my choices and judgments as a reporter, so it is incumbent upon me to understand those biases, inform you of them, and work to provide as truthful of an account as I can. In much the same way, it is incumbent upon us as news consumers to understand our own biases, and curate our news consumption such that we are not merely confirming them.

This is the primary difference between the ‘objectivity’ reckoning of the 1920s and that of the 2020s: information is everywhere now. Rather than being the gatekeepers of information, journalists now serve more as annotators. Often, the people for whom we are writing—you all, in my case—have likely already seen at least a vague description of the events we are reporting, thanks to the speed and ubiquity of social media. My job is to provide context and verified information, along with all the evidence I can find. That requires subjective judgements. The goal, then, is to be transparent, and to find the line between offering context that is (unfortunately) subject to those biases, which is good, and offering my subjective opinion as fact, which is bad.

This is why it is so important to get your news from multiple different sources. Much as FiveThirtyEight aggregates poll numbers in an effort to smooth out the biases inherent to the various pollsters’ samplings and methodologies, you should seek to inform yourself from a variety of journalists in an effort to smooth out their personal biases. I try to do some of that for you by sourcing my articles from many different journalists, but even that is subject to my own biases on who I consider trustworthy. You’ll rarely see me cite the Portland Police Bureau, for instance, unless their information has been confirmed elsewhere, or I am contrasting their claim to the observations of journalists on the ground. I sought to give them an honest chance, but their repeated and well-documented lies and half-truths, which I and many others have reported on extensively of late, have caused me to lose any expectation of honesty from their reports.

Still, I must be wary of weighing my subjectivity too heavily, and constantly seek to challenge myself in how I view a situation, lest I fall prey to the ever-lurking predator that is confirmation bias. As Rosenstiel puts it, “If we think that the solution to a flawed understanding of objectivity is to just be subjective, what’s going to happen is we’re going to drive people further apart. And the reporters themselves, when they go out on a story, are going to reconfirm their prejudices time after time, because they’re going to be so imbued with, ‘What do I believe is true here? And now I’m going to seek out evidence to prove what I already think.’” Subjectivity is inescapable, but it is mitigable.

That’s probably a good thing, because boy am I hella white.

Black lives matter, y’all. G’night.

(P.S. I’m taking tomorrow off because it’s my four-year anniversary with my wonderful partner, so I’ll see you all for my typical nightly protest coverage on Friday!)

Donate

[1] https://www.dontshootpdx.org/support-our-work/

[2] https://blackpdx.com/become-a-patron/

Sources

[3] https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/08/police-declare-riot-amid-protest-at-union-building-no-injuries-in-area-shootings.html

[4] https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/what-is-journalism/

“Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. It is also the product of these activities.”

[5] https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/what-is-journalism/purpose-journalism/

“The purpose of journalism is thus to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.”

[6] https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/what-is-journalism/elements-journalism/

[7] https://mobile.twitter.com/TomRosenstiel/status/1275773992507453440

“Objectivity replaced ‘realism’ as the dominant concept, which was if you made it seem real people would believe it. It invited pure fiction.”

[8] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/8/4/21306919/donald-trump-media-ethics-tom-rosenstiel

“…the obsession with ‘objectivity’ in particular has led to an obsession with ‘balance’ or ‘fairness’ that makes it easy for bad-faith actors to get away with pushing falsehoods.”

“For Rosenstiel, journalistic objectivity was never intended to mean neutrality or balance; instead, it meant something like the pursuit of truth using objective methods. Because journalism is conducted by human beings and therefore can never be truly objective, their methods have to be instead. A journalist’s duty is to write ‘what they can prove’—and if they can prove one side is lying and the other is telling the truth, that’s what they should write.”

“If we think that the solution to a flawed understanding of objectivity is to just be subjective, what’s going to happen is we’re going to drive people further apart. And the reporters themselves, when they go out on a story, are going to reconfirm their prejudices time after time, because they’re going to be so imbued with, ‘What do I believe is true here? And now I’m going to seek out evidence to prove what I already think.’”

“Factually accurate reporting is necessary but insufficient. Something can be factually accurate and substantially untrue at the same time…If I quote Neo-Nazis saying a bunch of stuff that is technically accurate (meaning they actually said it), but a total distortion of reality, then I’ve quoted them accurately telling their lies. A strictly factual journalism can muddy the truth, in other words…So you need to provide context. Likewise, if Trump says something and it’s not true and you’ve quoted him, you’ve been factually accurate as to what he said, but it’s also important to point out how what he said is not only not true, but he’s repeated it 28 times and it’s been pointed out 27 times, and by now, if he doesn’t know this is untrue, he’s strategically lying.”

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opinion/objectivity-black-journalists-coronavirus.html

“Conversations about objectivity, rather than happening in a virtuous vacuum, habitually focus on predicting whether a given sentence, opening paragraph or entire article will appear objective to a theoretical reader, who is invariably assumed to be white…Instead of telling hard truths in this polarized environment, America’s newsrooms too often deprive their readers of plainly stated facts that could expose reporters to accusations of partiality or imbalance.”

“Those of us advancing this argument know that a fairness-and-truth focus will have different, healthy interpretations…And so, instead of promising our readers that we will never, on any platform, betray a single personal bias—submitting ourselves to a life sentence of public thoughtlessness—a better pledge would be an assurance that we will devote ourselves to accuracy, that we will diligently seek out the perspectives of those with whom we personally may be inclined to disagree and that we will be just as sure to ask hard questions of those with whom we’re inclined to agree.”

“In coverage of policing, adherents to the neutral objectivity model create journalism so deferential to the police that entire articles are rendered meaningless.”

“Black journalists are hired and told—sometimes explicitly—that we can thrive only if we don’t dare to be our full selves. Frequently, when we speak out about coverage that is inaccurate or otherwise lacking, we are driven from newsrooms—which results in fewer experienced black candidates in the room when it comes time to hire for senior editorships.”

[10] https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/7022-letter-from-washington-post-un/1501aa1ca97145b26b2d/optimized/full.pdf#page=1

[11] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/15/874530954/rancor-erupts-in-la-times-newsroom-over-race-equity-and-protest-coverage

Portland Police Watch for August 1-2, 2020

CW: police brutality

TL;DR at the bottom. If viewing on Facebook, you can find the sources in the first comment.

Note: These observations are on tonight’s abuses by the Portland Police. These abuses, of course, come in response to the protests over racial discrimination and police brutality spurred by the murder of George Floyd. While I believe these abuses are important to document and do play a part in the overall narrative of the protests, they should not overshadow the larger message fighting racial inequity. Along with donating and promoting the voices of BIPOC, they are simply how I feel I can be most actively useful given the health conditions that prevent me from participating in the demonstrations during this damn pandemic.

If you’ve been finding my reports useful, and have the means to do so, consider throwing a few bucks my way. I’m spending five to eight hours every night watching these protests, doing research, and communicating with protesters and reporters on the ground, and while I’m happy to contribute in the small way that I can and will continue to do so regardless of donations, it’s quite draining work. Additionally, with most forms of acting cancelled for the foreseeable future, my finances have taken a severe hit, and soliciting voluntary donations allows me to dedicate more time and energy to providing the in-depth coverage this movement needs. Alternately, consider donating that money to either the journalists I’ve been citing or to one of the nonprofits supporting the protests, like Don’t Shoot PDX or the Black Lives Matter group, itself.

Donate to Don’t Shoot PDX [1] Donate to Black Lives Matter—Portland Chapter [2]

Venmo: @theburgerboy Cash App: $theburgerboy

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You can’t spell violence without PPB! Or, well, you can, but…shut up.

Welcome back to Portland Police Watch!

After two quiet nights in a row, I was starting to wonder if we were going to go an entire weekend without police violence. I thought that maybe, now that the feds are pulling back—although not gone, it should be noted—the police were trying to wait out the national media before they got back to assaulting their constituents.

I thought wrong.

For the 67th consecutive day—or 65th if you’re counting from the first mass action—protesters gathered throughout Portland as part of ongoing protests against racism and police brutality, spurred by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Today featured a number of different actions, stretching from downtown all the way into NoPo and Southeast [3]. The biggest flashpoint, though, occurred at the event that started in Laurelhurst Park [4], although there was also a massive rally, as always, outside the Multnomah County Justice Center and the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Downtown [5]. But let’s start with Yannyhurst. I mean Laurelhurst.

Around 200 protesters gathered at Laurelhurst Park starting around 7 PM. According to journalists on the ground, they held discussions about where they should march and then took a vote [6]. They settled on the nearby Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, the site of a previous police assault during these protests [7]. Tonight wasn’t much different…but we’ll get to that.

Protesters arrived at the sheriff’s office and began their usual rounds of chants. Multiple journalists got pictures and videos of what appeared to be an officer filming the protests [8][9][10][11], which would be a direct violation of the Temporary Restraining Order issued just two days ago. The order reads, in part, “The Portland Police Bureau [is] temporarily enjoined from collecting or maintaining audio or video of protesters demonstrating in public spaces, except where the video or audio relates to an investigation of criminal activities and there exist reasonable grounds to suspect the subjects of the videos are involved in criminal conduct” [12]. Not only did there not appear to be any criminal conduct, but the assembly hadn’t even been declared unlawful.

Yet.

A scant few minutes later, it was deemed exactly that. Police asserted that people were throwing glass bottles and shining lasers at them [13], but every journalist I could find was baffled by this declaration, having witnessed no such escalation on the part of the protesters [14][15, 5:25][16][17][18]. That didn’t appear to stop PPB.

Look, I’m a trusting person. I want to live in a world where I can take someone at their word. Even as a journalist, I give people a chance to be honest. Sure, I require a bit more substantial proof when I have my figurative press hat on, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, at least in my mind. The Portland Police Bureau has lost that. I have seen them lie about things protesters have thrown at them to justify their use of force. I have seen them lie about cooperating with federal agents just after they were clearly communicating directly with them. I have seen them lie in an official charging document about how a journalist assaulted them, when the only one assaulted was that journalist, by them, all of which was captured on video by another journalist. It was those lies, actually, that drew me to put on my press hat in the first place. I have no formal training—I’m an actor by trade, as some of you know—just a knack for research and a deep caring for the Truth. As my acting professor Mindi Logan taught us on the first day of acting class, “Above all, an actor prizes the Truth.” That’s not what I was getting from the police. I saw as the official PPB description of events matched nothing that I was witnessing in real time on the live streams. I refuse to accept that kind of dishonesty in my real life, and I refuse accept it from those in power. That is, fundamentally, what journalism is about: holding those in power to account. I’m a trusting person, but break that trust enough times and I’ll stop believing anything you say unless you have a mountain of irrefutable evidence to back it up. I’ve yet to see the PPB present that.

Police pushed protesters into the residential neighborhood surrounding the former precinct [19][20][21]. Once again, they bull rushed groups of people already complying with their orders, shoving them, beating them with batons, and macing them without provocation. Not even the press were spared, despite a Temporary Restraining Order that bars police from assaulting press or requiring them to disperse. And, ya know, despite the First Amendment. That old thing.

After a few recent cases of protesters falsely dressing as press for perceived protection—actions that the actual members of the press have been calling out—police seemed not to accept any of the journalists present as legitimate [22]. Officers mocked them [23], vandalized their cars (which were clearly marked as belonging to press) while they (also clearly marked as press) were still inside [24], and threatened them with pepper spray [25][26]. For some, it was more than a threat [27]. Jake Johnson, an independent journalist, was shoved into a bush by one officer, then maced by another as he attempted to record the first officer’s identifying number [28]. PPB’s response was so blatantly criminal—can you even describe it as disproportionate if there was nothing for it to be proportionate to, since protesters literally did nothing to incite it?—that even the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, outside whose building protesters gathered, distanced themselves. After being questioned by a number of journalists, they issued a public statement saying that they were not involved in the response, and that they don’t even own the building in question, they merely rent it. I took that as an implication that they would not have used such forceful tactics to defend it had it been them out there [29].

At this point, perhaps it is worth noting that the police didn’t even attempt to arrest most of the people they assaulted, even those who were clearly incapacitated [30]. That makes it seem as if police were just out to hurt folx, rather than protect anyone or anything as they will undoubtedly claim, and as their oath requires. If that was indeed their goal, then they succeeded.

Meanwhile, down at the Justice Center, a crowd of around 2,000 gathered [31], and police…did nothing, it appears. For the third straight night, these protests seem to have ended peacefully, at least as of this writing. It’s almost like protesters don’t escalate if the police don’t do it first [32]. Hmm…

Black lives matter, y’all. G’night.

(P.S. As per usual, I’ll be taking the next three nights off to rest and recuperate. See y’all Wednesday for another special edition!)

TL;DR: After a few nights of peace and quiet, this episode shall be titled “Revenge of the PPB.” Obvious violations of multiple Temporary Restraining Orders, including targeted attacks against clearly-marked members of the press. Police were out to hurt folx tonight, and they succeeded.

Donate

[1] https://www.dontshootpdx.org/support-our-work/

[2] https://blackpdx.com/become-a-patron/

Sources

[3] https://twitter.com/suzettesmith/status/1289765654594072576?s=21

[4] https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1289762237058449409?s=2

[5] https://twitter.com/julesboykoff/status/1289791703272972288?s=21

[6] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1289773275329880065?s=21

[7] https://twitter.com/pdocumentarians/status/1289780808358621184?s=21

[8] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1289780830110232576?s=21

[9] https://twitter.com/human42lm/status/1289784938229768197?s=21

[10] https://twitter.com/therealcoryelia/status/1289790291419906048?s=21

[11] https://twitter.com/lukiferdass/status/1289792648862027776?s=21

[12] https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2020/07/30/28689798/portland-police-temporarily-barred-from-live-streaming-protests

[13] https://twitter.com/portlandpolice/status/1289786851180417024?s=21

[14] https://twitter.com/pdocumentarians/status/1289787435858006016?s=21

[15] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1289787851027038208?s=21 5:25 “I didn’t see anyone in the crowd do anything illegal. Nobody even threw a water bottle until the first charges. I did see a mattress dragged out into the street at one point, but nobody was hanging out around it.”

[16] https://twitter.com/human42lm/status/1289788901104553987?s=21[28

[17] https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1289788967060004865?s=21

[18] https://twitter.com/andrewjank/status/1289787345730859008?s=21

[19] https://twitter.com/pdocumentarians/status/1289792025580023808?s=21

[20] https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1289792999291985922?s=21

[21] https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1289801996799578114?s=21

[22] https://twitter.com/r3volutiondaddy/status/1289784924950544387?s=21

[23] https://twitter.com/666hotdogs666/status/1289796670989819904?s=21

[24] https://twitter.com/therealcoryelia/status/1289795602667118592?s=21

[25] https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1289806231914205186?s=21

[26] https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1289810714857619458?s=21

[27] https://twitter.com/r3volutiondaddy/status/1289799872044924928?s=21

[28] https://twitter.com/fancyjenkins/status/1289808596243374082?s=21

[29] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1289821108221259776?s=21

[30] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1289793484354752512?s=21

[31] https://twitter.com/donovanfarley/status/1289810992465973248?s=21

[32] https://twitter.com/andrewjank/status/1289846936091025410?s=21

Portland Police Watch Special Edition: Wall of Moms and Mini-Report for July 29-30, 2020

CW: police brutality, non-police brutality

Note: These observations are on tonight’s abuses by the Portland Police. These abuses, of course, come in response to the protests over racial discrimination and police brutality spurred by the murder of George Floyd. While I believe these abuses are important to document and do play a part in the overall narrative of the protests, they should not overshadow the larger message fighting racial inequity. Along with donating and promoting the voices of BIPOC, they are simply how I feel I can be most actively useful given the health conditions that prevent me from participating in the demonstrations during this damn pandemic.

If you’ve been finding my reports useful, and have the means to do so, consider throwing a few bucks my way. I’m spending five to eight hours every night watching these protests, doing research, and communicating with protesters and reporters on the ground, and while I’m happy to contribute in the small way that I can and will continue to do so regardless of donations, it’s quite draining work. Additionally, with most forms of acting cancelled for the foreseeable future, my finances have taken a severe hit, and soliciting voluntary donations allows me to dedicate more time and energy to providing the in-depth coverage this movement needs. Alternately, consider donating that money to either the journalists I’ve been citing or to one of the nonprofits supporting the protests, like Don’t Shoot PDX or the Black Lives Matter group, itself.

Donate to Don’t Shoot PDX [1] Donate to Black Lives Matter—Portland Chapter [2]

Venmo: @theburgerboy Cash App: $theburgerboy

—————————————————————

“I’m disappointed in you.” —Wall of Moms…to itself, presumably

Welcome back to Portland Police Watch!

THE BIGGER THEY ARE…

As per my new posting schedule I mentioned yesterday, I’ll still be covering the protests on Fridays and Saturdays, but I’m using Wednesdays and Thursdays to investigate the stories going on behind the scenes. Yesterday I covered last weekend’s violent coup at Riot Ribs—and yes, that is the correct, unbiased description based on what I found in my research. I left off by saying that it was the first of two major setbacks for Don’t Shoot PDX, the direct community action group founded by Portland activist Teressa Raiford. Today we’ll be covering the second: the mama drama. That is, the scandal that has sent waves through Portland’s Wall of Moms community over the past few days.

If you can believe it, despite the international attention and the chapters forming all over the United States, the Wall of Moms is less than two weeks old. Not years. Not months. WEEKS. Tell me again how 2020 hasn’t screwed with our collective sense of time. The group started as a call to action on Saturday, July 19th, taking the form of a short march from the Willamette River waterfront to the Multnomah County Justice Center in Downtown Portland, which has been the epicenter of the protests [3]. The idea, according to founder Bev Barnum’s original Facebook post, was to “form a protective line between police and demonstrators” [4]. A group of nearly 40 mothers gathered the first night, but within two days that had multiplied into the many hundreds. National and international media outlets, which were already in town covering protesters being spirited away by unidentified officers in unmarked vans, quickly latched onto the nascent organization. By the end of the next week, everyone from President Trump [5] to children’s musician Raffi [6] was talking about them. It inspired the formation of several other demographically-restrictive groups, like the PDXDadPod and the Wall of Vets. Over this period, some in the community began calling out the Moms for having an mostly white administrative core—aside from Barnum, who is Indigenous—despite being a group dedicated to combating racism. Taking these criticisms to heart, the leadership reached out to Teressa Raiford for guidance. The white administrators happily stepped down, replaced by three notable local Black activists [7]: Demetria Hester, who was accosted and assaulted by self-described neo-Nazi Jeremy Christian the day before he stabbed three people on the MAX, killing two [8]; Danialle James, who acted as a spokesperson for the local Occupy ICE protest back in 2018 [9]; and Raiford.

That day, Barnum registered the entity “Wall of Moms” with the Oregon Secretary of State [10], with no other information given. Not surprising, given how quickly their profile was increasing. On July 28th, though, she reregistered with the Oregon Secretary of State as “The Wall of Moms”—notice the definite article—this time listing herself as President, co-founder Jaclyn Pritchard as Secretary, and Stevens & Legal, LLC as their Registered Agent (the entity responsible for accepting legal documents on their behalf) [11]. She also registered “The Wall of Moms PAC” with her and Pritchard in the same offices [12]. None of the new administrators were mentioned.

None of them were even told.

On the morning of July 29th, Don’t Shoot PDX announced that it was formally severing ties with the Wall of Moms because of these and other anti-Black actions [13]. They said that several Black mothers had approached them to say that WoM leadership was not protecting them, and would go silent at the most crucial moments. Don’t Shoot saw the aforementioned filings as an attempt by the founder to wrest control away from the Black administrators who had been appointed in effort to center Black voices and lend legitimacy to the group on the issues they were protesting—racism and police violence—which disproportionately affect Black folx more than any other demographic. Raiford later said that she attempted to speak to Barnum for several days about the conflict, but came to believe “that we could not have a conversation that centered support for the protests, they only centered on her trauma” [14], which was related to the federal occupation, not violence against Black bodies [13]. Barnum seemed to confirm this in a statement posted on the private Wall of Moms Facebook group on the morning of July 29th, in which she stated that, “WOM is a group that supports BLM, not a BLM group. If that is not good enough for you, please feel free to leave this group. And if you currently volunteer your time, please feel free to leave your positions.” In a comment to a dissenter, she elaborated that “[Wall of Moms] has grown beyond that call,” referring to Black Lives Matter [16]. By the early afternoon, Barnum had removed Hester, James, and Raiford as administrators [17].

The reaction from the community has been largely negative, to say the least. PDXDadPod called out Barnum for accusing Raiford of “[refusing] to take any responsibility for what has transpired” and appearing to threaten her with legal action [18]. Even the Wall of Moms Twitter account, which is not run by Barnum, lambasted her actions as a “betrayal” to the Black community [19], saying “our founder went rogue” [20].

To me, this read like a reverse situation from the Tragedy of Riot Ribs. Rather than a disgruntled outsider violently overthrowing leadership, this was the founder and leader attempting to consolidate power away from the very people who had given her group legitimacy. Barnum’s assertions that the organization was “not a BLM group” rang strangely in my ears as an individual who has been following the narrative pretty closely, even when I was taking a break (yeah, yeah, so sue me, I couldn’t help it). The very first tweet from the Wall of Moms account had the hashtag for Black Lives Matter [3]. The group had been actively suggesting that those who wanted to get involved should start following Don’t Shoot PDX and the Portland chapter of Black Lives Matter [21]. The group’s website even featured a manifesto as early as July 21st. Among the five main points it made about the upcoming protest that night, here are three [22]:

1.) “We listen to Black leaders. We are here to follow their direction, behind the scenes and at the justice center. We go where they tell us.” 2.) “Our goal is to push the media to turn the focus where it belongs: Black leaders.” 3.) “Bev’s vision was that we moms would take some physical hits in hopes our Black and Brown kids, friends, neighbors, and loved ones will be spared some pain…Not to be the voice of the movement.”

If that doesn’t sound like a BLM group, I don’t know what does. Regardless, it certainly doesn’t help Barnum’s case over the accusation that she used a Black-centered movement to boost the profile of her organization before wresting control away the Black people who had helped get her there. That manifesto, by the way, is now conspicuously absent from the group’s website [23].

While the future of the Wall of Moms organization itself may be unclear, the movement seems undeterred. The ousted administrators immediately banded together with other Black activists to form Moms United for Black Lives, an open Facebook group filling much of the same role as the Wall of Moms [24]. After all, if anyone is going to bounce right back, it’s moms.

…THE HARDER THEY WALL

The drama behind the scenes certainly didn’t stop the moms from showing up [25][26]. Now, as I said at the beginning, I’m saving my minute-by-minute rundowns for Fridays and Saturdays, so this is going to be more of a short summary. Due to how common it’s become, you can assume that “police disproportionately react with indiscriminate force including tear gas and impact munitions over comparatively minor provocations from a small minority of mostly peaceful protesters” occurred somewhere in the narrative unless I specify otherwise. It certainly did last night.

The most notable feature of last night’s protests was the even more overbearing force the police used to clear the area [27]. The Oregonian described it as their largest visible presence to date. Furthermore, the provocations that usually spur their response were almost entirely absent, consisting of only a handful of fireworks and lights of various colors shone toward the courthouse. Police also used a new weapon, which looks like it come out of a sci-fi JRPG that I would totally play. I’m not kidding, look at this thing [28]. Apparently it is called a “thermal fogger” and general used for mosquito control. Instead of bug spray, it appears the feds loaded it with some kind of chemical irritant, which they released indiscriminately. Kinda hard to aim with something like that.

Really, though, I would totally play a video game with a weapon that looked like that.

Black lives matter, y’all. G’night.

Donate

[1] https://www.dontshootpdx.org/support-our-work/

[2] https://blackpdx.com/become-a-patron/

Sources

[3] https://twitter.com/wallofmoms/status/1284975796088643586?s=21

[4] https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/21/trump-federal-agents-portland-protests-moms?__twitter_impression=true Barnum called for a group to dress in white and form a protective line between police and demonstrators who Trump painted as anarchists.

[5] https://www.businessinsider.com/portland-protests-trump-calls-wall-of-moms-scam-2020-7

[6] https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/07/raffi-turns-beloved-americana-tune-famous-thanks-to-its-a-wonderful-life-and-bruce-springsteen-into-portland-protest-song.html

[7] https://www.instagram.com/p/CDB9KWKFtbZ/

[8] https://www.opb.org/news/article/jeremy-christian-demetria-hester-max-train-attack-portland-police/

[9] https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-oregon-ice-building-occupy-protest/

[10] http://egov.sos.state.or.us/br/pkg_web_name_srch_inq.show_detl?p_be_rsn=2147267&p_srce=BR_INQ&p_print=FALSE

[11] http://egov.sos.state.or.us/br/pkg_web_name_srch_inq.show_detl?p_be_rsn=2147737&p_srce=BR_INQ&p_print=FALSE

[12] http://egov.sos.state.or.us/br/pkg_web_name_srch_inq.show_detl?p_be_rsn=2148001&p_srce=BR_INQ&p_print=FALSE

[13] https://www.instagram.com/p/CDO2rh_hNJR/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_mid=B5BF0C81-D3AC-4825-95D4-314A87674326

[14] https://twitter.com/teressalraiford/status/1288844377456959489?s=21

[15] https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/07/portlands-wall-of-moms-crumbles-amid-online-allegations-by-former-partner-dont-shoot-pdx.html “The announcement of the 501c3 really hurt some of you,” she wrote. “That was never my intention. In fact, it was just the opposite. WOM will be led by a BIPOC board and BIPOC advisor committee. WOM is a group that supports BLM, not a BLM group. If that is not good enough for you, please feel free to leave this group. And if you currently volunteer your time, please feel free to leave your positions.”

[16] https://twitter.com/wallofmoms/status/1288609392502300672?s=21

[17] https://twitter.com/wallofmoms/status/1288616296322486272?s=21

[18] https://twitter.com/pdxdadpod/status/1288723531069497345?s=21

[19] https://twitter.com/wallofmoms/status/1288608592174571521?s=21 Thread

[20] https://twitter.com/wallofmoms/status/1288701951777968129?s=21

[21] https://twitter.com/wallofmoms/status/1286002789194141697?s=21

[22] https://twitter.com/cyndiroot/status/1286002940994637825?s=21

[23] https://thewallofmoms.com/

[24] https://www.facebook.com/groups/291983945248461/permalink/292459638534225/

[25] https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1288702492738387968?s=21

[26] https://twitter.com/wallofmoms/status/1288704152021811200?s=21

[27] https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2020/07/protests-continue-for-63rd-day-in-portland-live-updates.html

[28] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1288878518177153026?s=21

Portland Police Watch Special Edition: Riot Ribs

CW: police brutality, non-police brutality

Note: These observations are on tonight’s abuses by the Portland Police. These abuses, of course, come in response to the protests over racial discrimination and police brutality spurred by the murder of George Floyd. While I believe these abuses are important to document and do play a part in the overall narrative of the protests, they should not overshadow the larger message fighting racial inequity. Along with donating and promoting the voices of BIPOC, they are simply how I feel I can be most actively useful given the health conditions that prevent me from participating in the demonstrations during this damn pandemic.

If you’ve been finding my reports useful, and have the means to do so, consider throwing a few bucks my way. I’m spending five to eight hours every night watching these protests, doing research, and communicating with protesters and reporters on the ground, and while I’m happy to contribute in the small way that I can and will continue to do so regardless of donations, it’s quite draining work. Additionally, with most forms of acting cancelled for the foreseeable future, my finances have taken a severe hit, and soliciting voluntary donations allows me to dedicate more time and energy to providing the in-depth coverage this movement needs. Alternately, consider donating that money to either the journalists I’ve been citing or to one of the nonprofits supporting the protests, like Don’t Shoot PDX or the Black Lives Matter group, itself.

Donate to Don’t Shoot PDX [1] Donate to Black Lives Matter—Portland Chapter [2]

Venmo: @theburgerboy Cash App: $theburgerboy

—————————————————————

Welcome back to Portland Police Watch! As per my new posting schedule, I’ll still be covering the protests on Fridays and Saturdays, but I’m using Wednesdays and Thursdays to investigate the stories going on behind the scenes. And boy are there a lot of those right now. Over just the last few days, we’ve had what appears to be a violent coup at Riot Ribs, the cancelling of the Wall of Moms, and dueling narratives about just how long federal officers will be staying here. Given that the latter two are still developing, I’ve decided to spend today writing about what’s been going on with everyone’s favorite pop-up restaurant. Or…former restaurant. We’ll get to that.

For those who don’t know, Riot Ribs started on July 4th with one guy, Lorenzo, serving free ribs that he cooked on the sidewalk outside his van near the Downtown parks that have served as the epicenter of the Portland protests [3]. That night, he was tear gassed no less than six times, despite not taking part in the demonstrations, himself. Police said that the protesters were rioting, so Lorenzo rolled with it, jokingly calling his “restaurant” Riot Ribs. Over the next few weeks, the operation transformed into an ACTUAL restaurant, and so much more: a 24-hour semi-permanent fixture providing everything from barbecue to medical supplies to clothing to resume-writing services, all on a pay-what-you-can basis. A group of 10-15 volunteers began helping out, mostly houseless folx, some from out of town. Everything continued to run on donations, with a publicly available spreadsheet showing all of their influx and expenditures. They also posted receipts for all of their purchases. Their fundraising was so successful in such a short time that, late last week, they voted—Riot generally ran things by consensus or democratic vote—to stop accepting monetary donations.

Now all of that is gone [4].

So what the hell happened? Why did a beloved staple of the Portland protests that had raised over $300,000 (that’s not a typo) in less than four weeks suddenly dissolve?

Because of nothing less than a violent coup. Who had “beloved public coop violently overthrown by disgruntled volunteer” on their 2020 bingo?

The story begins on July 24th. That day, after taking a vote amongst their volunteers, Riot announced that they would no longer be taking monetary donations [5]. They had over $300,000 in funds and wanted to work on spending it—including on an expansion to other cities—and distributing it before taking on any more. The next day, Riot announced that they would be transferring leadership over to Don’t Shoot PDX, run by notable Black activist Teressa Raiford [6]. This was to ensure that such a large sums were handled by “organizations that are better equipped to provide permanent mutual aid in Portland,” according to their spokesperson, Beans. They also sought to help mutual aid organizations in other cities.

That night, however, one of their cooks, who had been in the minority of the aforementioned vote, began soliciting donations under the name Riot Ribs PDX, claiming that Riot had changed their donation handles on Venmo and Cash App [7][8][9]. Even after he was confronted, he continued to put up these signs, and tore down those the actual Riot was putting up saying that they were no longer accepting donations [10]. This individual was also accused of “verbally, physically, and/or sexually abusing other volunteers” [11] and stealing thousands of dollars in cash donations [12]. By the evening of July 26th, he had set up his own Twitter account under the Riot Ribs PDX name, falsely claiming that it was the official Riot Robs account [13]. He also began attempting to run the physical operation. On the morning of the 27th, he and a group of friends violently expelled those left [14]. At least one person was physically assaulted, and those on the scene reported that multiple of these individuals, including the leader, were armed. While they do, indeed, still serve free food, I have not been able to find any indication of them running with the same kind of transparency that Riot Ribs did. They continue to operate the physical location under the guise of Riot Ribs, but have shifted their online handle from @RiotRibsPDX to @FreeFoodPDX [15].

Now, you may have noticed that I never used the name of this individual. Honestly, that’s because I don’t know it. Riot has never used his name in any of their public statements, and they asked those they contacted to not use it, either [16]. I wasn’t able to find it after a bit of digging, although I’m not sure if I would have reported it had I found it. Ah, the journalist’s dilemma: do I report this thing because it’s newsworthy, or do I keep it quiet at the request of the people actually affected? Another time, perhaps.

You also may have noticed something if you were following along with the links, but I want to be absolutely transparent about my sources for those who didn’t. Every one of them comes from Riot Ribs, itself. Even the journalist and activist I quoted sourced their information directly from Riot Ribs. Now, when it comes to accusations of wrongdoing, as a person, I think one should believe victims by default, especially when the accusation is a serious one, as it is here. As a journalist, though, it is my duty to go further than that. I might believe the victim personally, but it is my duty to confirm it from as many outside sources as I can, preferably with evidence rather than merely statements. That’s a bit of a problem here, as every one of the sources for these accusations traces back to Riot Ribs, itself.

However.

While this would seem to present a complication, there are two main reasons I am choosing to present these accusations as fact. First, Riot Ribs has been unbelievably transparent since the very beginning. Or…very believably transparent, I suppose. Whichever one means, “They’ve done such an admirable job that even a transparency snob like myself couldn’t be any more proud.” Now, the trust they’ve built up could make it easier to get away with a lie, but they’ve also given no indication that they want to engage in such skullduggery. Quite the opposite, in fact. Second, I haven’t been able to find anyone who refutes their story, even the people who took over. The closest I’ve been able to find is the new leadership accusing the old of absconding with the $300,000+ [17][18]. This is a) a red herring, and b) flatly untrue, if by “absconded with” you mean “stole” and not “generously donated.” If you meant “generously donated,” kindly reconsider your definition of absconded. A quick check of the actual Riot Ribs Twitter (and the Tweets from those who have been thanking them) shows that they have been steadily donating large chunks of this money—in the tens of thousands of dollars range for most donations—to other activist organizations supporting the BLM movement [19]. They continue to run their public spreadsheet for the sake of accountability. Ya know, like the true criminals they are accused of being.

So that’s the story of the Tragedy of Riot Ribs. And it marks the first of two major setbacks for Don’t Shoot PDX, as Riot will no longer be partnering with them. The other one? We’ll get into that tomorrow…

Black lives matter, y’all. G’night.

Donate

[1] https://www.dontshootpdx.org/support-our-work/

[2] https://blackpdx.com/become-a-patron/

Sources

[3] https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/07/14/protesters-feast-on-riot-ribs-a-donations-only-barbecue-in-the-center-of-a-standoff-with-the-feds/

[4] https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2020/07/at-portland-protests-riot-ribs-is-dissolving-completely-after-threats-to-groups-safety.html

[5] https://twitter.com/riotribs/status/1286848697901309958?s=21

[6] https://twitter.com/riotribs/status/1287226592318697475?s=21

[7] https://twitter.com/riotribs/status/1287194299365330944?s=21

[8] https://twitter.com/tuckwoodstock/status/1287285491952267265?s=21

[9] https://twitter.com/riotribs/status/1287453361432752128?s=21

[10] https://twitter.com/riotribs/status/1287222277076127745?s=21

[11] https://twitter.com/riotribs/status/1288145235927654400?s=20

[12] https://twitter.com/lilithxsinclair/status/1287912074090172417?s=21

[13] https://twitter.com/freefoodpdx/status/1287559336571441153?s=21

[14] https://twitter.com/lilithxsinclair/status/1287913049458786305?s=21

[15] https://twitter.com/FreeFoodPDX?s=21

[16] https://twitter.com/lilithxsinclair/status/1287915893838643200?s=21

[17] https://twitter.com/freefoodpdx/status/1287905439561089025?s=21

[18] https://twitter.com/FreeFoodPDX/status/1287945381586714630?s=20

[19] https://twitter.com/riotribs?s=21

Portland Police Watch Musings

—————————————————————

And I’m back!

After most of a week off to recharge, I’ll be back at it today with my coverage. Over the break, I had some time to consider how I approach my coverage, and I’ve decided upon the following changes:

Wednesday and Thursdays are going to be dedicated to the story surrounding the protests, rather than the protests themselves. These will be more akin to Special Editions I’ve been occasionally producing, doing a deep dive into one or two topics and interspersed with my analysis of how this might affect the broader movement. I’ll have one such report later today, and starting tomorrow I will also provide a small update on what went down the night before, with links to videos of anything I believe is particularly important. If you’re interested in rundowns for any of the nights I’m not directly covering (more on that below), I recommend reading the daily articles from The Oregonian. Their coverage of these events has generally been excellent, and has earned back some of the trust I’d lost in them over the past few years.

The reason I’m doing this is twofold:

1.) Unfortunately, “police use disproportionate force against mostly peaceful protesters after comparatively minor provocations” has become the norm, rather than the exception. We’ve seen it literally every night, almost like clockwork. It’s always been that way for BIPOC, of course, but we are now seeing it on a mass scale, over such a sustained period, and with such widespread evidence (video and otherwise), that it will likely be possible to write some version of that same headline for weeks and months to come. I suppose that itself is newsworthy, but the narratives of each night have become so similar as to not be particularly NOTEworthy. This is not meant to dismiss the protests, just to say that we have entered a sort of plateau period. Hence the shift to summaries, supplemented with videos of actions on both sides that differentiate them from previous nights.

2.) The other reason for this is to limit the number of nights a week that I see 6 AM. While I am a night owl, the deadline stress was getting to me. I’ve likened it to frantically writing a paper in that you know is due the next day, except it was happening every week, four days a week, and there was no way to start writing it ahead of time, since the research I need didn’t crop up until between midnight and 3 AM. That leads me to the fact that…

Fridays and Saturdays will still be the in-depth, minute-by-minute summaries you’ve come to expect. These tend to be by far the largest nights in terms of sheer numbers, and, not coincidentally, have also been some of the most violent. As such, I felt it was still necessary to cover them, even with the increased media attention these nights usually draw.

Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays will continue to be my days off. Originally I was taking Sundays off because I had early work for my OHSU job on Mondays, but that was only temporary. Knowing my brain as I do, though, I thought taking three consecutive nights away every week would avoid the kind of mental stress overload that caused me to take this past week off.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments!

Black lives matter, y’all. See you, space cowboy.

Portland Police Watch for July 23-24, 2020

CW: police brutality

TL;DR at the bottom. If viewing on Facebook, you can find the sources in the first comment.

Note: These observations are on tonight’s abuses by the Portland Police. These abuses, of course, come in response to the protests over racial discrimination and police brutality spurred by the murder of George Floyd. While I believe these abuses are important to document and do play a part in the overall narrative of the protests, they should not overshadow the larger message fighting racial inequity. Along with donating and promoting the voices of BIPOC, they are simply how I feel I can be most actively useful given the health conditions that prevent me from participating in the demonstrations during this damn pandemic.

If you’ve been finding my reports useful, and have the means to do so, consider throwing a few bucks my way. I’m spending five to eight hours every night watching these protests, doing research, and communicating with protesters and reporters on the ground, and while I’m happy to contribute in the small way that I can and will continue to do so regardless of donations, it’s quite draining work. Additionally, with most forms of acting cancelled for the foreseeable future, my finances have taken a severe hit, and soliciting voluntary donations allows me to dedicate more time and energy to providing the in-depth coverage this movement needs. Alternately, consider donating that money to either the journalists I’ve been citing or to one of the nonprofits supporting the protests, like Don’t Shoot PDX or the Black Lives Matter group, itself.

Donate to Don’t Shoot PDX [1] Donate to Black Lives Matter—Portland Chapter [2]

Venmo: @theburgerboy Cash App: $theburgerboy

—————————————————————

“I get hit in the face a lot. It’s fine” —Robert Evans

Welcome back to Portland Police Watch!

(If you’re just interested in what happened tonight, feel free to skip on down to the section titled YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT.)

ENCROACHMENT, ON THE DEFENSE, 5-YARD PENALTY

It was a quiet night here in Portland.

Nah, just kidding. I almost had you, though, didn’t I? Yeah, totally almost had you. Especially you, Grant. Fuckin’ Grant.

Today was quite the eventful day on both the legal front and the front lines, but let’s start with the law. There were two major developments today on the legal front that could have some impact on the protests moving forward.

First, a temporary restraining order was placed on officers from the US Marshals and the Department of Homeland Security, preventing them from arresting, threatening to arrest, using force against, or dispersing anyone they know or reasonably should know is a journalist or legal observer, unless they have probable cause to believe that individual has committed a crime [3]. That wording is important, as, in case of a lawsuit, the burden of proof shifts to the police to prove they had “probable cause,” which is a higher legal standard than the usual “reasonable suspicion.” Eagle-eyed readers might notice how similar this is to the injunction recently issued against the various Portland police agencies, and they wouldn’t be wrong. This order stems from the same lawsuit that generated the local order, decided by the same US District Judge. Now, this order is no panacea. As I reported about at the time, a local journalist, Andrew Jankowski, was arrested by the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) while covering a demonstration just last week, well after the local order went into effect. Furthermore, local police have continued to treat journalists with a certain amount of disdain, and the occasional use of force when those journalists have not been filming—incidents of which have been confirmed and occasionally filmed by other journalists who happened to witness them. However, after the local order, PPB has allowed reporters and legal observers to stay and even film arrests and confrontations, which is a sight different to, say, the night before the order when three journalists were assaulted and arrested for simply recording.

The other legal news came out of a source few would have expected to hear from during these protests: the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT). Yeah, yeah, I know Grant, you expected it. Shut up. Jesus, that guy. Today, PBOT, which is led by City Council Member Chloe Eudaly, demanded that the reinforced fence surrounding the federal courthouse be taken down…because it blocks bike lanes (without a permit) [4]. How Portland is that? PBOT’s Director, Chris Warner, said that the city’s attorney was considering fines or legal action if the barrier was not removed immediately. Yeah, I…I got nothing to add to that one, other than to say that that is oh so very Portland. It could only be more Portland if it unicycled in playing the flaming bagpipes with a Darth Vader helmet on. For context for those not from here, there are two things you learn not to mess with in the City of Roses: our recycling, and our bike lanes. Your move, feds.

So, what’s been happening down on the streets?

YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT…THAT’S IT. THAT’S THE TITLE

For the 58th consecutive night, demonstrators gathered in the parks abutting the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse and the Multnomah County Justice Center in Downtown Portland, OR as part of ongoing protests against racism and police brutality that were spurred by the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis police custody. As the sun set, thousands gathered to participate in a movement that 10 days ago President Trump referred to as “very much quelled” [5]. Not every protester makes it out every night, so the consistency In crowd size—and recent exponential increase—has been driven by new, sometimes first-time protesters entering the fold [6]. For the first few hours, as happens most nights, activities were generally relegated to listening to speakers, chanting, and singing [7]. For their part, the feds added more tactical shooting locations—dubbed “murder holes” by protesters, after the medieval castle fortification—to the courthouse façade so that they could more easily shoot into the crowd behind the fence [8].

The crowd fell into a bit of in-fighting to start, but turned its attention back on the fence as midnight approached [9]. Protesters shook the fence, lit a small fire inside the makeshift courtyard beyond it, and shot off a few commercial-grade fireworks [10][11]. Just before 12:30, police launched their first volley of tear gas [12, 31:10], which was quickly dispersed by what seems to be a relatively new tactic introduced by protesters: leaf blowers [13]. Just as individuals have used traffic cones and water to contain and extinguish tear gas canisters—a tactic used to great effect during the Hong Kong protests—some are now using leaf blowers to clear the gas and smoke and blow it back toward officers. These individuals often wear gas masks and bulletproof vests, and are guarded by one or more shieldbearers for protection from impact munitions and pepper balls. Man, I feel like I’m describing a fucking video game—one that I would totally play, by the way cough cough just saying devs cough cough too much tear gas—but such is 2020.

Protesters quickly regrouped and began more aggressively firing fireworks toward the courthouse, although I would once again like to offer that they were doing so against officers wearing what amounts to full wartime armor. These are the acts that often provoke the most aggressive responses from officers, but you can be the judge of exactly how much danger they pose [14]. About half an hour after the gassing, the feds launched their first major assault, blanketing over a thousand people in a tear gas cloud that appeared to envelop the entire two block area [12, 53:30][15][16][17][18]. Some protesters managed to hold their lines, but many more were cleared by the widespread and indiscriminate gassing [19].

At some point around this time, federal officers declared the gathering an unlawful assembly, the first time during these protests that the feds have made such a declaration [20][21]. While there have been plenty of unlawful assembly and riot declarations, they have universally been made by local police, until tonight. Around 1:10, police launched another major assault, seemingly spurred by no other action than a few enterprising protesters making their way inside the fence and mostly staying near the outskirts [12, 1:15:30][22][23]. Protesters regrouped again, but feds launched their third and final assault 15 minutes later, attacking from multiple directions to scatter the crowd [12, 1:30:40][24][25]. Despite the temporary restraining order (TRO), feds appeared to continue targeting press, even those filming by themselves (i.e. not near protesters) [26] and/or clearly identified as such [27]. This is somewhat different than the reaction of local police, who have been more deferential to their TRO, as I mentioned earlier. Feds formed a massive riot line and began pushing protesters away from federal property [12, 1:40:00][28][29][30]. Several reporters, including one of those hit with munitions earlier, were ordered to move and disperse, in apparent violation of the TRO [31]. One protester was forcibly held in a cloud of tear gas, which appeared within the power of surrounding officers to move, as multiple officers arrested them [32]. Federal officers pushed a street or two further, but then launched a bevy of tear gas and smoke as they retreated [33].

Officers and protesters engaged each other a few more times, but the rest of the confrontations were minor, from what I saw.

During this final push, I grew curious as to what gave the Federal Protection Service (FPS) jurisdiction to move protesters further than just off federal property. From my layman’s perspective, this would seem to be the job of local and state forces, not federal. I decided to look up exactly where FPS held jurisdiction, and came across an interesting answer. While their authority is tied to federal property, 40 U.S. Code § 1315 grants them authority “in areas outside the [federal] property to the extent necessary to protect the property and persons on the property” [34]. This is another one of those situations where this makes sense in the abstract—federal officers sometimes need to leave federal property to ensure it’s protected—but has the strong possibility for abuse. In the past, this has largely been kept in line (for white communities) by the natural checks and balances of the legal system. We have an administration right now, and especially a President, however, that is willing to test those ill-defined boundaries, and has a strong grip on one of those checks, the Senate. This leaves us in a bit of an unprecedented situation. How far could they reasonably decide to extend the boundary they feel they need to protect federal property? What actions could they take to do so? The answers to those could very well determine whether this turns from the current hostile occupation into a true war zone.

But hey, at least we got to see a tear gas tornado [35]. Who had that on their 2020 bingo card? I had pepper spray tornado. So close.

God dammit, Grant.

Black lives matter, y’all. G’night.

TL;DR: Another night, another fed riot. Federal officers appear to ignore the new temporary restraining order against attacking journalists.

Donate

[1] https://www.dontshootpdx.org/support-our-work/

[2] https://blackpdx.com/become-a-patron/

Sources

[3] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/508834-federal-judge-temporarily-bars-federal-officers-in-portland-from

[4] https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/07/portland-officials-demand-feds-remove-courthouse-fence-in-bike-lane.html

[5] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286518425703964672?s=21

[6] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286531039150477313?s=21

[7] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286524898785914885?s=21

[8] https://twitter.com/therealcoryelia/status/1286548212367597568?s=21

[9] https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1286555678828457984?s=21

[10] https://twitter.com/emilygillespie/status/1286560554002165760?s=21

[11] https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1286563634458423297?s=21

[12] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1286555367330045952?s=21 31:10 for first gassing 53:30 for major attack 1:15:30 for second major attack 1:30:40 for third major attack 1:40:00 for fed battle line ~110:00 indiscriminate shooting away from fed property

[13] https://twitter.com/45thabsurdist/status/1286563650765914114?s=21

[14] https://twitter.com/andrewjank/status/1286565819003019265?s=21

[15] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286569306046644226?s=21

[16] https://twitter.com/therealcoryelia/status/1286569794183901189?s=21

[17] https://twitter.com/therealcoryelia/status/1286570130713919488?s=21

[18] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286572332555755520?s=21

[19] https://twitter.com/45thabsurdist/status/1286572250284490754?s=21

[20] https://twitter.com/pdxfrontline/status/1286574922882408448?s=21

[21] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286576074680233984?s=21

[22] https://twitter.com/therealcoryelia/status/1286575586500984833?s=21

[23] https://twitter.com/hungrybowtie/status/1286577287182204929?s=21

[24] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286579193023623169?s=21

[25] https://twitter.com/griffinmalone6/status/1286580517802897409?s=21

[26] https://twitter.com/rjaellis/status/1286578718693978113?s=21

[27] https://twitter.com/mathieulrolland/status/1286618588757991424?s=21

[28] https://twitter.com/pdxzane/status/1286579801180876802?s=21

[29] https://twitter.com/griffinmalone6/status/1286581320873676800?s=21

[30] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286581663753842688?s=21

[31] https://twitter.com/rjaellis/status/1286581690626748416?s=21

[32] https://twitter.com/griffinmalone6/status/1286587892106539008?s=21

[33] https://twitter.com/bethnakamura/status/1286597975804768257?s=21

[34] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/40/1315

The Secretary may designate employees of the Department of Homeland Security, including employees transferred to the Department from the Office of the Federal Protective Service of the General Services Administration pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, as officers and agents for duty in connection with the protection of property owned or occupied by the Federal Government and persons on the property, including duty in areas outside the property to the extent necessary to protect the property and persons on the property.

[35] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1286585525365768193?s=21

Portland Police Watch for July 22-23, 2020

CW: police brutality

TL;DR at the bottom.

Note: These observations are on tonight’s abuses by the Portland Police. These abuses, of course, come in response to the protests over racial discrimination and police brutality spurred by the murder of George Floyd. While I believe these abuses are important to document and do play a part in the overall narrative of the protests, they should not overshadow the larger message fighting racial inequity. Along with donating and promoting the voices of BIPOC, they are simply how I feel I can be most actively useful given the health conditions that prevent me from participating in the demonstrations during this damn pandemic.

If you’ve been finding my reports useful, and have the means to do so, consider throwing a few bucks my way. I’m spending five to eight hours every night watching these protests, doing research, and communicating with protesters and reporters on the ground, and while I’m happy to contribute in the small way that I can and will continue to do so regardless of donations, it’s quite draining work. Additionally, with most forms of acting cancelled for the foreseeable future, my finances have taken a severe hit, and soliciting voluntary donations allows me to dedicate more time and energy to providing the in-depth coverage this movement needs. Alternately, consider donating that money to either the journalists I’ve been citing or to one of the nonprofits supporting the protests, like Don’t Shoot PDX or the Black Lives Matter group, itself.

Donate to Don’t Shoot PDX [1] Donate to Black Lives Matter—Portland Chapter [2]

Venmo: @theburgerboy Cash App: $theburgerboy

—————————————————————

It is with great honor that I present Ted Wheeler his tear gas merit badge. Welcome back to Portland Police Watch!

(If you’re just interested in what happened tonight, feel free to skip on down to the section titled TOMORROW THERE’LL BE MORE OF US.)

WAR…WAR NEVER CHANGES

Urban warfare has come to Portland [3].

For the past several weeks, Portland has played host to federal officers from a variety of agencies, ostensibly here to protect statues, monuments, and federal property, most notably the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Downtown. This comes despite nearly universal opposition from local and state elected officials, not to mention community members, who have repeatedly admonished the feds for their extreme and at times apparently unconstitutional behavior. Federal police have targeted journalists [4], attacked medic tents and food stalls [5], and whisked away peaceful protesters whose only crime was wearing black clothing [6]. That comes in addition, of course, to indiscriminately beating them and dousing them with copious amounts of pepper spray, impact munitions, and tear gas. It has all the trappings of a hostile occupation, minus the live ammunition. As war reporter Robert Evans said recently, it’s about as close as you can come to war while still using non-lethal munitions.

Tonight was no different.

Before we get to the action on the streets, though, there were a couple of interesting developments today that I’d like to draw your attention to, both national and local.

EXPECTED THE…EXPECTED

First and foremost, of course, was the official announcement of the expansion of the federal occupation of Democratic-controlled cities to include Chicago and Albuquerque [7]. The Trump administration will be sending officers from the US Marshals and the Department of Homeland Security—two of the agencies leading the Portland occupation—in addition to those from a few smaller agencies to tamp down on what President Trump calls “violent crime.” He had “no choice but to get involved,” he added.

This was far from unexpected. Just the other day, Trump announced that he would be taking unspecified action against cities like Chicago, curiously emphasizing that they were all run by Democrats. Nonetheless, this marks an important escalation of his crackdown on supposed violent crime—at the same time that he has insisted the mostly peaceful protesters are “anarchists and agitators” [8]. “Violent anarchists” and “criminals,” as DHS put it. It’s unclear at this point how, or if, their tactics will differ from the ones deployed in Portland that have earned them such strong condemnations.

A FINE, FINE LINE

Speaking of tactics, the Washington Post did a deep exploration of how those tactics are being seen by experts in the field and former DHS officials, including the very first DHS Secretary [9]. As I wrote the other day, this is the benefit of having the national news media in town; they don’t always provide the greatest context for what is going on, but their resources and contacts allow them to do much deeper dives on issues that touch the national scene, like the evolution of DHS tactics, than most local reporters could hope to do on their shoe string budgets and caffeine addictions (speaking as one of those). The article itself goes into great detail about how the Department of Homeland Security, formed in the wake of 9/11 with the mission of preventing another such attack, has been turned inward by the Trump administration onto its own citizens. I was most interested, though, in a couple of quotes from the interviews they conducted while writing it, which I’ve quoted below:

1. “There’s a line that it certainly looks like they’ve crossed. And, if I may, it’s an important line because it’s the difference between federal law enforcement and a roving commission where you’re using these law enforcement officers to go out and restore what they deem to be order,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

It is not merely the protesters on the street saying it. Even experts at well-respected law schools are arguing that these actions cross a new and dangerous line. They are engaging in, at best, questionably constitutional behavior that violates the spirit of the freedoms of expression and peaceable protest.

As I wrote about last month, police tend to be disproportionately white, male, and conservative, so “what they deem to be order,” as Vladeck puts it, might be very different than what locals would deem it to be, especially in progressive cities like Portland. Portland, particularly, has a long history with protest culture—President H.W. Bush didn’t call us Little Beirut for nothing—and its citizens (although not its police) may be more tolerant of these kinds of protests than non-locals. That’s a big reason this federal occupation has scared so many Portlanders. These officers do not know the local landscape, are not bound by local rules, and are not accountable to local or, with them covering up any kind of personal or even agency identification, even national officials.

2. [The specialized DHS teams sent to Portland] are among the most “heavily militarized” components in federal law enforcement, normally assigned to “engage in low-grade warfare against heavily armed narco-terrorists,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former DHS official who now works as a senior fellow at the R Street Institute.

“I think it is not illegal, but it is an expansion of mission and what I would characterize as a misapplication of authority,” Rosenzweig said. “So make it lawful but awful.”

In other words, the officers they sent to Portland are about as close to soldiers as you can get without actually being soldiers. In fact, according to Robert Evans, many of them are FORMER soldiers. Furthermore, as we learned from the New York Times recently, these officers have no special training in crowd control tactics. That calls into question why, if they are trained in low-grade warfare against armed terrorists but not in peaceful crowd control, these specific groups were sent here in the first place. It might well reveal what they think of the protesters, and offer a clue as to how they will treat those in other cities moving forward.

3. Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor who served as the country’s first homeland security secretary under George W. Bush, said during an interview Tuesday with broadcaster Michael Smerconish that DHS was established to protect the country “from the ever-present threat of global terrorism.”

“It was not established to be the president’s personal militia,” Ridge said. “It would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to a unilateral, uninvited intervention into one of my cities,” he added, “and I wish the president would take a more collaborative approach toward fighting this lawlessness than the unilateral approach he’s taken.”

Even the first head of DHS, Republican Tom Ridge, believes that President Trump is using DHS as his own personal militia, a far cry from its intended purpose. It puts into relief why some in the administration and right-wing media have been trying so hard to label these protesters as actual, bonafide terrorists. The right has used this kind of rhetoric for a long time, but it seems to me we are at a tipping point right now with DHS actually being deployed against its own citizens. Then again, if you asked Black folx, or undocumented immigrants, maybe we should have been expecting this; they’ve been dealing with it for years.

WHAT IS SIMON WITHOUT GARFUNKEL? (BESIDES A GREAT MUSICIAN…YOU KNOW WHAT, THIS IS A TERRIBLE TITLE)

Finally, it seems the dynamic duo has finally been forced to break up. Today, the Portland City Council voted unanimously to prohibit the Portland Police Bureau from cooperating with any of the federal agencies currently occupying Portland [10]. It’s unclear exactly what effect this will have on tactics, as it does not prohibit them from communicating, but it likely means that we will see less of the behavior we saw last week, with PPB working hand-in-hand with feds and seemingly using them to circumvent the court orders they are bound by. We’ll have to wait to find out.

So, what’s been happening down on the streets?

TOMORROW THERE’LL BE MORE OF US

The protests have doubled in size since I last talked to you, that’s what! Just a matter of weeks ago, the protests had shrunk down to around 200-300 per night. Now they are ten times that [11]. Reporters on the ground said that, at its peak, the crowd was bigger even than the previous two nights, which would put it in the 2000-3000 range or above. Certainly not “quelled,” as President Trump said last week.

For the 57th consecutive day, protesters gathered in the parks abutting the Multnomah County Justice Center and the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Downtown Portland, OR as part of protests against racism and police brutality spurred by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody on May 25th. They were joined for the first time by an unexpected guest—well, as unexpected as you can be when you announce your intention to be there hours ahead of time—Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who has long been the subject of protester ire for his anti-protester messaging before the arrival of the feds [12]. He listened to protester complaints and spoke for a short while about his intentions moving forward, at times to the chagrin of many attendees [13][14]. Eventually though, he heeded the calls of protesters and joined them on the front lines [15].

Meanwhile, protesters began their usual ritual of firing fireworks at the courthouse, where federal officers have been staging [16][17][18]. Combined with the trash some protesters had thrown over the newly reinforced fence, a fire started, which quickly grew into a small blaze [19][20, 9:40]. A few protesters managed to get the side gates open, and began meandering around the makeshift courtyard. Just after 11:15 PM, federal officers deployed their first round of tear gas, also peppering the crowd with…well, pepper balls. And impact munitions, but that’s not as funny when paired with the word “peppering” [20, 22:10][21]. Mayor Wheeler himself was gassed at the front of the crowd [22], and immediately said that he was reconsidering the use of such weapon, especially given that protesters had done nothing to warrant it, in his view [3][23].

This will certainly come as welcome news to protesters, although it rang a bit hollow, considering protesters had been saying the exact same thing since police under his command began gassing protesters on May 29th [24]. It called to mind the age old stereotype of the out-of-touch white person refusing to believe how horrible things can be for BIPOC until they themselves experience a taste of it.

The crowd regrouped quickly [25], leading to about a half hour standoff between feds and the more than 1000 demonstrators still in attendance. Protesters returned to meandering around the steps of the courthouse, banging in the fence, and shooting the occasional firework, which prompted another federal response [20, 46:20][26]. Officers once again launched munitions indiscriminately into the crowd [20, 55:05]. Protesters again regrouped, and in one of the more surreal moments of the night, began loudly playing the famous “Imperial March” from Star Wars [27]. In another odd move, the feds seemed to refuse to put out the fire on federal property despite their supposed mandate to protect federal property [28].

For the next half-hour, officers continued their song-and-dance of storming out the courthouse, firing off a round of munitions, then retreating [29]. Sometime around this point, Mayor Wheeler left due to the effects of the tear gas, followed by a throng to the Portland Building [30]. Exactly 36 minutes after Wheeler’s departure, PPB showed up and declared a riot [31][32][33]. It was unclear to me what changed over the course of those 36 minutes, other than the departure of their commissioner, as protesters did not appear to do anything they hadn’t already been doing, which Wheeler himself had just said did not warrant the feds’ overwhelming use of crowd control munitions. Nevertheless, PPB threatened crowd control all the same, including the very tear gas that their commissioner had so recently decried. In a somewhat amazing change of pace, however, they never actually used those munitions, nor did they even appear to attempt to push people out from what I saw.

Instead, the feds saw to that.

Federal officers continued their aforementioned song-and-dance [34][35][36], until making one big final push [37]. Most reporters had left by this point, so I was unable to find a reporter who witnessed the attack to confirm whether or not there was an inciting incident, but their previous assaults on the night suggest that there was little to none, and certainly not one that warranted the type of overwhelming force they used.

And that was about it, he says acknowledging that two months ago he would have thought that was enough to write a book on. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but it has become a part of daily life under the occupation of federal officers, who continue to indiscriminately assault the people of Portland. I guess when you think peaceful protesters are terrorists, anything is game.

Black lives matter, y’all. G’night.

TL;DR: Mayor Wheeler took to the streets alongside the largest crowd since the first week, receiving a deluge of boos, heckles, and, eventually, tear gas.

Donate

[1] https://www.dontshootpdx.org/support-our-work/

[2] https://blackpdx.com/become-a-patron/

Sources

[3] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286194497559252992?s=21

[4] https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-officers-portland-force-journalits-legal-observers/

[5] https://twitter.com/pdocumentarians/status/1285882926316449793?s=21

[6] https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/oregons-attorney-general-argues-for-temporary-restraining-order-against-federal-law-enforcement.html

[7] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/508566-trump-announces-hes-sending-federal-agents-to-chicago

[8] https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1284831061181173761?s=21

[9] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/facing-unrest-on-american-streets-trump-turns-homeland-security-powers-inward/2020/07/21/655e7822-cb71-11ea-89ce-ac7d5e4a5a38_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_protestpowers-753pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

[10] https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/07/portland-bans-police-from-working-with-federal-law-enforcement-targeting-journalists-and-legal-observers-during-protests.html

[11] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286157778965262337?s=21

[12] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286151667780476930?s=21

[13] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286157991188688899?s=21

[14] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286160468013268993?s=21

[15] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286182983485894662?s=21

[16] https://twitter.com/dirquez/status/1286175064015032321?s=21

[17] https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1286175141559296000?s=21

[18] https://twitter.com/pdocumentarians/status/1286175583689297920?s=21

[19] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286180979149664256?s=21

[20] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1286177806464950272?s=21 9:40 for fire 22:10 first gassing 46:20 second gassing 55:05 third gassing

[21] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286186098520027136?s=21

[22] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286190958455844866?s=21

[23] https://twitter.com/evertonbailey/status/1286191443824926720?s=21

[24] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286189393544265729?s=21

[25] https://twitter.com/donovanfarley/status/1286185879904509952?s=21

[26] https://twitter.com/therealcoryelia/status/1286190801156939777?s=21

[27] https://twitter.com/13374nt1f458008/status/1286193120384876544?s=21

[28] https://twitter.com/bethnakamura/status/1286198386316546048?s=21

[29] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1286203439974768641?s=21

[30] https://twitter.com/tuckwoodstock/status/1286193671629443072?s=21

[31] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286205487743082496?s=21

[32] https://twitter.com/lindseypsmith7/status/1286203048277102592?s=21

[33] https://twitter.com/andrewjank/status/1286202967494991872?s=21

[34] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1286204519559225344?s=21 11:40 for yet another gassing, I’ve lost count

[35] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286208094880411648?s=21

[36] https://twitter.com/therealcoryelia/status/1286217439210958849?s=21

[37] https://twitter.com/cascadianphotog/status/1286239797132947456?s=21

Portland Police Watch Special Report: Feds in Portland 2

CW: police brutality

Note: These observations are on tonight’s abuses by the Portland Police. These abuses, of course, come in response to the protests over racial discrimination and police brutality spurred by the murder of George Floyd. While I believe these abuses are important to document and do play a part in the overall narrative of the protests, they should not overshadow the larger message fighting racial inequity. Along with donating and promoting the voices of BIPOC, they are simply how I feel I can be most actively useful given the health conditions that prevent me from participating in the demonstrations during this damn pandemic.

If you’ve been finding my reports useful, and have the means to do so, consider throwing a few bucks my way. I’m spending five to eight hours every night watching these protests, doing research, and communicating with protesters and reporters on the ground, and while I’m happy to contribute in the small way that I can and will continue to do so regardless of donations, it’s quite draining work. Additionally, with most forms of acting cancelled for the foreseeable future, my finances have taken a severe hit, and soliciting voluntary donations allows me to dedicate more time and energy to providing the in-depth coverage this movement needs. Alternately, consider donating that money to either the journalists I’ve been citing or to one of the nonprofits supporting the protests, like Don’t Shoot PDX or the Black Lives Matter group, itself.

Donate to Don’t Shoot PDX [1] Donate to Black Lives Matter—Portland Chapter [2]

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Tonight’s Portland Police Watch Special Report is brought to you by I-had-too-many-thoughts-to-keep-in-until-tomorrow, when I’ll be back from my mental health break for regular nightly protest coverage. As with last time, this is a bit different from my nightly reports, in that it focuses on a single issue—today’s response from the Trump administration to the Portland protests—and contains more of my thoughts than usual as I attempt to contextualize and unspin it based on my observations. While I am certainly no expert, I have been following these protests very closely, and have a lot of knowledge about politics thanks to my obsessive politiphilia. And let me tell you, this has been the worst four years ever to be a politiphile (thanks OCD-bama).

Today, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf held a press conference, defending the tactics being used by federal officers in Portland in their attempt to “quell” the protests, as President Trump put it last week. In addition to Wolf, Acting Secretary of Customs and Border Patrol Mark S. Morgan and Deputy Secretary of the Federal Protective Service Richard “Kris” Cline, whose agencies have been among those front and center in the recent federal crackdown, made appearances.

The Oregonian wrote an article summarizing the conference [3], and I have pulled out what I saw as five key sections, offering my thoughts on each.

1. According to the federal code, these federal officers can make arrests “without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in the presence of the officer or agent or for any felony” and “conduct investigations, on and off the property in question, of offenses that may have been committed against property owned or occupied by the Federal Government or persons on the property.”

According to this, it would seem that these behaviors are, in fact, legal. Personally, I don’t find this surprising, but, as I wrote yesterday, the bigger question that protesters seem to be asking is whether they SHOULD be legal, rather than whether they ARE legal. After all, as I wrote about the other day, it’s not just long-controversial laws like the infamous Patriot Act making these abuses possible; experts say that the Title 42 pandemic law triggered by President Trump’s national state of emergency declaration over the coronavirus grants certain agencies, such as CBP, extra authority, which they are now using against Portland protesters under the ostensibility of combating the pandemic. This is just speculation, but it might be one reason Trump hasn’t rescinded the emergency declaration despite desperately wanting the economy to get going again.

2. Both Morgan and Wolf called it offensive for Portlanders or others to describe federal officers as “unidentified stormtroopers” or the “gestapo.”

I’m assuming most of you know this already, but for those who don’t, stormtroopers were the original paramilitary wing of the German Nazi Party, named after the German shock troopers of WWI, while the Gestapo were their official secret police.

Look, I don’t think anyone, or at least anyone rational, is arguing that the behaviors of these agencies have been perfectly analogous to the above-mentioned institutions, at least in the context of these protests. I think there’s a case to be made that they ARE more analogous when it comes to CBP’s treatment of undocumented immigrants and refugees these past three-and-a-half years, but if we’re just looking at these protests here, the analogy falters. Hitler’s secret police were known to not just abduct people for a few hours, but straight up murder them, or spirit then away to labor camps. Now, I have received second-hand, unconfirmed reports from a reliable source that some people may still be being held without charges, but, again, these are very unconfirmed, nor have I received an update in several days, so take them with a massive heaping of salt. Even that, though, pales in comparison to the viciousness of the Gestapo.

However.

These behaviors clearly stand in direct contradiction to the freedom of thought and expression that underlie the philosophy of a (small-l) liberal democratic republic like the United States. Moreover, these behaviors seem to blatantly conflict with the Constitutional protections against the government abridging freedom of speech, assembly, and petition for redress of grievances—at least on their face; I am no legal scholar.

Then there’s the optics of it all. “Unidentified officers (either by name or even by agency) scooping people up off the street for no other reason than participating in a protest that the President doesn’t approve of” doesn’t exactly scream “freedom” to the casual viewer, even if they are let go a few hours later. In fact, it kinda screams “secret police terrorizing political dissidents,” which IS analogous to the GOALS of the Gestapo, if not the TACTICS. Whatever the case, unaccountable, unidentifiable secret police do not a healthy democracy make. “Stormtroopers” and “Gestapo” are simply a colloquialized way of saying, “unaccountable, unidentifiable secret police that appear to be grossly violating people’s rights.”

So…if the shoe fits.

3. In an attempt to counter a New York Times report, Morgan said the Customs and Border Protection’s Special Response Team and Border Patrol Tactical Team known as BORTAC are highly trained to respond to riot control in detention facilities. The Times quoted from a Homeland Security internal document prepared for Wolf’s trip to Portland, which warned the federal officers in Portland were not specifically trained in riot control or mass demonstrations.

I mean, you can say that, Mr. Secretary, but doing so without providing any of your own evidence to counter that published by the New York Times gives me no reason to believe you. And the comparison of Portlanders exercising their Constitutional rights to inmates doesn’t exactly speak highly of his views of his fellow citizens.

4. “I’m willing to work with [local officials],‘' Wolf said. “We need to de-escalate. We need to find a peaceful outcome.”

But he pledged to keep federal officers in Portland until the violence ends.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the vast, VAST majority of violence has been committed by the police. And aside from the first major might of protests, May 29th, I would go so far as to say that the vast majority of the of the violence AND property damage committed by the protesters had come in retaliation to police abuses. After all, most of the protesters have been non-violent, and yet neither the local police nor the feds have seemed to make any distinction between peaceful protesters and instigators when using force, force has that has been far disproportionate to the acts of which the protesters are accused—the most violent of which have rarely been witnessed or even confirmed by journalists on the scene, or really any other evidence besides the police’s own. As former FBI special agent Michael German put it in an article released today by the Washington Post, “[They are] equating terrorism to vandalism. You can wash spray paint off a wall. You paint over it. It’s not that serious of a crime. And why that would ever justify the government’s use of violence is hard to understand” [4].

Even the May 29th riot must be seen in the context of years of PPB’s racism, brutality, and what German called “objectively” better treatment of largely non-local far-right white nationalists and supremacists, including those who had overtly expressed violent agendas, over local, mostly peaceful counter-protesters and those who showed up to protect them, since the police weren’t. So this is far from the first time Portlanders have faced police brutality and injustices recently, and it hasn’t just come from the feds. In that way, even the extreme actions a tiny minority of protesters have taken, such as setting small fires in the Portland Police Association union building the other night, could be considered justified—if technically illegal—retaliation to months, years, and decades of assaults by police. After all, if the people charged with upholding the law are the ones breaking it (or twisting it to a violent end), and if the mechanisms of oversight have shown themselves to be broken, and if your peaceful protests haven’t changed anything for the better, what other option does one have than to commit an illegal act of destruction to bring attention to the injustice?

5. According to Cline of the Federal Protective Service, members of Oregon’s U.S. Attorney’s Office are present at each evening roll call with the federal officers stationed at the courthouse, reviewing the uses of force and rules of engagement. Cline said the federal officers are acting under the direction of the Federal Protective Service.

It is interesting that they appear to have legal experts with them—although it should be mentioned that they are only there at roll call, not when force is actually being deployed—but this really comes full circle back to the question I asked in the beginning: it’s not whether these behaviors ARE legal, but if they SHOULD be..

This is why the deference on when to enforce the law given to members up and down the executive branch, from beat cops all the way up to the President, as well as the long-standing presidential norm of taking public opinion into account, are so important. Unfortunately, President Trump has only shown interest in either when they personally benefit him or those close to him.

Regarding executive deference, he will gladly use that it to benefit those he perceives as loyal to him, like Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, but turn around and use it to harshly punish those he perceives are not, like these protesters. These two contrasting examples might be the most clear evidence yet of how President Trump is more interested in using the presidency to reward those aligned with him and punish those opposed to him, rather than serving citizens equally, as he swore to do. He could, if he so chose, use his executive authority to order these officers to leave, or stand down. At the very least, he could order them not to leave federal property, and only clear those actively attempting to breach it. Instead, he has publicly supported their heavy-handed tactics, which have included firing tear gas and making arrests blocks away from federal property. He has ordered attorneys to prosecute those arrested to the maximum extent of the law. We already knew he had little regard for those in Oregon, since it is a very blue state, so this leaves two possibilities, in my opinion, as to why he is choosing this route:

a. He wants people in blue states to suffer. More so, he wants the BLUE people in blue states to suffer, but he’s never been a terribly subtle actor. b. He wants to impress swing voters, who have historically been opposed to protests that include more violence like these, with the narrative that he protected them by strongly cracking down on what Acting Secretary Wolf has insisted (72 times in his recent statement) are “violent anarchists.”

Perhaps he’s trying to hit two birds with one stone.

Regarding norms, he will gladly synecdochize his base’s thoughts for the thoughts of every American when his base supports something he wants to do, especially when he knows it is controversial, like limit immigration from majority-Muslim countries, while ignoring what the vast majority of the only people affected by another one of his policies, and their elected officials, are asking for, like Portlanders asking the feds to leave, or at least stop acting like an invading secret police force. It’s a classic form of gaslighting. A President shouldn’t always follow the will of the public, of course; they’re generally privy to much more and better information (if they’re willing to read and/or listen to it) than we are—and may not always be able to reveal that information for security reasons—and therefore can make more informed choices. However, as an elected official in a democracy, the people’s will must play a role in the decision-making process, even if it is eventually dismissed in favor of better information. Due in part to his well-documented abuse of the deference power mentioned above, however, as well as his tendency to lie or twist the truth to cast him in a more positive light, President Trump has lost the benefit of the doubt that he is acting in good faith when dismissing the public’s will. And, frankly, there is no realistic scenario in which the information he is receiving privately on these protests would somehow justify these tyrannical behaviors. And it is those unjustifiable behaviors that have reignited this movement tenfold. They are why people of Portland and the officials who represent them are asking—nay, demanding—that federal officers leave. Until then, it seems the people of Portland will think of them as nothing but a violent, occupying force of a wannabe authoritarian dictator.

If the shoe fits.

Black lives matter, y’all. Have a pleasant evening.

Donate

[1] https://www.dontshootpdx.org/support-our-work/

[2] https://blackpdx.com/become-a-patron/

Sources

[3] https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/07/federal-authorities-answer-questions-about-role-in-portland.html

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/21/portland-feds-protests/