Behind the Bastards - Episode 10: Uprising: A Guide From Portland: The End of Uprising

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

In this episode we cover the struggle to save the Red House, and where things in Portland stand today.Host: Robert EvansExecutive Producer: Sophie LichtermanWriters: Bea Lake, Donovan Smith, Elaine Kinchen, Garrison Davis, Robert EvansNarration: Bea Lake, Donovan Smith, Elaine Kinchen, Garrison Davis, Robert EvansEditor: Chris SzczechMusic: Crooked Ways by Propaganda Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's real talk, straight from the source. The How Men Think podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out. It's going to be fun, informative, and probably a bit scary at times. Because we're literally going inside the minds of men. Listen to How Men Think on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I literally had to go like Thanos, and I don't want to have to be the villain, but when I went and did the Donda thing, Yay returned. And everybody had to sit back and watch the real leader. Check out Drink Champ's conversation with Yay and many more legendary artists each and every Friday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Colleen Witt. Join me, the host of Eating While Broke podcast, while I eat a meal created by self-made entrepreneurs, influencers, and celebrities over a meal they once ate when they were broke. Today I have the lovely AJ Crimson, the official princess of Compton, Asia, Kid Ink, and Asya. This is the professor. We're here on Eating While Broke, and today I'm going to break down my meal that got me through a time when I was broke. Listen to Eating While Broke on the iHeart Radio app, on Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. As the sun began to tuck away for winter, so did many portlanders who'd spent the summer out protesting.

As the days grew shorter, a shrunken but dedicated group of activists continued to pound the streets in their call for justice. The early days of the protests had been fueled, in part, by the massive lockdown and the layoffs that came with it. As the pandemic wore on, economic collapse contributed to street activism in new ways. Portland has been in a housing state of emergency since 2015, as it was declared by former Mayor Charlie Hales, and extended by his successors in the city council again in 2019 for two more years. For a long time, thousands of portlanders had lived one paycheck away from homelessness, and in 2020, thousands more found themselves on the edge of a cliff. To stave off disaster, a pandemic eviction moratorium was adopted by local lawmakers.

It included no forgiveness or grace period for missed rent. This meant that, while you wouldn't get kicked out of your home for missing rent, all that unpaid rent still stacked up. At the time of recording, 89,000 households in Oregon are subject to eviction when the state's moratorium expires, owing more than $378 million in collective back rent. Now, evicting all of those people would cost the state $3 billion, eight times more than the total back rent owed. Near the end of 2020, the whole situation wound up coming to a head in the battle over a single property, the Red House, on North Mississippi Avenue. Coming up next is Elaine.

Portland has spent the last decade basking its image as a liberal playground of birds, stickers, and locomotive foodies. However, this hides the concerted destruction by developers and city planners of Portland's black community in the Albina district during that same time. The area was redlined for blacks with local government working in concert with real estate agents and banks to guarantee black people virtually had no options to live outside the neighborhood. Following the Vanport floods of 1948, local lawmakers and real estate interests coordinated to ensure that thousands of black individuals and families suddenly without a home could look nowhere else but a small section of inner north and northeast Portland if they were to live within city limits. The mostly European immigrant populated neighborhood flipped almost overnight with many other residents quickly fleeing the area to avoid living near black people. Shortly after the flood, close to 70% of the state's black population lived in the Albina district.

Consequently, the neighborhood has been the nucleus to much of the city's black community for generations. The Portland Police Bureau conducted years of targeted harassment aimed at the Albina community. Years of blight, systemic disinvestment, and policing have led to a mass exodus of blacks from the Central Albina Corps. Many left to the fringes of the city in search of lower rents as northeast Portland suddenly became prime real estate. Quickly, the place so many called home was eroding before their eyes. Here are the snack mamas on the gentrification of Albina and some history of northeast Portland. It's hard to see how north Portland is turned. It's really hard to watch the change. Sometimes I get really angry. You could have cleared the freeway and stuck it right there and put a hospital right there.

I don't even remember what was there before the motor center was, but I'm sure it probably should go to home. It used to be the Rose Quarter. They changed that without telling anybody. There's a whole industrial area down there, but you're tearing families out of homes who live there. I was like my son's grandmother. She lived on 33rd and Prescott right there on the corner. She's like in her late 90s. They came and pretty much stole that house from up underneath her. Yeah, and they're always the blocks with all the, you know. They moved into like a hotel, like apartment thing, and died shortly after that. And it's like, it's upsetting when I drive by and see it.

I'm like, Goddamn, I don't drive my car through that house. It's upsetting the way they do things and the way they, you know, re-home people. The ruins run deep. In the last decade, home ownership for black Portlanders has fallen, not risen. Perhaps more striking is their representation in the houseless population. About 7.2% of Multnomah County's population is black. But according to their most recent point in time count, which was released in pre-COVID times, it showed that black Portlanders accounted for more than 16% of the houseless in the area. The policy adopted by the City of Portland designed to give residents with historic ties to inner north and northeast

helps illustrate how deep the need is. The policy gives first dibs at select new apartments being developed by the Housing Bureau, assists existing homeowners in the area with maintenance, and fosters home ownership opportunities. When applications for the first round of units opened up in 2015, thousands applied to live in the handful of units. More complexes have been built since and dozens more serve for the home repair and ownership opportunities. But every time applications open, the systems are flooded with people just hoping to make the waitlist. However, for people that qualify, some feel like the program does not go far enough

to remediate the damage that was done to the community. The snack mamas continue while even that program has problems since it limits the ownership rights of the family that it helps to return. I entered into this program for people who lived in North Portland and were kind of pushed out. So I entered that program and I'm just like, this is fucking complete bullshit. You're asking people who have been kicked out of their homes because you guys have great fucking credit to get into this program and to be able to buy a home on their own shit. But yet you own the land, they can own the home. Go fuck yourselves. Yeah, that's what it is. They own the program.

They own the land. They bring people back into the neighborhood. They own that land, you own the home. Mind you, when you move out, they get a piece of that money when you sell your home because they helped you get into there. So you can't do any work on the land or tear the house down and build and you can't do whatever the fuck you want to do. That's their fucking land, you know, and you're just owning the home on it. So it's not actually helping people get back into the neighborhood any functional way.

No, no, no, absolutely the same. That's how they like to make it look. So you have choices between all these little houses or little buildings or townhomes or whatever. There was nothing that was over like two bedrooms, I think, two or three bedrooms on any of those lists because I've got a family of five, you know, and I'm just like, fuck, none of this shit's here for me. Like, what's the deal? Can I build on it? No, you can't build anything else on it. What the fuck? You know, finding out that that's their property, you just own the building for that point being, you know,

and yeah, I'm just like, but all these properties are certain properties, you know, because it's just what they own that you get to live on. Yeah, basically. It's like this fucking bullshit, dude. You know, I never made it to my second appointment. I was like, fuck out of here. Local activist Regina Rage also spoke on the ongoing gentrification in Portland in specific relation to a certain red painted house on Mississippi Avenue that was owned by the same black family for more than 50 years.

That house would become one of the main focal points in Portland protests. Yeah, Mississippi Street is... During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not on the gun badass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time,

and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me.

About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Located in a neighborhood in Portland, that was previously an all-black neighborhood and is at the very moment being gentrified and developed. And black families are being forced out into East Portland and Southeast Portland because of this gentrification. And so like for me specifically, I like remember the lot that we're all occupying and it's been empty my entire life. And now because of this protest, they want to develop it into something else. They're going to donate it and then they're going to put higher eyes on top of it, condos.

The neighborhood looks vastly different from when I was growing up. I don't recognize it. Sometimes I'm driving and I just really don't recognize it. And that's what makes it important to the community is this is one of the last black families in this neighborhood and they are doing everything they can to remain this neighborhood. And previously they were displaced from Vanport as well. Another neighborhood in Portland that was destroyed. And all of it is tied to white supremacy and what we're fighting against.

I'm Colleen Witt. Join me, the host of Eating While Broke podcast. While I eat a meal created by self-made entrepreneurs, influencers and celebrities over a meal they once ate when they were broke. Today I have the lovely AJ Crimson, the official princess of Compton, Asia. Kid Ink in Asia. This is the professor. We're here on Eating While Broke and today I'm going to break down my meal that got me through a time when I was broke. Listen to Eating While Broke on the iHeart Radio app on Apple Podcast

or wherever you get your podcasts. The art world, it is essentially a money laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging on people's walls. You know, they don't even know or suspect that they're fakes. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed and forgery in the art world. You knew the painting was fake. Listen to Art Fraud starting February 1st on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Robert Lam. And I'm Joe McCormick and we're the hosts of the Science Podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind where every week we get to explore some of the weirdest questions in the universe. Like, if sci-fi teleportation was possible, how would it square with the multitudes of organisms that inhabit our human bodies? Can we find evidence of emotions in animals like bees, ants and crayfish? How would an interplanetary civilization function? Disfree will exist. Stuff to Blow Your Mind examines neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels and the wonders of techno history.

Basically, this show is the altar where we worship the weirdness of reality. If anybody ever told you, you ask the weirdest questions. It is time to come join us in the place where you belong, the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Thursday with bonus episodes on Saturdays. Listen to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's Donovan Smith. The Red House on Mississippi has belonged to the Kenny family for over 65 years. William and Pauline Kenny sold their house to their son, William Jr. and his wife in 1995. Their financial dominoes began when the owner's son got into a car accident on a suspended license at 17 in 2002.

The driver of the car died, the passenger was injured and William III was ultimately convicted of a felony. To cover legal fees, the Kenny family took out a balloon loan against the house. The son, William X. Nietzsche, was sentenced to five years first in juvenile detention before being transitioned to the state prison at 18. Over time, due to interest and expenses piling up, as well as inadequate legal representation, the Kenny family home, now one of the last black-owned homes on North Mississippi, ended up in foreclosure. Because the foreclosure process started prior to the pandemic, in September, a judge ruled that the eviction of the Kenny's could proceed despite the eviction moratorium. That month, the Multnomah County Sheriff stormed into the red house with rifles and evicted four members of the family. After the initial eviction, some Portlanders began gathering around the red house to support the Kenny's. They decried the forced eviction, especially amidst economic crisis and a pandemic.

Some even camped outside the property. And then on December 5th, the Portland Police Bureau and County Sheriff's arrived yet again to clear out residents' campers and render the home on Mississippi Avenue uninhabited. Alisa Azar, an independent Portland journalist, was on the ground when the tide turned against the police eviction team. Red House, wow, where to begin? You know, Red House is like such a wild story in so many ways. That morning, oh my God, it was like not even 9.30 in the morning. And I was like, holy shit, like everyone just went like full Paris on PPP. It was not even 10 o'clock in the morning. I was like, what am I witnessing right now? This is wild.

But I think that's fucking huge because, you know, for almost 200 days, we've seen people, you know, we've seen activists and protesters play nothing but defense. And even the defense is very like, it's usually very childish and comical, you know, which is what's so fucking powerful, you know, they throw bouncy balls and water balloons filled with glitter at the cops and the cops' reaction is just like, you know, it's absurd. So seeing that kind, and even the morning of Red House, that was still defense. But it was a different kind of defense. It was a hands-on, aggressive, don't fuck with us kind of defense. And you know, it's the first time I've seen anything like that. And the fact that it was done for that reason, I think also just goes to show, like, what the community is about. Seeing people care that much was incredible. There were people literally fighting the cops. And I think this is one of the few, like, literally fighting the cops to defend a family that was, you know, they were trying to force out of their home.

And I think, you know, in general, Red House, but like even like leading up to Red House, there's been, I think there's been a lot more, like, attention and a lot more like care and focus on houselessness. Activist Regina Rage also witnessed the December raid. I was there at five. They called me at four and forty-five, and I got there right after. In the morning. Yes, in the morning. Initially, it was just me there. And then I think by the time daylight hit, and Coyote was there, there was maybe like 50 people all like crunched in like this one tiny side yard that the only place we were allowed to be at. And at that point, I noticed that white people were allowed to stand in that alleyway.

And I wasn't. Every time I stepped in the alleyway, they the police charged at me and threatened to arrest me. And I started yelling about how like they were blatantly allowing these white people to walk back and forth in this alleyway, but I wasn't. And other people started yelling. And then soon we were all just standing in the street and the police were rushing us. At one point, they maist us all and forced us all back onto the side yard. And then we rushed again. A couple of people got arrested and they at one point decided to pull back and the sheriffs left first. And as they started to lead, I started running down the hill towards the cop cars. And everybody else followed and it escalated from there.

Under a hell of water bottles, rocks, paint balloons and other random projectiles, police retreated from the area. The cops initially arrived around 5 a.m. and were completely gone by 10 30. In the five hours they were present, at least seven people were arrested. In the hasty retreat, several police cars were damaged, some by projectiles and one due to an officer crashing his own cruiser into another car. And then they would describe what happened next. The police finally left. We're chased off, whatever. And we just took down the fence and started building them immediately. The police had destroyed all of what we had built at Red House.

It was like a weather-proof living space for those individuals who were staying there as well as like an event space. It was like very, very, very nice and they destroyed it. And so we took basically all of the broken materials that they created for us and used those to build barricades. And when the barricades were up, we organized watch and began calling for supplies to be brought in. Like what happened, I do want to add, what happened with that barricade was just like an organic response to being attacked by an enemy who literally does not give a fuck about your life. Regina and I are both single mothers. You know what I'm saying? They're out there gassing single moms. Alisa recounts the mood after the cops were pushed out of the area. Everyone was just kind of like on edge. It was a huge celebration, but everybody was like they're coming back and with force, they just got their asses handed to them.

There's absolutely no way they're just going to leave. So everyone was ready and everyone was waiting and within minutes barricades started to go up. But even then, they weren't just like barricades. Were you at PICAS or any of the really, really barricaded knights? And those knights were fucking sick, but a lot of the barricades, they were really cool and they served their purpose. But Red House, I'm talking like reinforced barricades and blockades. There were power tools, there was concrete being laid out, anything you could think of. And I think a lot of that comes from practice and you learn what you do wrong by testing things out. But I think the biggest change was it was the passion.

Hours after the barricades went up, narrowly reelected Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler made a series of tweets. Decrying the eviction blockade and mischaracterizing the eviction defense as a so-called autonomous zone. He said, quote, I'm authorizing the Portland police to use all lawful means to end the illegal occupation on North Mississippi Avenue and to hold those violating our community laws accountable. There will be no autonomous zone in Portland, end quote. Nervous anticipation loomed over everyone the first night inside the barricades. Behind the multiple layers of reinforced barricades and impromptu call troops, people anxiously waited to see if the police would show up that first night. But slowly morning came and the coast was clear. Over the next few days, the infrastructure grew. Barricades grew more sophisticated. The janky call trouts made of screws and garden hoses were replaced with welded rebar.

The food donation area turned into a whole kitchen and more and more tents were put up in the streets around the Red House. But as time went on and police didn't show, familiar problems arose regarding people acting as security. Here's Regina. And I think that white people in this movement often come into it with a white savior complex and take up a lot of space and actually alienate the black people that this movement is about. And that's what happened during the barricade. There were a ton of white cisgendered people running around, behaving crazily, acting like cops, to be honest. Multiple people, some of them children were physically assaulted, put in choke holes, shot at with paintballs, and kicked out of the Red House eviction defense area for not having permission to use paint. By large men acting as self-appointed security team. Problems with the protest security occurred, important before the most notable being the truck driver assault, but smaller incidents took place throughout the summer and fall.

Armed men running around in tactical gear trying to intimidate people into obedience and in some cases using physical force has the same fundamental issue people could police for. The same problem of armed security essentially acting as cop is part of what got a black teenager in Seattle's Capitol Hill occupy protests or chop killed. One phrase spray painted near the Red House was kill the cop in your head, reflecting the protesters dissatisfaction with this dynamic. When a group of people are attacking children over graffiti, that's basically a mini police force, unaccountable armed men in tactical gear. Part of police abolition is confronting policing dynamics found throughout your life, even at anti-police protests. The kill the cop in your head graffiti at Red House was soon buffed and covered over by his fellow activists within the blockade. For most within the barricades, there wasn't much conflict to speak of. The time at the eviction blockade was mostly spent sitting around a campfire and watching over the fortified fences for incoming police.

For the neighbors who lived near the Red House, the biggest change was a site inconvenience to parking. Many locals are very sympathetic to the cause, putting up signs and supported the Kennes and the Red House. And some even showed support in other ways. People were actually very supportive. Neighbors were bringing us food and supplies. They were coming to hang out with us. They were bringing us coffee. There were very few individuals in the neighborhood who actually felt threatened by any of us. But unfortunately, those are the people who got to the media first.

But I think that if we were able to talk to everyone who was involved, I think that they would say that they were proud of what we did. The few and far between ones who were against it were just very loud, quite privileged people with time on their hands. Which oftentimes, as we know, can have the powers that be. Once the barricades went up and the 24-7 lockdown beeped up, media both locally and nationally couldn't resist the Red House story. What had been one family's years-long battle in the courts was now suddenly catching the headlines of CNN and TMZ and yep, even Fox. A local activist named Coy Crespin who had been working with Regina to organize what the Kennes launched at GoFundMe. It set out to raise a quarter million dollars for the Kennes as a bargaining chip to get to developer Roman Ulzeruga to the table. When national media began constantly reporting on the House, donations shot up coming from all corners of the country as sympathetic viewers and readers

aimed to stop the Kennes from losing their home. A slight twist came when the Oregon Public Broadcasting or OPB released an article revealing that the Kennes family, in fact, had a place to stay after the raid. In fact, it was another family member who, yep, owned their own home. The headline read, family at the center of the Red House protests owned 2nd Portland home, detailing the fact that the home had been kept in the family for generations. This spurred similar headlines locally and nationally. And the media tried to say that they had a second house and as if an entire family with multiple generations all has to live in the same house. That is some racist shit. Super racist to say that a black family has to all live in the same fucking house.

OPB ran an apology article shortly thereafter, apologizing for their mischaracterization of the Kennes plate. Some support had dwindled, but through it all, support for the Red House grew and so did the fundraiser. The GoFundMe raised well over the quarter million dollars needed to secure the house. The developer was ready to approach the bargaining table. With the assistance of the city, Roman and the Kennes began discussions about transferring ownership back into the hands of the family. This was a mark of celebration for some who had been occupying the house since September. As conversations with Roman trucked on, the city after days of threatening police force against the house promised to barrel what back off if barricades came down. The Kennes obliged the dismay of some activists, many white, who wanted to flex the strength of the people.

But for Regina, she says the occupation was never about the walls. There were a lot of people who we didn't even know who had never been to the Red House, who had opinions on what we should have done and who we are now because we didn't keep those barricades up. But it was never about the barricades. It is and will always be about what is best for the Kenny family and what they want. And we did lose support slowly and slowly after the barricades came down. People stopped coming. And there are individuals living at the Red House right now who still need support from this community and are not getting it because the cops aren't an imminent threat anymore. At the moment, it does seem the eviction blockade was successful in applying enough pressure to open up options for the Kennes to keep their home.

Holding out a few blocks of a neighborhood while raising hundreds of thousands of dollars may not be a perfectly replicable strategy, but it does show the type of things that can happen when community comes together to stand up against a perceived injustice. Here's Coy on the potential impact of the Red House story in the future. And I hope it happens all around the country. I hope people are inspired by it and that they go seeking out evictions to do the shit with and to lift up this work. This isn't like the first ever time a neighborhood has risen up to defend an eviction. This would happen even as far back as the 30s. Communities would come together to fight the police when they came to drag people out of their homes. Right, I think like we've all seen, I don't know, we've probably all seen that pic of like, it's from like the 30s, like raised reference, where it's like neighborhood men and they're all white, like on top of a sheriff,

stopping them from evicting a widow, you know, like. A handful of people continue to occupy the Red House negotiations have continued since December, but all parties have been pretty tight-lipped about the status of the talks up until now. Red House has not marked the end of protests in Portland. More than anything, it's galvanized a large amount of mutual aid directed around evictions and houselessness. During the same period as Red House activists keeping multi-week watch over a houseless encampment at a local park that was under threat of sweep by the city. As winter is set in, the mayor is forced to roll back eviction protections as well as protections against campsweets. Facing freezing temperatures and a mounting pandemic, activists have mobilized to get gear and supplies as well as helping with defense work to prevent more evictions and displacement. Activists argue that sweeps and evictions are unconscionable during a pandemic and that money funding the evictions could be used to make sure that people are housed.

Demetria Hester speaks about the continuing mutual aid. No, it hasn't surprised me because our community know it's a need. They know it's a need, so they've started all these groups so that we can help the need in our community. I mean, people are still getting evicted. They're still not being able to pay their bills. They're still not getting food from our government, so we have to depend on each other to give us what we need, you know, to be successful, to keep going on. Because I don't see a future of our government giving us or doing anything to help us, so we still have to continue this fight. Plus, we're pushing it to the White House. I was there when Biden won.

We marched with the Black Panthers to the White House saying, two, four, six, eight, tell the world who we hate, the Republicans, the Democrats, the whole damn bunch. Another ongoing movement that has gained renewed interest since the summer protests is the Patrick Kimmon marches that happened twice a week. Letha Winston has been marching the streets of Portland at times alone in the search for justice for her son, Patrick Kimmons. For years, Letha has pleaded for local officials to reopen his case after he was shot and killed by Portland police in late 2018. The calls were met with little action. That was until the George Floyd uprisings. These protests have gave rise to an amended version of the slogan, Black Lives Matter, with many beginning to claim that all Black Lives Matter. While this phrase was created in part to give more visibility to black LGBTQ people who are experiencing some of the worst harms in the community,

it also grew to buck at the idea that those worth honoring or remembering need to somehow be perfect victims. Black and unarmed with no criminal background. When news of Kimmons case broke, details were scammed. He got into a confrontation with two men, shooting and wounding both of them. Police showed up shortly thereafter and he was shot and killed. It was later revealed by the autopsy that of the 12 bullets police fired at 27-year-old Kimmon, Nye entered his body. It also showed that some of those shots had gone through his back. After a judge ruled that there was no wrongdoing by the police, the barrel release footage of the early morning standoff organizer, Jedai Libby, explains the scene here.

Basically, like there was like a minor like argument or scuffle or whatever and Patrick started running and he didn't know that he was running towards the police. But he was running towards the police and then went to turn into like in between some cars and the cops started shooting him and all the shots went into his back. So yeah, they shot him in the back and killed him and the cops were not charged. It was basically rural justifiable homicide and it wasn't though because they shot him in his back. During the trial, the rookie cop who fired the fatal shots described himself as doing what he was taught to neutralize the threat. It was enough to vindicate him in the courts but not in the eyes of Alitha. She's been bleeding regular marches throughout the city since 2018. Sometimes with a crowd, other times just alone with a megaphone demanding for the case to be reopened.

Once the Portland protests began, her fight gained new light. Organizers like Jedai have helped grow the fleet of protesters marching alongside Kim and his mother. He talks about his involvement in the marches here. She did it for well over a year with virtually no help except for one person named Jay and he still comes to this very day. He's the only person that actually stuck with her throughout this entire time. So she's basically just trying to spread awareness and talk to Ted Wheeler. It worked. An emotional face-to-face between her and the mayor was finally scheduled. Ted Wheeler was super sad and was like, I can't believe I haven't done more about this. I'm really, really sorry. He's told her that she's like the strongest speaker, like one of the strongest speakers he's ever seen and he was brought to tears. This nigga was literally crying in the mayor's office. So that was great.

And basically we're just continuing to put the pressure on the police officers when we go out. Really, we just want the next meeting to come up because the next meeting they're going to sit down and actually review the tapes together. So that is what is being done right now. And just keeping our fingers crossed that happens sooner than later. Still, the case hasn't been reopened. Letha continues to march around the city demanding justice for her son, affectionately known as Pat Pat. The marches have continued with increased numbers through all the fall and into winter. During the autumn, face with increased attacks from far right extremists who would attack Letha's marches with signs and flags declaring that they backed the blue. Organizers and activists began using the slogan, Back the Black, for their weekly protests.

The continued hate and aggression that these peaceful marches have seen reflected the growing vitriol that was coming from the far right as we moved into the election. And finally, the January violence that rocked the nation. In Washington D.C. on January 6, thousands of Trump supporters rushed to Capitol building and a last ditch attempt to stop the certification of the presidential election results. The violent attempt to take over forced Congress to evacuate left five dead, including two police officers and drew the ties between law enforcement, Republican Congresspeople, and far right militants to the forefront of national awareness. In December, a stop the steel rally in Salem, Oregon had similarly breached the state Capitol, though the group hadn't reached the chambers of legislature. CCTV footage later showed that the breach in Salem began with the Republican legislator opening the doors to admit the mob. On the 6th of January, a small far right group assembled again and clashed with left wing demonstrators. The group again included both mainstream Republican politician and extremist figures, including one of the white supremacists convicted in the 1988 murder of Ethiopian grad student Mulligeta Sera and Portland.

Compared to the nation's Capitol, the Salem rally was limited. No major breaches of the Capitol in Salem occurred. By 3pm, the crowd had dispersed. Despite the shakeup, Biden assumed office just over a week later. On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order halting ICE deportations for 100 days as the administration attempted to overhaul many of Trump's deportation policies. That same day, protesters in Portland gathered at the local ICE headquarters. They didn't want to temporary into deportations. They wanted a complete disbanding of the 9-11 era agency who split up scores of families, held small children in cages, and acted in strong concert with the FBI since its inception.

This night ended with six arrests and without the stating of tear gas. Days later, another was a different story as feds and riot gear met protesters with cuffs, force, and closet gas. The headquarters had, however, become a fixture in the protests with federal agents regularly deploying CS gas against them. But situated next to the facility was the school. K-8 public charter, Cottonwood School of Civics and Science. The school regularly was engulfed in tear gas. Dr. Juniper Seminus immediately sprung into action collecting soil samples across the school campus, including its playground, to assess its impacts. While that research continues, Cottonwood didn't wait for their answer.

They wanted an immediate end to the use of tear gas by federal agents. Now, the agency hasn't issued any formal response, but it's almost certain that activists will continue returning to the building and call for an end to ICE as weeks roll on. With four years of Biden and Harris at the helm, their election was a welcome reprieve from Trump's heavy-handed brand of racist politics, but not an end to the fight against systems of repression. The simultaneous re-election of Mayor Ted Wheeler was a mark of dread for many who had been on the ground. He eked out a win, earning more votes than on-ballot challenger Sarah Iannarone, but less than her in total write-ins, many which are presumed to have went to don't shoot Portland founder Teresa Rafer, who community members launched a writing campaign for after the longtime BLM leader lost her bid for Portland's top seat in the primaries. The results revealed a divide even in Portland politics. Despite the split, it also marked the most racially gender and sexually diverse council in the city's history. The new council assumed office this January. Negotiations began between the city and police union that same month, and this time for the first time ever, the public got a glimpse behind the curtain.

After months of protests that put their barrel on headlines across the world, all eyes were on these powerful vancars of the profession. In the negotiations, tensions remained high as union heads railed against new measures of oversight, discipline, and limits on overtime expenditures. While the Bureau had said they want racial and social justice changes in the police force, many of the proposed changes have been met with critique and resistance. Their current contract with the city expires June 30th this year. As negotiations continue, it remains to be seen what changes will come between the Bureau and the city. The past year has been marked by a number of police involved violence, despite the growing cause for justice. In Vancouver, Washington, a bridge away from Portland, two young black men, Kevin Peterson Jr. and Genoa Davis, have been killed by officers within just a couple months of each other. In the college town of Eugene, Oregon, Wushin Sharif was shot after police responded to an alleged domestic violence report. Sharif did survive. Meanwhile, amidst the backdrop of the pandemic, the streets of Portland are seeing 30-year highs in gun violence. Economic downturn is leaving the city on edge.

White supremacists of all stripes have been emboldened while cries for justice for black lives have reached feverish new highs. The international cameras are gone now. Protests continue, but in markedly smaller numbers, that nine-minute fuse of George Floyd's murder had lit a fire under the country. What surface was a renewed urgency to transform a system that has devalued black lives, not as an exception, but a fundamental tool and tradition of the society? As the streets have quieted, the urgency for change still remains for those that have been a part of these uprisings. As the resistance begins to take a new face, the question remains, what's next? I don't think people are just going to get tired and go away. People have had enough of this police brutality and the racism that influences police brutality. I don't see it going away. I see it ebbing and flowing. It's almost natural for any energy to do that. We go up with big turnouts and go down with low turnouts or up with really good morale and then down in the dumps later.

I think it's going to keep following some kind of ebb and flow of change, but I don't think it's going to go away. I don't see how it would go away when the police are continuing to kill unarmed black people. They're continuing to do it. I think it's really telling that, as far as I know, not one single Portland police officer has been disciplined for their actions, and they have done some extremely terrible things that should be disciplined. Things that go against their training, things that go against their own policies and procedures, and these things are caught on video. So there's no excuse at all for why they have not been disciplined. The changes become the norm of it, if that makes sense. The way it gets pushed out into the big sea of water, the big sea of sea, and that's what it is.

I look at Ferguson, does that movement kind of fade away or whatever in this election that just happened? Yeah, in this post-election, they just elected one of the activists from there to Congress. So that's like, though the movement like says, that's like a lot of change. There are people there who are radicalized to do this. But though the movement that's tied to the summer of 2020 may fade away, unless they're going to remove everybody in all of our experiences, all of our renewed perspectives on life, then you can't really destroy movement at all. I think it's interesting. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations.

And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not on the gun badass way. He's a nasty shark.

He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth,

his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The morale of the city as a whole is very limbo, I feel like, often times.

But because it's like, ultimately, people who are protesting are ultimately doing it for the right reasons. And we get little glimmers of hope, but then just today I learned of three black people that were killed in the last week throughout the United States by police, unarmed. And then you hear shit like that, and then it just makes you wonder, like, why are we even continuing to do this? Like, why even keep fighting this just keeps happening? But I think that right now we live in this, I feel like right now we live in this time of questions where we have a lot of questions without answers.

But there are years that ask questions and there are years that answer them. I don't think we're in a year right now where we're going to get a lot of answers and that's okay. I feel like we need to be okay with, like, sitting in the questions and going through, like, the mud and going through the puddles, so to speak, in order to get to where we want to go. It's going to take time because the system is taking years to build into what it is right now. And so it's just going to take time. So I think the morale of the city limbo is because you have a bunch of, you know, the white neoliberals who just want to go back to normal, but normal was killing us, so we're not going to do that.

And then you have our side, which is like, we're feeling pulled in all kinds of directions. We're feeling inspiration and then we're feeling discouragement because we keep seeing the same shit happen. But ultimately, mutual aid really is the way of the future. And I think that these mutual aid groups and networks that we're forming right now are really the genesis of what it's going to look like for humanity to live in a world without dependence on the state and without feeling like the police are going to keep us safe when they've proven so many times that we don't. So I personally am excited about the future because I'm witnessing like the, yeah, really just the genesis of what the world that I would like to live in.

But obviously, you know, it's the whole two steps forward, one step back thing that we have to deal with as well. So I'm looking forward to how things are going. I'm just hoping that more people can really open their eyes to how they're how being complicit to the system is literally murdering people that look like me and Donovan and that we need to stop it. There's too many people who are still sleeping. That's a big reason why I think we were doing that thing at RCJ was to wake up this side of this, the river like marched through the neighborhoods, wake people up, let them know that we're here. There's a ton of us and that they need to be on our side because ultimately when we are free,

when black people are free, everybody's going to be free because black liberation is human liberation at the end of the day. So if we can really focus on uplifting our most marginalized and most oppressed communities and we're uplifting everybody at the same time and the quicker that more people really understand that and are inspired enough to actually take action and be a part of the movement, the better. Yeah, I'm looking forward to things though personally. Just as lifting weights keeps our bodies strong as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to Before Breakfast wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back the hit podcast How Men Think.

And that's good news for anyone that is confused by men, which is basically everyone. Get an inside look at what goes on in the mind of men from the men themselves. It's real talk, straight from the source. The How Men Think podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out. It's going to be fun, informative and probably a bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the minds of men. As much as we like to think all men are the same, they're actually very different. Each week, a celebrity guest host provides honest advice in his area of expertise. When I agreed to do this reboot, I had a few conditions.

No sugarcoating, no mind games, and absolutely no mansplaining. Men are hard enough to understand without the mind games. Listen to How Men Think on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Roxanne Gay, host of the Roxanne Gay Agenda, the bad feminist podcast of your dreams. Now, what is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, you might ask? Well, it's a podcast where I'm going to speak my mind about what's on my mind, and that could be anything. Every week, I will be in conversation with an interesting person who has something to say. We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books, and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics.

I started show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going to share with you a movie or a book or maybe some music or a comedy set. Something that I really want you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well. Listen to the Luminary Original Podcast, the Roxanne Gay Agenda, the bad feminist podcast of your dreams, every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2020 uprisings were not Portland's first by any means. The city earned the name Little Bay Root after protests against the Portland Republican National Convention in 1989. But when the world was gripped with a pandemic that had brought most facets of normal life to a screeching halt,

a spotlight was flung on the gaps between what America says it is and the realities its black citizens have experienced for decades. And in the midst of all this, Portland became Little Bay Root again, or as President Trump called it, a beehive of terrorists. To many of those on the ground, the city of roses seemed to be seeing what might be the beginnings of a beautiful new world, straining to be born. Tragedy warred with hope and, through it all, blood, sweat, and tear gas. A sometimes messy but determined group of activists stood toe-to-toe against some of the deepest cylinders of oppression in the country to make sure the normal that we have all known is replaced. Some lobbied, some voted, some shouted down the mayor. Some started nonprofits, some started wearing block.

No matter what people chose, thousands decided to take action. No definitive answers emerged out of the protests, but what did emerge was a reinvigorated sense of urgency for change. The question we're now all left with is this. Will we right the historic wrongs of this nation in time to fix things before the clock runs out? Only time will tell. From Cavalry Audio comes the new true crime podcast, The Shadow Girls. I grew up near the banks of the Green River and in the shadow of the killer that bears its name. Excuse me, described him as a serial killer survived.

But this podcast isn't only about tracking down the killer. It's about the victims. We stayed in the woods. He always liked to go in the woods. Listen to The Shadow Girls on the iHeart radio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back the hit podcast How Men Think, and that's good news for anyone that is confused by men, which is basically everyone. It's real talk, straight from the source. The How Men Think podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out. It's going to be fun, informative, and probably a bit scary at times,

because we're literally going inside the minds of men. Listen to How Men Think on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Look for your children's eyes, and you will discover the true magic of a forest. Find a forest near you and start exploring at DiscoverTheForest.org, brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the Ad Council. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside his hearse were like a lot of goods. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.