Behind the Bastards - Episode 4: Uprising: A Guide From Portland: The Battle of July 4th

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

After more than a month of enduring police violence, Portland protesters finally leveled up enough to fight back. This is the story of the battle of July 4th.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. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut?

That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space. With no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So join me, won't you? Listen to the Doctor's sex re-show every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Ad Council. The Gangster Chronicles podcast is a weekly conversation that revolves around the underworld. With criminals and entertainers, to victims of crime and law enforcement, we cover all facets of the game. The Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify or promote illicit activities. We just discuss the ramifications and repercussions of these activities, because after all, if you play against the game, you are ultimately rewarded with gangster prizes.

iHeart Radio is number one for podcasts, but don't take our word for it. Find the Gangster Chronicles podcast on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Violence has a curious way of rendering you both more resilient to, and less tolerant of, more violence. By the start of July, every regular protester and press member in the city of Portland had seen dozens of flashbang grenades detonate within feet of their heads. In June alone, I was tear-gassed at least 60 times, and there are literally thousands of other Portlanders who endured similar barrages. We'd all run like hell from charging riot lines, which is an experience in and of itself. I've been to war zones on two continents I've been shot at and I've been shelled once, and I can honestly say that being bullrushed by dozens of armored policemen ranks as among the most frightening things I've ever experienced.

It's certainly less lethal than coming under sniper fire, but there's something uncontrollably panic inducing about being chased by a wall of angry men who want to harm you. The lizard part of your brain starts firing. Panic rises up in the primal hinterlands of your brain. If you aren't careful, it takes over completely, and even if you do stay in control, the adrenaline coursing through your system, it'll make your hands shake. It'll blur the parts of your mind that make coherent thought possible. Portland protesters learned a lot through the month of June, but one thing they didn't quite figure out was how to stand up against a charging riot line. They did learn a lot of other valuable things, though. Tear gas went from something that instantly dispersed crowds to more of a moderate annoyance.

Some of this was a product of people acquiring gas masks and respirators, but more of it had to do with people learning how to treat gas injuries, how to put out or throw back smoking canisters, and, most importantly, how not to panic while choking on poison. One major way this information spread in the early days were live streams. Conundrum, a blind journalist who recorded soundscapes for the Portland riots, recalls how she used live stream audio to train herself up before going out. I'd been, you know, since, like, the first week, helping out in ways I can, sort of from behind the scenes, constantly. It took until mid to late, you know, because initially, when all this started going down, you know, here in Portland, I was like, how can I be involved? You know, logic brain is going, okay, Katie, you're blind, not safe for you to go out there. You know, all of these reasons why a blind person, probably running through clouds of tear gas, not the greatest idea you've ever had. And so it was like, okay, well, what are the other ways I can support the community at large and specific people who I know that are out there?

Well, for one, I got that $1,200 stimulus check and I didn't need it, so I'm like, who needs gear? So donating into different organizations, that was one way that I could help very easily in my position. I live by myself, I live like a student, because I am a student, and I, yeah. Also supporting friends that I had who were out on the ground, like, sitting there watching all of the live streams and like, following all of you guys that were out there on the ground since day one. Like, I'm sitting there up all night, every night, eight nights a week, because some number of my friends are out every night, right? And so as stuff gets started, I start pulling up every stream that I could find. So yeah, that was a lot of what I would be doing is having multiple live streams playing at the same time, like listening to the audio. Obviously, I can't see what's happening in the videos, so I mean, I was not as effective as somebody who could actually see the pictures, obviously.

In that tiny regard, I can't see the pictures people are tweeting out or what's in them, but, you know, me and some of my friends had some groups set up where I wasn't the only one doing this, and we would sort of share the information with each other first before passing it on to the people who were, you know, out and about, like, hey, guys, maybe stay away from Third and Madison. There's reports of fascists in a truck with US flags, like, don't go around, there's a guy with a gun, you know, stuff like that. Once people were actually out on the ground, getting tear gassed and granaded and charged on a regular basis, they started coalescing into groups based on what they were particularly interested in doing to help out. For Chris and a number of his colleagues, that meant learning to work as a team of medics. This kid had a broken shoulder, and there's a bunch of people crowding around being like, I'm a medic, but I've only got water and band-aids and stuff. And I wandered up and I said, hi, my name's Chris. I have triangle bandages. Would you like one?

And so I met a medic friend that way. And then I met all of their medic friends. And it's like, well, we should keep in contact. You guys have signalling me, like a small signal group. And then I started to meet other medics and, like, get their signal information. I met other medics that were doing the same thing. And so we all kind of, like, everybody kind of met, like, five medics, and all five medics knew another five medics. And so it all kind of coalesced like that. So there's a lot of independent medics, but really there are these medic groups. And within the internal communications that we have, we usually have, like, a few people, like, one or two people from each group.

Like, I'm with Pam. I know other medics that are with Pam that are in, like, a, you know, in communication. And then, you know, there's the Ewoks, and we'll know some Ewoks, and if I can't get a hold of the Ewoks, I know somebody who can. And so we do all try and talk to each other, we try and talk to each other on the day of to make sure that, you know, like, we're all on the same page. Because different medics have different styles. And then another reason that's so important is because, especially in emergency medicine, you're taught how to deal with, like, bi-hazard situations, you know, things where you need to triage, things where there's a lot of patients at once. And there's a lot of people coming from different places to be medics. And you have to learn, you know, who's above you, who's below you, so that you're not stepping on each other's toes and getting each other's way.

And so learning what everyone's scope of practice is was very important. And that's just kind of a standard question that we ask now. If you meet somebody that you have a man that, like, oh, I'm a medic, it could be like, oh, hey, cool. My name's Chris. I was trained as an EMT. If you don't mind me asking, what's your scope of practice? Because sometimes there are people who would be like, oh, yeah, I've been taking care of my mom for, like, five years, but I have no formal training and be like, all right, cool. I'm going to keep that in mind so that when something happens, you know, I don't ask someone, like, hey, grab my Sam's plant and mold it for me.

I can be like, hey, hold my flashlight, guy. Or sometimes, you know, when a lot of people get tear gas, those people are really good because flushing eyes isn't hard and I can teach somebody how to flush eyes. And that way, if we've got those people flushing eyes and then someone else has, like, a broken bone, I can deal with that. Medic! There were small emergent groups who brought shields, others who brought traffic cones and water jugs to douse tear gas, and others who showed up with food and protective gear to hand out to protesters. A number of disabled activists who did not feel they could safely participate in toe-to-toe confrontations with riot lines filled valuable logistic roles, making sure that frontliners had ample water, respirator filters, and food.

Juniper was one of hundreds of people who took it upon themselves to see that the Portland protests were supplied with what they needed. I was able to feel like I could go and drop off supplies. Like, I have, you know, I am a middle class, upwardly mobile, white person, and I have some money. And there are people out on the front lines putting their bodies and lives on the line. And so I was like, I'm going to go give some snacks to people and get some water and just some other protective equipment and things that I knew could be useful. Other small groups helped coordinate aid and raise attention for actions online. One of these organizations was PopMob, or popular mobilization, who formed early on in the Trump administration after a series of disastrous and bloody dueling rallies between fascist and anti-fascist protesters in Portland.

PopMob acted as a sort of unifying bridge for different local anti-fascist groups, with a focus on getting the word out to large groups of what they called everyday anti-fascists. These were people who weren't hardcore activists but didn't want Nazis marching around their city. In Portland's BLM movement took off, though. Effie Baum and their colleagues at PopMob decided they should take a less visible support role. So mostly just retweeting things and then when people would share events with us, boosting those events or boosting different affinity groups that were involved in the nightly protests and really just kind of providing basically a signal boost to the people that were doing the organizing

and specifically focusing only on trying to boost BIPOC-led efforts, especially given all of the conversation around white anarchists and co-opting the movement or the media like to blame everything on white anarchists, which then takes away the autonomy and disempowers the people that were in fact organizing those events in a very real anger and justified anger behind those events. And so we also did not want to contribute to that narrative in any way, shape, or form. So we really made a very intentional effort to operate exclusively in a supportive role. A lot of us were there many nights and continue to go out many nights,

but the organization as a whole did not have an organizational presence. As organizers, one of the goals that we would have is pushing back against kind of this white supremacist culture that we all participate in every day. And so that was one of the main reasons we did not want to take any kind of lead in the organizing is because it's one thing when we are coming out and organizing against like Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer, who, you know, the Proud Boys and those groups target a lot of different marginalized and vulnerable populations from, you know, many different groups. And so in a sense, you could look at it and say that the work is similar.

But at the same time, I think that it's important for the people who are most affected to be the voices that people are hearing. And especially because we've seen how much that the media has latched onto trying to discredit those voices by painting it as angry white anarchists. As the days and weeks wore on, Portland protesters grew hardened and increasingly effective at standing up to police violence. Tear gas and grenades stopped working to disperse crowds. Pepperballs, little paintball-style projectiles filled with mace and fired from a paintball gun. Likewise, lost their effectiveness as shields became more common. Police bullrushes remained the most effective tactic for dispersing crowds,

especially since, by late June, most of those crowds were quite small. Portland protesters started gathering on Telegram, an anonymous messaging app, in order to coordinate and pass on intelligence. During events, people would warn each other of police charges and the presence of riot trucks. Before and after events, they would dissect their performance and discuss ways to improve. Near the end of June, they started talking about how protesters might form their own shield wall, something that could stand up against police charges. Now, in between numerous nights of reporting on riots, my partner Elaine Kenshin spent hours browsing through those conversations

and watching as people worked out how to defend themselves from charging officers. I'm going to throw you over to Elaine now, explaining how that process came together. Well, since the very beginning of the protest, there had been various diagrams that were circulating on the Internet. A lot of them came from things that had been done in Hong Kong. So, different diagrams of roles that protesters could take to more effectively protect each other. Some of those involved laser pointers and some of them involved shields or helmets or supply line stuff. And so, those had been being circulated throughout all of June, both on protest or Telegram channels and also on Twitter and other communication channels.

And as the charges, the bull rushes and stuff really heated up and more people were being injured and the police brutality was becoming more intense, a lot of those discussions and how to effectively implement them would be happening after protests had wound down or during the day. And so, I would follow and read through all sorts of different threads where people were posting images of how to do Roman-style turtle shell formations with overlapping shields or could make an effective wall to block the people behind them from police munitions to more effectively protect all the peaceful protesters who are in the back. All these different emergent groups that form to handle different tasks within the movement

are what is called affinity groups. This is a fairly old concept within anarchist organizing. Here are our friends at the Youth Liberation Front, or YLF, explain the context. Again, because President Trump and numerous right-wing media figures have repeatedly called for their imprisonment or execution, we've hired voice actors to reread the things they said to us rather than risk exposing their identities. So, an affinity group is usually like five to ten people who share some affinity and it's the preferred method for anarchist organizing because it's small, it's informal, and... Usually non-hierarchical.

And usually horizontally organized, yeah. I think it's been preferable to the large organization model that we attempted and just failed because there was no accountability and there's no way to ensure that everyone was cool with each other. And when problems came up, they just fucked us over. We spoke to one anonymous activist who had no experience with anarchist organizing prior to the summer of 2020. She started coming out to Portland protests earlier in the summer with her friends. So the first time I went out to one of the nightly protests,

I went with a couple of friends that I've known since I was like 18 or 19 because they had been going out and I felt comfortable being with them. They don't come out anymore. Once her friends stopped going, she floated around different crews of activists, experimenting with different affinity groups, but eventually deciding that she preferred an even more decentralized approach to protesting. As far as my length of knowledge, an affinity group is just a decentralized group of people that you can form ideas with and kind of go over maybe safety tactics and different things like that.

But I kind of quickly realized that affinity groups weren't necessarily for me. I think that sometimes it can get complicated fairly quickly. And so I still go down to the protests by myself. Since I've been doing this for as long as I have, it doesn't take me very long to run into somebody that I know. And sometimes I feel like having someone that's worried about my safety can be a bit of a hindrance. Sometimes I'm having to be on a radio consistently and always be on my phone to make sure that I'm in communication with different people.

I don't want anybody to have to worry about if I'm going to be fine, because I'm going to be fine. So yeah, I usually go down by myself. I think that the network of affinity groups has been a positive thing. 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 in the good and bad ass 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 heaven. 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 offending 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. People that have been around and experienced the most have that information that they can share with one another.

One major advantage of anarchist organizing tactics is that it makes anarchist groups harder to infiltrate and disrupt. Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI instituted a counterintelligence program nicknamed COINTEL PRO at the orders of director J. Edgar Hoover. The program was initially targeted at the U.S. Communist Party, but was quickly extended to all kinds of left-wing activist organizations, particularly the Black Panthers. Hoover's goal with COINTEL PRO was to increase factionalism, cause disruption, and win defections. He wanted to spread such terror among left-wing activists that none of them would again walk into a meeting without feeling like there must be FBI agents in the room. COINTEL PRO was incredibly successful, and while the program officially ended in 1971, the tactics the FBI pioneered in this period have been used by a variety of law enforcement agencies ever since. Even organizations like the Portland Chapter of the Black Panthers, whose more radical programs included free breakfast for neighborhood kids and dental care for all, earned the ire of COINTEL PRO. In an interview last year, chapter co-founder Kent Ford recalled a journalist sharing with him plots from the FBI to poison the produce the Panthers would use to feed hundreds of kids every morning.

As a result, it is impossible to take part in any kind of mass anti-government action and not feel like there are probably federal agents in your midst. When PT Barnum's Great American Museum burned to the ground in 1865, what rose from its ashes would change the world. Welcome to Grim and Mild Presents, an ongoing journey into the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season, we'll be giving you a backstage tour of the always complex and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is the American Sideshow. So come along as we visit the shadowy corners of the stage and learn about the people who are at the center of it all. In a place where spectacle was king, we will soon discover there's always more to the story than meets the eye. So step right up and get in line. Listen to Grim and Mild Presents now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more over at GrimandMild.com. I'm Eve Rodzky, author of the New York Times Bestseller Fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space. Activist on the Gender Division of Labor, Attorney and Family Mediator. Dr. Aditya Narukar, a Harvard physician and medical correspondent with an expertise in the science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. We're so excited to share our podcast, Time Out, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine. We're uncovering why society makes it so hard for women to treat their time with the value it deserves. So take this time out with us. Listen to Time Out, a Fair Play podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Organizing by affinity groups helps to negate some of the advantages the state has. It's impossible to know that any masked group of hundreds of people doesn't include undercover cops, but it is very possible to know that you and your four or five close buddies aren't cops. The only organizing that occurs in the open at a large-scale event is very basic and not legally incriminating, i.e. we're gathering at this park at 8 p.m. hearing speeches and then marching at 9 p.m. On most occasions, either a specific organizer will pick the direction for that week's march or a vote will be taken as to the destination. The decision to take part in any illegal activity, acts of property destruction and the like, is made by these small, independent affinity groups and sometimes just individuals on their own.

Often, only two or three groups out of a 300-person march will actually engage in serious law-breaking. The others are there to shout, wave signs, and stand up to confront the police when they inevitably arrive. This method of organization does have a number of weaknesses, which we will discuss in subsequent episodes, but it has proven more resilient to state surveillance than being part of an organization with a strict hierarchy. One major aspect of this is that many more dedicated Portland protesters take something called security culture very seriously. Here's the YLF again. Security culture. Security culture, I think, is interesting.

The risks you are taking and what precautions you need to take to be safe, because not every risk is going to have the same consequences. And so it's being able to judge those. And if you do something that's questionable, possibly illegal, don't talk about it. Don't incriminate yourself. Keep your mouth shut. Don't incriminate others. There's just a crime think article called what is security culture, I believe, and that's a great introduction for people who don't know.

It's a very important part of really any movement, because if you have bad security culture and you're putting yourself at risk or the organizers at risk, you're going to disrupt a movement because you're going to get people in trouble. So that definitely plays like, don't talk about things you did. Don't photograph things you did. Don't bring your phone if that's the thing you're able to do because they could track you. And Feds and Portland literally cloned phones and have like, they can just pinpoint you. So that's another thing where it's like, yeah, basically it's knowing the risk

and knowing how to safely protect yourself from those risks. That, Zine, what is security culture? We like to make sure to send it to all, everyone who wants to get involved with us. That's like the first thing, yeah. It's the most basic thing that we send. None of these security measures were enough to protect people from being arrested by cops during actions. It doesn't matter how solid your digital security is or how trustworthy your friends are if a cop charges at you faster than you can run away.

But good security culture can prevent activists from being arrested after actions. See, the United States is filled to hell and back with cameras. When protesters damage or destroy property while protesting, police will spend weeks trying to identify the individual's responsible. This is a big part of why Black Block has evolved as a tactic. If everyone is dressed basically identically, with their features covered and no logos or tattoos showing, it's much more difficult for police to identify people after an action. Going in Block has disadvantages too though, largely when it comes to optics.

When you're properly blocked up, it will be difficult or impossible to determine your race. As a result, police and local politicians in Portland tended to blame the activities of blocked up crowds on white anarchists, alleging that the city's Black Lives Matter movement had been hijacked by white kids who just wanted to break things. Koska, an indigenous Portlander who has been arrested by this point at least 10 times in 2020, pushed back against that characterization. It's definitely a narrative that works because people believe it and people keep repeating it. Even some people of color, I hear repeating it.

But I know for a fact it's not true because I've been doing this with people in Black Block for several years and have got to know lots of people. I have never ever seen so many people of color in Block before. Particularly Native people, just the Native people in Block is a huge amount compared to the population, the general population of the area. I think you could even say it's racist to say that everyone in Black Block is white. In September, after more than four months of nightly protests, the Justice Department launched a criminal inquiry targeting the leaders of organizations responsible

for anti-police brutality protests across the nation. Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told Fox News, what we know is that we have seen groups and individuals move from Portland to other parts of the country. I also found a very poorly written USA Today article on the subject. It includes this paragraph. Asked why leaders of Antifa, a loosely organized extreme far-left ideology and Black Lives Matter, formed in part to call attention to violence against Black communities, had not been arrested. Wolf said, this is something I talk to the AG personally about, and I know that they are working on it.

So far, these investigations have been markedly unsuccessful. Leaked reports later in the year revealed that the Department of Homeland Security thought that Antifa was an organized group with a structured leadership cast that could be identified and arrested. No evidence of this was ever turned up, which suggests that this sort of decentralized organizational tactic is at least harder for law enforcement to penetrate. The vast majority of affinity groups don't exist to organize window-breaking, fire-starting, or any of the other things the media love to focus on in their coverage of Portland protests. At their most basic level, affinity groups are a safety tool.

Cop riots can be incredibly dangerous, and everyone considering going into such a situation should have buddies who are there to watch your back and render aid if you get hurt. Obviously, not everyone interested in participating in protests had friends who were willing to go out with them. Enter Comrade Collective, an organization that formed in the middle of the protests to help match lone activists with buddies they could protest with for the night. And so, the first time I had met up with Comrade Collective, it was funny because I had all this anxiety and stuff, and I remember thinking, oh my god, I'm so uncomfortable, I don't know these people, and then I was like, I'm totally not going to meet up with them again, because I was like, I'll just stay by myself.

Here we are. But it was when I left and one of our other comrades messaged me and was like, are you home? And I wasn't expecting that, and I was like, what? And I was like, oh my god, that's awesome. And then just getting used to the checking in to make sure they're not arrested or didn't get attacked by fascists or whatever. And so just kind of like, I think just getting exposed to people. I'm like, oh my god, these are like strangers that I don't know that give a shit about my well-being. And so that kind of in turn makes you care more about yourself and then also want to do the same for others.

And I also, I'm one that tends to stray from the group, so I'm definitely comfortable by myself in certain situations. But I still, even if I'm separated. 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 were like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not in the good and bad ass 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 heaven. 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 offending 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. I like to know that there is someone out there that I can hit up or check in with, even if we're not together at that moment. By the start of July, all the ingredients were in place for Portland's protest movement to display its first real, meaningful resistance to the violent might of a police riot line.

Protests had seriously waned in the days prior to the 4th, with just a few dozen people showing up most nights. But the holiday, and more to the point, the fact that shitloads of fireworks were on sale for the holiday, brought a massive crowd of more than a thousand Portlanders out to the city parks in front of the Justice Center in the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse. In the days that followed DHS director Chad Wolf's announcement that rapid deployment teams were being sent to Portland, activists had been on the lookout for feds. They'd been visible inside the IRS building across the street from the Justice Center. Reporters had taken several photographs of men in heavy military body armor, carrying rifles. But until the 4th, none of those men had actively engaged with the protest. My team, Beatrix, Elaine and Garrison, and I all arrived in front of the Justice Center at around 9.30 p.m.

The energy in the air was as apparent as the smell of gunpowder. People were setting off fireworks, mostly mortars at random, in and around the crowd. We hated it at first. After weeks of being repeatedly flash banged by cops, we were all just ridiculously on edge. The first thing I saw upon arrival was a pile of American flags burning in a concrete pit that had once held a massive elk statue. For several nights in a row, protesters had set fires in and around the elk statue. Not out of anger, but out of a desire to stay warm and, one assumes, for the joy of setting fires. Eventually, the city removed the elk out of fears that it might collapse and injure somebody. Protesters loved the elk statue, though, and began constructing a series of facsimile elk statues.

On the 4th, it was a tiny model of a baby elk sandwiched in between billowing flames. While the flags burned, protesters chanted, Black Lives Matter. As more folks arrived, more fireworks were set off. At first, people simply stood in the street in front of the Justice Center, aiming fireworks straight into the air to provide their incarcerated friends with a show. This was not universally popular behavior because, again, at least half the crowd was dealing with the opening salvos of pretty serious PTSD at this point. Of course, the fireworks continued, and once they hit a certain frequency, everyone's brains kind of got numb to the effect. If I can be honest, it started to be fun.

Some individuals in affinity groups within the crowd had brought lasers to shine into the giant camera that had been installed out in front of the Justice Center. By 10.15 p.m., the fireworks usage had grown more militant, and people were shooting dozens of commercial-grade fireworks straight into the Justice Center, breaking several windows. At least one prisoner inside was seen waving excitedly out to the crowd, which provoked rejoicing outside. The fireworks barrage continued, with protesters aiming occasional salvos at the federal courthouse too. At around 10.35 p.m., the police finally showed up. The fence. Job-direct fireworks towards the Justice Center. These fireworks are impacting the adults and counseling and the building.

Please speak, activities. We crook it. Mastermind rover rings in the hearts of all trans利, youngsters and backdrops of making sure everything goes awry. Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more productive with the Before Breakfast Podcast. In each bite-sized daily episode, time management and productivity expert, Laura Vander Cam teaches you how to make the most of your time, both at work and at home. strong as we age learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron listen to before breakfast wherever you get your podcasts give us your attention we need everything you've got fast waiting on reparations we'd be the endless podcast tune in every Thursday politics and wordplay we fight for the people because they got us in the worst way from the hill to Brazil Bombay to

Kanye from the left on clave to what the neocons say every Thursday cop the heady conversation and break us off with some break as we're waiting on reparations listen to waiting on reparations on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast after 30 years it's time to return to the halls of West Beverly high and hang out at the peach pit on the podcast 902 one OMG join Jenny Garth and Tori spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly Hills 902 one oh from the very beginning we get to tell the fans all of the behind the scenes stories that actually happened so they know what happened on camera obviously but we can tell them all the good stuff that happened off camera get all the juicy details of every episode that you've been wondering about for decades as 902 one oh super fan and radio host sissony sits in with Jenny and Tori to reminisce reflect and relive each moment from Brandon and Kelly's first kiss to shouting Donna Martin graduates you have an amazing memory you remember everything about the entire 10 years that we film that show and you remember absolutely nothing of the 10 years that we film that show listen to 902 one OMG on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts virtually all the people out on the fourth were by this point hardened to police violence they've been trained by weeks in the streets to do exactly the opposite of whatever the police Elrad told them to do true to form they surged forward at this moving and force into the intersection between the courthouse and justice center more and more fireworks were launched at both buildings as I moved forward sensing imminent tear gas I heard one person behind me say they shouldn't have said anything look what happens when they talk

at 1041pm I started live streaming almost immediately after that federal agents inside the courthouse started dumping tear gas out of holes in the walls of the courthouse the crowd backed up but did not disperse instead they retreated to the park and they gave a warning and people kept firing fireworks and now it looks like they're out and shooting tear gas into the square the crowd backed up but did not disperse instead they retreated to the parks watched each other's eyes out and continued to shoot fireworks at both buildings after a few minutes they marched forward again into the intersection no one knew it at the time with the first federal tear gas deployment and the decision of protesters to continue advancing on the courthouse a series of events had been set into motion that would turn Portland into one of the biggest stories in the country lead to hundreds of arrests and several near fatal injuries I don't believe any of the people in the crowd that night particularly wanted that to happen I certainly saw no evidence of a concerted plan instead what I saw was a community of battered people who had just spent weeks being gassed and granated and beaten with truncheons and arrested for crimes as minor is standing in an intersection with a sign they had started coming out to protest police brutality and wound up repeated victims of it and now over the course of June they'd gotten good at resisting it each person there had learned tactics to mitigate police riot control agents they'd come to trust their fellow Portlanders and now finally there were enough of them out again to put up serious resistance to the cops and they had sacks full of commercial grade fireworks to throw back at the thin blue line shooting grenades at them with all that psychic weight behind them there was simply no way this crowd was going to back down to the demands of police or federal agents instead the mass of Portlanders swarmed the front steps of the federal courthouse that had just gassed them they began launching fireworks directly into its facade shattering some of the windows higher up the street level windows were all covered in plywood and those plywood walls had several hinged slits on them that federal agents inside could flip open to shoot from I started calling them murder holes after similar features built into medieval castles

the term stuck minutes went by federal agents would occasionally fire pepper balls into the crowd but 11 p.m. came and went without another major show of force at around 11 0 5 the police started dumping gas or smoke out of the side door of the justice center the feds dropped more gas out to but instead of dispersing the crowd moved back in an orderly fashion frontliners with umbrellas and shields moved to the front and deflected pepper balls while medics washed out eyes and people with gas masks and respirators ran into the cloud to throw more fireworks at the courthouse the whole situation evolved into something very much like a siege so we definitely have an old fashioned medieval siege here you see the crowd getting their shields to the front I think the feds and the police had expected that gas and pepper balls would suffice to force the crowd away but the crowd kept advancing dedicated teams would run up with traffic cones and put out gas grenades eventually the feds and the Portland police were forced to bombard both parks just to push the crowd away wow wow okay it's going wild somebody's riding a bicycle with a shield to the crowd fireworks are firing gas pills there's a little bit of gas behind us let's go through here go through here

the police made a decision more gas it was the most gas deployed in Portland since tear gas Tuesday despite being doused with gas the crowd did not scatter when I washed my eyes out and was able to look around I saw hundreds of people still arrayed for battle and ready to go the police and federal agents both came out and forced that night they marched forward pumping out gas and pepper balls and smoke grenades the crowd was forced back foot by foot but they held together I think DHS had expected that the presence of federal agents and military gear would have rattled protesters more but activists just treated them like more cops the site of fully armored soldiers and military gear was unsettling especially since no one at the time had any idea what agency they were with the combined feds and police succeeded in splitting the crowd in two through a combination of walls of gas and bull rushes but both groups held together and proceeded to lead law enforcement on a two hour chase through the streets of Portland there were moments of shocking brutality where police would tackle protesters and drag them on their backs across asphalt into clouds of gas to arrest them one protester we interviewed was arrested that night she'd shown up as a shield bearer and had been one of the people protecting the crowd from incoming fire yeah yeah the 4th of July was wild you know I think we everyone went into that night knowing like you know this is the 4th of July it's going to be a fairly big night the protests were really they were going strong and I showed up before the sun went down and was just kind of doing the thing that I had been doing the entire time leading up to that point which is I was far enough away from the police that I could be there if anyone got tear gas to help them with saline or something like that and I had been coming out each night with like extra gear to hand out to people that didn't have anything so I was with one of my friends who ended up getting arrested right next to me and I was giving someone saline and he said Emily get up there about to rush us and I had been given a shield that night because

the night before there was a woman who was who had been tear gas really really badly and I gave her like my personal gear I'd given away all of my extra stuff so I gave her my stuff and someone came up to me earlier in the evening and was like are you Emily and I was like yeah they're like we made this for you like you helped my friend last night and so this is for you and so I had a shield with me I use my shield to get up off of the ground and I started to run and that's when I got tackled and arrested I had you know after looking at the video I remember feeling at least two knees on top of me and you know going back and thinking about it like I had a palm on top of my head I ended up with a black eye that I had for like three weeks but someone was palming my face into the pavement and so you know I get up I had a backpack on they cut my backpack off of me the person the officer that arrested me told me that I had tried to hit a police officer with my shield and I just like very calmly and politely said you know like you know good luck proving that because I would never do anything like that because I wouldn't I was down there to help the people that needed to be helped I'm not a medic I never wore medic gear I never claimed to be a medic you know I was just there to assist in any way that I could both crowds engaged in something of a fighting retreat for the better part of two hours when police would mass up for a bull rush protesters would launch fireworks into their riot line this disrupted them every time and seemed to even panic some eventually the police grew so weary of being blasted that they pulled back and both crowds were able to escape pursuit at around 1240 am both crowds met up again just a couple of blocks away from the courthouse and justice center after two hours of constant fighting hundreds and hundreds of people were still together organized and dangerous despite everyone's weariness there was tremendous excitement in the air as the crowd of Portlanders reoccupied the parks and set off celebratory fireworks in the center of the elk statue

for the first time since the demonstrations had begun on May 29th Portland protesters had what felt like a real victory the police and the federal agents had thrown everything in their arsenal at a crowd that refused to disperse people had held their own against multiple riot lines and forced them to back away for the first time ever a crowd kicked out of the parks in front of the justice center had succeeded in reoccupying those parks for a long time people just celebrated an experience July 4th was the first night that did feel a little like a revolution and of course the coming days and weeks would make it very clear that the fight was far from over and that July 4th had been at best a very temporary victory but in the early hours of July 5th it still felt like one it still felt nice to see us elite in a cop light promises 20 teens looking like the 60s it's crazy a nationwide deja vu what my people supposed to do go to schools named after the clan founder we're around town is I don't see why we frowning Native American students forced to learn about when O'Para Sarah how is that fair bruh some heroes unsung and

some monsters get monuments built for them but ain't be all a little bit of monster we crooked give us your attention we need everything you got fast waiting on reparations we'd be the endless podcast tune in every Thursday politics and wordplay we fight for the people cuz they got us in the worst way from the hill to Brazil Bombay to Kanye from the left on clave to what the neocons say every Thursday cop the heady conversation to break us off with some break as we're waiting on reparations listen to waiting on reparations on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your

podcast hi I'm Robert sex Reese host of the Dr. sex re show and every episode I listen to people talk about their sex and intimacy issues and yes I despise every minute of it yeah she she made mistakes too but hell is real we're all trapped here and there's nothing any of us can do about it so join me won't you listen to the Dr. sex Reese show every Tuesday on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast what's up guys I'm a shop allow and I am Troy Millings and we are the host of the earn your leisure podcast where we break down business models and examine the latest trends in finance we

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class mix for pop culture want to learn about the real estate game unclear as how to stock market works we got you interested in starting a trucking company or a vending machine business not really sure about how taxes or credit work we got it all covered the Ernie leisure podcast is available now listen to Ernie leisure on the black effect podcast network I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast 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 was like a lot of guns but our 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 I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast 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 to death sentences in a life without parole my youngest I was incarcerated two days after her first

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