Behind the Bastards - Episode 5: Uprising: A Guide From Portland: The Fed War: Part 1

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

In this episode we discuss how Portland's confrontation with the feds mushroomed from the Battle of July 4th into a massive, nationwide spectacle.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. But we can tell them all the good stuff that happened off camera. Listen to 90210MG on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the doctor's sex re-show every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the doctor's sex re-show every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Up until July 2020, there was relatively little, on a national level, that separated Portland's BLM protests from the ones happening everywhere else. A few shots of tear gas walls had gone viral in the mainstream media,

and livestreams of Portland protests were popular among a certain set. But as far as the big networks were concerned, Portland was just another city convulsed with riots in the summer of 2020. That all changed in July. It started with the siege of the federal courthouse on July 4th. While that was going on in the streets of the Rose City, up north in Seattle, an activist named Summer Taylor died that night after a car plowed through a BLM march. On the 8th, activists in Portland staged a memorial vigil for Taylor.

This was disrupted by a small squad of federal agents who hit the crowd with flashbangs and impact rounds as they lit candles. Feelings were raw, but the crowd gathered near the justice center that night numbered less than a hundred. You could be forgiven for thinking that the Battle of July 4th had been the last gasp of a dying movement. Outside of the attack on the vigil, the rest of the week followed the same pattern established in June. Tiny groups of ragged activists being horribly beaten by riot lines of cops. It was exactly one week later, on July 11th, that everything changed. That night, a 26-year-old protester named Donovan LaBella was shot in the head at close range by a U.S. Marshal armed with an impact weapon. His skull was shattered. Donovan nearly died.

Video of the unprovoked attack went viral nationwide. Our own Garrison Davis was standing just a few feet behind Donovan when he was shot. Here's how Garrison recalls that night. So I got downtown around 9 p.m., kind of just a regular time to arrive. Usually that's like a bit before action starts. But when I got there, the streets around the courthouse and justice center were already filled with tear gas. There was already feds out in the streets. It was unclear what got them out.

It turns out it's just because people were on the courtyard. So there was already people in the streets and feds in the streets by the time I arrived. And then the feds got pushed back into the courtyard by a small group of activists on 4th Avenue. And then when the feds were on the courtyard, they just started shooting canisters from their grenade launcher. So yeah, this is like, I don't know, I've only been there like 10 minutes at this point. All this is happening very, very quickly. And the feds shoot off like five canisters in a row that are all like duds. They don't actually do anything.

And one of them lands underneath the car and a young man holding a boombox kind of like kicks it out from under the car. Because it was like sparking, but it wasn't like doing anything. It wasn't like exploding or shooting off any gas. And then after he kicked it out of under the car, he picked up just a boombox and was standing on the sidewalk across the street from the courthouse. I was like five feet to his right. And then he just got shot in the head. Yeah, he was just standing there with a boombox and he collapsed on the ground. I remember hearing, I mean, I heard the shot and I heard the fall.

I didn't see him fall. But by the time I looked over, he was on the ground bleeding out of his head. And you know, very quickly people came over and grabbed him. The thing that sticks out most is when they grabbed him and pulled him away, just how limp his body was. Like it was a very lifeless body. His head was like bobbing everywhere, which probably wasn't, you know, wasn't great. You should, you know, when you're picking someone up like that, you should try to make sure that doesn't happen. But yeah, it was, it was, it was, he was just so lifeless in that, in that moment.

They took him into the, into the park. Some medics started, you know, people, people yelled medic, medic. Medics came over, started to, you know, try to stop the bleeding. And an ambulance came about like 10, 15 minutes later, but like it felt, it felt a lot longer. You know, it felt like they were taking forever to arrive. But there's a lot, a lot of blood on the sidewalk, a lot of, a lot of blood in the park. The grass was like soaked. Donovan very nearly died from his injuries.

As we write this episode in December of 2020, he's just recently been released from the hospital following another round of treatment for the infections caused by his injuries. He has suffered permanent cognitive damage. The brutality with which Donovan was assaulted enraged Portlanders, even those who had not previously been active in the streets. Rage was further stoked by poor coverage by local mainstream sources like the Oregonian, who responded to this brutal attack on a young man wielding a boombox by grenade launcher wielding feds with an article full of expert analysis on why it had happened.

Those experts included a retired commander with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, who insisted the shot, which was taken from about 30 feet away, had to have been an accident. Quote, Nobody anywhere in the world that I am aware of is taught to aim for the head unless deadly force is also authorized. In this particular case, there is no rational way to say that deadly force was authorized. Overall, the article was crafted to leave the reader with the opinion that Labella's injuries must have been a tragic accident in the heat of the moment, rather than an angry and undisciplined federal agent choosing to permanently injure a 26-year-old armed with speakers.

The good news is that no one bought it. Portlanders were outraged by what happened to Donovan. More protesters began to trickle in to the nightly demonstrations outside the Justice Center, which switched their attention to the adjacent federal courthouse. Conor O'Shea had gotten his start attending Rose City Justice Marches. He switched over to attending the nightly confrontations against the police after he got bored of marches that seemed to go nowhere. I'd be like, Wait, what's going down by the Justice Center?

What's happening over there? I want to go over there. Why is everybody going back home? Like the sun's still out. Like this is, I want to go see what's happening over there. And then started doing that. And then was like, yeah, this feels right. This feels like, you know, like not, not to say like that.

You know, having a march during the day with like speeches, like, like, you know, all the protesting is valid. But I was definitely attracted to like showing up at the sources, like the biggest, the gnarliest symbols of what, what people are protesting against. Conor watched as the protests dwindled and he saw how the introduction of heavily armed federal agents and the outrage over Donovan's injury started drawing more people out into the streets. Before the fed showed up, it really felt like we were losing a lot of not necessarily momentum, but just like people showing up. Numbers were kind of coming down a little bit, which is to be expected. But yeah, when they did make an appearance, like aggressive appearances, it totally, it was, it totally served as a catalyst for further, like, like when, when they, they shouldn't know by now, like when they show up, you know, cops and feds. When they, when they show their face, it's like almost always worse, like in terms of like a crowd response, which I kind of love.

So, so when they showed up, it was like, like almost immediately everyone was like turning turning back up in huge numbers. So that was, it was just so funny to me that they, that they kind of kept doing what they were doing when the crowd response was just getting amplified by their presence. Many in the movement were rejuvenated by the fact that protest numbers were growing again. After so many nights of watching tinier and tinier groups get brutalized by the Portland police, it was stirring to feel like people cared again. Mark Pettibone's first night out had been June 1st, and like Connor, he'd been dismayed as numbers fell off throughout that month. He kept coming out though, and he was out protesting near the federal courthouse with Connor when the night of July 14th turned into the early morning of July 15th. It was actually a relatively uneventful night in terms of clashes between protesters and the cops. The PPV showed up, I think, once to kind of remove some barricades that people had set up in the street in front of the courthouse. And the feds made a really kind of quick, they came out of the building to, if you're facing the Justice Center, they came out of the building to the right briefly, and then retreated back in.

And so honestly, that night I spent, what I remember from early in the night was I was playing frisbee with people in the park. We were just hanging out. There wasn't much to kind of be angry at, at least visibly, the feds weren't out and about. So Mark and I were like, all right, this has been good. It's been fine, I guess. Not much going on. Let's get out of here. We've got to work tomorrow. We just, we had just gotten out of work a couple hours before. So like midnight or one o'clock rolls around and we're leaving. And as we're walking back to his car, we kind of get stopped by some protesters on the corner of the street there, just a couple blocks away. And they, they warn us that they had seen, or that people had seen unmarked vans kidnapping people. And so we were looking around and sure enough, right then, a van pulls up right in front of us, seemingly out of nowhere. And a bunch of guys in military fatigues jump out.

I look in it, I'm like, oh, they're probably feds. I don't know. It's a, it's a fucking minivan full of guys and fatigues, camo fatigues. They open the doors. Everybody but the driver gets out. They start, they start just walking straight towards us. And we're like, what, what, what, what, what the fuck? And there's, you know, there's traffic behind us. I remember Mark and I, like, almost getting hit by a car that had to stop because we're like, oh, I think we need to run. So we all take off in different directions. You know, there's no, no identification visually and also audibly. You know, they didn't say stop. We are, you know, so-and-so. It was just immediate. And so we, we kind of, you know, we ran for our lives and they ended up the people and the fatigues who ended up being the feds. They chased me down. One chased me down on foot. So I ran, I'll see West and made it a few blocks, took a turn and heard the van kind of accelerating up the hill, cut me off.

And so I dropped to my knees and I asked why several times. That was all I could form. Honestly, I wasn't like, why, why is this happening? Am I being detained? It was just why. And so they, they lifted me up off my knees, put me in the van, pulled my beanie over my head, padded me down, asked if I had weapons. And you know, I said no. And at this point, I, I, it was kind of this weird, you know, people always talk about these out of body experiences. And I, you know, had no experience with any of that until this happened. Mark booked it West. I went south. I was kind of running next to somebody for a minute, like, you know, maybe 15, 10 seconds. And then I cut up another, I cut up a block West after I got one block south. I think the, the fed that was the fed or feds that were after me and this person, like, I think they either went after that person or like, they forgot about me or something. Maybe it was just because I was able to run faster. I huck my sign that I've been carrying. Got it back the next morning. That was cool.

I huck my sign that I was carrying and am running up another block, fucking like scared for my life. I was able to be like, just don't talk to these people. At this point, I was pretty sure that it was the feds. And it wasn't some kind of rogue, you know, militia group. And I figured the best thing for me to do at that point was just to shut up and get through and ask for a lawyer when the time comes. At that point, I hit a dark street and I see what is either that same van or a different van cut across in front of me going north. That was, they were trying to find Mark. And at that point, I looked, looked over and saw, I forget what the name of the, it was another courthouse. Of course, because there's like 80 down there. I, I look at this, like, concrete railing, whatever you want to call that out front of this courthouse. And I'm like, there.

And okay, yeah, there, I'm going to jump this. I sprint across once the van gets out of sight because they started to loop back around the block. Yeah, sprint, jump over it, jump over the little barricade. And at this point, I didn't, I was sure they were going to get me. The only thing I could think to do was to shut my phone off, which I now know can still be traced, which is also horrific. But I have a Faraday bag for that now. So that's great. I shut my phone off. I hear more like another van or two, I assume, driving by like very kind of erratically like gunning it and then slowing down. I heard like that. I think that was them. I'm not positive. I heard someone in like boots with some jingling going on walk past. I just like tucked up against this barricade and was just like as quiet as I could be for, I don't know how long, half hour an hour until I was able to get in touch with a friend. They booked it across the river. They showed up. They opened the back door of this car, jumped in, stayed laying on my back. I don't think we covered me up with anything, but it was like, yeah, it was terrifying enough to be like, I don't know why they targeted us.

So yeah, got out of there and then get a call from Mark relatively quickly after I got to the other side of the river. I was like, like because we we friends were texting, I think like Emily and and another friend of ours, like we were like, they were like, we can't we can't get in touch with Mark. We think they got him. They did have Mark. But thankfully, he'd broken absolutely no law. The agents who'd snatched him had probably hoped that he'd be rattled enough by the whole experience to answer whatever questions they asked. When he refused to talk without a lawyer present, they had no choice but to let him go. The whole thing took about two hours, maybe even less. And so I was released with one other person. And I believe it was one of the protesters that I had been standing next to in the street when the van first pulled up. I think they ended up picking them up as well. So they released the two of us. 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 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. Same time. And this is after they read me my rights once I was shackled in a cell and asked if I wanted to wave them.

And I said, no, I want to talk to a lawyer. So after that, they came by again and said, okay, you're free to go. That same night, a local activist filmed federal agents and camouflage and military gear snatching another black clad protester and dragging him into an unmarked rental van. The video was horrifying, the kind of blatantly dystopian police state shit that couldn't not provoke a national response. And it did. Within a day, the video had been viewed millions and millions of times. The story broke nationwide on the 17th when The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and basically every major news source reported on Portland's federal snatch fans. Now we have some video that was posted to Twitter from last night. The post says that federal officers rushed up and arrested someone for no reason.

Unmarked police vehicles, they're not even, they're not police vehicles. Right. They're just vehicles. They're rentable vans. They're like consumer rentable vans filled with guys in paramilitary gear who are supposedly federal policemen. Unmarked vans have unleashed tear gas into crowds, rounded up and detained protesters, and even shot one man in the head with a nonlethal round, causing serious injury. Their presence and their tactics have raised questions about the use of federal agencies to police cities, even when local authorities don't want them there. We croak it. Rafi is the voice of some of the happiest songs of our generation. Baby Beluga.

So who is the man behind Baby Beluga? Every human being wants to feel respected. When we start with young children, all good things can grow from there. I'm Chris Garcia, comedian, new dad and host of Finding Rafi, a new podcast from iHeartRadio and Fatherly. Listen every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to be real with you, Tig. I like you. But now, all signs point to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls.

If this game is just starting, you better believe I'm going to win. I'm Tig Torres and this is Lethal Lit. Catch up on season one of the Hit Murder Mystery podcast, Lethal Lit, a Tig Torres mystery, out now and then tune in for all new thrills in season two, dropping weekly starting February 9th. Subscribe now to never miss an episode. Listen to Lethal Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. From Cavalry Audio comes the new true crime podcast, The Shadow Girls. I always wanted to know what it felt like to kill somebody. He started laughing. Prosecutors described him as a serial killer savant, picking up these girls, getting them in a position of vulnerability when he got a hold of their neck. That was it. I'm Carolyn Osorio, a journalist and lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest.

I grew up near the banks of the Green River and in the shadow of the killer that bears its name. How many times did you bring the camera to the river? One time. Just one time. He was fantasizing about having sex with his mother and he fantasized about killing her. 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. He was just to all of the kind of things.

Do you know how he feels about prostitutes? Listen to The Shadow Girls on the iHeart radio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Donovan LaBella's shooting had enraged people, but it was the federal snatch fans that would finally radicalize thousands of Portland's liberal majority to take to the streets. It was on the night of July 18th that the first group of what would become the Wall of Moms showed up to protest the feds. We'll talk about them in a second, but first, here's Garrison to explain another important action that occurred the same night. The militarized feds had captured Portland's imagination, but as the quote, fed war, started to ramp up, protesters who had been fighting the police for weeks didn't want people to forget the reason all of this had happened in the first place. They organized a rally, simply titled, quote, Abolish the Police, for June 18th at Peninsula Park in North Portland.

The event was boosted by groups such as the YLF and Direct Action Alliance, people who were generally trusted within the community of veteran activists. The last time a protest had been held at Peninsula Park was June 30th. The crowd had marched to the Portland Police Association building, which had been surrounded by dozens of armed cops. Police quickly pushed the crowd away using trenches, grenade launchers, and tear gas. It shouldn't be surprising then that the crowd of several hundred who showed up on the 18th came expecting a fight. Banners at the front of the march included, quote, Chad Wolf listens to Nickelback, mocking the acting DHS director who had just visited Portland a few days prior, and also spoke with the PPA. Other banners read, Decolonize, and Mourn the Dead, Fight Like Hell for the Living.

One banner read, Kwanis Hayes was only 17 years old. In February 2017, Portland Police shot and killed Kwanis Hayes, an unarmed teenage black portlander. When they shot Kwanis, he was on his knees, 10 to 15 feet away from officers aiming guns and shouting contradictory commands. Officer Andrew Hurst, who was providing, quote, long cover with his AR-15, fired three shots at the teen when Kwanis reportedly moved his hands from above his head. At the same time Kwanis was shot for moving his hands, other officers were ordering him to get face down on the ground with his hands by his sides. The Portland Police use of force investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of Officer Andrew Hurst. He still walks around with a badge and a gun today. The lead use of force investigator on that case was Detective Eric Cammerer,

but Portland protesters might know him better as the notorious Officer 67. Speaking as a journalist who has watched the Portland Police riot team in action, Officer Cammerer is quite possibly the most violent man I have ever met. All of this was on the mind of the press in attendance when the crowd departed Peninsula Park at around 8pm. We suspected they would head straight for the police union building, but that's not what happened. The people at the front of the march headed in that direction at first, but as the crowd got close to the union building, they made a sudden turn, confusing the police and probably some protesters. The march went on southward for about half an hour, chanting along the way. Kwanis, Kwanis, Kwanis, Kwanis!

Soon enough, the crowd arrived at the surprise destination, the Portland Police North Precinct. Only a handful of officers were present when the group of marchers approached the building and said officers quickly moved inside. As they did, hundreds of people chanted, quit your job! Protesters hung out in the precinct parking lot for almost an hour. Officers had been so surprised by their arrival that a police car was left sitting unattended in the middle of the crowd. It was tagged with graffiti and a banana peel was placed on its hood, but nothing else. As was inevitable, the police, LRAD, eventually arrived and ordered the crowd to leave under threat of arrest and tear gas. On previous evenings, the crowd would have just stood around, defiant and waiting to get all beaten up and gassed.

But tonight was different. As the LRAD blared threats, people in the crowd yelled, be water! Echoing a Hong Kong slogan, and the crowd began to move once again. You need to vacate facilities parking on the move back to northeast MLK Boulevard. Failure to follow this direction may subject you to arrest, citation, or use of force, including crowd control munitions. The tactical decision to move after the LRAD's warning apparently bamboozled the police, as the nearly 500 protesters were able to swiftly march north to the completely unguarded PPA building. Dumpsters were overturned to block the street, and protesters in Black Block assembled a makeshift battering ram out of random materials nearby. No one said anything, but the crowd knew what was about to happen. People were going to enter the police union building. Dumpster fires were started to block the police from seeing what was happening.

In due time, the LRAD arrived, and an audibly nervous LRAD operator ordered people not to enter the PPA. This is the Portland Police Bureau. This is a residential area. We noticed criminal activity occurring in this crowd. You attempt to breach and enter the PPA office. You'll be subject to arrest or use of force to include crowd control munitions. But for the Portland Police, it was too little, too late. People had already broken through the front door of the police union building and lit a small fire inside. As soon as the riot police arrived, the crowd began dispersing. People had no desire to fight the cops this night. They'd achieved their goal, and now it was time to run like hell. Police chased the crowd for a few blocks, shooting off tear gas, tackling and arresting anyone they could get their hands on during bull rushes. As the dwindling group of protesters entered residential side streets, it was more difficult for the police to follow, and easier for small affinity groups to break off and disperse.

It was in these residential streets that the vast majority of protesters successfully lost not only the cops, but also the small group of journalists who were jogging to keep up. When we interviewed some folks with the YLF, the Youth Liberation Front, they mentioned this night as a sort of turning point for some protesters. Newer people realized what could be done by a crowd that was cunning and disciplined, and committed to not getting the piss beaten out of them by the police. Here's the YLF. As a reminder, we redubbed the audio due to the constant death threats against these literal children. I think eventually people just got burnt out and realized something had to change, and we did start making Twitter threads, suggesting some changes, and so maybe that pushed things in that direction, and I think people have started to have been sizing up the opponents more realistically, and finding cops may have worked in the first few days of the uprising, but we honestly, in the protests that are happening now, they don't have enough resources to effectively push them back, and the cops have a bunch of experience with crowd controls.

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 gotta 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 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 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. Yeah, and I think now, like since all this time has passed, there's enough points that you can point to and see this was an effective tactic in reference to being water. Like the first time PPA was set on fire, the way people were able to move in and out. And I don't remember how many people got arrested that night, but it was definitely, I mean, it was definitely less than the normal amount.

And I think that was the big first instance of people being able to point at this tactic used in Portland and be like, see, effectiveness. This worked. This got people home safe to an extent. We've mentioned quote being water a few times now. This was a term for a tactic used during the Hong Kong uprising. It derives its name from a famous Bruce Lee quote that Hong Kong activists repurposed as a guide for how to move in situations where police are chasing you. The quote reads like this. Be like water, making its way through the cracks, do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find your way around it or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. Here's how the YLF describes Portland's process of learning to be water. To some extent it was being exposed to the tactics of the Hong Kong protest, but a lot of doctrines weren't really adopted. But I think also there has been a lot of trial and error because people have tried a lot of stuff that didn't work and they got their shit fucked.

And I just think that has been the best way to learn what works, especially in our unique conditions. I think a big part of people embracing becoming water, that as a tactic was getting fed up with getting her kicked out of them. I mean, staying and fighting the police is usually not the right tactical decision because in Portland we have an extremely militarized police force and they're always going to be better equipped than us. That's just how it's going to be. And so you have to think about like, what am I? What is the risk versus the reward of staying and fighting this cop versus just disappearing in the night to fight another day? And I think that goes hand in hand with the decentralization of the movement when there were marches with people leading with megaphones, walking around and then suddenly the police show up and you have your conflict. People didn't have the agency or their own agency to really disappear into the night and move on from that. People felt obligated to follow somebody, so I definitely think that played a role and Portland moving towards decentralization also played a role in that.

Now my colleague Beatrix is going to explain what happened in downtown Portland in front of the Justice Center in the federal courthouse at the same time as the rally at the Portland Police Association. While about 500 people had gathered in North Portland on July 18th, around a thousand had gathered downtown at the Justice Center and the adjacent federal courthouse. Signs reading Unqueld referenced the statement by President Trump days earlier that Portland had been out of control and that federal presence had very much quelled it. On July 16th, Homeland Security Director Chad Wolf had made national headlines when he visited Portland and referred to protesters there as violent anarchists 60 times in a single press statement. Discussing the use of fireworks by protesters on July 4th, Wolf declared, perhaps prophetically, a federal courthouse is a symbol of justice. To attack it is to attack America. Quick historical footnote here, in September of 2020, a federal judge ruled that Chad Wolf was likely unlawfully serving as acting director of Homeland Security during the entirety of his tenure in that position. 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 A.J. Crimson, the official princess of Compton, Asia, Kiddink, and Ossia. 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 podcast. 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. And I'm Dr. Edina Rukar, 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 podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Adoption of teens from foster care is a topic not enough people know about, and we're here to change that. I'm April Dinwoody, host of the new podcast, Navigating Adoption, presented by AdoptUS Kids. Each episode brings you compelling real-life adoption stories told by the families that live them with commentary from experts.

Visit adoptuskids.org slash podcast or subscribe to Navigating Adoption, presented by AdoptUS Kids. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families and the Ad Council. During Wolf's visit, Mayor Wheeler had said that he and all city officials would refuse to meet with the DHS head if invited. However, the day after Wolf's visit, the Portland Mercury reported that Daryl Turner, the head of the Portland Police Association, had met Chad Wolf without approval from either the mayor or the police chief. Chief Lovell would not say definitively whether any officers had met with DHS, but photos showed uniformed PPB officers speaking to Chad Wolf during his visit. The action, targeting the Portland Police Association's union headquarters in North Portland, was one response to these events. The protests downtown, likewise, were driven by anger over Donovan LaBella, federal overreach, and the federal snatch fans. While the North Portland crowd was made up of mostly experienced activists, the folks at the Justice Center represented a broader cross-section of Portlanders.

Several images from the 18th went viral both nationwide and locally, and would bring more of the city's liberal majority out into the streets. One such video showed a 53-year-old Christopher David surrounded by tear gas approaching armored federal agents. According to Mr. David, a Navy veteran, he wanted to ask the men how they felt about violating their constitutional oath. Instead, the video shows one of the agents gripping his baton, two-handed, like a baseball bat, and smashing it into David's arms and legs five times. Another agent then steps forward and maces David in the face as he stands motionless. He walks away after the attack, middle fingers raised on his broken hands. As of this recording, video of the assault has been viewed more than 15 million times. Another viral moment came when a group of about 40 people calling themselves Moms Against Police Brutality and dressed in white were horribly tear gassed by federal agents.

Videos of the attack incensed thousands of Portlanders and led to the creation of the famous Wall of Moms. Courtney is an indigenous Hawaiian portlander. She's one of the Moms who came out on July 18th. Here's what she recalls. I don't know if you've seen anything like anything against police brutality and things like that. So I just roll up and then not even, probably like two or three hours later, the feds come out and just start shooting at us. And I was front-line then because I didn't know what I was walking into. I just didn't know. I had no idea what was going to happen. I had seen the videos the night before, but I just didn't know what to expect. I didn't think it was going to be as violent as it was. So yeah, that night they gassed the shit out of everyone as always, but they actually got hit by rubber bullets that night.

I still have a scar from a pepper ball on my shoulder from the first night that I went out. And so yeah, that was my first night out. Courtney recalls being struck by the extremity of the violence, how sudden and overwhelming it all was. I honestly just didn't expect, I didn't expect a close-range shooting, first of all. I didn't expect the amount of gas that they were using on people. It's different when you're watching it on a stream versus actually being there in person. Especially if there was the line that we were standing in the first night that I was there. There was probably seven of us and there were ten feds just shooting at all of us.

Just standing there trying to guard ourselves behind an umbrella. And they clearly knew that there were moms out there because that was the night where we were all wearing yellow and we were standing out. And it was majority of us were just females standing there. And they just did not care. It didn't matter, it didn't matter. So that was shocking. I don't think I've processed really anything that's gone on. I just checked it away for another day, but I didn't expect the extremity of it.

Within hours of the first major gassing by federal troops, a DHS memo was leaked to the New York Times, revealing that the feds in the courthouse had not been properly trained with any of the riot control munitions they were using. Instead, the DHS officers had been responding to unarmed protesters with military tactics. Rather than mere dispersal, the goal was shock and awe. To shatter all resistance with a display of overwhelming violence that would leave its targets frightened and broken. Instead, as Costco describes, Portland took away a very different message. It felt disgusting to me. Even though I knew they weren't the military, they felt like the military because they all looked like the military.

To me, they all looked really young, too. They were very aggressive and very quick to act in violence. To me, they seemed more afraid of us than Portland police ever seemed afraid of us. I don't know if that made them react in fear more, but they were definitely more aggressive. I knew it was going to turn into a circus. The following night, July 19th, well over 1,000 people filled Chapman and Lowndesdale, the two parks in front of the federal courthouse and the Justice Center. The group of moms, now in matching yellow t-shirts and helmets, numbered in the hundreds. It was easily the largest crowd since the end of the Rose City Justice Daytime marches.

Medics came through, handing out tear gas wipes and eye flesh bottles, and the moms linked arms before moving to form a living wall facing the fence recently erected around the Mark O. Hatfields Courthouse. Many of the people who came out that night were new to the confrontation downtown. As Demetria Hester describes it, they were greeted as welcome reinforcements. Because we knew what was coming. As black people, we know the torture and the abuse that the police give us. So we were very unprepared. We had respirators, we had masks, we had helmets, we made sure that all the moms had equipment and everything they needed to get through the night. From the open doors of the courthouse, agents in battle dress could be seen moving into position in the darkened lobby, as the feds' very own Elrad warned against attempts to damage the fence. Behind the wall of moms in yellow, the rest of the crowd was also getting into position, and a chant of Feds Go Home was taken up by hundreds of voices, unlike the enormous daytime rallies from June. This crowd had not come to march. After more than an hour of chanting and singing, answered by scattered pepperballs and flashbangs from the feds, a few sections of the fence were removed by protesters.

And soon, the whole fence came down. That night, the crowd fell back under the ensuing tear gas barrage. Federal agents advanced through the park, and protesters retreated. But slowly, and with a smattering of shields and umbrellas blocking some of the federal munitions, the night of the 20th, Lowndesdale and Chapman were an unbroken sea of thousands. People worked their way across the park with buckets of rubber squeaky pigs. Speeches echoed over the PA from the steps of the boarded-up justice center, under the words, Fed Goons out of PDX projected in letters five feet high. The wall of moms was joined by a self-described wall of dads, wearing safety orange and equipped with leaf blowers to disperse tear gas. Here's Demetria again. The dads came with the leaf blowers. I mean, they came with protection. They guarded us, and probably just protecting each other. The shields, too, had multiplied, made out of plywood, foam, and 50-gallon plastic drums.

The boards over the courthouse doors and windows had been fitted with small hatches in an echo of the PPB's strategy from the days of the justice center fence. This time, when the first tear gas grenades came through the hatches, the crowds surged forward. This rush of activity was followed by a long, tense lull. For two hours, the crowds sang and danced, yellow-cloud moms forming a kickline where the fence had stood only a day earlier. The mood was celebratory and fierce. Using sections of chainlink fence, lumber, and other debris, members of the crowd wedged shut some of the doors and hatches covering the front of the federal courthouse. Some people tore at the plywood covering the courthouse door with their bare hands. There was no coherent strategy to this, but the sentiment was unmistakable. Portlanders were no longer on the defensive against the federal occupation.

When federal agents finally emerged from the building, it was less a clean charge and more a series of shoves. After a scuffle with protesters, one agent responded by drawing his sidearm and pointing it at eye level into the crowd. Protesters backed up, but few people actually left. Instead, they fell back, slowly. The images of that night are surreal, men in camouflage and plate carriers pointing rifles at the gessive teenagers in tank tops and respirators as smoke bombs from the crowd, mixed with clouds of tear gas and HC smoke. The feds never formed a coherent line, and many people remained in the park throughout the first push. As the bulk of the crowd waded back into the gas and smoke blanketing Lowndesdale Park, a shield wall formed up in the middle of Southwest Main Street and held. Elaine remembers it this way.

And then the first time actually seeing that on the ground, federal LEOs coming in to shoot at people and the shield wall forming up and just holding ground. And it was amazing to see how the federal forces didn't seem to know what to do with people just standing their ground and protecting themselves. And so they just were shooting and shooting and shooting and there was this incredible moment where suddenly I heard this like it was the farting sounds of their paintball guns that they were shooting pepperballs and rubber balls at the protesters with just running out of air because the shield wall was holding and people were keeping it together and protecting the people behind them. Despite the fact that many of the federal agents on the line were armed with M4 rifles, those holding the shield wall along Southwest Main Street lobbed back gas canisters and glass bottles at the officers. Then the shield wall started moving forward to the repeated lines, fuck you, I won't do what you tell me, from rage against the machines, killing in the name. Shockingly, almost miraculously, the feds started falling back. After about 10 minutes, the shield line advanced to the end of the block and the feds withdrew to the steps of the courthouse.

On July 17th, Chad Wolf had declared via tweet, we will never surrender to violent extremists on my watch. Now at about 1am, after one of the most intense nights of federal violence thus far, Lonsdale Park was full of people and Chad Wolf's federal agents had scrambled back inside their fortress, low on ammunition and clearly rattled. Several DHS agents tried to prop closed a door that had been shattered by enraged moms and teenagers with skateboards. Others attempted to fire out of murder holes, only to be stymied in this by teenagers hooking dozens of bottles at their gun hands. The feds would push out again that night, but federal charges no longer provoked protesters into automatic retreat. Portland had gotten a taste of what it felt like to face down the violence of federal agents, and they even seemed to like it. For the next several weeks, the city would begin to treat fighting the feds as a city-wide pastime. In our next episode, we'll talk about how this dystopian side mission became the setting for a national media spectacle,

how an armed coup took over a rib restaurant and so much more. Some heroes unsung and some monsters get monuments built for them, but ain't be all a little bit of monster, we crock it. 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. I just walked in and saw this bright red painting presuming to be a Rothko. Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to be made, a lot of money. I'm listening to what they're paying for these things. It was an incredible amount of money.

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. We hold court and have exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names in business, sport and entertainment. From DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquille O'Neal, I mean, our alumni list is expansive. Listen to them as our guests reveal their business models, hardships and triumphs in their respective fields. The knowledge is in depth and the questions are always delivered from your standpoint. We want to know what you want to know. We talk to the legends of business, sports and entertainment about how they got their start and most importantly how they make their money.

Earn Your Leisure is a college business class mixed with 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 Earn Your Leisure podcast is available now. Listen to Earn Your Leisure on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 90210MG, visit Jenny Garth and Tori Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly Hills 90210 from the very beginning. We get to tell the fans all of the behind the scenes stories that actually happen. So they know what happened on camera, obviously, but we can tell them all the good stuff that happened off camera. Listen to 90210MG on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 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.

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