Behind the Bastards - Episode 9: Uprising: A Guide From Portland: Tactics and Teargas

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Inspired by past resistance movements, Portland has at different points adopted a variety of tactics used to achieve protest objectives. Broken windows, graffiti, and nearly nightly dumpster fires has lead the perception that Portland is in ruin. But if you dig deeper than the snappy headlines you’ll find the real destruction that’s facing the city and local ecosystem is due to the unprecedented amount of poison gas munitions used in an American city. 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.

I'm Colleen Witt. Join me, the host of Eating While Broke podcast. While I eat a meal created by self-made entrepreneurs, influencers, and celebrities over a meal they once ate when they were broke. Today I have the lovely AJ Crimson, the official princess of Compton, Asia, Kid Ink, and Asya. This is the professor. We're here on Eating While Broke and today I'm gonna 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 Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to our show. I'm Zoe Deschanel and I'm so excited to be joined by my

friends and castmates Hannah Simone and Lamorne Morris to recap our hit television series New Girl. Join us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast where we'll share behind-the-scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes. Each week we answer all your burning questions like is there really a bear in every episode of New Girl? Plus you'll hear hilarious stories like this. That was one of your things you brought back from Latvia. Yeah, I brought back a hoop. Because all professional basketball players. Yeah, it's like a little seven-foot hoop. Yeah. Listen to the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Look for your children's eyes and you will discover the true magic of a forest. Find a forest near you and start exploring at discovertheforest.org. Brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the ad council. Failure to adhere to this order may subject you to arrest, citation, or crowd control agents, including but not limited to tear gas and or impact weapons. Leave the area immediately." A phrase you'll hear thrown around often at Portland protests is diversity of tactics. It's a civil revolt organizing principle that dates back to at least around the 1960s

and was popularized by people like Malcolm X. Diversity of tactics emphasizes making periodic use of force for defensive or disruptive purposes stepping beyond the limits of non-violence but also stopping short of militarization. It's about promoting solidarity between those who practice peaceful protest and those who are more militant. As Malcolm X put it, our people have made the mistake of confusing the methods with the objectives. As long as we agree on objectives, we should never fall out with each other just because we believe in different methods or tactics or strategy to reach a common goal. Taking their cues from Malcolm X, younger and more militant Black liberation activists increasingly supported this approach with Gloria Richardson

of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee declaring in 1964 that the federal government would only be compelled to intervene on behalf of integration only when matters approached the level of insurrection. While support for a diversity of tactics was foundational to struggles throughout the later half of the 20th century, the phrase itself was popularized by the protests against the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2008. A broad coalition of labor, anti-war, anti-globalization, liberal and leftist groups drafted the St. Paul principles which Redis follows. Number one, our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups. Number two, the actions and tactics used will be organized

to maintain a separation of time or space. Number three, any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events. And number four, we oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others. The principles were a rough compromise, the common ground that most of the 10,000 protesters who gathered in the Twin Cities to face down heavily militarized police could agree to. 12 years later, spurred on by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the national uprising of 2020 would grapple with those same debates over acceptable and useful tactics. They would find no

easy answers. Here's Garrison. In Portland, there has been even further distinction between peaceful protests, i.e. long pre-planned marches with speeches and no property damage, and nonviolent protests where people aren't physically harmed, but protesters do engage in property destruction for various reasons. It's often said when these different types of protests can happen simultaneously, both a big, more liberal one and a smaller radical one, that's when you can get the most reforms. As the YLF explains here, note the audio is redubbed. I do think that's important. If we have to work inside the system and are not able to outright destroy it, that is definitely an important aspect because it basically gives the people in charge, in this case we'll

say Ted Wheeler, there are two options. You can go with, in his mind, the violent rioters wanting to destroy everything, or you can go with the peaceful ones. He's left with two options and he's always going to take the peaceful liberal marches. At the end of the day, it's not nothing because they're still out there demanding school resource officers out of schools, the gang task force gone, and so it basically makes them choose, and I guess if we're working in the system, any progress is good. Despite police and the media's insistence, vandalism and violence are not the same thing, but there still is a public perception that anarchists, protesters, and rioters are, quote, destroying the city, unquote. Tristan notes how violence and vandalism

are misconstrued and exaggerated in press coverage. I think the most damaging thing or the worst counter narrative is basically just around the vandalism that goes on and really blowing that out of proportion and trying to act like that is going to, there's this narrative going around that's distracting from the real purpose of the movement and that it's white anarchists trying to take the attention away from black folks, and that's usually being pushed by really conservative black people and the kind of people who they have a lot of influence with, you know, you'll see mainstream like in the LACP here in Portland who's always been tight with the mayor's office, really pushing that narrative hard, and lots of other folks coming

up to back them up. Yeah, so I guess one thing that I've also seen is that there's this conflation of like, they'll say like downtown is deserted because of these protests because all the violence, but downtown is deserted because of the pandemic. And also despite the plague and a record number of businesses shutting down due to COVID, downtown Portland is unfortunately quite active at the moment. It is in fact not destroyed, nor taking enough appropriate COVID precautions. You know, and that's not like, that's like the most disingenuous thing anyone could possibly say. And it's so it seems so patently obvious that it's like, you know, like a red herring, but then people are still like buying into it and to a certain degree are like

echoing that sentiment. And it's just, this is not the case. And it's like, and there's also this like desire for, for them to like, they kind of say that it's all white anarchists, but there's no way for you to prove that because most of the people who are doing this share are all blocked up. And it's like, so there's also this like kind of subtext that they, what they really want for these people, they want to know who these people are, you know, partially to like, like, you know, gratify themselves to be right, but also just sort of the fucking cops now, you know, it's like, it's like undercurrent of like, respectability, like, if you know, they really cared, they would like show their faces or something like that, like, I don't know. The vast majority of Portland

protesters do not partake in any political violence or even vandalism, even at the riots that end in destruction and violence. At almost every one of these protests, physical violence is started and further escalated by law enforcement. Entire crowds get punished for the actions of a few individuals. The more rare alternative to this is quote unquote, targeted arrests, that despite its name, are often not actually targeted at specific individuals, and instead just end up targeting people wearing black clothes and those that don't run away fast enough from riot cops. The people arrested in these targeted arrests often get charged with a mix of small misdemeanors and sometimes egregious felonies, most of which end up getting dropped due to lack of evidence.

When the arrests are specifically targeted, it's usually for such quote unquote crimes as standing and protesting on the driveway of the ice building at 1am. The validity of property destruction has faced a lot of criticism from pundits, politicians, and even many protesters. For the summer of 2020, there was actually very little property destruction saved for the first riot night, as people were mostly trying to repeatedly occupy the areas around boarded-up police buildings. But as the summer turned into fall and tactics evolved alongside the smaller crowd sizes, broken windows became more common. Critics say that it is not strategic because it does not help grow the movement, gain public support, or by itself be enough pressure for instituting change.

That much is arguably true, but that assumes those were the goals of the action in the first place, which is usually not true. In a recent interview, local political consultant and former activist Gregory McKelvie said this about the purpose of vandalism such as breaking windows, quote, quote, honestly I think in some cases the goal has been explicitly revenge for night after night of tear gas, beatings, disparate policing, and PPB's protection of the ice detention centers. However again, we must put ourselves in the minds of someone who probably rightfully believes the world is ending, or at a minimum is on the brink of being unrecognizable with incredible amounts of death, pain, and climate chaos. If the world is ending, some people are going to act like it.

It's amazing to me that liberal democrats really do believe that we are on the brink of something like Armageddon, and that are shocked that some people behave like it. What did you picture Armageddon to look like? Public testimony? Unquote. Vandalism like graffiti and breaking windows also serves as a demanding of attention, while also symbolizing a direct attack on racism, class divides, capitalism, or the status quo itself. For years people have tried just asking nicely. Over the summer here in Portland there were thousands of people peacefully demanding a $50 million budget cut from PPB's $245 million budget to then reinvest in community services. The minus $50 million would bring the police budget down closer to their 2016 budget of only $190 million. Other

demands include wholly abolishing and replacing the Portland Police Bureau, dropping all charges for civil rights protesters, and that Mayor Ted Wheeler resigned. With none of those demands met and politicians all but ignoring the peaceful demonstrations, people are angry so windows get broken. And this seems to be the only thing that gets attention anymore and keeps the dialogue about police violence active. Here's Tristan again. Yeah, I mean, that's like I said, like I definitely feel like that kind of like vandalism should be engaged with in like, let's say a productive kind of way. I don't necessarily think it's wrong, but if it, if you can't see, yeah, this is hard to parse because I mean, it's totally valid to be able to speed mad and smash it. And I guess in terms of

like small businesses. I mean, well, I guess, okay, so one way that it's, if I think fully justified, even if it is like a small business, if they're like, cop friendly, if they're like, cop adjacent, and like, if they got like a blue life matter of fact on the window, like gloves off, as far as I'm concerned, I don't give a shit. But you know, if it's just like a random business, like, probably don't, you know, because I mean, the cops are gonna, they're gonna come at you anyway. You know, whether you like break a window or like, you know, burn a cop car, right, they're gonna arrest you. And they could probably arrest you even if you don't do that. And so it's really just a matter of like, which of those two acts is actually going to like materially deprive

the police of their ability to commit further harm. Here's another quote from Gregory in his recent interview at the Willamette Week. Quote, for generations like mine and the one after, Gregory is in his late 20s, by the way, we have been told our entire lives that the world is about to end if nothing is done immediately. And that all of the evils of our world, climate chaos, racism, the ills of capitalism and more are all inexplicably linked. In my mind, and in the minds of protesters, these things are objectively true. So if a young person is told the world is ending, and then told to sign up to testify or go vote, that does not meet the urgency of the moment. Destruction is a natural reaction to feeling desperate, helpless, and in imminent doom.

The solution to all this would involve actually addressing the legitimate issues that are killing us all with the urgency that's necessary. The politicians who are acting like everything is fine as the world literally burns, or say they care about these issues but don't actually do anything to fundamentally fix them, are only making the problems worse and people's desperation worse. And then when both liberals and conservatives alike make more of a fuss about a broken Starbucks window than the literally hundreds of people beaten and gassed in the streets by the cops afterwards, that only further proves the protesters point. When P.T. 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 slash presents.

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

If anybody ever told you, you ask the weirdest questions. It is time to come join us in the place where you belong, the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Thursday with bonus episodes on Saturdays. Listen to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It would be remiss to talk about tactics without mentioning the influence Hong Kong's protests have had on the Portland uprising and the 2020 BLM protests in general. The militant protests in Hong Kong sent shockwaves across the world months before the COVID pandemic. Hong Kong protesters used tennis rackets and umbrellas to deflect police projectiles

and traffic cones and water bottles to contain and diffuse tear gas grenades. All of these tactics were adapted at various points throughout the Portland protests. At a PPB press conference back in July, the deputy chief featured an infographic describing the different roles protesters took up in the Hong Kong uprising. PPB also tweeted out the graph, saying, quote, we have seen all of this at demonstrations in Portland, unquote. Knowingly or unknowingly, the PPB had aligned themselves with the Hong Kong police and their crackdown on the Hong Kong protests, arguably the most widely accepted and praised protest movement of the last decade, prior to the George Floyd protests.

Here is deputy chief Chris Davis introducing the graphic at his July 8th press conference. The graphic that he showed was originally based on the Hong Kong protests and designed to assist protesters. It outlines the anatomy of a typical protest, laying out the different protest roles that people can take on to achieve their goals. It's important to note that one person doesn't need to be stuck with a single purpose for one day. The roles people take up and the actions they do can be semi-fluid. The graphic gave each of these roles kind of silly names, and while designed based on a different struggle, each of these roles was represented in some form in Portland. First are support roles that people can do from home if they are unable

to attend in person. These include graphic designers who make posters, banners, and infographics, and people who work online comms, listening to police scanners, and signal boosting information about police activity and location, from on-the-ground sources, and then distributing the information via apps like Telegram, Signal, and Twitter. Moving on to the actual protest, in the back, barricaders, people who build barricades out of usually found objects. In Portland, we've seen these have two main purposes. One, to help prevent vehicular attacks on the crowd, and two, quickly erect obstacles as police are chasing the crowd to hopefully slow the police down. Up next, medics, and people who help with tear gas or pepper spray exposure.

Medics all have different skill ranges, and in Portland have had to deal with minor medical issues like tear gas, but also broken bones, head trauma, seizures, and gunshot wounds. They often stay towards the back of a protest, to both have a safe place for treatment, and in cases where an ambulance has to be called in. Closer to the middle, we have people that were playfully referred to in the Hong Kong graphic as fire squads and range soldiers. Fire squads are protesters who use water and traffic cones to suppress and extinguish tear gas canisters. Portland police even began collecting and confiscating city traffic cones so that they wouldn't be used this way. Another anti-tear gas measure we've seen is

simply heat-resistant gloves used to chuck tear gas back at cops or away from crowds. Hockey sticks and lacrosse sticks have also been used to relocate tear gas canisters. During the Fed War, this group also came to include people with leaf blowers, who did a really good job at keeping gas at bay. Range soldiers are protesters who throw water bottles, paint balloons, and other random trash to help inhibit police from advancing. Beside them are light mages and fire mages. Light mages use lasers and flashlights to obstruct surveillance cameras, drones, and stop police from being able to aim and identify protesters. While effective when used in the large numbers seen in the Hong Kong protests,

isolated lasers did very little to obscure cameras or disrupt police surveillance, although the feds and PPB officers did report some eye strain due to the laser targeting. Portland police have even described being quote-unquote struck with objects including lasers. For example, here in this audio courtesy of local street reporter Jasper Florence. Fire mages are protesters who are prepared to set fires. Often these are two barricades and dumpsters, although Portland's months of protests saw extensive use of fireworks and at least four Molotov cocktails, half of which actually hit fellow protesters. Thankfully no one was permanently injured by Molotovs in Portland during 2020.

Now closer to the front. Peaceful protesters who make up the bulk of any martyr action, and could also include people who don't want to fight but join hand in hand with the frontliners and can serve as human shields. During the fight with the federal forces, thousands of Portlanders made up of the peaceful crowds, while the Wall of Moms acted as a front line, often protecting people who were throwing tear gas canisters back at the feds. Another role showcased on the graphic is what's referred to as a flag bearer. Their job is to signal and warn when riot police are approaching. In Hong Kong this was done via flags and signs, and in Portland this was done by someone with a sports whistle.

Then of course we have frontliners, people up at the front, some ready to take various direct action, and others with umbrellas to guard against projectiles and cameras. And then at the very front, shield soldiers or shield bearers, with shields made out of foam, wood, or sometimes umbrellas. In July, Portland got pretty famous for its shield wall, but like everything else it needs to be a tactic that's carefully applied under certain conditions, or it can actually be a hindrance. In theory, shield walls serve two main purposes, to deflect against projectiles and offer a first line of defense from charging enemies or people attacking with batons. Shields are effective at stopping munition fire,

but when facing bullrushes, shields are grabbed by police and used to gain leverage on protesters to push them onto the ground or destabilize them so they can be attacked and arrested. One element of a truly effective shield wall, whether you're advancing or simply holding a ground, is people behind the shield wall throwing projectiles, because often merely a shield wall alone isn't enough to deter people. Which is why when law enforcement brings out their shields, they also have people behind them shooting grenades, tear gas, and pepper balls. Another advantage of the shield wall projectile combo is that shields can be used to visually obstruct the police from seeing who is throwing objects, making them target at arrests more

difficult. But you better be confident in your throw or you might hit your friends. Although even having a shield in the first place makes you more of a target for arrests, and if you touch an officer with your shield, let's say by an officer charging directly at you at full speed, you can get charged with assaulting a police officer. Probably the most effective shield wall we've seen in Portland was not used against the PPB or the feds, but the proud boys and other street fascists on August 22nd. All these different elements came together in a rare instance. A strong, tight, interlocking network of shields was support from behind enough to stop incoming attackers, and folks behind the wall throwing rocks, water bottles, and fireworks.

Altogether, it was enough to break the far right's more disorganized and individualistic shield wall. And also, of course, the proud boys don't have arresting powers, so people are more free to push back with their shields. Other considerations for shields depend on what your objective is and what tactics you use to achieve that objective. In the fall, as crowds thinned and protests began to move faster, the large bulky shields were largely abandoned by some protesters in favor of umbrellas. Shields can be heavy and awkward to move with, plus there's getting the shield to the action, carrying it around, and then figuring out what you want to do with it afterwards. These are all added considerations, particularly if you want to

leave a protest more covertly. As great as it may be to have a wooden, foam, or plastic shield in the moment as you're deflecting grenades or pushing off someone, it may not be worth all those extra trade-offs, especially if an umbrella can suffice in your munitions' shielding needs. Umbrellas are more of a multi-use tool that can adapt to different situations and even be concealable, especially collapsible ones. While not as sturdy as a shield, umbrellas are generally less suspicious than huge wooden shields. A reinforced banner can also provide some protection from munitions while also sending out a message. However, some places have legal restrictions on what banners can be made of. Throughout the summer, nightly actions focused on direct confrontation with police,

often returning to repeatedly confront the same riot line. By August, while protest tactics remained largely unchanged, the Portland Police tactics began to change. PPB alternated between nights of brutal bulrushes and physical violence, with only few arrests, and other nights where they conducted mass arrests of entire crowds. By fall, smaller crowd sizes and less frequent actions required protesters to change up tactics as well. Repeated direct confrontation with riot lines was, in many ways, a habit picked up from the days of mass mobilization at the fence, and such confrontations took arrests for granted. Protesters were being treated as disposable. When Portland had been the focus of national news,

facing down police lines reliably generated front-page coverage of police brutality. But by early fall, Portland was no longer the focus of attention, and over time, the shock and awe of footage showcasing police brutality wears off, even as people keep getting hurt. By October, night time actions began to involve smaller crowds of people in BlackBlock, smashing the windows of banks, real estate firms, and Starbucks coffee shops, and then attempting to vanish into the night. These actions raised familiar objections from the more moderate sectors of the movement, and fit the right-wing narrative of the destructive and Tifa boogeyman. But, as we touched on earlier, these actions were not to gain good optics,

but instead to vent frustration that the previous demands for change had not been met, and to create an economic cost for the city in maintaining the status quo. These marches echoed the BlackBlock snake marches of the 90s anti-globalization movement, and to a lesser extent, the bee water mantra of the Hong Kong protests, though in Hong Kong, crowds routinely targeted civil infrastructure. This shift in tactics resulted in less arrests on average, though smaller crowd size made the diverse rules of the larger demonstrations impossible, and the prevalence of vandalism meant that those who were arrested could face some harsher charges. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has

admitted to the difficulty of combating such attack and disappear actions, saying, quote, they pop up wearing black from head to toe, they go down streets relatively quickly, then they disappear into the wind. Those tactics have evolved to a degree where we now find the law enforcement tools we have in place are dated. I'm Eve Rodzky, author of the New York Times bestseller Fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space. Activists on the Gender Division of Labor, Attorney, and Family Mediator. And I'm Dr. Adityna 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 podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to our show. I'm Zoe Deschanel, and I'm so excited to be joined by my friends and castmates, Hannah Simone and Lamorne Morris to recap our hit television series, New Girl. Join us every Monday on the Welcome to Our Show podcast, where we'll share behind-the-scenes stories of your favorite New Girl episodes, reveal the truth behind the legendary game True American,

and discuss how the show got made with the writers, guest stars, and directors who made the show so special. Fans have been begging us to do a New Girl recap for years, and we finally made a podcast where we answer all your burning questions like, is there really a bear in every episode of New Girl? Plus, each week you'll hear hilarious stories like this. At the end, when he says, you got some Schmidt on your face, I feel like I pitched that joke. I believe that. I feel like I did. I'm not on a thousand percent. I want to say that I tossed that one out. Listen to the Welcome to Our Show podcast on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back the hit podcast, How Men Think. And that's good news for anyone that is confused by men, which is basically everyone. Get an inside look at what goes on in the mind of men from the men themselves. It's real talk, straight from the source. The How Men Think podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out. It's going to be fun, informative, and probably a bit scary at times, because we're literally going inside the minds of men. As much as we like to think all men are the same, they're actually very different.

Each week, a celebrity guest host provides honest advice in his area of expertise. When I agreed to do this reboot, I had a few conditions. No sugarcoating, no mind games, and absolutely no mansplaining. Men are hard enough to understand without the mind games. Listen to How Men Think on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Since the summer of 2017, the image of black clad and Tifa militants has loomed large in the nation's imagination. The garb which Wheeler describes as black from head to toe is of course black block, a counter-surveillance tactic which originated in Europe in the 1980s and was first popularized in the United States during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle.

Traditionally, block serves to protect the identity of individuals involved in militant action, and people in block provide a defensive front line in larger protests, specifically in confrontations with police and the far right. Theoretically, block should make it difficult to identify the wearer's gender, race, and age. This has led to activists in block being glossed over as young white anarchists, which Koska takes issues with. Given the prevalence of both CCTV and phone cameras in protest settings, even the small details can be uniquely identifying. At a Seattle media action in 2012, one activist was ultimately identified by his shoes. As such, modern block often includes removing logos and other recognizable elements from clothing.

This also means that more out patches or more tactical looking gear can also be used to identify the wearer. Block is a tactic, not an organization, a uniform, or identity. Here's an indigenous participant in The Wall of Moms describing how she shifted from black block as the protests continued. I'm really big on being autonomous and not really having any leaders or things like that, and I just want to be another face in the crowd. I want to be unrecognizable, so I think that's why block block is so important. I also don't want to be targeted, and I want to be able to protect other people around me. It's my responsibility to make sure

that I am unrecognizable to my other protesters and my friends, because if something happens to me, one wrong move or getting doxxed or something like that can really affect everyone around me, so that's why it was really important for me to transition into block block. I've just been seeing so many of my friends and comrades just getting doxxed, just being recognized by small things, even if they're in block block. I just feel like it's my responsibility if I'm going to be out there, then I need to be unnoticeable or unrecognizable. For obvious reasons, block is only protective in groups and draws the attention of law enforcement.

Another aspect of wearing block is bringing extra clothes and figuring out when and where you should take off your block block, or D block, as you probably don't want to get snatched up and arrested while leaving in action. In Portland on January 20th, 2021, people were arrested on a sidewalk after a protest, many blocks away, just because they were still wearing black block, and in doing so matched the supposed description of people who vandalized a building, i.e. also wearing black clothes. Lots of people actually wear normal clothes under their block, making D blocking a little easier, but people still need to choose a time and discrete place to take off their black outer garments. Besides shields, umbrellas, and block,

the other gear people have acquired and brought to the protests also helped set Portland apart. James, from Portland Action Medics, describes how the gear their organization provided mirrored the evolution of the movement. The summer got really, really wild, and first, we had respirators, some of us, who are more seasoned protest medics, but they weren't widely used, because the thing about tear gas is like, if there's just a little bit of it, you can just walk away, and it will burn your eyes, but if you just go downwind or upwind, it's fine most of the time, but that's not true if they're using extraordinary quantities of it, such that entire parks are just full of gas.

So we went from a situation where respirators were this niche gearhead thing to an absolute necessity, basically overnight, and then we learned a lot about what kind of cartridges filter out COVID versus what kind of cartridges filter out tear gas, and how to combine them with each other, and then we were making little tear gas canisters, snack packs for people that are like, these sandwich bags contain both together, and you should just plug them right in, we pre-assembled them for you, here's your gas mask, and then I was like, well, what if we get full-face gas masks that have included eye shields? That should probably happen because we're in a pandemic. Portland Action Medics and others distributed hundreds of respirators and began

using 3D printers to make gas mask inserts for eyeglasses, as glasses are notoriously incompatible with full-face masks. As police violence continued and violence from the far right escalated, James says additional gear became necessary. I think it has mostly been in response to far-right fighters coming into Portland, that we have really been a lot more worried about gun shots intentionally being fired at people potentially in a mass way. You know, like, I'll please come with guns, and so that's always a possibility, but like, we have yet, we saw some brandishing of firearms at people from the feds over the summer, but we have yet to my knowledge to see police fire live rounds on protesters, but the far-right like constantly runs around on the

internet saying they're gonna shoot us every day, and so, you know, depending on how seriously you take them, it's reasonable to prepare for stripping. And so, especially over the summer, as the rhetoric from the far-right increased in extremeness, plus the, I mean, basically like, if someone's firing projectiles at crowds indiscriminately, then it makes sense to wear a helmet at the best regardless of who those people are. And it's hard to distinguish, it doesn't matter whether it's a cop or a fascist that is not wearing a uniform, doing that, right? So there's that, so like, throughout the summer, people were like, I need ballistics, I need heavier ballistics, I need a helmet, I need a better helmet, I need goggles, I need better goggles,

I need shadowproof goggles, because we kept seeing people just get really badly fucked up by projectiles. So it was that, but then, yeah, specifically when it comes to gunshot wounds, we did a lot of preparations, especially leading up to the election, frankly, because the rhetoric about what people wanted to do was really scary. And it's always impossible, basically, to tell how seriously to take these people. Other necessary gear is ear protection for flashbangs. This can be little foam earplugs or more bulky noise-canceling headphones. Ear protection became very important during the Fed War, as flashbangs from the feds are way more powerful and damaging than the ones Portland

police use. Here's Donovan Smith. Tear gas. It was used almost every night in the more than 100 days of protests in Portland, both by local police and then revved up again during the federal occupation. But what exactly was this so-called gas that was filling the streets of Portland each night anyways? Well, turns out it's a wartime chemical banned by the 1925 Geneva Convention. Following the First World War, a protocol nixing the use of poisonous gases during warfare was adopted, including some lethal compounds like chlorine and hydrogen gas. And while its name sounds like something that would make you feel similar to cutting up onions at dinner, a deeper look into its true effects

began to open up a much clearer picture on why it's been banned as a tool of warfare for decades. Turns out tear gas isn't even a gas at all. It's sort of a chemical explosion, one where a chemical powder gets heated up really quick and mixed with the solvent and finally released as an aerosol. And voila, tear gas. Its sole purpose from there is to induce pain. Dr. Anita Randolph explains its effects here. She led a research paper on the effects of tear gas commissioned by Don't Shoot Portland, published in late June, just weeks after the uprisings began. Tear gas is actually a solid. That's why they're packed in that canister. So there's a few chemical reactions that have to happen to convert it to a gas like substance.

So when you're out there, you're getting tear gas, you know, it's kind of like this white mist or white powder everywhere. And that's because it has to be heated up to be able to be dispersed, right? And then once it's dispersed, you have this big boom. And then it just allows it to spread over larger radius. I think in the paper, from our research, we show that one canister tear gas can reach like a 400 meters square radius, which is like a one loop around a track, which is large, right? Because once you stretch it out, that's a lot of area that it can cover. And it's also like very potent that can penetrate glass, right? So that's why people were dressing in layers too, right? Even me, I was like, oh, man, I learned that I was like dressing in layers,

you know, people getting tear gas or like shedding layers outside because it just goes through and it just wants it's on your skin, especially when you're sweating. And those glands are open, it's just very painful. I can honestly say I don't I don't I'm not too motivated to get tear gas. The pain isn't just exclusive to humans. Similar reactions are caused in animals too, even causing death at certain levels of exposure. A 2019 protest in Hong Kong saw a nearby veterinary clinic forced to evacuate all its feline patients after police began shooting the so-called riot control agents into the crowd of nearby demonstrators. Not all the cats could be moved in time though. In one case, an 18 month year old cat reportedly began clawing at its eyes after inhaling the gas.

While there's little documentation on how tear gas affected the critters of Portland, they certainly were a feature of the protests, with one stand out being a 350 pound llama named Caesar. His owner, a central Oregon man, says he bought Caesar to the demonstrations to boost morale and would quickly depart with him when munitions began sounding off. And while Caesar went unscathed, we cannot say the same with certainty for all our other furry friends. Another possible victim of Portland's bouts of chemical warfare was one of the city's pride and joys, its environment. Early in the protest, concerned eyes turned towards the Belamette River, the de facto divider between the city's east and west side, the 13th largest north flowing

river in the United States. The Belamette also shares the distinction of being a superfund site, meaning it's been pegged by the feds as one of the most toxic sites in the entire country. A not so distant relic of the heavy industrial activity, particularly along a 10 mile stretch spanning from the Burnside Bridge to Sylvie's Island. In short, the Belamette is no stranger to abuse. But some began to wonder if all the CS gas and pepper spray runoff was furthering those harms as cleanup crews power washed the residue into storm drains leading to the river. The city's Bureau of Environmental Services began vacuuming tear gas residue from the drains surrounding the downtown justice center in August during the fed occupation to prevent any toxic harms.

But despite a wealth of research on the effects of tear gas, little seemed to be known on both its short and long term effects on the environment. So the move came out as a bit of a preventative shot in the dark. According to the Bureau, at the very least the gas was an illegal discharge as no other substances besides rainwater are allowed down the drains. Morgan from the Mutual Way Protests Cleanup Group, Team Raccoon said they could feel the remnants in the air returning to ground zero every morning. Basically, we got a little bit of money from Mutual Aid donations. And we were wondering what, because park cleans are pretty low cost, you know, trash bags, trash grabbers doesn't cost a lot of money to maintain that. So we were wondering like, what do we do

with this money that will really help our community? And we were noticing the air quality in Lowndesdale and Chapman getting worse and worse and worse because of the tear gas and the chemical munitions every night. Even just walking through there during the day, you wanted to put your respirator on at the end of July. The move led to a mass mobilization of respirators and on the ground research into the gas. Morgan continues. So we were connected to some researchers who wanted to keep a certain level of anonymity. And we decided the best way to do that was, through us, we could accept filters from the protest community and we could give them to the researchers. The researchers could conduct their studies in the privacy that they want.

And we could use Mutual Aid money to facilitate that. Meanwhile, CDBeerCrafts began running their own tests on the sediments collected from the nearby drains to test for the primary chemicals associated with tear gas, hexavalent, chromium, percholium, barium, and cyanide. The following month, the Bureau released its findings saying that while there were higher levels of toxins at the source of the storm drains, by the time they hit the river, levels were pretty much normal. The results only accounted for the August round of chemicals found in the river. BES officials insisted, however, that the testing was thorough as it accounted for the buildup of chemicals that have been deployed since the George

uprisings in late May. This didn't stop five environmental groups from teaming up to launch a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, alleging they were out of compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act by not conducting an assessment on the impacts of their gas ahead of using it, breaking federal law. Represented by the ACLU, the groups seeked a complete sabbage in federal usage of tear gas. DHS ended up pulling out before the ruling was made, but the question continued to loom. What exactly were the long-term effects of tear gas? It's a question that's further complicated when considering the findings of chemical weapons research consortium, who say during the Fed's occupation, a mix of CS gas and toxic chemical

smoke grenades made hexachlorothane, or HC gas. HC is a toxic compound banned by the US military for its severe health effects, but was deployed repeatedly by federal agents against the people of Portland, easily identifiable by the way the canisters glow red, continuously spouting dents, opaque smoke for a minute or more. Juniper Simonus, who helped lead the research team, explains its effects here. I saw a number of people that had basically chemical burns, like chemical mist burns that they had never had with other gases. The stomach set of symptoms, so if you ingest it, which you would do through gulping, or just having your mouth open walking through gas, that will cause vomiting, nausea, and that whole kind of set of symptoms, because your

body knows that zinc is bad, it wants it out. In your lungs, however, zinc chloride is really corrosive because of the chlorine? Among the complications, a number of protesters reported having prolonged, irregular menstrual cycles, sometimes bleeding for weeks after exposure to the gas. Oregon Public Broadcasting spoke with 26 people who attended the protests and self-reported changes in their bodies. Effects reported included trans people who would cease taking testosterone shots, beginning to menstruate again. Others reported pain, so uncomfortable, they had to take a trip to the hospital. In one month alone, others reported multiple cycles. For a long time, especially right now with COVID, it's kind of hard to tweeze out

if somebody has a long-term symptom that's going to linger for a while. I think due to the pandemic, it's going to come found a lot of these things a lot more and it's going to make it a lot more difficult to tweeze out one from the other, definitively. But I do think it needs to be investigated. I hope people don't forget about it, especially with the unhoused. Portland has a really high number of unhoused individuals and my heart's broke for them every day because we pack up and go home, but we're in their space, essentially. If it's getting tear gas every single night constantly, they're actually the ones that's getting exposed the most and have the highest frequency of exposure. But for whatever reason, it's not too many people advocating for

them in this space. So I just really wanted to throw that out there. While no definitive links have been made yet between tear gas and their regular cycles, the string of complaints made for yet another worry as protesters hit the front lines each night, facing off with a police force armed with a banned war chemical whose true effects may not be known for years to come. About a week after George Floyd's murder, don't shoot Portland lost a class action lawsuit against the city of Portland, alleging indiscriminate use of tear gas and excessive force at the hands of the Portland Police Bureau. Shortly thereafter, US District Judge, Marko Hernandez, ruled in their favor, placing a two-week restraining order on the Bureau until further court ruling. However,

there was a catch. In his 10-page ruling, the judge wrote the following, quote, In addition, tear gas use shall be limited to situations in which the lives or safety of the public or the police are at risk. This includes the lives and safety of those housed at the Justice Center. Tear gas shall not be used to disperse crowds, whether it's little or no risk of injury end quote. That little or no risk left a lot up to interpretation for the Portland Police Bureau. Governor Kate Brown signed a bill that had banned tear gas following Hernandez's ruling that followed similar directives in July. Tear gas was banned only into the police declare riot loudly. Police had already been loosened their existing directives for when and

when not to use tear gas. Up until then, the only thing preventing thousands from being draped in wartime chemicals was officers on the ground declaring the gather a quote unlawful assembly. After that, you'd have to hear something like this a few times. Once this request for dispersal was given over the loudspeaker a few times, it was up to the incident commander to give the green light on firing the gas into the crowd. After the so-called temporary ban, things pretty much continued to follow this pattern. From the police chief to the mayor, officials at the city continued to argue that tear gas was a key tool in the cops arsenal to disperse protesters. But despite the questionable use of force

breaching the First Amendment, the gas often encroached on those who weren't even on the front lines of the demonstrations. Tear gas is gripped loomed across the city. And in the case of Demetia Smith, it followed her family home. And all of a sudden, they seen flashing lights and looked outside. And the whole PPA building was lined with riot officers. And the last time we had protested, I don't remember the exact date we were downtown. And it was the day it made news that the police had tear gas, like there was a group of protesters that weren't a part of like a group of 3,000 people. But the police like tear gas, everybody with that was down there. My son was caught in the middle of that. So he'd like already been like on edge about police.

So he called me freaking out that the riot police were all front of a building in front of my mom's house. And he was like crying like hysterically, like he didn't know what was going to happen. And he was just telling me to be careful. And there was no protesters there was just all police. But like their presence like had him freaked out and crying. So I'm leaving work. And when I come home, so I can't park there can't even get through to there because at that time now the protesters have made it to the PPA building as well as the riot officers. So I'm like circling around circling around and I couldn't park anywhere close enough. So I I parked my car at home and walked all the way through. I'm because I'm trying to get to my kid. So I'm walking through.

And everybody all of a sudden you just start seeing smoke or whatnot. But again, I'm in mom mode and like that's my house. And again, I already the police aren't I've witnessed the police not acting right during protests or like no, they're trying to push me back. And I'm like I'm live right here. You guys can see my ID 100 days in crowds continue to show up and cops continue to gas. Tomorrow, Ender lives just off of Ventura Park in East Portland. On the 100th night of protests, he found his neighborhood blanketed in tear gas. And I was like, Oh, geez. So then at that point, we make our way past tear gas again. And basically climbed our little fence and jump over that to get inside our house and make sure all the windows were closed. And then we put towels

under the two kids rooms. I mean, we have a at that point, we had a one month old child, two month old child and a two year old child. And it's incredibly scary to have tear gas deployed. It was more than one canister of tear gas that was deployed in front of our house. And you don't have anywhere to go. So the police are on all sides of my house. There's loud speakers, loud noises, tear gas being deployed. I mean, the street in front of my house was a war zone. The police turned it into a war zone. And the response was over the top. It was, in my opinion, meant to chill speech. And I mean, we don't have gas masks in our house and they don't make a gas mask for a

two month old child. And so our options is limited. I mean, if it was a private individual doing this, I could defend my house. But I don't have that luxury when it's the government doing it. Morgan, a member of Team Raccoon, had been cleaning up trash and spent munitions at protests throughout the summer. After the ongoing gassing of neighborhoods, they shifted to supplying families with respirators for their children. What we found was that the best situation was a 3M respirator for ages about seven and up. And younger than that, what we do is we get something called a BARDA system, which is a pressure positive hood that also has a straw and a sippy cup. And it's made for

young children. The pressure positive hood helps so they don't have to have anything strapped to their face. And the motor keeps it keeps filtered air moving through the hood. So it never, it never stops moving out. And that's how they keep the tear gas away from children. For infants, we weren't really able to find something that was super affordable and easy to get. So for infants, we basically suggest what people do when they are trying to keep tear gas out of their homes, roll up a towel and put it under the door. Try to get as far away from windows or any exit points as possible. If you need to evac, try to make sure that you get to safe air as quickly as possible. But there aren't a lot of answers when you're talking about

infant impact and tear gas or prevention from getting tear gas in infants lungs. As the smoke from September wildfire settled over Portland, Mayor Wheeler issued a ban on CS gas. Wheeler's police bureau pushed back. Both the police chief and their union head publicly rallied against him with the Portland Police Association launching a full-on petition railing against the ban. Then the smoke cleared. Just days after Wheeler's ban, a familiar scene formed outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building with calls by protesters to abolish ICE. A group of about 100 gathered outside the facility and were met not by PPB but federal agents. Shortly after nightfall, tear gas ensued alongside pellets and

smoke bombs. Wheeler and police chief Lovell were quick to announce that their bureau wasn't responsible for the night's chaos, which ended with nearly a dozen arrests. Protests continued in much this way in the days following the wildfires, direct actions around town at night, drawing out a few dozen people who would be met with police force and arrests. And while the police force had yet to cease, the use of tear gas had come to a halt since the mayor's ban. In the weeks leading up to the election, much of the city's downtown core was boarded up. Businesses feared of broken windows. At the local level, an unpopular mayor and police commissioner was set up for re-election with many constituents divided over

whether or not to vote for his self-described, everyday Antifa opponent Sarah Yanarone, and a community-led Raiden campaign for Don't Shoot Portland founder Teresa Raiford, who came in third in the primaries. This and other key council races had many on edge for the future of the city. On top of that, the decidedly blue Portland, which had just seen a fatal clash of Trump caravans and BLM protesters, waited to see if the 45th president, who'd just occupied the city, would occupy the seat for four more years. Wheeler eked out a win against his opponents, receiving less than the combined votes of Yanarone and the Raidens, but enough to secure his seat again to the lament of many activists. Trump lost to Biden, protests ensued. Later that November,

yet another tear gas-related suit was filed, this time by inmates of the Justice Center. While the use of gas had come to a halt, their class-action suit turned its finger at the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, alleging that from the first day of the protests, those caged at the Justice Center were left to suffer as gas from the outside seeped into their cells. More than 300 inmates joined in the suit. Many of them had yet to be convicted, and were awaiting trial. The suit described a number of alleged incidents of inmates coughing, wheezing, and kneeling over in agony in the weeks of protest. They were stuck in their cells, and some repeated a familiar refrain, one that sparked global uprisings,

I Can't Breathe. Tear gas continues to be a tool used by most urban police departments across the country. The nightly chemical warfare that police enacted on Portland streets, along with other munitions, turned the city both into a battlefield and a testing ground. The true mental, physical, and environmental effects of the gassing may not be realized for years to come. But from Portland to Hong Kong, one thing remains clear. While protest tactics may adapt over the years, the response of governments remains largely the same. Suppress and silence dissent. Portlanders continued to push back, imperfectly, but with more skill. Some broke windows, while others simply claimed their streets, grabbed a bullhorn for the first time, and demanded to all

who could hear that without justice, there would be no peace. From optics to effectiveness, some on the so-called left were split on which roads best aided in the liberation of black lives. And while diversity of tactics got sticky at times, many will argue that the norm most protesters rail against is more insufferable. We quoted Malcolm X at the beginning of this episode. One of the most popular phrases he's known for is, by any means necessary. As we reflect on the lessons of the ongoing movement for black lives and the months of protests that took over Portland, we'll leave you with a more full version of that quote he gave during a speech at the founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964. We declare our right on this earth to be a human

being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary. Last episode, you may remember us speaking with Juniper Semenis about chemical munitions used by the feds and local law enforcement during the 2020 protests. We wanted to offer a correction about some of the statements issued during that last episode. Juniper Semenis is in fact Dr. Juniper Semenis with 15 years under their belt as a quantitative conservation biologist. In the research we said they helped lead with chemical weapons research consultorium on hexchlorothane gas or HC gas. They didn't so much as help lead, but in fact spearheaded the effort with the assistance

of some volunteers. There's in fact a wide-ranging array of research and science regarding HC gas and tear gas out in the world, some dating back decades. But even today researchers continue to unearth more understanding about what the real impacts of these chemicals are on humans, animals and wildlife, and the environment at large. Another thing is scientists are sort of constant skeptics. So when we say that no definitive links have been drawn, when it comes to research, especially in the world of science, it's almost an oxymoronic statement. Everything can be challenged to gain better understandings of the floating rock we live on and everything else beyond it. What we do know for sure is that the countless munitions unleashed on Portland left

scores of protesters ailing. As scientists continue to unearth new research on these chemicals, the uprising team would like to offer our apology for the errors reported in that last episode. I'm Jake Halpern, host of Deep Cover. Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago. He bribed judges and even helped a hitman walk free until one day when he started talking with the FBI and promised that he could take the mob down. I've spent the past year trying to figure out why he flipped and what he was really after. Listen to Deep Cover on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Colleen Witt. Join me, the host of Eating While Broke podcast, while I eat a meal created

by self-made entrepreneurs, influencers, and celebrities over a meal they once ate when they were broke. Today I have the lovely AJ Crimson, the official princess of Compton, Asia, Kid Ink, and Asya. This is the professor. We're here on Eating While Broke and today I'm going to break down my meal that got me through a time when I was broke. Listen to Eating While Broke on the iHeart radio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get all the real Housewives T you need on the podcast to tease in a pod. Join ex-Housewives Teddy Mellon Camp and Tamara Judge as they watch, recap, armchair quarterback, and break down all things from the hit reality TV franchise. This team tells it like it is. Each week we're going to be recapping

whatever Housewife is currently airing. Lucky for Tamara, we're going to start, oh my gosh, I know, with Orange County. Listen to Two T's in a Pod on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.