Front Burner - Inside 60 nights of protests in Portland

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

For more than 60 nights, protesters have gone out on the streets of Portland, Ore. to fight anti-Black racism and police violence. It seemed like things were calming down, but then U.S. President Donald Trump sent federal agents into the city. Today on Front Burner, we're joined by Tuck Woodstock, an independent journalist who has spent the majority of the last two months out at the protests. They tell us what it looks like on the ground, and how the violence has escalated since federal agents arrived.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Josh Bloch. Today on FrontBurner. For over 60 days, protesters have gone out on the streets of Portland, Oregon, to fight against anti-Black racism and police violence.

They started after George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis. And night after night, they continued. And then in late June, federal agents were deployed to the city. Tonight, Portland thrown into chaos. Months of tensions boiling over as the White House deploys federal agents against protesters. Since then, the protests have ramped up again. And so has the violence. So far, more than 60 protesters have been arrested or detained.

There are nightly clashes with federal agents, and more agents are on their way. Today, I'm talking to Tuck Woodstock, an independent journalist who has spent the majority of the last 60-plus nights out covering the protests. This is FrontBurner. Hello, Tuck. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. So it looks to me like the last few nights, the last while, have played themselves out in a similar fashion in Portland, where protesters are converging on the federal courthouse until federal law enforcement tried to disperse the crowd. You are right in there, you know, amongst the protesters. From your side of the fence, can you describe how this is playing out? Yeah, absolutely.

So there is this fence now. And so every day protesters are, I should say every night because it starts at 9 or 10pm protesters are gathering in front of this fence and doing things like pushing against the fence so that it rattles or throwing

plastic water bottles over the fence or sometimes throwing fireworks over the fence and using these tactics that are, you know, escalating the situation, but without, I would say, like physical harm to anyone, because the federal troops at that point are all inside the building. They're throwing these things over the fence in like this empty area. Sometimes they'll try to breach the fence and go over it.

And, you know, eventually it gets to the point where, you know, somehow federal agents decide, OK, this is enough. And typically they'll come out and use tear gas. And sometimes they'll use crowd control munitions as well. And then from there, it's the rest of the night is just rolling waves of tear gas and rolling waves of crowd control munitions from the federal agents and then sort of defense tactics by, you know, local protesters. So that would be, you know, having shields up and umbrellas up and trying to, like, grab the tear gas canisters and throw them back over the fence, things like that. You know, this has been going on for more than 60 consecutive nights now, and you have these protesters going up against tear gas and crowd control munition. And after almost two months of this, it seems like the protesters with their shields and umbrellas have become pretty savvy.

Absolutely. It is funny because a few weeks ago, even as recently as a week and a half ago, there were maybe one or two leaf blowers out there. And now there's dozens of leaf blowers out there that's been used so heavily that, in fact, the federal agents now have their own leaf blowers. And there is a battle of the leaf blowers to see who can blow the gas in what direction. And, of course, the wind also plays an element in this, too. So it's pretty wild to watch, honestly. And of course, the wind also plays an element in this, too. So it's pretty wild to watch, honestly. But yes, these protesters have been out there coordinated. And we have, you know, different blocks of protesters that are very coordinated, because some of them have been out

there for two months, others have only been out there for a few days. But it's really a mix. And it's been really interesting, even the folks who have only been out there for a week, like the mom block, which I'm sure people have heard about if they've heard about these protests. Those moms in just a week went from showing up in just yellow T-shirts to showing up in yellow T-shirts, a helmet, goggles, a gas mask and a shield. So everyone's leveling up pretty quickly. And just describe what is that mom block? I mean, I've seen these images of, I guess, what is moms locked arm in arm right on the front lines? Right. So I want to be really clear that mothers have always been a key part of this protest. And black and indigenous mothers particularly have been coming out to the protest since day one and have been there throughout 60 days. But within the last couple of weeks, this group of predominantly white mothers have banded together and created this thing called Wall of Moms, in which they dressed in matching outfits and they would link arms and go to the front lines of the protest and chant things like, Feds stay clear, the moms are here.

Feds stay clear, the moms are here. We need to stand up. I'm 60 years old. I probably shouldn't be here in public, but this is beyond acceptable. And it's sort of weaponizing this concept of white women, white mothers as being like inherently more fragile or like less deserving of violence or less threatening. look at, you know, black block protesters, some of them say like, oh, these people, you know, they're, they're violent, and they're like asking for it, and they deserve to be, you know, tear gassed and shot at, which, you know, we can have that discussion separately. But these moms went out to say, like, look, we are not doing anything violent, we are not threatening anyone, we're just standing here, and we're also getting tear gassed. So there's this discussion around this of to what extent is this also racism to see these moms, these white moms, as inherently less deserving of violence, but also I'm very aware that these mothers are doing that on purpose, right,

are using this as a tactic and are themselves trying to take cues from black leaders and are not trying to spotlight their whiteness over black voices that have been at these protests since day one. A lot of the images that we're seeing from the protests are coming from the front lines. It is the clashes between protesters and law enforcement. But can you describe a little bit what's happening behind the front lines, the protesters that are there, but are not clashing with police? Yeah, that's a great question. That's also changed over the last couple weeks from where it was. But for the first six weeks of these protests,

the majority of the time was spent sitting around in the park, eating snacks, talking, dancing, listening to music. And now a lot of that is still happening. And so if you back up even just half a block off of the front lines, you'll find a bunch of drummers and percussionists playing a beat and maybe there'll be a dance party next to that. Or there will be, you know, someone singing and chanting next to that. And you'll find, you know, mutual aid groups handing out food and protective equipment and first aid equipment and water. Across the street from the federal courthouse is Riot Ribs, which is a 24-7 donation-based outdoor kitchen. And so protesters, homeless folks, anyone else can line up for free food from Riot Ribs at any time. It's important to remember this

is happening during a pandemic. So often this is the only social event that people have gone to in months. And so yes, there is there is skirmishes on the front lines. But there's also just a lot of socializing and honestly, a lot of joy in this level of community support and engagement and the amount of people who are coming together for a common goal and like really showing up for each other. I want to ask you more about how this all began. Back in May, there was about 10,000 people that took to the streets after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police. How did the Portland police handle those crowds back then? It's funny because they handled them in a very similar way to what federal agents were doing for the first few weeks that they were there.

Just in the last few days, I finally, as a reporter, am to the point where I will say that the federal agents are using more force and are significantly more violent and dangerous than the Portland Police Department. But for the first three weeks that the federal agents were there, I would not have said that because they were using almost identical tactics. Portland Police was also using tear gas as well as pepper spray. They were using crowd control munitions. I mean, even really specific tactics like Portland Police was also hiding all identifying information from the officers uniforms, much like the federal agents are doing. Portland police was calling for unlawful assemblies and then bull rushing crowds out of the area like federal agents are doing.

And so it was very, very, very similar tactics. And it's only in the last week or so that the federal agents, I think, have escalated past what Portland police has already been doing in the last two months and before then. In recent weeks, there has been a radical movement to defund, dismantle and dissolve our police departments. This bloodshed must end. This bloodshed will end. Today, I'm announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime. I want to understand how we got to this place we are right now. I mean,

after those initial protests, it looked like the number of protesters started to dwindle. But what happened? Why are we seeing this surge of protesters taking to the streets again in the last few weeks? Yeah, so what happened was that, yes, the protests did dwindle down from thousands of people to a couple hundred people coming out every night, as recently as a couple weeks ago. And what really sparked a change was not the arrival of federal agents, because federal agents arrived almost a month ago. What really sparked a change was not the arrival of federal agents because federal agents arrived almost a month ago. What really sparked the change was an Oregon public broadcasting article that broke the news that federal agents were snatching protesters off the street, seemingly without cause, and driving them around in unmarked vans. What are you doing? Use your words. What are you doing? I haven't done anything wrong.

Use your words. You just violated their rights. Kidnapping people. You just violated their rights. That story, you know, to an outsider seemed terrifying and appalling and completely out of the blue. And that really drew local and national attention to what was going on downtown and led to thousands of additional Portlanders wanting to come down and, you know, stand up for their belief that these federal agents should not be in Portland or that they should not be snatching protesters off the street or they should not be using violent eschatore tactics. You know, all of these people were drawn out by this news story. But the news story is just a recounting of what was already happening, right? So it wasn't really that, like, federal agents changed their tactics. It was just that the word of what they had already been doing finally got out to the public.

And one of the protesters that got a lot of media attention was Mark Pettibone. Tell me about him. Yeah, so Mark Pettibone was a protester who was walking home from a protest. It had been a relatively uneventful night in terms of clashes with the police and the federal agents. But as we were walking to my friend's car, a van pulled up in front of me. When federal agents rolled up in an unmarked van. I tried to flee and they tracked me down and threw me into the van. So they pulled my beanie over my face and held my hands over my head. And then brought him to the

federal courthouse, searched him, I believe eventually released him after not finding anything that could be seen as incriminating on him. But it was really just a story that counteracted the federal agent's narrative that they were really targeting specific people who they knew were, you know, perpetrating crimes. Like their line was, we are watching the crowd very carefully. And then when the crowd gets smaller, we're going to go out in the crowd, we're going to pick off the people that are doing the crimes, and we're going to arrest those people. But this was really demonstrating that this man, Mark, was not on federal property. It's just such a kind of a cliche image of authoritarianism.

And I knew that this is kind of the logical progression of what's been going on. I just didn't expect it to hit home so directly. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

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I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Federal officers were ostensibly deployed to the city to protect the federal courthouse. You've been on the ground there. Is that what you're seeing? I suppose that that could be argued that that is what's happening because protesters are trying to breach this fence around the courthouse. this fence around the courthouse and so you know acting homeland security secretary chad wolf has said that if federal agents pulled out of portland protesters would burn this building to the ground we're not going to advocate our mission our responsibilities uh however whatever the local leadership here is telling us we're going to do our job we're going to do it professionally

but we're not going to have these violent anarchists who show up about the same time every night and having that federal destruction to property. I think that that's a really flawed argument for two reasons. One is that before the federal agents arrived in Portland, no one was paying attention to the courthouse. And so really the protesters are not chanting at the fence and trying to breach the fence because they're trying to burn the courthouse down from anything I've understood in my 60 days of reporting. My understanding is that they're trying to breach

the fence because they're angry about the federal officers. And they're trying to demonstrate their anger at the federal officers presence by messing with this fence, like the fence is an escalatory thing by the federal agents. And that was shown a month ago when Portland police did exactly the same thing and put a fence up around their police headquarters and things just escalated because protesters had a target of their frustration, which became, you know, yelling at this fence and shaking this fence. This is our street. That's our fence. It's on our property. Take it down and leave our town. But a month ago, we were having this exact same standoff across the street at the Portland Police headquarters. And once the Portland police took down that fence and stopped appearing every night to have skirmishes with protesters,

focus shifted entirely away from that police headquarters. No one has burned it to the ground. There's barely even been graffiti. So it's clearly the protesters are focusing on wherever law enforcement is stationed rather than on destroying specific buildings. And federal officials have internally acknowledged that they have, you know, their presence has contributed to the escalation of the conflict between protesters and law enforcement. Yes, absolutely. I understand there's been some criticism of the protests as well, that, you know, recently the president of the Portland NAACP,othed confrontation. She, photographed doing yoga poses. That is definitely the tipping point for me.

I mean, my great-great-uncle was lynched for just speaking to a white woman. I think that we need to remember that this is exactly why Black men were lynched in America and what a slap in the face it is for us. Can you tell me a bit more about those concerns? Yeah, absolutely. So these protests started as a Black Lives Matter movement. And if someone went down to the protest, they would see that the protests were much more racially diverse than Portland as a whole. Portland is only 6% African-American and 76% white.

And these protests were much more diverse than that. And so you were seeing like a lot of focus on Black Lives Matter topics. All of the people on the bullhorns were black. And the focus was on, you know, defunding Portland police, which disproportionately targets black and indigenous Portlanders. Now the headlines are showing things like the wall of moms, which is, you know, primarily white women. They're showing white protesters getting shot in the face. They're showing white protesters getting tear gassed. A lot of the media focus is on, you know, Trump and these federal agents versus the city of Portland. The mayor says President Trump sent in federal officers to fire up his base during an election season, a point echoed by Governor Kate Brown.

It's all about scoring political points and, of course, a photo opportunity. Mr. President, federal agencies should never be used as your own personal army. And that Black Lives Matter message is getting lost. But I don't know that on the ground that message has been lost because on the ground I'm still seeing almost entirely black folks on the bullhorn. I'm still seeing signs about Black Lives Matter. I'm still hearing chants for George Floyd, for Breonna Taylor, for black Portlanders who have been killed. And so I don't think the protesters on the ground are losing the threat of Black Lives Matter. I think it's the media that is focusing on white people involved and like white perspectives of these protests that's really causing that issue. I wonder, you know, you've been covering these protests for four months now and you've described the tear gas, the flashbangs, the fireworks that are there. I mean, what's it like to be in the middle of these protests? It's one thing for us to watch these videos from afar, but I imagine it's quite disorienting at times to be right in the midst of it. Absolutely.

What's sort of been horrifying is how the journalists and the protesters on the ground have adjusted to experiencing this because I'm at the point where I go out there with a respirator and goggles and helmet and I'm just standing in a cloud of tear gas checking my tweets because it is just so common to me now that I don't even move away from it. I just stand there and, you know,

look at my phone. When flashbangs go off or when fireworks go off, I don't jump or react in any way because I am so used to it. But definitely the other day I was standing on the front lines reporting and I saw three people around me get hit with flashbangs, which is not how flashbangs are intended to be used. They're not ammunition. But people on either side of me get hit with flashbangs, which is not how flashbangs are intended to be used. They're not ammunition. But people on either side of me were hit directly with flashbangs. And it's one of those things where, you know, you turn and look and you're glad that it didn't hit you specifically. But you know when you're out there that there's a very real chance that at any moment you'll be hit with pepper balls, you'll be hit with flashbangs, you'll be tear gassed. And you just sort of accept that risk and get used to it happening all around you. I mean, after two months of protests, it doesn't seem like there is an end

in sight. And now we're seeing similar protests, you know, sparked in other cities, including in, you know, major protests in Seattle. What's your prediction about where this is all heading? I have absolutely no idea because two weeks ago, before that Oregon Public Broadcasting story broke about the federal agents snatching people into unmarked vans, I really thought that the protests were going to die out in a matter of weeks because the crowd was getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And now every day is the new biggest day. It's gotten to the point where I am now covering the protest less. I started covering the protest because there were only a couple of journalists on the ground getting all of the information out. And I felt that it was important that people knew what was going on. And now I'm

on the front lines and there are dozens and dozens of press all around me. I can't even get to the fence because there are so many people in front of me. When the tear gas comes in, there are so many press and protesters that it's hard to even move away from the tear gas because the crowd is so dense. And when it gets to that point, it's hard to see what's going to happen from there because it's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger every single day. And so I really do not have a prediction of what's going to happen now because all of my previous predictions have been wrong.

So, I mean, this could go on until the election for all I know. Well, we will continue to watch closely. Thank you so much, Tuck, for speaking with me today. Thank you so much for having me. Before I let you go today, an update on a story that we brought you last week. The Major League Baseball season just started, but already two games have been called off because of a coronavirus outbreak within the Miami Marlins. According to ESPN, the team has at least 14 positive cases. Their home opener against Baltimore, scheduled for last night, was cancelled, as well as a New York Yankees game. The Yankees would have been in the same clubhouse as the

Marlins used last week. That's all for today. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner.