It Could Happen Here - The Proud Boys Return to Portland: An After Action Report

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

On August 22nd, for the second year in a row, Proud Boys and other Far Right associates descended on Portland Oregon. Here is our field report. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's racism. What the fuck?

All right, this is It Could Happen Here, the podcast that already started once, and then I wasn't recording, okay? I wasn't recording. But you are now, and that's all that matters. But I am now. I got it right eventually, and people need to just be proud of me for eventually doing things right. Garrison, hi there.

Good morning. We were supposed to record this yesterday, but I got a horrible stomach virus. So we didn't because I was dying in bed. Yep. Mm-hmm. But we're here today because on the 22nd of August, which was this Sunday, there was a Proud Boy and affiliated Other Boys rally in Portland that turned into one of our by now routine running street fights through the city, this time in a new neighborhood. And then there was also a gunfight in the

neighborhood where fighting has happened generally before. Usually happens in downtown. Usually happens. Yeah. And there's some, I don't know, I think kind of meaningful takeaways from this event, both in terms of what the far right is going to be increasingly doing and kind of some missteps among the far left in confronting them. Yeah. And I think it's important to kind of, well, let's start with giving a couple of weeks ago right after a big series of street fights over a a canadian uh pastor whose church lost religious status in canada because he was uh so bigoted technically like this rally has been planned for a few months but it really got yeah boosted after this thing earlier in august yeah there was always going to be something on the 22nd

because there was a gigantic street fight uh in portland on the 22nd of 2020 right in front of police headquarters um and so they there was always going to be something and it kind of started to take shape uh two weeks ago after this street fight uh where i mean the picture that went viral was a guy pointing what looked to be an AR-15 at a friend of ours, Justin Yao, a photojournalist that was later turned out to be an airsoft gun. The guy's gotten a couple of charges for menacing. But it was a whole thing.

They announced that they were going to be doing this rally downtown, and then local anti-fascists announced a rally very nearby, and a lot of people started talking about it, became clear that it was going to get numbers. And they switched at the last moment, the right wing switched their rally to a completely different part of town in the northeast side of Portland in the most diverse neighborhood in Portland, right next to Park Rose High School, which is the most diverse school in the entire state of Oregon. High School, which is the most diverse school in the entire state of Oregon. And so, you know, people rallied, left-wing anti-fascist protesters rallied downtown at Salmon Springs Park. Pretty good numbers, I would say between 300 and 400, kind of at the height of the gathering. And then somewhere around 200-ish Pr boys and other times you get and you know most of the most of the the left-wing counter protesters who rallied were either from portland

or from you know a nearby city like seattle or salem everyone was pretty local relatively yeah everybody was pretty local whereas a significant chunk if not a majority of the right-wing protesters were from other states like including like they brought out a fucking Enrique Tarrio, who just got sentenced to I think six months in jail. Yep. Leader of the Proud Boys slash federal informant was there, as were a lot, you know, a lot of the same crew who have been traveling around to fight people in different parts of the country, including when there were a bunch of California proud boys who have been taking part in some of the events outside of the Los Angeles, you know, city hall and whatnot. So they showed up. And basically, you know, at first, their gathering was, you know, they put out a big flag, they had like a stage on in the back of a truck and they were you know given giving the

standard speeches the rally was billed as sort of a uh a free our political prisoners thing for the people arrested on january 6th and for alan swinney who's been in jail for nearly a year after he pulled a gun on a crowd of uh random unarmed people and journalists uh and on the 22nd last on the 22nd last year shot a bunch of journalists with paintball guns did a bunch of you know illegal shit um so they were that's how they were billing it it was i don't know broadly it was very because we showed up kind of early in the rally um we kind of drove around the parking lot a little bit getting some shots from a distance um and they were definitely very paranoid from the beginning.

They had like a couple of rifle teams walking around the area. They had people in vehicles patrolling. We parked outside of the event. We walked up. There were four local women, kind of all look to be in their in their 50s or so, who were protesting unmasked with signs in front of but outside of the event. And they lived in the neighborhood. They just heard that the Proud Boys were showing up and they were not happy about that. So they had shown up to protest. We walked over to talk to them.

And as we were talking to them, we got surrounded by a group of Proud Boys and kind of affiliated folks who started, you know, live streaming and yelling questions. And in a couple of cases, like walking up to us with weapons in hand and asking if we wanted to fight. And eventually we kind of pulled back from that and talked to some other locals, maybe half a block away, who had just like stopped to watch the confrontation. And as we were talking with them, we get surrounded again a second time by these folks who, again, are both trying to kind of menace us and menace the locals that we had been interviewing.

And there was an interesting moment there that I took down that I want to kind of quote from where they started, like, there was clearly this mix of like wanting us to be scared of them and also wanting to put on a good face for these locals. Yeah. And so they said to the locals at one point, hey, we're being very civil. And the man we were talking to looked back at them and said, it's a veneer of civility, which I appreciated his attitude a lot. which I appreciated his attitude a lot. But so we backed off after a little while, just because the people we were trying to interview kept getting surrounded by Proud Boys.

And it kind of felt like we were bringing heat on them that, that we didn't want to be doing. So we started to head back downtown. And while that was happening, a horrible giant fight broke out. And it had been, I think the start of it was that, so there were these, you know, unmasked women kind of out in front. And as they get surrounded, a couple folks in block came up to kind of try and defend them. Like one of them pulled his Toyota Tacoma up to the side of the group because people

were spilling out into the street. And so he was kind of trying to block cars from the people who were out in the street. A couple of medics showed up and were just kind of hanging around out, you know, at the edge of the thing in case something happened. And it kind of seems like folks continued to flood in. And from what we know of what was happening over downtown at the main anti-fascist gathering. At a certain point, people said like, hey, we need to, the block needs to show up and confront, you know, the fascists in Northeast. And people couldn't agree on whether or not they should go in numbers. There was kind of like a failure to get consensus. So some scattered groups showed up and the Proud Boys attacked. And there was a big, ugly street fight that went on

for pretty close to an hour it led to at least two vehicles getting totaled um they attacked the drivers of a van who fled the van and then the van uh was flipped uh and totaled um and you'll see like the the disinformation kind of spin on this is that antifa was trying to drive a van into the proud boys but we we have video that's a very clear video sure yeah no one is in the van because they've maced and beat people and they ran away from the van uh and then later the proud boys like ran more than like a block away from their location they attacked a guy in a truck um and not just totaled his truck but like multiple people were beating him about the head and shoulders as he was sitting alone in his truck.

They occupied the parking lot of a local high school, fired paintball guns at random local bystanders and at press. And the police didn't show up at all. We never saw a single police officer in the aftermath of that. They were like throwing like smoke bombs and fireworks and there's like paintballs going off for like an hour and no yeah they complete completely left alone they destroyed like totally destroyed two vehicles and while this was happening like right after this had happened and i think like as sort of the footage of them destroying these vehicles it started to go viral uh a right-wing counter-protester downtown got into an argument with some left-wing counter-protesters. I say argument. The allegations are that he was

just hurling racial slurs at them and trying to show a couple of black people video of a lynching or footage of a lynching. Again, these are kind of the allegations folks on the scene had made. The allegations folks on the scene had made. He got sort of chased out of the event by a group of left wing counter protesters. And he was armed and had apparently been flashing his gun. And a couple of them were armed. They were about half a block away. Well, they were like literally across the street. So he was a good it looked like 30 or 40 feet away from them when he pulled out his gun, got behind a trash can and started

firing into the crowd. And his weapon jammed pretty quickly. I think he got off maybe two shots. And people, counter protesters, Jason Wilson of The Guardian said two of them. But I think only one actually got off shots, fired back. And thankfully, no one's bullets hit anybody. But and he and he was the the shooter was arrested pretty much immediately thereafter, which marked kind of the first time the police showed up. There was an undercover cop in the anti-fascist crowd who got arrested, the guy who started shooting the anti-fascists.

Yeah. As soon as press saw the undercover cop with other cops, the guy in plain clothes very quickly left the scene. Yeah. He ran away quite quickly. You might call him burned. Now, so that's, I don't know, the rough shape of the event. And, of course, because of, I think, a mix of the Proud Boys, you know,

getting so violent in the area they were rallying um and the shooting happening uh the anti-fascists who were downtown at salmon springs park um did the thing that that demonstrators do in portland now which is uh start tearing up street signs and grabbing pieces of fencing and making barricades so they made a little barricade around the protest area and they did and this is again this is just kind of what happens at portland protests if they go on if there's enough people and they go on for a certain period of time they fucking love building barricades um i'm not convinced there was a huge amount of purpose uh for building the barricades but whatever it makes people happy there was a huge amount of purpose for building the barricades,

but whatever, it makes people happy. And there was this kind of, there was a pretty intense expectation that Proud Boys were going to come out and attack at night. I don't really think anything happened that night. I think they went back to Vancouver and all got really drunk. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

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Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So that was the rough shape of the day. I think I want to start by kind of getting into some critiques we have of kind of what we saw on the left that day. Because it is this, the police completely abdicated, as did the city government, any responsibility for the event. They announced ahead of time that they were not going to intervene if people were being assaulted, because they assumed that if you were being assaulted by the Proud Boys, you're a combatant.

That was the assumption. And again, like these women we talked to who showed up unmasked with signs, got like maced from behind and shoved and stuff, and like, absolutely were not combating. They basically just said that if you're near a Proud Boy and like, absolutely, we're not combating. They basically just said that if you're near a Proud Boy and you get attacked, we're not going to do anything about it. And they sure didn't. So that kind of necessitates and this has been this has been an evolution of the police's attitudes for a while. For the first couple of years of these gatherings, the police would be there in heavy presence and would mostly attack left-wing counter protesters and in recent the last year and change they've just not shown up at all um and so again there's a when it comes to like sort of the there's often this debate about like we'll just don't show up don't counter protest them and like they they won't get anything

that they want well when they show up they attack people so like the last couple of weekends there have been attacked the last couple of times that they've shown up in town late at night groups of people have attacked homeless encampments right um you know when they when they weren't heavily confronted two weekends ago uh people drove around macing and shooting paintball guns at kind of random bystanders. So the violence isn't predicated on whether or not people in black blocs show up to confront them. It's predicated on the fact that they come to Portland to do violence, and they'll find a way to do it one way or the other.

Now, the fact that I think, you know, some form of community response is necessary to this, because again, the local government and the police are never going to do anything to protect people, doesn't mean that I think the response that we got on the 22nd is without criticism. We saw some really dumb shit. I think one of the first things we saw when we showed up was kind of at the outskirts of the event. There was a guy in a grunt-style shirt on a bicycle who kept arguing with people. At the anti-fascist event in San Francisco Park. At the anti-fascist event, yeah.

He kept arguing with people, and after, I don't know, 30 minutes or so, one of them bear-maced him. And obviously, so bear mace is great for bears. People like to use it because it seems more hardcore than just normally macing somebody. Bear mace also spreads a lot more than normal mace. It gets carried by the air a lot more. So number one, when there's hundreds of people around and you bear mace one guy, you're going to get mace in a bunch of people's faces, which is exactly what happened.

Which is exactly what happened. Yeah. faces which is exactly what exactly what happened yeah um so it was so purely for just like uh uh like obviously so number one there was more of people were hit by that mace who were on the side of whoever was spraying the mace uh than who weren't um including a guy who had been trying to de-escalate things um And secondly, it's just like, no matter how annoying a dude is being, macing a random dude arguing with you, makes you the shitty one,

which is a number of people called out at the time. John the Lefty, a very prominent Portland anti-fascist activist, got very angry at this because it was so, it was fucking dumb. And, you know, we shouldn't be, I don't want to be doing the, you know, the thing that that like the right wing does which is you take an event hundreds of people were at and you highlight one example of someone being dumb and say this is the whole event because it wasn't but it is the kind of thing you do see at these events and it's part of the problem of a completely horizontal movement where the benefit of that is it's it's it's it's durable it's hard

to infiltrate the downside of that is if some guy shows up at the outskirts and decides he's going to be captain bear mace um what are you going to do like what are you going to do to stop him you know yeah and we kind of saw this trend continue over the course at the anti-fascist rally like like after the shooting when everyone was all like amped up like like you know as as you should be you guys because you you you like just got shot at but somebody tried to shoot you today. You're going to be very amped up. A lot of the block was then

very aggressive with cars and drivers and people in the area who were trying to go about their day really unnecessarily. A lot of people were like, if someone was confused about why there was stuff in the street and they were like driving, you know, very slowly and stopping to talk to people.

And a lot of people, well, not a lot of people, you know, there was a few people in block who were very, very aggressive with them. And there was people trying to de-escalate and stuff. And that's just not super useful because it just makes everyone more antsy. And it's not, you're not really really you're not like reading the situation accurately um if you're taking every grandma who's driving their old car trying to go to like the grocery store or whatever yeah taking her as like this is a massive threat she's not she's trying to talk to you because she doesn't know what's happening and if you just scream at her face and like her, that isn't anti-fascism. No, and also if you're just kind of randomly, as we saw,

expanding out into different intersections and taking intersections and yelling at people or just standing around with weapons, that just kind of freaks people out and that doesn't protect anybody. Your presence at that random intersection um isn't doing anything um and and that was a frustration there were people at the time there was this one beautiful moment where this one guy in block started saying to everybody

hey guys we have a defensible position back at the fountain why are we standing at a random intersection let's get back to like where we were it's a much safer and and less stupid place to be standing and then there was some fucking dude with a paintball gun who said why should we go back let's take the city and it was my dude what do you what are you gonna take you got a fucking paintball gun and you're standing in an intersection like come on man shut the fuck up um it was just silly yeah uh and it's the kind of silliness that again i don't think there's any sort of comparison for the kind of violence deployed by the two groups and i think it's worth noting that like absolutely not when the proud boys don't show up there aren't random groups of people in black standing in intersections with paintball guns

it's just not a common thing in Portland outside of these events. We're seeing a lot of the trends that got started last year. People trying to set up a spot to protest then defend that spot, occupy this particular space. And this isn't always a useful tactic, and it's not a useful tactic for a lot

of anti-fascist demonstrations. So trying to occupy a four-block city radius doesn't make sense when you have 200 people in a crowd who are doing like an anti-fascist rally like it's it's it made a whole lot more sense at the beginning of the rally when everyone was just at the park because that was a very you know strong like like like show of strength um against against any fascists who wanted to show up downtown um and it's a much more defensible spot than being spread out across three different intersections.

And I think the Corvallis Against Fascism, an anti-fascist group, put out a decent thread on this very topic, talking about all these kind of same criticisms and how there was... They even talked about how there was instances of block getting aggressive with houseless people and threatening to mace them, you know, there was instances of block, like, getting aggressive with, like, houseless people, and, like, threatening to, like, mace them, and, like, a whole bunch of this kind of stuff, which is, you know, pretty similar to,

like, Corvallis said, is, like, you're engaging in the same violence against mentally ill people and houseless people that, like, cops do. And when you're getting this overly aggressive, escalating terms of, like, this, this escalating conflict you're just you're just treating people like cops you're not actually trying to do anti-fascism and and that is always the danger is this has evolved into a thing a more constant thing is people have gotten traumatized because i do think trauma is a huge part of this one of the things that when you've been when you've repeatedly been the victim of violence both from police and from right wingers, you get extra amped up and you show up with weapons. And, you know, if the, if no one shows up, if you don't get that, that kind of

fight that you, you went into this for days, kind of preparing your adrenal system for, maybe you just start yelling at some random person in a car or somebody on the street who transgresses in some slight way because you're extra amped up. And that is the, you know, I think that needs to be taken into account as like as much of a problem as anything else that needs to be dealt with. Like that's actually an anti-fascist problem is dealing with the brutalization effect that occurs to people showing up at these events and makes them more likely to engage in unreasonable behavior that alienates people, that makes the overall cause harder. You know, there were a couple other things. There was,

there's a recall effort to get the mayor to not be the mayor anymore. And some people were there taking signatures. I signed the sheet. Um, they were, you know, wearing uniforms and stuff. And like a group of people in block it, very angry at them. Like you're putting people in danger cause you're taking their info down

here. And it's like, guys, they're not requiring you to sign anything. And not everyone who shows up at these events is, is, is worried about being identified as having been at these events um a lot of people weren't in block they're just in their regular clothes because you don't need to be in black

block to be an anti-fascist yeah yeah and you don't have to hide your involvement in anti-fascist activity uh and in fact it's beneficial if there's a lot of people who don't if you're a more extreme activist if you're also partaking in like anti-police activism like yeah i get it who don't. If you're a more extreme activist, if you're also partaking in like anti-police activism, like, yeah, I get it. You don't want your identity known. Or you're somebody who's directly confronting the right wing a lot physically. You don't want your identity known because you might get attacked. That's not everyone who shows up. And everyone is safer if a bunch of random people who might be perfectly comfortable signing a sheet like that also show up at the event. And that's, you know, somebody got harassed would be too strong word, but somebody got like crit critiqued at the event for like not showing

up in block. And it was like, well, they don't need to sometimes it's fine. It's you want as many random people to show up as possible. It's it's overall beneficial to the the thing you're actually trying to do. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The one other thing we should bring up is the whole horrible debate that's been going on on Twitter around press stuff. Oh, God, yeah, yeah.

What's happened at the Kmart around around the Kmart stuff? Because this kind of does kind of does tie into all of these same root problems, I think. Yeah. So the basic thing that happened that that was kind of the big development on the, you know, because there has been kind of a growing cult of smashing cameras on the left for a while. And some of it comes from a very reasonable place, which is that a number of people are in jail or caught charges because of footage that press took and posted. Usually people not wearing block as well. Usually people not wearing block are disguising their identity, which, again, we could litigate that.

And so there's this mix of people who are just extra heightened about press and people who are just like, well, anytime you see a camera, it's fine to hit it. It's like all cameras are snitches. All cameras are snitches, yeah. And I don't know. There's a number of, I think, shortcomings in that type of thinking, including the fact that those same people tend to repeatedly miss right-wing live streamers who are in block and filming events. It happens every single time they get angry at a marked press person. Yeah, people get very angry at people who are, you know, like the people in the block will get very angry and hostile at like photographers who are you know clearly marked um yet ignore and miss uh like bad

like bad actors who are dressed in block secretly filming who get a lot of footage people doing crimes and this gets missed every single time and no one talks about it this is something that it never gets brought up in the debate about cameras it's like the people getting actual footage of you doing crimes are people in block and you just ignore them and it you know that was this weekend there a local journalist marini stab um was filming and she actually got assaulted by both sides she was maced by a right winger before she got attacked by uh some left-wing folks in block and had her camera broken. It was a very ugly situation.

People called her a slut. Yeah, yeah. Some misogynist insults. Someone in block did that, and they smashed her camera stuff. She was trying to—yeah, yeah. And here it is. There's a whole bunch of people with con with like contradictory claims but what happened some people saying that she attacked the block she did and she was trying to get her phone back she she didn't attack the

block like whatever you want to say about like because there's arguments about like she only complained the block had attacked her she didn't point out that she had also been maced by right wingers like whatever that's he that's not the thing to harp on the thing to harp on is for all that people claim about her camera putting them in danger them assaulting her was filmed from like six different angles it turns out when you when you when you very publicly assault a journalist for quoting for like you know because you think they're gonna film you doing crimes you get filmed doing crimes from many angles in high definition like that you did not prevent yourself from getting caught on camera doing crimes you only made it more so also as you were doing this fascists were assaulting people like a ton of people you weren't doing anti-fascism

you were focused on this one journalist that you don't like i know some people are some people are like saying they don't like her because she has worked with ford fisher in the past and they don't like ford fisher because of coverage he's done so like it's okay because she works with this with this media person like as you're arguing and doing all this stuff there are literally fascists a block away assaulting people inside a truck and like right um so you're not actually doing anti-fascism and you're also not preventing yourself from getting caught on camera so it's a it's a whole bunch of things that are frustrating because i feel like people really aren't thinking through this position fully and what are actually

what what is actually happening on the street and yeah if you just get caught in this kind of endless debate that really has no actual answer because no one's no one's going to change their opinion on it and like i don't have i don't have like i i understand the sentiment but i also understand how there are lots of cases where press coverage is very helpful for these types of movements and then there's definitely ways to do it responsibly but also just attacking every journalist on site does not seem like a very anti-fascist thing to do. And it's, yeah, I don't want to like, I don't want to claim that that's like the only majority response. It's a specific subset of the left-wing demonstrators.

Because like later on in the day, like my photographer and I were getting shots of the barricades. And there were some black people around them. And one of them walked up and very politely said, hey you mind um not photographing you know the people in there blind we showed him like no no we're just getting like barricades and stuff it was a very polite conversation and i think a reasonable way to like everyone has a has a right to walk up to press and request that they not be photographed you know um obviously that doesn't necessarily come with like a legal backing or anything. But I think most press, if someone walks up and says, hey, would you please not, like

most people are going to be relatively decent about that. You'll deal with some like shitty people now and again. And I think that we're harping on these problems because the basic reality is that a response from the community is necessary for these events. People do need to show up. People do need to confront and oppose these right-wing groups when they show up in town. And because the local government, the federal government, and law enforcement have completely have stated in multiple states, right, this kind of shit's been going on in Los Angeles. There have been street fights with people stabbed

in front of police headquarters, in front of the LA City Hall. Police don't declare unlawful assembly. They don't do anything to confront the folks who are just like, some of the same Proud Boys who are here in Portland were out in front of a clinic in Los Angeles a couple months ago,

assaulting cancer patients for wearing masks into a clinic. Like a response is necessary. A community response is necessary. And because of how necessary the response is, it is also necessary that we critique the response when it falls short. Yeah, because all of these things distract from

the much more severe thing that Proud Boys horribly beat people on sunday like there was nearly a guy could have died yeah and really ugly and i know there's been people complaining that there was like seven photographers watching this happen and like i i totally understand that um absolutely that is very yeah and that's a very fair criticism of of press because i happen to know there have been times when like right- wing videographers have gotten caught in a crowd and beaten up and members of the press have said, hey, they've had enough after a certain point, because you do at a certain stage have a responsibility to step in. You know, it's like if you're a photographer and you see somebody with a gunshot wound, if it's safe for you to administer first aid, it's more incumbent upon

you to administer first aid than to get a shot. That said, like, there's, I don't know, this is, this is an old argument in conflict reporting. There's that very famous photo of a child, I think it was in Ethiopia, but I'm not certain where, like, a kid who's clearly dying of malnutrition, and a photographer took a picture of them and people like critiqued that photographer and attacked him. And I think the photographer eventually committed suicide, but it was this whole, it was this whole like debate over, shouldn't he have done something? And his argument, which I do think he was right in this was like, I, if it was something I could have taken action on, I would have, but like, this is a kid who's been malnourished for months and

months and months. Like nothing I can give them is going to. You can't even just give them food because they can die when they're that malnourished. It's this whole it's this whole question. I'm not saying that I think the photographer is taking pictures that guy getting beaten in the truck should have charged in with sticks and beat the Proud Boys. But someone could have said, hey, guys, you like you need to back off like he's had enough. Something like that. Especially because there was a lot of them. And yes, they were outnumbered by the Proud Boys.

And yes, the bystander effect is a real thing. If more people are there, you assume someone else is going to intervene. Then everyone just watches because that's just what humans do in a lot of cases it's like that but yes there there there could have there could have been things done to prevent this to maybe slightly prevent this man from getting beaten so badly because he he he it was it's it is it is horrible it is it's horrible yeah um and i i do think yeah and i also i get i i don't want to like come at this by saying I think that they're like the anger at press is completely irrational. There's some very understandable reasons for it, both stuff like that and just kind of the general basic fact that if one group of, both groups of people are having violence against them and getting traumatized, but one group of people is also making a profit off of their presence there, that's going to cause friction. group of people is also making a profit off of their presence there, that's going to cause friction. Like there's a number of things that cause friction between the press and communities.

And when you kind of have this community of press who's come up and makes a living off of photos of these events that are deeply traumatic for the people personally involved, that's going to be a cause of friction. But the fact that there's friction and the fact that there's uncomfortable questions to be asked about that doesn't mean that like well just attack people with cameras is a is a reasonable response um and like attacking people with cameras and like attacking them as they're like throwing soda cans at them as they're getting medical aid like that's yeah like like for people saying like oh like doing this kind of stuff is self-defense because we're defending our communities from getting documented. First of all, if you're wearing good block, you shouldn't be identifiable in the first place.

That's why block was invented. And second, throwing soda cans at someone getting medicated isn't self-defense. In no way, that's self-defense against people filming you. You are very past that point you're just hurting someone who is getting treated by medics that that's that's all you're doing at that point and again you're not stopping other people from filming you because this whole situation has caused more cameras to focus on specific individuals like you're you're not even achieving your goal and your goal is slightly confusing because you're not you're you're you're not even achieving your goal and your goal is slightly confusing because you're not,

you're, you're, you're, you're just hurting people who are getting medical aid at this point. And that's not, that's not really super, I don't, I don't see how that really is in line with trying to prevent fascists from hurting your community as fascists are literally a block away beating up people. Yeah, and it's, you know, we talked to some locals in the neighborhood while this was going down, and I think there is, in Portland, a broad kind of support for people confronting these folks. And there's even, you know, we talked to, as we were, as we were

putting on our gas masks and shit to wade into, you know, kind of the tail end of the big street fight, other people in masks and armor who had like, just come up from downtown were walking past. And there was like, we ran into this, this young black woman, Mars, who was heading to a church event with her family. And we had just like parked in front of her house. And she was like, Hey, what's going on? And we were like, Oh, it's the proud. And it, you know, she had, she was a community organizer, she'd had to stop showing up at events, because she had gotten targeted and maced and followed home and stuff. And she was surprised to learn that, like the event had been moved at the last moment to be

right next to her, you know, her community, and was supportive of to learn that like the event had been moved at the last moment to be right next to her, you know, her community and was supportive of the fact that people were showing up to counter these folks. Um, and I, I think that, uh, I think that the, the, the long-term solution to more effectively opposing these people is, um, continuing community outreach, um, and outreach and building ties within the areas where they show up, because there's a lot of it's friendly territory in a lot of cases. Mars told us that like she thinks that that block showing up at events like this is necessary, especially like there's a lot of criticism about like, oh, well, these are all like white people showing up.

And her attitude was that like, well, that's it's kind of incumbent when other when like white supremacist groups are showing up in black neighborhoods to confront people it's kind of incumbent upon other white people to show up and protect and like put their bodies on the line like that's that that's kind of how she she saw it um another good part of like like you know, an objectively successful part of this particular situation is the mass mobilization online of the anti-fascist resistance at the original meeting spot, which successfully—there was so much talk about it that the fascists got scared away. Like, they got scared away, and they had to meet inside a Kmart parking lot. Now, yes, they did violence outside of that, but they kept, you know, the mobilization online, and they, like, you know,

preparing for the in-person thing in downtown, got the fascists away from downtown, got the fascists away from the homeless encampments downtown that they've been targeting the past few weeks. That was very successful in terms of keeping fascists out of downtown and keeping a large mob of Proud Boys

away from just running through a homeless encampment beating up people as they've done in the past. In terms of positive things, that is absolutely very good. And there was a lot of anti-fascists on the ground. All of our critiques are talking about a very small group of people because there were there were hundreds of people on the ground yeah

a lot of block was doing a very good job keeping keeping you know people protected keeping certain spots secured um especially at salmon springs yeah and there was a right-wing live stream where they like drove past the counter-protest event part of and said like it's a sea of black we shouldn't go down there um and yeah that that is when folks show up it does protect certain areas and kind of one of the the shortcomings that isn't a moral shortcoming of the response was kind of the the fact that when they showed up in a different location the the the there there was not really a very good concerted response to like getting people out and so you kind of had really unclear isolated small groups of people in block showing up and so they were outnumbered and it didn't like the confrontation with them in northeast

didn't go super well they weren't able to have enough people there to show up a strong resistance yeah um yeah because like when back at salmon springs and downtown a lot of like rumors like how much a block is going over to the kmart is just a little bit as a lot like it was very unclear um and that that part was yeah because of the location change and people debating whether or not they should go to the Kmart where the Proud Boys are at. That is kind of the root of all of the issues that came up that day just because the crowd size got split. It was very awkward.

This led, you know, there wasn't enough anti-fascist and block to really actively oppose the Proud Boys. So then they started focusing on a few of the journalists who they did not like there and that's kind of caused that that's kind of how that problem got got to that certain point and they weren't able to you know really show a good a good defense when when the proud boys started attacking and pushing people out um so you know there's a few a few you know logistical things that are – that just is a hard problem. That is a very difficult thing to figure out on the ground. I totally sympathize.

It's an organizational problem and a pretty new one, and you can't – this is an ongoing adaptation thing, and I'm not really really sure what the longterm solution to that is going to be. And I think the fact that there was an armed attack on the protest downtown, one of the things I'm worried about going forward is that like now that line has been crossed. This isn't the first time there's been gunfire at one of these events. There's happened a couple of times. This is the first time though,

that there's been an exchange of fire and that's worrisome. And it's kind of hard to tell like where that's going to go. And especially if what I think makes this a particular danger is that when we see deadly violence, like we saw with, um, um, Jay Danielson and Michael Reinold last year, like we saw with Skylar Jernigan firing a gun into a crowd. Um, both of those two situations just mentioned happened at parking garages. This one happened out in front of a pizza joint a block and a half, something like that, away from the main gathering.

The really violent shit always happens on the periphery, and it always happens between small groups of people, sometimes just individuals. And I'm worried that if there isn't a better solution figured out for dealing with, okay, they changed location, they're showing up in numbers here, we've already got hundreds of people here, who comes over to the new location, how many of them come? If that isn't kind of settled in a concerted way, you're going to increasingly have small groups of people, most of whom are probably packing firearms, running into each other on the peripheries of events. And that is a fucking recipe for for people getting shot to death one other good thing is when anti-fascists did fire back because they were being fired upon yeah they were absolutely right to fire this was one of the better instances of

like how they actually fire like i know you talked about how they were um how all of like the bullet impacts we found were like lower onto the ground None of them cracked the windows of the building, so they were shooting low. And they weren't shooting someone as they run away. They weren't trying to shoot a moving vehicle or a moving target. It was very focused. They were firing at a stationary person who was firing on them. They took effective cover between the wheels

and engine blocks of cars between them, and they aimed low it was very very effective uh and i think very justified self-defense yeah yeah so i think that kind of wraps up most of what happened yeah i think that does yeah we could have focused more on what the proud boys did but i'm pretty sure everyone kind of knows that they're bad and yeah bad things if you're listening to this you know they're bad and they did bad things. If you're listening to this, you know, they're bad and they did bad things. There's no, there's no equivalence between like the level of violence deployed because,

uh, you know, in terms of severe injuries, uh, it's, it's pretty one sided. And we're like, I'm,

we're not trying to like backseat activist here by talking to, you know, by critiquing stuff. But like, as much as people find it frustrating optics do matter because there is more of them than us like we can't we can't win this battle without without optics so all the time that gets that gets dedicated to talking about oh here's how much antifa is attacking you know random people filming all that distracts from the actual like brutal assault that happened um by by the

proud boys you know so all of these things do do matter in the long run because unfortunately um there is there is a lot of them and for now at least we uh optics are things that needs to be considered if we want to have any kind of success at this type of organizing. Yeah, and I also think that just, obviously, like, part of why we're not focusing on the Proud Boys as much is that everyone listening to this knows they're dangerous, and it's much more effective to talk about, hey, what were the shortcomings on our side this event? What are the things that, like, could be done or need to be done better in order to improve people's safety and improve the efficacy of the resistance to these groups because that's what people are actually going to listen to you know all right yeah yep all right that's an episode

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