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NY Times, July 18, 2020
50 Nights of Unrest in Portland
Robert Evans of Bellingcat says the city “is being used as a bellwether
to see what this administration can get away with.”
By Charlie Warzel
Mr. Warzel is an Opinion writer at large.
Thursday night marked the 50th consecutive night of demonstrations in
Portland, Ore. The protests began after the killing of George Floyd —
tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest police
violence and racial injustice. Since then, the protests have grown
smaller, but clashes between law enforcement officers and protesters
have escalated — on July 12, videos circulated of a federal officer
shooting a protester in the head with a nonlethal munition, resulting in
a skull fracture. Coverage of the unrest has caught the attention of
President Trump, who vowed to “dominate” the protesters with federal law
enforcement officers.
According to recent reports from Oregon Public Broadcasting and other
outlets, federal agents dressed in fatigues have been patrolling the
city in unmarked vans, grabbing and detaining protesters, often with no
indication of whether they’ve been charged with any crime. “This is an
attack on our democracy,” Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, said.
The Oregon senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, as well as Senator
Chuck Schumer, have requested a formal federal investigation into the
arrests. The Nation reports that the arrests have been carried out by
Customs and Border Protection, acting on the president’s “Executive
Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and
Combating Recent Criminal Violence.”
To get a sense of what is unfolding in Portland and what it’s like to be
covering protests each night for two months, I spoke with Robert Evans,
a freelance journalist based in the city. Mr. Evans is a conflict
reporter who has reported from Iraq and Ukraine. He covers far-right
extremism for the investigative journalism site Bellingcat and hosts the
Behind The Bastards podcast. The conversation has been edited for length
and clarity:
How many nights have you been out there covering these demonstrations?
Of the last 51 or so nights I’m at somewhere around 30 that I’ve been out.
It’s not going great. I had to have a sit-down talk with a 17-year old
photo journalist because his hands won’t stop shaking and I know from
prior experience in war zones that it’s an early sign of P.T.S.D.-like
symptoms. I had to tell him: “You very likely have done permanent damage
to your brain covering this stuff and now you’ll have to ask yourself
how much damage you’re willing to incur.”
What is happening in Portland right now?
What is happening in Portland right now — and I say this as somebody
who’s seen war in other countries — it’s as close up to the line as you
can get to actual war without live rounds. It’s really hard for me to
see how things go much further without people dying.
The craziest night so far was July 4, where kids stockpiled thousands of
dollars in illegal fireworks. They were in the center of downtown where
the bulk of the protests happened around the Justice Center.
It started as drunken party, more or less. At random, cops began
shooting into the crowd. Protesters coalesced around the idea of firing
commercial-grade fireworks into the Justice Center and Federal
Courthouse. You had law enforcement firing rubber bullets, foam bullets,
pepper balls and tear gas as crowds circled in around the courthouse
firing rockets into the side of the building. That went on for a
shocking length of time — there was this running three-hour street
battle. I couldn’t tell whose explosions were whose. Just a constant
series of concussions.
The president started taking Portland personally after that.
Federal law enforcement escalated after that, right? That’s the story
that is making the rounds right now — the unmarked vans rounding up
suspected protesters and arresting them.
Since the feds got involved with police it’s gotten really brutal. I’d
argue we’ve seen more police brutality in the last 50 days from Portland
Police Department than anywhere else in the country. It’s brutal but
it’s also predictable. There are rhythms to the way police work. It’s
become an orchestrated dance with both sides.
There are warnings and kicking people out of the demonstration area. But
the feds have deliberately defied the rhythms. Last Saturday, the crowd
was 100 or so. It was very chill — nothing going on beyond the
now-normal occupation of the Justice Center. And feds came out grabbing
people seemingly at random and beating people with sticks. There was the
kid who got shot in the head and his skull was fractured. The federal
law enforcement violence is unpredictable violence.
Early on there seemed to be mass demonstrations focused on policing and
racial justice. Is that still going on?
It’s on a protester by protester basis. If you want to find really dumb
stuff — kids getting into fist fights — you’ll find it. But there’s a
reason the demonstrations in Portland have been going on longer and at a
higher intensity than any other city. First off, people here are really
profoundly mad at their police department and they saw what Minneapolis
got in terms of reform. Here, they’re not willing to take the minimal
$25 million budget cut that they are offering police.
Also, protests have become, for many people, the main culture that
exists in Portland now. We have a virus here, there’s not much else
going on. There’s an understanding there’s an opportunity to either
accept how bad things are or you can go out every night and try to do
something about it.
How does that culture manifest?
Have you heard of Riot Ribs? There’s a guy named Lorenzo — he lives in
Portland and came out one night grilling ribs for the protesters. He got
tear gassed. He’s become something of a monument to the community. He
Built a 24-hour rib restaurant — as much as you can eat. A local
collective called The Witches created a fund-raiser for him while
different houseless people helped to turn Riot Ribs into something
bigger. Lorenzo set up résumé building programs and programs to get
people showers and job interviews. It’s been a huge community effort.
That's what people don’t see as much. You could go to Justice Center at
night and provoke feds or you could eat ribs. It was this beautiful
surreal community. Last night, police cleared out Riot Ribs.
What’s been your interaction with the federal agents? Have you
personally seen them rounding up people in unmarked cars?
I’ve seen them rolling around in the vans and tackling people. My
partner has watched them do a few snatch and grabs. The difference is
they’re not cops. They go after people like soldiers, where the goal is
to be unpredictable. The way they use munitions is different.
In Portland, people are scared of the feds. But nobody is scared of the
cops anymore. At a certain point of being subjected to police flash
bangs and gas, you stop fearing it.
How are people keeping up the stamina after 50 nights of this?
There’s this cycle of violence every night but also something ineffable
at the center of it. Everyone is kind of aware they’re getting some
P.T.S.D. from this and it’ll hit so hard when it stops. So you can
almost delay it another night by eating the tear gas. And I do think
there’s also this growing realization that what’s happening here is
deadly serious. So there’s a choice, I think. We’ll either accept that
this is the country we’re living in or we’ll just show up until people,
nationally, realize that this isn’t OK.
Part of it is: what else are you going to do? I live here. I don’t want
to live in a place where this happens. You can talk about journalistic
objectivity all you want but I don’t want to live in a place where
federal agents in unmarked vans abduct people.
I feel like an escalating factor here — part of President Trump’s focus
on the city — comes from the right wing media’s obsession with the city
and its protest culture.
Portland has a special place in the far-right imagination. It does have
this reputation going back a while. George H.W. Bush famously called it
Little Beirut.
Portland has loomed large for a while at places like Fox News as a
hotbed of radical leftist activism, though I guess we’ve earned that now
over the last few weeks. One of the things I think people get wrong
about this place, though, is that they see the protests and the
right-wing coverage and the city is depicted as convulsed and
collapsing. It’s just not true. You go three blocks from the center of
downtown and life goes on as normal. Where I live, you could go every
day and see no real signs of the protests.
The image of federal police in unmarked vans has captured attention
because it feels so nakedly authoritarian. Is what we’re seeing just the
purest example of American militarized policing or is it something
different?
It’s something different. It’s two things. Law enforcement is extremely
lucrative and so you have a huge class of people in a lucrative industry
who feel threatened and like they need to do violence to those who want
to take the job away. The other is you have Portland, which has put
itself in opposition to this president who has made law and order a
defining issue of his re-election.
Portland is being used as a bellwether to see what this administration
can get away with. And also what works to quell protest. The police
tactics don’t work. We’re on night 50. There’s this knowledge, I
believe, in the more lucid chunks of the administration, that this
problem will get worse in the next month. August is shaping up to be one
of the hardest months in our nation’s modern history. September may be
worse. And it will have to come to a head.
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