PDX Protest (and Beyond) — Things That Have Happened
By: Dr. Sodapocket
Tags: Blm, Andy Ngo, Minneapolis, Protest, Portland

All the time, I’m bookmarking tweets that seem important but that I don’t have the time or capacity to absorb at the time. The intention being that I’ll go back later and catch up on twists and turns that have passed me by in the accelerating chaos. I don’t think that I’ve ever done this. Not once. But there’s a few things I caught wind of that seem fitting for this here blawgy whatever, so let’s see what the fuck happened.

May 28th

Right-wing demonstrators had plans to stand on a corner in Oregon City and wave flags for a while. Probably signs, too, but they call it a Flag Wave, and they certainly tend to include Flags getting Waved. Counter-protesters got there first though and decorated the area with literal blood, guts, piss, and oil.

“Fascists are not welcome under any flag they fly,” the graffiti said. “We must take every opportunity to disrupt organizing, recruiting, and propaganda.

Some presents were left behind for your shitty rally:

- Blood & soil ideology was met with real blood

- The writing’s on the sign, & the blood’s on your hands

- Cat urine is very concentrated, and .05% ammonia

- You might find it hard to clean, when mixed with oil

Enjoy wallowing in your filth.

Signed,

Anarchists Against Nationalism”

Also at least one little black sign that read, in red, “Fuck blood + soil. Enjoy blood, shit + oil.”

“Fuck Nazis” sprayed on the sidewalk, of course. I imagine there had to have been an “ACAB” somewhere.

It must have all happened before sunrise. A video of the mess posted from Protest Twitter was atypically dark, and how the hell you going to get away with this kind of vandalism in broad daylight? You can get away with a lot in a hi-vis and a hardhat, but I don’t think that includes dumping blood, piss, and oil on the sidewalk and then spraypainting about it.

Sounds fuckin’ gross, that’s for damn sure. Didn’t work, though, apparently. Somebody said the event happened anyway. I wonder who cleaned it up. Surely they didn’t just wave flags amongst the offal and excrement, did they? Maybe they just moved.

That night, there was an “autonomously organized” “anniversary” protest scheduled downtown “in solidarity with BLM.” Not sure what the anniversary was. Maybe the first night of Portland protests? “Wear bloc & be water,” it said, tacitly encouraging people to get rowdy. “No cameras, no megaphones, no masters.”

That first definitely did not get followed. A good few cameras came out, even in the hands of veteran antifascists (which surprised me a bit, cuz they tend to be respectful of those autonomously organized rules). Nobody’s camera was smashed, though, and no press were assaulted, so that’s something.

Well, ok, that’s not exactly true.

Andy Ngo has a sordid history in Portland, that stretches back before I was “involved” with activism. He got milkshakes thrown at him as some point. These may or may not have been filled with concrete. That might have been someone else, or it might have been a fabrication. Because Ngo does occasionally fabricate information. But what he’s more known for doing is stealing other journalists’ videos and posting them as if they were his own, alongside text that recharacterizes the videos either using incredibly loaded language like “Antifa thugs” or, more often, with outright lies.

He even wrote a book about his self-alleged infiltration of Antifa, called Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, which, it’s generally agreed by anyone who actually went to the protests, is completely full of shit. (Despite currently being the #1 best seller in Local U.S. Politics on Amazon, with a five-star rating from 3,841 reviews. A hearty recommendation from Tucker Carlson will do that for you, I suppose.)

The big, bad granddaddy of accusations, however, is his allegedly providing a “kill list” to accelerationist neonazi group Atomwaffen Division. “Andy Ngo is a threat to our communities and provides kill lists for Atomwaffen,” as the meme goes. According to data scientist and serial nazi-doxxer Emily Gorcenski (who was on said list), that’s not exactly accurate.

See, Andy like to spotlight what he considers to be “Antifa journalists,” pulling the same sort of move that he does with videos: retweeting something and grossly mischaracterizing it. It’s somewhat a mark of pride in the scene to be highlighted by Ngo. Except that it inevitably comes with death threats, harassment, and deeper doxxing attempts from his ravenous fanbase.

in 2019, according to Gorcenski, a right-wing activist attempted to identify a conspiracy between “Antifa” (the mythical organization) and a handful of journalists, sloppily using graph analysis on Twitter networks. His methodology was soundly refuted, but Andy Ngo came across the work and amplified it in his characteristic style of contextless re-spin. Shortly after this, members of Atomwaffen posted a pair of videos essentially broadcasting death threats.

I’m not sure how Atomwaffen deriving a list of targets from Ngo’s publicly broadcast work got telephoned into Ngo personally providing a kill list, but I’m inclined to believe this account, given that it is a refutation of the meme coming from someone who was targeted in the actual event.

Needless to say, Andy Ngo is immensely unpopular amongst antifascist protesters. To the point that miscellaneous Asian-Americans are occasionally assaulted by traumatized protesters jumping to inaccurate conclusions.

It’s for this reason that I was cautious to believe that the Asian-American downtown on the 28th who was pushed to the ground and punched repeatedly was actually Andy.

The man ran into the Nines Hotel and crouched behind a desk. A valet driver talked shit to the protesters. The police LRAD exhaustedly warned the crowd to step away from the Nines “or you wi — may be arrested.”

In the end, it turned out that the protesters actually got it right for once, because it was, in fact, Andy Ngo.

June 3

Apparently, the intersection where George Floyd was murdered (say his name) has been barricaded and occupied since the day after the murder. George Floyd Square, it’s known as. I’m baffled that I was completely unaware of this fact until the news on June 3rd that the city was trying to clear it and open the intersection back up.

I gotta do a whole hell of a lot more reading before I can say much of anything on the Square. I’m seeing it called a memorial, a vigil, a protest, an occupation zone, an autonomous zone, a no-go zone… Clearly there are a lot of perspectives. My initial impressions, though, remind me of the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle: A lot of art, a lot of community, a lot of solidarity, where street gangs take advantage of the lack of cops to settle beefs with gunfire. Don’t quote me on that, though. Most of the info I’ve gleaned so far comes from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, rated by Media Bisa/Fact Check to be left-center biased with high factuality in their reporting. I suspect, then, that most in the Portland protest scene would derisively call them [neo]liberals, and the “libs” in Portland are usually ideologically at odds with anarchists.

The City of Minneapolis had, on a couple of occasions, announced dates on which they would clear the Square — once by Aug 17, 2020, and once by the end of Derek Chauvin’s trial. Neither happened. At 4:30 am on June 3, the City began removing the barricades around the Square as a first step in what the City is calling a phased reopening of the intersection. The City has hired local nonprofit The Agape Movement — who erected the barriers in the first place — to assist with the effort. They mainly provided 30 Black men to protect the City’s workers and attempt to de-escalate any violence that emerged. Fortunately, none did.

“Agape” (pronounced “uh-GAH-pey” or similar) is a Greek word referring to universal, unfaltering, unconditional love. The sort prescribed by hippies, therapists, various religions, and weirdos like myself, and the sort that Christianity (at least) ascribes to God. On their website, The Agape Movement lists their mission as being “to bridge the gap between the community and law enforcement.” This cuts both ways: helping the police to do a better job at actually protecting and serving, and helping people to more effectively deal with and keep themselves safe from law enforcement. They are mostly composed of former gang members, and publicly express prioritizing the communities and their direct residents over outside occupiers.

It’s hard to imagine this group being very popular at all in Portland. I don’t have much of a window into the radical side of Minneapolis protests at all, but It’s important to remember what a goddamned microcosm Portland is, and that it’s careless to extrapolate the attitudes here onto other cities.

Regardless, there must be some decent number who opposed this joint move, because within a day, vehicles were moved in as temporary barricades while ad-hoc replacements could be made out of pallets, construction fencing, and other infrastructural clutter.

A second attempt was made just this morning, and so far it’s been a perfect repetition: 4:30 am start time, Agape Movement providing security, and vehicles moved in to block the intersection while the barricades are rebuilt.

That’s not the only news from June 3 (much less the five days following), but I’m past 1500 words, so I should probably call it for now. This ain’t the fuckin’ New Yorker.

I’ll aim for a follow-up on Thursday, but don’t get your hopes up.