Thank you for this outstanding piece. It deserves a wider audience in Portland.
In a city with a healthy press that was less obviously biased against law enforcement in favor of left-wing activism, the incident at Normandale Park and the one that anticipated it nine months earlier* would have been the subject of high quality investigative reporting.
Portlanders would know the identities of the organizers behind a so-called racial justice movement that had sufficient discipline and vigor to turn out armed marchers on a weekly basis over a span of a year or more.
Journalists would have pressed the leaders to explain the moral calculus behind demanding justice - racial or otherwise - for someone who was killed while rushing police with a gun after shooting two men in a parking lot brawl at 3:00 A.M. in the morning.
Someone would have asked the leaders and rank-and-file what they hoped to accomplish with their armed marches and what difference they thought they had made to date.
We would no longer need to speculate as to marchers' motives. Instead, we'd know what drove the true believers among them; how many were cosplayers attracted by the sheer badassery of it all; and whether our suspicions that some were drifters with rap sheets looking for trouble were correct.
Last but not least we'd have answers to the most pressing question: Why the long guns? You'd think they were too young to be stirred by images of gun-toting IRA paramilitaries or Black Panthers, but who knows?
Readers might even understand the complacency on the part of the city's elected officials, law enforcement and mainstream media to an institution - yes, that's exactly what the armed marches were, right down to the "corkers" - that would be more at home in war-torn regions of the world than the setting of Portlandia.
Speaking of corkers, for all its failings in the face of a home-grown quasi paramilitary movement, The Oregonian did record an important element of the marchers' M.O. for posterity. See how corkers like Deb cork and the effect being corked can have on unwitting members of the public:
Police are investigating an armed confrontation between a motorist who pulled a handgun and at least two pedestrians dressed in black and armed with what appear to be assault rifles that erupted Thursday in the middle of a residential street in North Portland.
It’s unclear what started the standoff, but videos circulating on social media show the resulting confrontation between people in a crowd and the motorist, Joseph Hall, who remains hospitalized. [Unclear? The very next paragraphs make it clear the marchers provoked the one-sided brawl by blocking the motorist's path and scaring the bejeezus out of him with the long guns they were holding.]
The tense encounter unfolded during a weekly march called Justice for Patrick Kimmons, a 27-year-old Black man shot and killed by police in downtown Portland in 2018 after he shot and wounded two other men.
Hall, 53, said he’s a handyman who was headed home from his repair work at a nearby apartment complex when he swerved on Alberta Street to avoid a moped that cut him off.
He said he then noticed the moped following his truck and a man screaming on a handheld radio to stop his truck.
When he reached Michigan Avenue, Hall said another vehicle blocked his path “and all of a sudden I have three or four people around me” with what to him looked like AR-15s and AK-47s.
Hall said he grabbed hold of a non-lethal handgun that can shoot hard pellets to try to get the people to clear the way and hadn’t realized there was a march until people circled his truck. He said he heard a woman outside on a megaphone yelling at the crowd to let him go, but the people continued to block his truck and call him a “Nazi.”
“They’re screaming and yelling at me, claiming I was out there trying to run people over. That’s when I discovered a march was going on,” he said. ”I was trapped. A vehicle in front of me trapped me in. I couldn’t go forward or around.”**
"Journalists would have pressed the leaders to explain the moral calculus behind demanding justice - racial or otherwise - for someone who was killed while rushing police with a gun after shooting two men in a parking lot brawl at 3:00 A.M. in the morning."
Yes, the Kimmons case was a big sign of the Floyd madness to come. He shot two black men and could have easily killed both, but it was all about "police violence!" according to bleeding hearts who supposedly revere black lives.
As with Hamas apologists, they only care if someone of-color is harmed, no matter what preceded it.
There is no such thing as a “well intentioned” Antifa or Anarchist supporter or member! Their only goal is to destroy the very institutions that provide them with a way of life that is the envy of much of our world.
They're also massive hypocrites, leeching from local & Federal government services while traipsing around in masks with their whiny, nasal voices, acting like they need nothing from a stable system run by non-anarchists.
It was generally sad that these specific women died, but the nastiest Antifa vandals are wasting space.
Antifa chose Portland for a reason. We have weak leadership. And when we have the chance to vote differently, too many Portlanders continue to reelect the same people. Kate Brown is gone, But Tina Kotek is just the same. I was born and raised in Portland 61 years ago. I liked stump town. I even liked keep Portland weird. There's nothing to like about Portland anymore. I do not like that our officers were not allowed to protect our city from Antifa and BLM. They were kept behind a fence while bricks, concrete and burning objects were thrown at them. It's going to take a lot more than talking to get our once beautiful city back. We need new leadership. We need people to vote these liberals out of our city.
"I do not like that our officers were not allowed to protect our city from Antifa and BLM. They were kept behind a fence while bricks, concrete and burning objects were thrown at them."
Worse still, as far as the public knows, there was never an official investigation of the riots of 2020-21 by law enforcement, prosecutors and elected leaders. Neither did anyone publish an authoritative local history of the riots and the circumstances surrounding them.
The result is that while there are doubtless individuals in the local media, law enforcement, the D.A.'s office, the progressive activist community and local government who know a lot more than the average Portander about the riots, most of us are completely in the dark as to identity of the leaders, other participants, their aims, their funding and other forms of support, the paricipants' prior history of violence, their ties, if any, to the city, decision making within City Hall, the total cost of all law enforcement responses and the total damage inflicted, among other key facts.
Worst of all, neither law enforcement nor the various prosecutors' offices ever sought to mount a series of trials that was publicly billed as bringing the leaders of the riots of 2020-21 to justice.
When Antifa and the Anarchists make their next big disruptive appearance in our city and neighborhoods we will be just as much in dark about what's happening and why as we were in four years ago.
The $50k fine for a chronic rioter known as "DAK" was satisfying, but if you look up his employment, he's been allowed to work with railroad company software in some capacity. Who would put an anarchist in charge of infrastructure success? Little is publicly known about his full character. Did he learn a life lesson and change his attitude?
In March of 2021, cops kettled an Antifa mob in the Pearl district and took a lot of names. The public has a right to know who they really are, and they or parents could be sued for building repairs, etc.
Great piece--good to have someone digging into the depths of that sad story.
The local press slipped gingerly away from the fact that Normandale was, essentially, a gun-battle. Antifa was armed and looking for trouble; Deb was a "corker," a term not used in the O's story--she was an enforcer and part of Antifa's strongarm tactics. But the O's narrative starts to fall apart when that's pointed out...
Aug 27Liked by Richard Cheverton, Pamela Fitzsimmons
Sadly, Antifa basically achieved its agenda in Portland: undermining government, demoralizing and intimidating law enforcement, radicalizing youth, brainwashing the media, and sowing discord. Politicians and media dare not speak its name. Antifa and its witless wannabes will reappear when conditions warrant (as occurred last week in Chicago). We can expect them when the pro-Hamas crowd comes back to PSU. In the meantime, Antifa's legacy haunts Portland's streets every time we find a weathered "ACAB" under a bridge inhabited by our perpetual campers.
They oddly use the acronym CHUD or C.H.U.D. (1984 cult movie) to describe anyone they deem right-wing, but the villains in that film, climbing out of sewers, are a much better likeness of Antifa ghouls and homeless campers!
Fitzsimmons says what has only been whispered in most media....that Portland broke down into armed camps and the deadly actions of an unhinged, disaffected man had less to do with political ideology and more to do with the breakdown in basic social order.
When people are allowed to roam the street - armed - without police intervention, bad things happen.
I hope Smith never gets out of prison, but if he stays it will be because of the victims rights and "truth in sentencing" movements that the Portland left despises.
Good article. You provided a lot of background information that was never presented in the main stream media. The Oregonian has always colored their news by omission of key facts.
There are, unfortunately, consequences to our actions. Why some people are able to understand this better than others is something I’m still trying to figure out.
The Trump crowd also fails to understand that constant crassness on the right is met with the same on the left, making rational debate impossible. The idea that he can fix American cities (with mainly Federal power) is just as shortsighted as far leftism.
It looks like you only read a few sentences of the article, which dealt respectfully with the deaths. When either side deliberately buries context, you end up with screaming matches and kindergarten-level intellect.
Hey Bojack, as Pamela correctly points out, both these women died for Antifa’s brain dead adoption of armed demonstrations in service to a would be murdering scumbag and his grifting mother. In that context, I think it is entirely appropriate to criticize the actions and activities of the witless mob of Don Quixotes that have been knighted as defenders of the realm by our local media and politicians as said actions fomented these deaths.
“This dead person” was a young woman who hoped for a career leading troubled youth into nature outings. Deg had much to offer. Why did she waste her energies on a Justice for Patrick Kimmons protest — a man who shot and wounded two others? Why? Because Antifa is treated like a sacred cow by the scared media in this town.
Do you live anywhere near the likes of Patrick Kimmons or George Floyd? Virtual signaling is notoriously easier when you're detached from low-class ghetto people who ruin entire neighborhoods, thus you're able to focus on abstract identity politics rather than their vile behavior.
In his defense though in his old blog he introduced your blog with very high praise. The only reason I started reading you even if I disagree with just about everything you write.
In the world of progressive journalism, which too many of The O’s reporters occupy, anything negative about a “protected class” is automatically called hate. Thus, noting that Patrick Kimmons was black and shot two people is hateful.
What happened to Bojack? It's a question I've heard several people ask. He's still a good writer, and I still check in with his bojack2. You have to keep in mind where he works -- Lewis & Clark College. He's surrounded by hard-core progressives. Law Professor Aliza Kaplan is their rock star. She's the one who helped then-Gov. Brown arrange all those commutations.
Aug 27Liked by Richard Cheverton, Pamela Fitzsimmons
Oh this is excellent Pamela!! Well done!! Funny how the children of “Antifa” scream about demolishing police and prisons! Ha! Something that will NEVER happen! But if one of their “comrades” is murdered by a disgruntled lunatic then they’re all happy that we have a somewhat functional criminal justice system, and cheer on the long sentence of Smith.
They’re such clueless hypocrites!! They are the new face of Fascism, the new brown coats. Such clueless idiots, reveling in their self appointed role of White Saviors, while they live in their parents basements and survive on Go Fund Me and other donations just to eat.
One of the worst consequences of the fairly recent censorship that keeps the mug shots of criminal suspects out of the newspapers (with the notable exception of alleged child molesters) is that when Antifa and the black bloc contingent of Anarchists emerge from hiding to cause mayhem and property damage again, the public will be denied the pleasure of laughing at the misfits' gallery with their facial tattoos, surly expressions or studied look of disaffected privilege when a college kid gets caught.
The need to find a group to latch onto by lost pathetic souls is chaos waiting to happen. So many opportunities available that don't spew hate but for some reason unbalanced people flock to misguided groups like Antifa and BLM....God help us🙄.
Thank you for this outstanding piece. It deserves a wider audience in Portland.
In a city with a healthy press that was less obviously biased against law enforcement in favor of left-wing activism, the incident at Normandale Park and the one that anticipated it nine months earlier* would have been the subject of high quality investigative reporting.
Portlanders would know the identities of the organizers behind a so-called racial justice movement that had sufficient discipline and vigor to turn out armed marchers on a weekly basis over a span of a year or more.
Journalists would have pressed the leaders to explain the moral calculus behind demanding justice - racial or otherwise - for someone who was killed while rushing police with a gun after shooting two men in a parking lot brawl at 3:00 A.M. in the morning.
Someone would have asked the leaders and rank-and-file what they hoped to accomplish with their armed marches and what difference they thought they had made to date.
We would no longer need to speculate as to marchers' motives. Instead, we'd know what drove the true believers among them; how many were cosplayers attracted by the sheer badassery of it all; and whether our suspicions that some were drifters with rap sheets looking for trouble were correct.
Last but not least we'd have answers to the most pressing question: Why the long guns? You'd think they were too young to be stirred by images of gun-toting IRA paramilitaries or Black Panthers, but who knows?
Readers might even understand the complacency on the part of the city's elected officials, law enforcement and mainstream media to an institution - yes, that's exactly what the armed marches were, right down to the "corkers" - that would be more at home in war-torn regions of the world than the setting of Portlandia.
Speaking of corkers, for all its failings in the face of a home-grown quasi paramilitary movement, The Oregonian did record an important element of the marchers' M.O. for posterity. See how corkers like Deb cork and the effect being corked can have on unwitting members of the public:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[May 7, 2021]
Police are investigating an armed confrontation between a motorist who pulled a handgun and at least two pedestrians dressed in black and armed with what appear to be assault rifles that erupted Thursday in the middle of a residential street in North Portland.
It’s unclear what started the standoff, but videos circulating on social media show the resulting confrontation between people in a crowd and the motorist, Joseph Hall, who remains hospitalized. [Unclear? The very next paragraphs make it clear the marchers provoked the one-sided brawl by blocking the motorist's path and scaring the bejeezus out of him with the long guns they were holding.]
The tense encounter unfolded during a weekly march called Justice for Patrick Kimmons, a 27-year-old Black man shot and killed by police in downtown Portland in 2018 after he shot and wounded two other men.
Hall, 53, said he’s a handyman who was headed home from his repair work at a nearby apartment complex when he swerved on Alberta Street to avoid a moped that cut him off.
He said he then noticed the moped following his truck and a man screaming on a handheld radio to stop his truck.
When he reached Michigan Avenue, Hall said another vehicle blocked his path “and all of a sudden I have three or four people around me” with what to him looked like AR-15s and AK-47s.
Hall said he grabbed hold of a non-lethal handgun that can shoot hard pellets to try to get the people to clear the way and hadn’t realized there was a march until people circled his truck. He said he heard a woman outside on a megaphone yelling at the crowd to let him go, but the people continued to block his truck and call him a “Nazi.”
“They’re screaming and yelling at me, claiming I was out there trying to run people over. That’s when I discovered a march was going on,” he said. ”I was trapped. A vehicle in front of me trapped me in. I couldn’t go forward or around.”**
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some march. Some justice.
* Bernstein, Maxine. "Police investigating armed confrontation on North Portland street." OregonLive/The Oregonian. 7 & 10 May 2021. https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2021/05/police-investigating-armed-confrontation-on-north-portland-street.html
** Ibid.
"Journalists would have pressed the leaders to explain the moral calculus behind demanding justice - racial or otherwise - for someone who was killed while rushing police with a gun after shooting two men in a parking lot brawl at 3:00 A.M. in the morning."
Yes, the Kimmons case was a big sign of the Floyd madness to come. He shot two black men and could have easily killed both, but it was all about "police violence!" according to bleeding hearts who supposedly revere black lives.
As with Hamas apologists, they only care if someone of-color is harmed, no matter what preceded it.
There is no such thing as a “well intentioned” Antifa or Anarchist supporter or member! Their only goal is to destroy the very institutions that provide them with a way of life that is the envy of much of our world.
They're also massive hypocrites, leeching from local & Federal government services while traipsing around in masks with their whiny, nasal voices, acting like they need nothing from a stable system run by non-anarchists.
It was generally sad that these specific women died, but the nastiest Antifa vandals are wasting space.
Antifa chose Portland for a reason. We have weak leadership. And when we have the chance to vote differently, too many Portlanders continue to reelect the same people. Kate Brown is gone, But Tina Kotek is just the same. I was born and raised in Portland 61 years ago. I liked stump town. I even liked keep Portland weird. There's nothing to like about Portland anymore. I do not like that our officers were not allowed to protect our city from Antifa and BLM. They were kept behind a fence while bricks, concrete and burning objects were thrown at them. It's going to take a lot more than talking to get our once beautiful city back. We need new leadership. We need people to vote these liberals out of our city.
"I do not like that our officers were not allowed to protect our city from Antifa and BLM. They were kept behind a fence while bricks, concrete and burning objects were thrown at them."
Worse still, as far as the public knows, there was never an official investigation of the riots of 2020-21 by law enforcement, prosecutors and elected leaders. Neither did anyone publish an authoritative local history of the riots and the circumstances surrounding them.
The result is that while there are doubtless individuals in the local media, law enforcement, the D.A.'s office, the progressive activist community and local government who know a lot more than the average Portander about the riots, most of us are completely in the dark as to identity of the leaders, other participants, their aims, their funding and other forms of support, the paricipants' prior history of violence, their ties, if any, to the city, decision making within City Hall, the total cost of all law enforcement responses and the total damage inflicted, among other key facts.
Worst of all, neither law enforcement nor the various prosecutors' offices ever sought to mount a series of trials that was publicly billed as bringing the leaders of the riots of 2020-21 to justice.
When Antifa and the Anarchists make their next big disruptive appearance in our city and neighborhoods we will be just as much in dark about what's happening and why as we were in four years ago.
The $50k fine for a chronic rioter known as "DAK" was satisfying, but if you look up his employment, he's been allowed to work with railroad company software in some capacity. Who would put an anarchist in charge of infrastructure success? Little is publicly known about his full character. Did he learn a life lesson and change his attitude?
In March of 2021, cops kettled an Antifa mob in the Pearl district and took a lot of names. The public has a right to know who they really are, and they or parents could be sued for building repairs, etc.
Well said, Ollie! Thanks for the fantastic reply.
Great piece--good to have someone digging into the depths of that sad story.
The local press slipped gingerly away from the fact that Normandale was, essentially, a gun-battle. Antifa was armed and looking for trouble; Deb was a "corker," a term not used in the O's story--she was an enforcer and part of Antifa's strongarm tactics. But the O's narrative starts to fall apart when that's pointed out...
Sadly, Antifa basically achieved its agenda in Portland: undermining government, demoralizing and intimidating law enforcement, radicalizing youth, brainwashing the media, and sowing discord. Politicians and media dare not speak its name. Antifa and its witless wannabes will reappear when conditions warrant (as occurred last week in Chicago). We can expect them when the pro-Hamas crowd comes back to PSU. In the meantime, Antifa's legacy haunts Portland's streets every time we find a weathered "ACAB" under a bridge inhabited by our perpetual campers.
They oddly use the acronym CHUD or C.H.U.D. (1984 cult movie) to describe anyone they deem right-wing, but the villains in that film, climbing out of sewers, are a much better likeness of Antifa ghouls and homeless campers!
Fitzsimmons says what has only been whispered in most media....that Portland broke down into armed camps and the deadly actions of an unhinged, disaffected man had less to do with political ideology and more to do with the breakdown in basic social order.
When people are allowed to roam the street - armed - without police intervention, bad things happen.
I hope Smith never gets out of prison, but if he stays it will be because of the victims rights and "truth in sentencing" movements that the Portland left despises.
Good article. You provided a lot of background information that was never presented in the main stream media. The Oregonian has always colored their news by omission of key facts.
There are, unfortunately, consequences to our actions. Why some people are able to understand this better than others is something I’m still trying to figure out.
The Trump crowd also fails to understand that constant crassness on the right is met with the same on the left, making rational debate impossible. The idea that he can fix American cities (with mainly Federal power) is just as shortsighted as far leftism.
Yuck. Using this dead person as a jumping-off point for an anti-Antifa rant is pretty awful.
It looks like you only read a few sentences of the article, which dealt respectfully with the deaths. When either side deliberately buries context, you end up with screaming matches and kindergarten-level intellect.
Hey Bojack, as Pamela correctly points out, both these women died for Antifa’s brain dead adoption of armed demonstrations in service to a would be murdering scumbag and his grifting mother. In that context, I think it is entirely appropriate to criticize the actions and activities of the witless mob of Don Quixotes that have been knighted as defenders of the realm by our local media and politicians as said actions fomented these deaths.
I love Bog's blog--great invective smothered in snark. "Decency?" Not so much--it would just get in the way of the jokes.
“This dead person” was a young woman who hoped for a career leading troubled youth into nature outings. Deg had much to offer. Why did she waste her energies on a Justice for Patrick Kimmons protest — a man who shot and wounded two others? Why? Because Antifa is treated like a sacred cow by the scared media in this town.
Your sense of decency is apparently different from mine.
Do you live anywhere near the likes of Patrick Kimmons or George Floyd? Virtual signaling is notoriously easier when you're detached from low-class ghetto people who ruin entire neighborhoods, thus you're able to focus on abstract identity politics rather than their vile behavior.
I’m with the author. You are supporting people who frequently act with extreme violence and completely disregard the rights of others.
Not only is my sense of decency different from yours, but I don't delete comments criticizing me.
In his defense though in his old blog he introduced your blog with very high praise. The only reason I started reading you even if I disagree with just about everything you write.
I do indeed remember Jack Bogdanski giving me a nice shoutout in 2011 when I started www.heldtoanswer.com. I even remember which piece Jack quoted from — “Portland: Weird and White.” https://www.heldtoanswer.com/2011/05/portland-weird-and-white/
I also remember him encouraging me to keep writing. I did that!
Maybe Jack fell for that pathetic hit-piece about me in The Oregonian by Jamie Goldberg and Hillary Borrud: www.oregonlive.com/politics/2022/08/longtime-legislative-staffer-for-betsy-johnson-repeatedly-voiced-hateful-views-online-toward-black-muslim-and-lgbtq-people.html
In the world of progressive journalism, which too many of The O’s reporters occupy, anything negative about a “protected class” is automatically called hate. Thus, noting that Patrick Kimmons was black and shot two people is hateful.
What happened to you?
What happened to Bojack? It's a question I've heard several people ask. He's still a good writer, and I still check in with his bojack2. You have to keep in mind where he works -- Lewis & Clark College. He's surrounded by hard-core progressives. Law Professor Aliza Kaplan is their rock star. She's the one who helped then-Gov. Brown arrange all those commutations.
Oh this is excellent Pamela!! Well done!! Funny how the children of “Antifa” scream about demolishing police and prisons! Ha! Something that will NEVER happen! But if one of their “comrades” is murdered by a disgruntled lunatic then they’re all happy that we have a somewhat functional criminal justice system, and cheer on the long sentence of Smith.
They’re such clueless hypocrites!! They are the new face of Fascism, the new brown coats. Such clueless idiots, reveling in their self appointed role of White Saviors, while they live in their parents basements and survive on Go Fund Me and other donations just to eat.
Such absolute losers.
One of the worst consequences of the fairly recent censorship that keeps the mug shots of criminal suspects out of the newspapers (with the notable exception of alleged child molesters) is that when Antifa and the black bloc contingent of Anarchists emerge from hiding to cause mayhem and property damage again, the public will be denied the pleasure of laughing at the misfits' gallery with their facial tattoos, surly expressions or studied look of disaffected privilege when a college kid gets caught.
The need to find a group to latch onto by lost pathetic souls is chaos waiting to happen. So many opportunities available that don't spew hate but for some reason unbalanced people flock to misguided groups like Antifa and BLM....God help us🙄.
Great article!