I need you to understand something, it is incredibly important so I am going to be as clear as possible: this isn’t some nebulous thing in the world that I’m engaging with secondhand. This group affects my life directly. And by directly, I mean that it was my friend that they randomly assaulted on Broadway. My boss is friends with one of the queer folx they randomly assaulted. For both work and school, I am downtown nearly every day. When these violent sociopaths come into Portland, a climate of terror follows them and blankets the streets, a climate I know the police won’t do anything about, because I’ve witnessed with my own eyes the collaboration between them and PB. I’ve witnessed the high fives and “ok” hand signs they exchange. So what choice do you think we have? They come to Portland, and commit random acts of gang violence against anyone they deem a vulnerable target. They come in for disingenuous “freedom” rallies, or to protest a government they do not live under, but these are simply thin excuses to commit very much intentional and targeted violence, knowing they will face no consequences other than possibly a beating. On the rare occasions when they are arrested, they are released immediately and never face charges. Tiny was one of the men who assaulted my friend on Broadway, in broad daylight. Numerous witnesses reported this to police, and indeed, the next time Tiny showed up in town, he was arrested. He was released either later that night or the next day, and absolutely nothing has happened since. Why the fuck can he strut around the city with no fear, free to assault more Portlanders whenever he fucking feels like it? Why? The same goes for Donovan Filippo. How the fuck can these terrorists walk freely through our streets? I’ll leave you to answer that question for yourself, but what we know is that we can only rely on ourselves for protection.
Prior to August 4th, I had been in attendance at nearly every rally. The run up to the 4th was different, however. The chatter was consistently based around PP/PB showing up with guns, and there was a swirl of misinformation about where the event would actually take place. As I mentioned before, I was at Thunderbird the night before with a group of friends talking about the rally. Fresh on our minds was the photos of DHS snipers posted up on roof tops overlooking the occupy ICE encampment the day Gibson and company showed up to start shit. It occurred to us that if PP/PB were coming armed, it wasn’t going to be the goons on the streets. They were going to be on rooftops- and conveniently, there is a garage with a perfect view of the rally location. With that realized, we decided not to go the next day. It is no comfort that our fear turned out to be valid. And failing any serious intervention- one which puts the community’s needs first there will be no comfort.
So in order to defend ourselves, we had to learn exactly who they are. We know where they work, we know where they live. We know if they’ve beaten their partners, we know which ones are deadbeat fathers. We know what they’ve been arrested for, and where they served time. We know what they post online when they think they have privacy- so we know what they say, what they believe, and who they are associated with.
So when you tell me to go look it up on Wikipedia, all I can do is shake my head.
These gangs are enabled by equivocation, they are enabled by mainstreaming their ideas, and especially they are enabled by the people that buy their flimsy rhetoric about free speech or gun rights. What they are interested in- what they’ve been interested in since long before they became “proud boys”- is violence. And as long as people are enabling that violence, my community is under threat. So please, please, I will repeat PLEASE, do your homework, as we have, and learn who these assholes really are, and stop defending them.
Today, it is our community that must deal with this mindless hatred and violence. Don’t wait until it reaches your front door to do something about it.
Niemöller’s words were the lament of a coward.
