Interesting Oregonian front page article. Blacks make up 3% of the population in Oregon. Outside the Portland Metro area, Republicans dominate.
THE DEATH OF GEORGE FLOYD OREGON
Protests being held all over state
People turn out to march in smaller cities, towns in heavily GOP territory
Andrew Theen The Oregonian/OregonLive
In small towns and cities that sit squarely in Republican strongholds and rarely see protests, thousands of Oregonians marched, held Black Lives Matter signs aloft and chanted George Floyd’s name at rallies across the state this week.
They stood in solidarity in Pendleton, La Grande, Hermiston and Coquille as well as Portland suburbs like Happy Valley and Tualatin. They stood outside the courthouse in Prineville and marched into the night in Klamath Falls Some wore masks and some didn’t, emblematic of the country’s still fresh unease with the novel coronavirus. They gathered on the sidewalk of a state highway in sleepy Monmouth and stood in a small group in Burns, leashed dogs at their feet. They marched by the hundreds from an Albertson’s parking lot in Ontario, at the state’s eastern edge, to City Hall where they took a knee and held a moment of silence. A group of roughly 1,000 protested for 13 hours in Medford.
Less than two weeks after Floyd died after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes, protests and demonstrations continue apace in Portland and Eugene, where such expressions are part of the city’s DNA.
But this time, the moment of American pain spread to all corners of the state, including those where protests are something you see on the news, not down on Main Street.
Oregon has a black population of just 3%, according to the most recent census figures, far below the national rate of 14%. Protests against anti-black racism occurred this week in small towns where the black population is miniscule but where young Latino populations are booming.
Hundreds lined the street in Pendleton, as protests against the death of George Floyd have gone statewide, with marches in Ontario, Medford and La Grande, among others. Ben Lonergan, East Oregonian
Statewide marches
Adam Boyd, a 40-year-old Medford native who works in commercial video production, grabbed his gear and documented what he said was an unprecedented moment in his hometown.
“The reason that people are angry right now, I feel like it’s the most important issue in our country,” Boyd, who is white, said of institutionalized racism.
Take the political climate of the country, sprinkle in a global pandemic and multiple months of social isolation and it seemed that nearly every community was ready to explode.
“All it needed was one spark to set off the biggest forest fire that we’ll ever see,” Boyd said of his town, which is often inundated with wildfire smoke pouring into the Rogue Valley during the summer, “And that’s where we’re at.”
Kadedra Hackler, a 25-year-old lab specialist at a Pendleton recovery clinic, made signs and stood on a street corner with her husband, Charles, and hundreds of others.
Kadedra is black. Charles, who grew up in Pendleton, is white. “It could’ve been my dad, mom, sister, niece, cousins, friends, ME,” her sign read in part.
Some passersby flipped off the crowd or gave a thumbs down, Hackler said. But that was the exception.
“People were honking their horns and cheering along with us,” she said.
On the other side of the Blue Mountains, hundreds gathered on either side of the main drag through La Grande.
John Lamoreau, a 69-year-old social studies teacher who has lived in Union County since 1986, couldn’t believe the turnout. There were Eastern Oregon University students, but also a diverse group of locals, young and old, he said.
“I was really proud of our community,” he said.
ANTIFA BUSES
While thousands, collectively, gathered peacefully to protest police brutality and demand racial equity measures in those rural counties, there was a common presence at demonstrations in several of the smaller communities in Oregon and in parts of Idaho: armed white men, who were not law enforcement officers, standing guard.
In the past week, false social media rumors spread like a brush fire warning that leftist insurgents would be descending on these historically conservative areas to loot, riot and cause chaos, using the protests as cover.
“We heard that there were going to be busloads of antifa coming,” Scott Clauson, Medford’s police chief, said of the loosely organized antifascist group.
Clauson said those rumors, coming on the heels of property damage in downtown Eugene on Saturday, guided his preparation for Monday’s protest. He put a few more officers on the ground in case.
Medford’s rally started at the plaza outside City Hall with a sizable contingent, and many took to the streets and kept marching for hours from there.
In Grants Pass, armed men hung out in a parking lot near a Baskin-Robbins to protect what locals say is the state’s largest U.S. flag.
In Coquille, the seat of Coos County, law enforcement said they were “inundated” with calls in the 36 hours before a planned protest in the rural town of 3,800 people warning that outside agitators would use the small-town protest to cause mayhem.
As in Medford and Grants Pass, none showed up.
But nearly 200 people, some armed, took that rumor seriously. According to the Coos Bay World, a car with a Black Lives Matter sign happened to drive by the crowd and “a man wearing the American flag as a cape was seen taking the sign from those in the car and shouting.” Deputies recovered the sign, but the driver had already left, the paper said.
According to KOBI-TV, Klamath Falls events were largely peaceful but tense, with many armed men showing up due to antifa rumors. Some at the event were arrested for alcohol-related reasons and disorderly conduct.
The most high-profile arrests took place in La Grande and Medford, both involving white men with guns, though it’s unclear whether they were motivated to attend due to the false antifa rumors.
In La Grande, a man who was openly carrying a long rifle was arrested after apparently scuffling with protesters.
Lamoreau, the teacher, left before the arrest but said other gun-toting men were not directly confrontational but perhaps misguided. “When you show up for a peaceful rally with guns, you’re intimidating,” he said, whether intentionally provocative or not.
“Would you extend that to people on the other side?” he asked of the ability to openly carry a firearm, “if a person was black?”
In Medford, Boyd and Clauson recalled a tense moment during which a man waved a gun at protesters.
The man was arrested and charged with menacing and disorderly conduct, Clauson said. He was out on bail by the end of that night, but police kept the gun for evidence. Beth Heckert, Jackson County’s District Attorney, said Friday her office was still waiting on police reports before investigating and filing formal charges.
Boyd captured the scene on video amid the crowd. He’d never felt scared of being around someone with a gun but said that moment felt different because of the purpose of the protest. “For the first time I felt like I was put into someone else’s shoes,” he said.
Clauson said while antifa rumors were false, he was still prepared for the unexpected. He said he’s consistently fighting falsehoods. “There’s been a tremendous amount of disinformation, and it’s fueled by social media,” he said.
The rumors aren’t limited to those about buses filled with antifa members. “I’m still getting emails today,” Clauson said Thursday, “asking why we didn’t arrest him,” he said of the man he arrested for allegedly waving the gun.
Clauson said he thought the protest went well, saying that while there was a lot of “passion and anger and frustration” among the protesters, they never crossed any line.
“We respect people’s right to protest, we want to provide a safe venue for them to do so, we’re not going to hinder that process,” he said, unless there’s a threat of harm to people or property.
THE CHAIN
Kadedra Hackler has spent every year except for the last one living in the South, in a small town about 45 miles outside Atlanta. She said racism there is more overt, and she described generations of fear she and her relatives felt living among communities where the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups “run rampant.”
“People here have been more aware that there is a problem and don’t try to deflect,” she said of Pendleton. “People have been scared of saying the wrong things and I tell them don’t be scared, you’ll know when you offend me.”
Hackler said she felt moved to protest because enough was enough and she feels the national issues surrounding violence against black Americans are too often swept under the rug. “There is a problem, and no one wants to address those problems. We just want to be treated like human beings,” she said.
Lamoreau, the La Grande teacher, said he held a sign saying Oregon ranks seventh in the nation for the proportion of black residents who are incarcerated. “We need to ask ourselves why is this happening,” he said.
In Medford, Boyd said he has been awakened as a result of the nationwide furor surrounding Floyd’s death under the police officer’s knee and the subsequent murder charges.
“If I had children, if one of my kids was killed by anyone for no reason, I would want to burn everything down,” Boyd said, “Then to have the person that killed your loved one be a police officer, sworn to protect and serve, that would make it that much worse.”
He believes it’s time for real change in Oregon and the country. “Something is broken along the chain somewhere,” he said.
That chain, Boyd went on, could be viewed as humanity itself. People are supposed to link together. Everyone, he noted, bleeds the same.
atheen@oregonian.com; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen
“All it needed was one spark to set off the biggest forest fire that we’ll ever see.”
Adam Boyd, Medford native, speaking of recent protests
“People here have been more aware that there is a problem,” Pendleton resident Kadedra Hackler said. Ben Lonergan, East Oregonian
