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If you don't get out of here, everyone holding each other, that's unlawful. Get out of here. The first thing that comes to mind is just like the the power of mutual aid. Umm. The smaller events really build the community ties together. And just it enables people to like lean on each other for safety and for any resources and pretty much anything that somebody needs these smaller, like, well-being based kind of events like it keeps everybody together. And I think, I mean there's so much power, like mutual aid really is the way of the future. So this is basically just a precursor to like what I feel like will be a world like void of police. And like constant state violence is, we'll have these networks and mutual aid communities that. Well, basically make that **** obsolete. So that's really huge for us. That's Judai, a local organizer and musician. As the protests in Portland and around the nation moved into their third month, Governor Kate Brown announced that the feds were pulling out of the city. With the announcement, the crowds of thousands that had come out and forced to protest the federal presence shrunk. By the 2nd week of August, ongoing protests drew only a few 100 people into the streets each night. For the people that wanted to defund and abolish the Portland police, the federal drawdown meant that it was time to get back to the real fight. Months of being gassed and beaten together had given this community of protesters a powerful sense of shared purpose. At the same time, the drop off in numbers raised the spectre of burnout for activists and pointed to a long road ahead. Systems of mutual aid began to spring up, both out of need and out of a desire by many to finally start building the world they wanted to live in. To narrate the next part of this, here's Donovan Smith, a local Portland journalist and one of the authors of this series. After more than two months in the streets, protesters in Portland were exhausted and traumatized, but ready to return to the real fight of defunding the police. But the enormous protests of early June were now months passed, and after the wild circus of violence that was fed occupation, people were tired, and there were questions about how to direct the attention of the city back from Trump. To the violence of Portland Police Bureau, Jacob Burrows of Direct Action Alliance talks about organizing exhaustion. Well, to be honest with you, it doesn't really like everyone. Everyone falls off, everyone gets tired and falls off, and it's it's the solidarity that comes into play at that point. So. I mean, I'll take months off where I just can't anymore where I'm I'm just exhausted to the bone where I I literally have nothing left to give. And during those times is when my comrades. Come in and do what they need to do and then when they're tired, that's when I come in and do what I need to do and that's how we kind of keep it perpetually going, is that you've got to be there for folks when you see someone who's you know you, you people, that's the problem and it's it's fatiguing. It caused. There's a huge toll. Organizing takes a huge toll on people. Even just organizing one event, it takes 3 days of my life away from my kids, from my responsibilities at home, from what I need to do and it's it's. Exhausting. And that's that's just the organizing part. You know, you still have to consider the emotional toll that it takes to go out and do this and put yourself on the line. You have to take into account the threats that you get from the right. You have to take into account the threats that you get from the government. So there's all of these things and no one is just a super person that can go and power through it. And and that's that's a big thing, a big misconception, I think is people think that the faces, you know, there's some people who who their faces become prominent. Their names become prominent and people think that it's all them and it's not. There's. There is a huge, huge. Effort behind everything, of support, of mutual aid that keeps everything going. So the reason it's been able to go for 10 years isn't because there's people who have been able to keep going for 10 years straight. It's because every time someone falls back and can't do it and needs a break, someone else, we we are lucky enough to be in a community. And that's how it keeps on going, is that every time, every time there's a hole in the line, we have comrades who are willing to step back in and fill it up. And that's how that's how we've been able to. Kind of keep this momentum going is because. There's always someone who's willing to step up when someone has, when another person has kind of reached their limit. And that's that's how you keep it going is by building those connections, those trust bonds and those those solidarity connections and mutual aid connections where we're all helping each other out. We all have to be there for each other. And using social media and telegram, the community stepped up to fill holes in the line. Knightly actions began to be organized autonomously. Anonymous calls to action would post locations, mostly of different police precincts for the Portland Ice facility, and people would show up to the protests. If the police were going to continue to brutalize people, then protesters planned on wearing them down and exhausting their budget. Every night of the week, people assembled at some park around the city and would March to a different precinct, yelling, chanting and standing in the street for hours until the police would charge, clearing them out with gas, batons and brute force. While these actions were referred to as Dallas or direct actions, the Knights often consisted of protesters hurling more insults than anything else, adding in an occasional dumpster fire to mix it up. Despite the nightly actions beginning to follow up, predictable pattern that usually ended with police role rushing people down unlit neighborhood streets for the crimes of yelling in the road, PPB press releases portrayed each evening as an intense battle with dangerous radicals. These claims were not borne out by the arrests that they made. The charges leveled at protesters arrested were almost all IPO or interference with the police officer, the charge that they could file if you did not move fast enough. Then they will rush. IPO was one of the charges that DA Mike Schmidt had announced on August 8th that his office would decline to prosecute. Thereafter, nearly all protester charges were dropped, possibly to compensate for the loss of legal clout, Portland police ramped up on the brutality. Acts of minor vandalism will be answered by baton charges, and any protester unable to outrun the bull rush would be knocked to the ground, body slammed or beaten, and then often left lying on the pavement. But no attempt made to arrest. Police made it very clear that their intent was to punish protesters, whether or not they had legal recourse. It was an exhausting. However, in stark contrast to the brutality of the nighttime actions, by August protesters were spending the days building on the mutual aid networks that had already existed in Portland and expanding them in new ways to support the community. But what is mutual aid? To answer that, I'm going to turn this over to activists on the ground who are implementing it. PDX St Medics formed during the summer, and we'll talk more about their work later, but here is their definition of mutual aid. Bringing some amount of equity where there is none. You know in this very small sense of like the street mix, if someone can't afford repairs usually they would have to go into debt to get that repaired at an auto shop where usually they would be up sold several $1000 in repairs they don't need. So where we step in we are saving them that bill and then being able to make sure they are able to keep other needs met and through that action is. A small amount of equity where there would be none. I was just going to say kind of piggybacking off cypress's point I I kind of see. You know what we're doing as a, you know, I think it's it, it's kind of, it's trying to challenge the current system, you know, and and this system is a system that has. So many, so many flaws. And then I think that mutual aid is kind of trying to. Address some of those flaws, or try to mitigate some of those flaws. In the sense that you know. We kind of live in this. We live under capitalism. You know, we live under in a system that that tolerates, you know, homelessness. You know, we live under. Yeah, I mean a system that. Oppresses so many minorities and stuff like that. So I think that just what mutual aid is and you know, specifically maybe our role is kind of at least the way I see it is challenging. That system of capitalism challenging, you know, being like, hey, like, you know, you don't, you know, we're going to try to. Just help people not based on. You know, gaining anything out of it, we're just helping people because that's what we're supposed to do as humans. I think that's something that we really need to. Keeping this under my reminds me to thinking about mutual aid is that the people who lose the most in our current system have the tend to have the least ability to change anything. And that is one of the core like motivating factors behind mutually where it is people who are really like living truly paycheck to paycheck or don't even have any stable income and are living in a car and it's like slowly, slowly. Looking down and there's just nothing to do about it. These are the kind of situations in which that little bit of extra help can really mean that that person can continue to have a life, and that life can continue to be good, and that life can continue to be something that's worth fighting for. And that way those people can continue to fight for their own lives. If Community support doesn't really happen, and mutually is really just a fancy word for community support, if that doesn't actually happen, those people aren't going to be able to fight because they're trying to survive, and we need to be able to get. A little bit beyond survival in order to really organize and fight and resist on the scale that is necessary for dealing with the problem that we're facing. Something that I've talked to about a bunch in this in this group is that I actually sometimes don't think that organizations can provide mutual aid. But instead people have to provide mutilate and that by. That principle isn't about. Like usually, it's about seeing connectivity and weapon like acting within communities. Whereas charity is all about like creating this other that you're providing. And there's like a lot of dying and a lot of, like apologizing that happens in that relationship. Mutually easily seek some mutual aid groups existed in Portland prior to the George Floyd Uprising. As COVID swept the country in spring, new Mutual way organizations popped up all over the city, and some groups that were already active look for new ways to help. Rose hips, a medic collective, has been around for 11 years. They began making hand sanitizer in distributing it around the city at the beginning of the pandemic. As protests intensified, they worked to reverse engineer. Chemical waves to help with tear gas and pepper spray, medics loaded with carts filled with water, energy drinks and eye cleaning kits were a common sight. Every night, James, a Rose Hip St Medic, describes the early days of the uprisings. Yeah, I remember the first time that I went to a protest after the pandemic. Uprising began to happen at the same time, I think with the Peninsula Park and like, we just brought a bunch of hand sanitizer and we're like, I don't know, let's walk around and hand hand sanitizer out to people. And we also have these masks. So let's hand these things out and like. All of our supply was was gone within like half an hour and there was a large whole park full of people at that time. And so, you know, initially it was just handing things out to people before the marching began. Umm. And then once the protests really picked up steam and started to be responded to with more repression, we started to ask ourselves, like, what else can we distribute? Basically. And one thing that's treatments usually do, or or that treatments are really trying to do is to flush out people's eyes if they've been either pepper sprayed or tear gassed. But that necessarily creates aerosolized particles from people's eyeballs because you're squirting. Water into people's eyes with high velocity and so we are like this doesn't feel like a safe activity anymore. Can we hand out pre portioned bottles of our preferred eye wash solution? Yes, we have all these bottles lying around and so like let's do that. And then someone asked you know these these chemical weapons removing wipes like what's in these? Can we make our own? And then some very smart people who are not me like figured out the recipe. And created a whole manufacturing apparatus to produce and distribute huge numbers of chemical weapons wipes, Umm every day. And so and then because the demand kept increasing, particularly as does the violence in increased. And people use the products and then we're like, we really need these are great. And people, you know, they saw us around, maybe we were, we started to put our name on things just that it was clear that like it's us building up this trust in the Community and not some other random group. Umm, then people started to. So just sort of like the demand created the whole chain of events and because people already knew us from distributing hand sanitizer, we had a lot of goodwill with Umm, I would say community groups. Who wouldn't? Narrowly think to themselves as radical leftist St processors or our people, Umm. But like churches and whatnot who do a lot of work with people living outside, we're like, OK, you seem to be more or less on the same page with us. So that's how those distribution networks happened. Other groups that were already on the ground were the PDX General Defense Committee and Defense Fund PDX, who raise bail money and helped make sure that protesters. Get home and jail support waited outside the central precinct every night with food, hot drinks and support. The witches had already been present before the summer, handing out water bottles and supplies. Symbiosis PDX had begun as a coalition of mutual aid groups in 2018. However, when COVID hit, the work connecting communities and mutual aid expanded. So yeah, at the beginning of 2020, before COVID hit, symbiosis was mostly focused. On at the time our our project Merc or a municipal list Eco Resiliency project where we were working on kind of connect again with that dual power lens, trying to consolidate like food access and production infrastructure for the Community as well as like doing some housing rights work when COVID hit. We are really small organization and immediately just kind of like called this 6060 Org Wide Coalition call to be like, hey, radical left, this is a big ******* deal. What do we want to do about it? How can we support each other in doing that? And through that work we were able to kind of more succinctly find what gaps in the radical left infrastructure there was so that we could work on filling that need. Part of that was. Creating hubs around town there there was a few already existing and stuff. So that's where we created share or the symbiosis tub and resource exchange program where we were able to be some of the first first on the ground responders to making sure that our communities have the PPE they needed when we were being told that we that we shouldn't have PPE because we should save it for other people. So we we were distributing PPE, we organized the solidarity stitches, which were both producing their own masks and kind of teaching each other how to sew and learning basic organizing skills and how to interact with one another in this directly democratic way. But we are also activating the Community by creating these groups, the Solidarity Stitchers Group online that allowed us to then increase our production to being able to basically. And make masks that nobody could find anywhere, numbering in the thousands and and getting and partnering. We also created the Solidarity Fund, this Symbiosis Solidarity Fund, which basically was not only giving individuals in the Portland area who were experiencing economic hardship and response to the COVID pandemic directly, we are giving them funds like people who needed medical expenses. Covered people who needed transportation needs covered people, etcetera, but as well as well as grassroots organizations that needed money to continue their vital programming. For example, Portland action medics and slash, the rosehip medic collective. We were able to make sure to get them multiple thousands of dollars to continue the hand sanitizer project that they were doing. From there we are able to slowly grow through our our mutual aid program, through share and the solidarity stitchers the Solidarity Fund into also expanding within ourselves sort of this education and outreach work that we were doing to to further further within our organization and out in in the general public, educate about communalism, mutual aid, what it means to be an accomplice. Things about the the radical left movement that have been. Forgotten or never learned, this grew to encompass connections with the Warren Springs Reservation, distributing supplies, PPE, and clean water, with fires igniting the spirit when the water main for the reservation broke. When the protests began, symbiosis moved to make sure that PPE and resources were available there as well. We were printing scenes and showing up at protests at the protests. We are also the first group on the ground. Essentially to provide PPE, recognizing that yes, this uprising is going to happen regardless of the risk because the the need is that great, but we're going to do that and seed a culture of taking care of each other. So yeah, in distributing scenes and and educational material of other sorts and stuff, and getting people plugged into organizing other mutually formed in the early days of the protest, fueled by the desire to help out however possible. Early on, snack Mamas realized that they were not interested in running from the police, but they can make sure that the people in the streets had food and supplies. Coming and going I go by Shiba. Umm. Whereas we're mutual aid. Yeah, yeah. We hand out snacks and waters and things of that nature. Anything, you know, anybody would need. So does things like that stash medical supplies? Any like extra like masks or gas masks or any protective gear that we can possibly get our hands on? Lots of stuff. I mean, there's been a lot of random stuff that we've put out there. It's just whatever the needs are, but mainly just snacks and drinks. And I'm snuggling with you. I've already been doxxed so I'm not even worried about my name. I go by Amanda and. Yeah, that's pretty much what we do, mutual aid. How did you get started? Like when when did you first start coming to the out to the protest? Like how did you get started coming out to the protests? Like what was the impetus for you to come out? Well, when the whole George Floyd Video was released and I seen that it was. It was mortifying, I cried. Because it was, it was definitely just hard to watch again, again and again and again and again. And this was just kind of the last straw for everyone. But I, you know, I feel like, Umm and then there were protests going on downtown. So we went and checked them out and then we after that we started going out pretty much every night after that and just checking them out. I don't exactly remember when it was, but we have started up with. An ex partner of mine now he started. I remember it was the beginning of June. I dragged them with me. Yeah. We wouldn't check it out. Yeah, you know. So then after that, we had started cooking where we're cooking downtown. Did that for like maybe a month, two or two. Don't starve PDX. Yeah, don't starve PDX. So that was us. And then August 15th there was a domestic dispute between me and my partner. Who was part of don't start P, Who was part of Don't Start PDX. And then after that, I mean the the original snack van, he was supposed to get that and then after the domestic dispute, the the owner of the van pulled out from underneath him was like, you know, I can't support this. Then he offered me the van, and then me and her. Had this van and we were like, OK, what can we do with this? So then that's when we started doing Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for. None of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. 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For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Snack Mamas, it took us a minute to come up with a name. Yeah, but eventually we did. But at that point, people kind of already knew who we were. So then we, you know, came out with snack Mamas, and that's what we've been doing ever since. Yeah. I remember seeing you out when you were doing the don't starve. Yeah. What really was David is like to feed people, I think. I think we just want to support the movement. And I mean, honestly, we're a couple of chunky girls, you know, we weren't, we were no like match for these, you know, officers, they're like fit, you know, run, trying to chase us. We're like trying to find like bushes or like holes to hide in or. You know what I mean? We're just like, man, this is like, this is too much. Because I cannot run for crap. Yeah. The first time I knew that that wasn't for me. I'm standing there and all of a sudden I see this metal object moving toward me, and it's on fire and it's spinning. And I'm like, oh, and I like, you know, instantly start freaking out. And I'm like, OK, so, you know, I take off and I start running and I'm like, OK, this isn't for me, you know, I can't outrun objects. I can't outrun the cops, you know? So defense. So we didn't have any gas masks or anything yet or, like, we're, like, stuffing their faces with stuff, trying to breathe. Bill and try and like protect ourselves and yeah, uh, yes, it's harsh times, but we wanted to support like in whatever way we could. And I think that's kind of where we started, like doing the. This is Roxanne gay, host of the Roxanne gay agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of Your Dreams. Now, what is the Roxanne gay agenda, you might ask? Well, it's a podcast where I'm going to speak my mind about what's on my mind, and that could be anything. Every week I will be in conversation with an interesting person who has something to say we're going to talk about. Feminism, race, writing in books and arts, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. I started the show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going to share with you a movie or a book or maybe some music or a comedy set. Something that I really want you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, the Roxanne gay agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of Your Dreams, Every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up guys? I'm Rashad Bilal and I am Troy Millings and we are the host of the earn your Leisure podcast where we breakdown business models and examine the latest trends in finance. We hold court and have exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names in business, sport and entertainment from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquille O'Neal. I mean, our alumni list is expansive. Listen in as our guest reveal their business models, hardships and triumphs in their respective fields. The knowledge is in death and the questions are always delivered. From your standpoint, we want to know what you want to know. We talked to the legends of business. What's an entertainment about how they got their start and most importantly how they make their money earning. 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For other people that wanted to protest but didn't feel comfortable going out alone, Comrade Collective connected protesters to each other, sparking the connections that help sustain the movement. That's a tough that's kind of a tough one, to summarize. I guess the best way to say it is that the Community has kind of been a limiting factor for a lot of people in protests and right around the time of 4th of July and like right after that shark, you started kind of becoming a kind of a meeting point for folks through social media, through telegram. And from there, there's been several. Different iterations. Disabled Comrade collective Care collective, soon to be queer. Comedy Collective as well. All kind of forming from that I don't know locus of. Just a community, just like folks trying to find the necessary connections to get their ideas off the ground. Yeah, I mean, for me personally, I just sort of started sitting in a park with a sign just asking people if they needed buddies. I was going to be there anyway. I figured like it was something easy to do and I started to Twitter and one thing just sort of snowballed into another. Now here we are. Disable Comrade Collective help form to meet the needs of people with disabilities or who have alternative needs to be able to participate in protests. Yeah. How so how disabled Comrade Collective started was kind of like, so I'm I'm disabled and chronically ill, so, like I can't be on the ground all the time. It's like here and there and then when I am, it like takes a lot out of me. And so Sylvan who is like like the main person of like handling disabled. Comrade collective, uh. They also are disabled and chronically ill and so they just kind of like, we were just complaining on Twitter, like, they were like, man, like, there needs to be like a group for like, disabled and ill people like that have different needs and like, neurodivergent and then, like, it just everyone was like, yeah. And then it just kind of went on to Sylvan and they're like, I guess I'm doing this thing. So that's how that started. The ewoks. Also formed early in the protests, but through the course of the summer they found that their mission changed. He works as a humanitarian aid coalition made-up of crisis and medical workers. They're fighting integrated medical and mental healthcare. That's trauma informed and harm reductive in nature. This service model was really adapted from another organization that we worked with as organizers called Whiteboard Medicine, and they've been the attention of national news. Recently for their kahootz program. However, looking at the situations in Portland and the sociopolitical inequities that are being enforced every single day, it became increasingly clear that Portland's model was going to need to look a little bit different. So we beefed up our teams and we got a whole off the ground side, and now we've sort of moved, morphed into like a whole bunch of different things we do. Protest work still, we're committed in supporting the community for as long as that needs to happen. One thing that became increasingly clear as public reliance on the police force has begun to reflect the police forces ability to protect people and serve them. You walks is really taking a look at what the city needs most, and our shift was born out of seeing a complete lack of actually reachable mental health services within our city. Costs are prohibited. Access to those actual things within standalone buildings does not work for many patients, and it also leaves our houseless community severely lacking. As always is services and outreach. As we begin looking at adopting our model and taking a look at what this Community needed, one of the things that struck us most was that there is a complete lack of alternative resources to police involvement, and while E wax is not there yet, we would like to envision a future where we have a place in helping. Form a service that can do just such a thing. Meeting in the front of the federal courthouse during the Fed War, optical block began doing eye exams, helping people get prescriptions and glasses, organizing around the mutual aid tents of riot ribs. As riot ribs imploded at the end of July, the number of mutual aid quote blocks, organizing services to protesters and marginalized communities exploded. These groups organize around identifying and helping with one community need at a time. Protesters set up a wide-ranging network of alternative organizing to help each other outside of the frameworks of the city or capitalism. In many cases, the blocks were explicit that in an abolitionist framework, the goal was to meet needs without the charity and violence that often accompany the state, and more traditional types of assistance instead organized as a community to get people's needs met. As activist Mariah explains, there was a block for everything. All the blocks like pet block. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ohh gosh, I mean, I can't say I have a favorite. They're all amazing. Like, they they they honestly like shock me every day because I'm just like, ohh do we? I even asked him, like, yo, do we have a chiropractic block? Like, yeah, I don't say I have a favorite. I am just amazed by people being able to come together and do that. I've seen job block. I've seen, I've seen stuff I couldn't even think of. And I'm like, that's just amazing. I I think it's amazing for like, yeah, this little community. I'm like, I'm wish people like would know more about this. I would say know more about this, but get more involved because I'm like, the community is just doing it and like, yeah, we protect us and it's amazing. As August continued, community events and mutual aid fairs became common. Mending block could repair your clothes and made baklavas for anonymity. At night actions, beauty block could give you a manicure, but also made bath bombs and care packages for jail support. Community art therapy happened weekly as people tried to process the stress and brutality tech block assisted people with computers and devices. While we don't have time to cover every group that arose during that time, we can have some of the activists describe how and why they formed, Judah explains plant block so plant block literally came out of mutual aid like it formed out of like. Mac already being in contact with a bunch of community members, already having his own garden kind of thing set up and then just pull everybody together and creating like vigils with flowers that provide people with just like vegetable bags and stuff like that. So like nowadays if you go to any kind of like, well this was certainly true. I mean we're not having as many because it's so cold and wet now, but like a lot of the the like community events that we would hold. Umm. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one meant mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. 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So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes there are answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you. For the first time ever in a book format, you can preorder stuff they don't want you to know. Now it's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Half of those like vendors that would be at these community events literally were formed within this movement. They didn't exist prior to George Floyd. So seeing how you know the tragic death of of. Of him and many others falling before him, have kind of, in a way like been a catalyst for strengthening mutual aid in our city. And anybody who's been on the ground, been going to these events, have has seen it with their own eyes. So many different mutual aid groups have formed because of us just coming together so often. And the more that we come together, the more we realize we don't need to rely on the state. To feed and clothe and keep us safe during the Fed War, cars were damaged by riot munitions and had their filters clogged with powdered tear gas. Portland police developed a habit of repeatedly attacking protester vehicles, protecting marches by stabbing out their tires. Those snack Mamas had their vans impounded and trashed for handing out food and water. In response, PDF St Mechanics formed to help people repair their cars and provide vehicle assistance for protesters, but quickly enlarge their focus to help with other transportation needs. Here, they explain how they formed. Next started. Kind of just like on Twitter, primarily because there were calls for people's cars getting to repairs after having them be damaged out in protests. And it very quickly expanded well beyond that because car repair isn't something that you can do at protests. And that was one of our first things is like, Oh no, we're actually just doing community car care. By moving away from the protest scene actually allows us to. Focus on other things and actually focus on the marginalized communities that are tend to be very active in protests, but are also the reasons why we are protesting. And that was a big thing for us in our initial framing was not necessarily just helping protesters kind of manage their day-to-day needs, but also helping to support the communities that are have historically been marginalized and have historically been oppressed. So that these protests don't need to happen, we should not have to go out and protest. And a big part of that is building the world that we want to see. So we kind of quickly moved into that perspective. I think a lot of ways we we end up providing a lot of support for other blocks. So a lot of the people that we help and the people reach out to us are people who are using their vehicles for mutual aid. And those people absolutely get like care from us. They they they get support in terms of making sure that their vehicles are reliable and safe so that they can provide their own kind of like practices because a lot of a lot of other mutual aid. Systems are like organizations are about like just giving stuff away and providing those those goods. The service providing component kind of like breaks with that a little bit. So like we haven't really been able to kind of meet up and go to a lot of like the OR like some of the fairs or some of the kind of like mutual aid meetups, because we there's no spot to work on cars. So when we've run into some problems with that, we're like people being fine with people distributing food, but then you're like, oh, can we do an oil change in your parking lot? It's like, no, we can't do that. So we end up having to to get really creative in terms of where we do our work and how we. Actually, like, just like logistically organized with other people we crooked. When PT Barnum's Great American Museum burned to the ground in 1865, what rose from its ashes would change the world. Welcome to grim and mild presents an ongoing journey into the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season, we'll be giving you a backstage tour of the Always complex and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is the American sideshow. So come along. As we visit the shadowy corners of the stage and learn about the people who are at the center of it all, in a place where spectacle was king, we will soon discover there's always more to the story than meets the eye. So step right up and get in line. Listen to grim and male presents now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more over at grim and mild.com/presents. Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more productive with the Before Breakfast podcast and each bite size, daily episode time management and productivity expert Laura Vanderkam teaches you how to make the most of your time, both at work and at home. These are the practical suggestions you need to get more done with your day. 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Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up next is Elaine, my colleague in the streets and my partner in writing this podcast. The cycle of nightly protests and daily community building and mutual aid would continue unabated, and on September 5th Portland had its hundredth night of continuous protest. The event was marked by a care fair featuring many of the mutual aid groups that had formed recently. Plant, block, head, vegetables, sprouts and seeds that they were giving away and care block offered massages. Protesters and tea symbiosis tabled books and scenes, and people ate, donated food and listened to speakers and music by local musicians. At one point, the car caravan, a reoccurring car protest frequented by people whose social distancing needs made other types of visible protest harder, came past honking horns, waving signs declaring that black lives mattered. Mac was on the ground that day. You know, I think a lot of folks once once things went off in Minneapolis and once we knew they were, you know, once we had our first big right here in Portland, we knew something was going to happen. Like we knew that there were going to be some protests and stuff last a little while. I don't think anyone at the start of it really called 100 plus days, no continuous protest. When did you realize? This is not a normal, not just not a normal Portland protest. This isn't like a normal Portland summer of protests, and it would continue to not be a normal summer of protests. That night, Portland police pushed protesters blocks away from the East Portland precinct, gassing families in their homes. And at the beginning of September, Oregon began one of its worst fire seasons on record as one of the last marches commemorating the 100th day of protest. While in through the St. John's neighborhood of North Portland, Mariah remembers how the sky. Slowly dimmed as smoke began rolling into the city from fires burning from the South and east. I won't, I won't for the day. It started to rolling into town. I was actually at the big March in St. John's because we all started coming back and we were just like coughing and and everything and I was like, what the **** is going on? I looked in there and I was like OK it's smoke from a fire, but I was like, but where and then obviously you know 24 hours later we started becoming hell. But how much? It just shows like the community transition to mutual aid and. Eating like fire survivors and victims. Me as well. I also did like, I don't know, I raised like $5000 and went to and went shopping and dropped him off like so I got placed near Lloyd Center. And then out in Milwaukee. But it was so amazing to see the community be able to come together and help people dry. Conditions and hot winds sent fires sweeping 4 states. Oregon was enveloped in the worst fires the state had seen in decades. Smoke from multiple blazes blanketed the region, making breathing impossible and devastating huge swaths of the state as thousands evacuated and whole towns were consumed by fire with no evidence. Far right media exploded with rumors that Antifa and BLM were starting fires despite public officials trying to counteract. Rumors it was too little too late. The fear mongering rhetoric led scared individuals and right wing militias to stay in fire areas, hindering evacuees and to set up arm checkpoints and fire zones to harass anyone they thought didn't look right. Reporter Alyssa Azar went out to the Fire Zone to talk with evacuees and report on the fire response. Just seeing, you know, the community come together and kind of. A great example of we protect us, you know, manifesting right before our eyes. **** there were people that were like rallying together trailers to go help people evacuate their barn animals and take them to somewhere safe. So. Yeah, I mean that's what we went there for and it's it's so funny because. I believe the day before I went to Malala. Or the day before that. So one or two days before I had tweeted something and I was totally joking, but it was also very serious. It was along the lines of. Like, you know, right wingers on Twitter are saying, you know, Antifa started the wildfires. Meanwhile, every ******* leftist on Twitter at the time was like, hey, what's the most efficient way to bring a fire extinguisher to a protest? You know, because at the time, there was also a fire risk and the protests were happening, and this is something people were super concerned about. And, you know, we, we were making jokes about these circulating rumors. I really did not think in a matter of. Two days they would manifest into a full blown. Like actionable conspiracy theory, Alessa soon found out how serious those conspiracy theories were being taken. At the time, the witches had showed up, and they had brought a bunch of. It's like swaggins filled with supplies. We were on our way to. I think it was at the time. The airport, because that's where the firefighters had told us that they were going to. Have the firefighters be stationed as well as be taking supplies. So on our way there there was have you ever seen those those signs where it's like green, yellow, red and it's like a fire danger sign and the arrow points wherever. So the arrow was like all the way in the red and it was like leave now. So granted we stopped to take a picture of that because it's there's just this like, you know, field. Like tall grass on the side of the road. Leave now. It was just a very picturesque moment. Something. Really eerie about it. The road is like completely empty, but every now and then you can see like a line of cars trying to evacuate. But. Anyways, we we pulled over. Wow, I haven't thought about this in so long. But yeah, we've we pulled over to take this picture and Justin and Sergio are. Kind of still standing next to the car and this is public property. It's on the side of the road, it's not. Anyone's like yard or anything, and they're still by the car and I'm like in front of the sign and there's some like tall grass. I'm kind of crouched down taking a picture of it. And I'm like focused on the picture, and I hear someone talking. At first I thought maybe it was like Justin and Sergio, but I look up and there's three dudes with with rifles. You know, pointing their rifles at us, isn't it? It it took a bit for me to register what was going on because I was really confused. And I got up and they started interrogating me. And I'm answering, but I'm still like, really confused because I'm like, wait. They're not cops. But why are they so offended and so aggressive and hostile like I I was legit, just like I could not figure out what was going on. And then they kept asking questions, you know, like, where are you from? Where are you in our city or are you taking a picture of? This? Started talking about, like, because we all had our press credentials on. We were all in plain clothing. And, you know, slowly, like, based off the questions they were asking, it slowly started to kind of click for me. But even when it clicked, I think that just kind of made me more confused because, like, we were literally all tweeting about this jokingly. Last night, but somehow and **** literally two to three days, this, like rumor manifested into a ******* conspiracy where people are holding people at gunpoint, militias are holding people up at gunpoint. It's. It's just wild to me. They finally got to a point. They started saying that, you know, there were people that were coming into their city that are starting fires so that they can loot, you know, and and they kept saying the word, Lou. And then they started talking about protesters from Portland. And it was just like. You know, it was it was all like. It was coming to me before, but it was coming to me in a way where it's like, OK, maybe, but there's no way, but then. They started asking those questions. I was like, oh, OK, they they really do believe that I'm an Antifa starting the fires right now. Like, OK, **** yeah, using words like, like looting. And then they started talking about protesting. God ****. And then it it took a little bit before Justin and Sergio even saw and it was Justin who came down 1st and. Stop. Started to like, talking and see what's going on. Oh **** I just remembered too. When Sergio finally, like, realized what was going on, he came up to us and he's like, are you writing this, man? Yeah, yeah. Not and not physically. Nobody touched us, but just like body language and the way that they were being, the way that they were positioned and like slowly like, you know, edging forward when they would be speaking. We were, I think when when Sergio got involved, him and Justin were just trying to be like, listen, we're just trying to take pictures, like we're not going to bother you like, like, whatever. And also like we, we also tried to explain to them like we're not here to like. Make this political or dehumanize anyone or whatever. Like, we're here with, like, sympathy and you know, like, we're again, this is like a humanitarian issue. This is like, what the ****? Yeah, you know, we're not here to be like, yeah, like, you know, burn those, whatever. Like, no, none of that. So they really wanted us to just, like, pack it up and go back to Portland. You know, and they were kinda insinuating that they would have their eyes on us. They took a picture of all of our faces. They took a picture of the license plate. Umm. So yeah, it's kind of creepy, but I will tell you for sure, none of us really realized what happened until like a few hours later. Because we were fine, we were all fine and I was tweeting about it. I'm like, lol, guess what happened? And then like an hour or two later we're just like, ****. Like we got held up at gunpoint. The city, like by the time we got to where we stopped, that area was all burnt down already. So had something happened, there's a good chance no one would have found out about it. As we came to learn later, the cops are all very pro. These right wing militias over there, so. The seriousness of it definitely didn't kick in until a lot later, but what were protesters actually doing during this time? Well, many of the people being labeled as rioters and having rumors of arson spread about them or out in the community trying to help as many victims of the fires as possible, Alyssa continues. You know, Portland, like mutual aid groups from Portland were driving all the way down to Eugene to drop off some supplies and back. Like, you know, countless times back and forth. So that was that was really great just seeing, you know, what we're capable of. And. I think at first, you know, we talked about the protest kind of slowing down for the fires. And I think a lot of it at first was because it was unhealthy to go outside. But I think a huge part of it, too, is like wanting to prioritize. Like there's people that need help right now. And like, if we don't get on this, like, you know, this is, this is part of what we're here for. This is this is part of anarchy, you know? And yeah, just seeing people really like commit was really incredible. I mean, did you make it down to mall? Morgan from Team Raccoon had been coordinating filter exchanges and sourcing gas masks for children and rapidly changed their focus as the area was smothered by smoke. Yeah, yeah. I was really fortunate to get to kind of collaborate with a lot of mutual aid groups. For malt. The mutual Aid Lloyds Theater and also Mama the Milwaukee area mutual aid. We decided to move mall to Mama because it was damp out because of all the smoke cover and we were getting lots of donations of cloth goods like blankets and mattresses even and clothing and all kinds of things that we didn't want to mildew. But yeah, I I I was on the ground giving out respirators a lot at malt. I have a really fond memory of giving a respirator to an 8 year old and a Spiderman shirt. And the 8 year old was on a scooter, just scooting around pretending to be a robot Spiderman now that they had their respirator on. And that was fun. We had fun that day. But yeah, I I was kind of just giving respirators out like candy during wildfire disaster relief, so I'm not totally sure how many went out just for that, but it was quite a bit. Umm, basically we were trying to make sure that everybody who was going on supply runs to the actual camps themselves was getting a box of respirators to give out in case there were any people that were really struggling, any asthmatics, any people that. Have respiratory ailments. Because we had the worst air quality in the entire world. I gave. I remember I gave a box of like. I think it was like 18 respirators to somebody who was like, I actually work at an asthma clinic and I know a lot of patients. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, here you go. Here is a box of 18 respirators. The Ewoks transformed an empty mall parking lot into a fire relief aid station almost overnight, becoming a note for a tremendous amount of supplies and care to both evacuees, as well as to the Houseless community that had nowhere to go to get out of the smoke. When the fires first started raging, there was this moment, sort of I I remember being it being a Tuesday or a Wednesday just after the fires had started, where the protests calmed down a little bit, largely because it was a safety. Issue to be out in the smoke inhalation and even though all of our gear is built to protect from. CS gas that doesn't necessarily translate to smoke air everywhere. In taking a look at what the Community requests were, you work social media got a lot of requests of calls for medical support, calls for supply provision, and the other orgs that are headed by Ewoks. Organizers began getting requests through their social media and it became really clear that the aid sites that were previously established were overworked and ineffective. And they're functioning largely because of the amount of people that they had coming through and the issues that. And when you have those, that many people with differing views really meeting in the middle. When the Red Cross and the Salvation Army established a base at Clackamas Town Center, or intent was initially to be further down South with them. But when that site quickly reached capacity and the overflow went to the Oregon Convention Center, we realized that there was going to be a whole group of people that weren't being serviced by the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army also does not provide any sort of food or diapers, and their clothing supplies are pretty much. Limited to what you can carry. The malt site and and malt is an acronym that stands for mutual aid at Lloyd Theater and we established in the Lloyd Movie theater parking lot. Thankfully, the manager of that parking lot did not have an issue with it, but we began doing all of the supply provision that the Salvation Army at the Oregon Convention Center was unprepared to do. We also found that we were getting a high level of migrant communities. And minority communities that might otherwise feel grossly uncomfortable with organizations that have appeared to have government participation and cooperation in the past. When sort of roll through, started to slow down and the Oregon Convention Center began to stabilize as as paired with the breaking of the fire line and the actual fire danger. Moving a little bit further S we moved into the Clackamas area and our goal was finding a site that was going to be safe for humans to come through no matter what their resident or minority community status was and to receive services. But also to be close enough to jump further down South of that was what was accessary when we established the Mama site. And now that I'm thinking about it, I can't remember what Mama stands for. And I apologize. Mama stands for Milwaukee area mutual aid. There we go. Thanks, T. When we established the Mama site, we had every intention of continuing to move further down South. Something really amazing happened while we were there, and putting us inside the mutual aid area of Milwaukee allowed us to have resources within other organizations within the Community and the mutual aid network to send supplies further down South without having to move our site. That location ended up being really key in terms of in terms of being able to move supplies, gain supplies and see community needs and it also highlighted the needs that we were not able to meet within that, which was the. The property damage and the economic impacts of having lost everything. In that respect it allowed us to move more supplies to safer locations for humans because we were able to see that that was happening and able to pre plan for what their future coming needs would be. Some of those supply lines are still open and we are still funneling about supplies that have just been passed around groups since then. May I jump in yeah, please do so. A couple of things, I'd like to add one of the things that was really important about malt or mutual aid at Lloyd theater. We we were able to address the needs of our houseless community that did not want to. Go inside and stay at the Convention Center. So one of the things that we did is we sourced pretty much every respirator that was still in existence in the Portland metropolitan area. I had volunteers calling everything, getting inventories, making purchases, and delivering the respirators and filters to the houseless folks at. For not C3PO and other camps where people. Where people were. Just left to their own devices, I hear that the city or county was trying to find respirators on eBay, but of course we had better connections and then we were able to, you know, make sure that that our House was community, had their needs met before we moved to. Mama and I think the really important part about Mama was that it allowed people who were not safe at the Clackamas Town Center location to access mutual aid, the immigrant and refugee community. LGBTQ community there. There was a real disconnect in terms of providing safer spaces for. People. At that Clackamas County, Clackamas Town at the Clackamas Town Center site. I think that's all I I really wanted to add. The fires took a community that was based around brutality and trauma and helped remind people that not only do we take care of us, but that mutual aid and support were also the basis for larger change. After forming bonds and clouds of tear gas, there was something poetic and protesters turning their focus outwards to support others in a region where the air had been rendered unbreathable. After the fires, more mutual aid and support would be directed outside of the immediate protester community and towards those. Was placed by fire the chronically houseless and those facing eviction. While these centers of collective care and support were forming among protesters, another group had been preparing to mobilize in Portland. In our next episode, we'll talk about how the proud boys and far right extremists were capitalizing on the same paranoia that had made malicious form checkpoints and start preparing for a violent return to the city. To round us out, though, here are some final thoughts on mutual aid from activist Creme Brulee, the Ewoks, Courtney from Wall of Moms, and the Street. Mechanic block. One of the things you like to say is like. Defund the police and invest in community and you know, one of the things like my mom was on earlier and she's like. And that's your monitor. And they're not letting you do one thing just like you can do the other thing. Like I'm fighting. The Battle of help people that need help and. We want to see society where the police aren't needed for every *** **** thing. The police aren't needed to harass houseless people in various locations. The police aren't used to respond to various mental health situations of all high end all over the city. The police aren't, you know, basically they don't have the presence they do in the potential they do to escalate every ******* situation. Which is Umm you know So what we can do instead of I guess taking away their power directly and you know actually burning down PA is just take their jobs in the sense of like take away all their responsibilities and. Leave them with nothing to do. Uh, because that's the goal. Yeah, through the day, right? Is to have everyone in the community taking care of it. That's all we want. You know, it's like I said, the three lines you like Black Lives Matter and the baptism, like it's like we all just one big community taken care of and we're all just people who see that needs to be done through whatever different or specific numbers we need. Umm, so. Yeah, it's, it's more of a. I hope you continues to be this way. I think it will. It's becoming more of a thing of people are organizing action that is directly benefiting their community. The one thing that really stands out is that Portland's infrastructure is what makes it possible for us to continue to stay out here and do this work, and to continue to persist even as those that hold on to white supremacist structures really cling to the dying, gasping breaths of it. If you are in another city and you are looking to form your own mutual aid support network, firstly and foremostly this is going to be a massive collaboration effort. It's going to feel like you want to do everything because everything needs to be done, and so the most important step that you can take is recognizing your lane and recognizing how to stay in your lane and recognizing how to let your lane meet other people's lane. I think that just like the sense of like communities and people taking care of each other. We're in a pandemic and a lot of people just don't even have jobs or are working right now and. House of Community is only like getting larger and the police are attacking the House of Community as well. So just seeing. People rally around to take care of our community while the government and the police that we actually pay with our tax dollars. I'm not doing **** to help people right now at this moment, seeing us gather around and really take care of each other. Even though like we don't personally know each other, we're still, you know, everyone is still a family and doing everything they can to provide the necessities to live to each other. Well, I think that that's like something that's been really amazing is all of the mutual aid that's come out of. This what's been going on here in Portland is really beautiful. People are like able to like make rent, people are starting to get jobs through other people's connections. People are able to eat. You know, people are like providing shelter and you know things to live to the house with community after like they've been taken and flashed by the police. So I think that that's just something that outside of all of the protests is really amazing to see this and this community come together and. I actually took my children down to jail support to drop off some things this past weekend in Vancouver, and it was just a really great opportunity to show them how we as a community need to take care of each other and how much love is around all of this. It's hard for my kids to kind of understand what's going on. And see like why I'm like put them to bed and then, you know leave them with their dad to like go out every night and and I'm sure and they see certain things like on the news and stuff. So they have like I tried to explain to them what's really going on but it was really important for me to take them this weekend to show them that like we do have like we we always say, like we got us like we really do and. Explaining to them that if anyone's going to take care of our community like it's going to be us at the end of the day. So it's just, I'm like trying to eradicate my children at a young age and just teach them at a young age that you know. That in the end, we are the ones that take care of each other. Now that I think about a lot in terms of where where things are going is just about like all the skills that everybody's learning from whatever they're doing. There are so many different mutually like groups and blocks popping up and trying to or like create material action. But there's also a ton of things that are being learned on the street, and there are a ton of being things being learned in terms of organizing protests and direct actions and media campaigns and all of these other kinds of things. I think that as the protests continue and as the kind of resistance to the powers that be continues. Really hopeful that we'll all continue to grow and get better at what we're doing so that we can really like keep pushing forward and and build the world that we want to see. I have a couple things. First, anybody can do it, anybody and it doesn't matter how small, it doesn't matter what you're doing. You can be part of a larger scale operation in the sense of if you have something you can provide it, even if it's like helping something dig something off of the Internet. Or, you know, telling someone this is how this thing works. Anybody can do that and also. Do not be afraid to ask people for help if you don't understand something or if you just need help in terms of like resources. Like? These things are there and the more people that are involved, the easier it becomes. Does that make sense? Yes. Great. And that also mutual aid can be as small as it needs to be and as quiet as it needs to be. This is something like helping your neighbor jump a car like. That could be mutual aid. It's like you, you can start a group and raise $10,000 over the course of a few months and, you know, like, give people vehicles. That's also mutual aid. We don't need to like, you know, create weird hierarchies or kind of prioritize one form of it over the another. It's really just like, like a like a means for helping each other. Word the grand pops it couldn't fathom the Obama sisters I don't hate America just to me and she keeps her promises 20 teens looking like the 60s it's crazy a nationwide deja vu what more people posted do go to schools named after the Klan founder were around town is I don't see why we frowning Native American students forced to learn about when opera Sera how is that fair, bro? Some heroes unsung in some monsters get monuments built for them but they be all a little bit. Monster we crooked. Adoption of teens from foster care is a topic not enough people know about, and we are here to change that. I'm April Dinwoodie, host of the new podcast navigating adoption presented by adopt US Kids. Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told by the families that live them, with commentary from experts. Visit adoptuskids.org/podcast or subscribe to navigating. 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