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Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. So four whole months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar wide ape and disappear into the vegetation. In wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts, sisters of the Underground is a podcast about fearless Dominican women who stood up against the brutal dictator Kapal Trujillo. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. I am Daniel Ramirez, and as a Dominicana myself, I am proud to be narrating this true story that is often left out of the history books through your has blood on his hands. Listen to sisters of the underground wherever you get your podcasts. 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 hear 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. Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once again behind the ******** the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. And this week, of course, I'm in Portland, OR on the 17th, which is to us tomorrow, but to you in the past. There will be a rally from a group called Patriot Prayer who you will be hearing a lot about in the next episode of this podcast with some members of Rose City Antifa as guest. And today, of course, my guest is. My name is Maria. Eaton and I've lived in Portland for 14 years, and I do many different things here, including quite a bit of activism, quite a bit of activism. My main effort is with sexual and relationship violence prevention and victim advocacy. And I've done activism around that for about a decade now and I am a victim advocate both in the university setting as well as independent organization settings. And you've also done quite a bit of anti fascist action in the street during which you were photographed and have become sort of a figurehead of Antifa for CNN's reports on the matter. So CNN, we're officially, officially an interview with Antifa. That's the Fox News chyron that would go across. Yeah, that's true. So we're going to be talking about Oregon, your lovely home state, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and also way more racist, historically at least, than most people would give it credit for based on Portlandia. And currently, yeah, it's not just macrobiotics burritos and. I'm trying to think of something else. Hippieish cars that run on garbage. Garbage, yeah, yeah, garbage cars. It's, it's it's a little bit deeper than that that's going to be getting into the day today. The ******* is the state of Oregon, which, you know, sorry, Oregon, I do love you, but. Let's get into it. So Peter Hardeman Burnett was born in 1807. He started out as a self educated, which I think in 1807 just means uneducated owner of a general store in Clear Creek, Tennessee. As a young man, Peter Burnett came to suspect that an enslaved black person was drinking from his stores whiskey barrel at night. So he set up a booby trap, a rifle that was rigged to fire when the window shutter was opened. His trap wound up killing the poor man when the guy tried to break into his house, burned, expressed remorse, but was not charged with any crime because it was. 1807 and that sort of thing wasn't really a crime in Tennessee back then. In 1843, Burnett helped organize and lead the first Great wagon train to Oregon. So he was one of The Pioneers who first discovered this territory. Oregon Trail, you could say, is a game about Peter Burnett, murderer and soon to be politician because he was quickly elected to the Provisional Legislature of Oregon. Now this before Oregon was a state, it was still a territory, and he served as the territory of Oregon's First Supreme Court Justice, Chief Supreme Court. Justice. So I'm guessing his qualifications were little wagon train and was a murderer. And so in 1840 they were like, you're our judge, you're you're in charge of this state right now. So 1844 Peter Burnett was instrumental in passing what came to be known as the Burnett Lash Law. Have you heard of the Burnett lash law from you? OK, right. You're am I allowed to disclose? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that. We've talked prior to setting up this, this. I heard that secret. You had not remembered that. I'm sure I've heard it, but I have not remembered that until you brought it up. It's a little bit famous. It it's essentially stated that all black people were required to leave Oregon County under penalty of being whipped. Quote, not less than 20 or more than 39 stripes. This punishment was to be repeated every six months until they left the state. So one of the interesting things about Peter Burnett is that he's a classic example of someone winding up on the right side of a historical issue for tremendously wrong. Reasons because Peter Burnett was an outspoken abolitionist, not because he believed slavery was wrong, but because he was just that racist. And he thought that if there was slavery, there would be people who weren't white in the country. That was his whole issue, which is there's a whole, like, chunk of the abolitionist movement which were just people who were too racist to own slaves. It's kind of a little historical angle that gets left out a lot of the time, but bizarre. So Burnett's law did include a grace period, three years for black women in two years for black men. So we gave them some time to get out of the state. Burnett also pushed against Chinese migration to Oregon. He tried to ban it. He later went on to become the first governor of the State of California. So he is my state's first governor as well. And of course, his first action and governor of the State of California was. Pretty sure you can guess. You tried to ban all black people. Yeah, yeah. What do you know? And then he tried to ban all Chinese people from California. Peter Burnett was a consistent man, if nothing else. And I got a picture of him, and he looks like we'll put it up on the site behindthebastards.com, but he looks like the guy you would cast to play a generic one time you look at that forehead, that is, that's A5 head. Even A7, I mean, it is. It just keeps going. And those little curls on the side, the curls. I I'm not gonna go against them for the curls. No, I mean, that's it. Seems like you might have. No, that's the only redeeming quality. And I mean, it's a weird cravat. He looks like someone in a story who would, like, take off his cravat and his head would fall off in a in an old fable. Yeah, he doesn't look like a very happy person. No, no, he does not. He looks a little bit like the painting of the guy Vigo in Ghostbusters 2. The the bad guy who's trying to steal that baby's. Yeah, yeah, he's got that. He's got his eyes are doing that sort of thing, so. You really owe it to yourself to look at a picture of Peter Burnett, a guy who looks like his goal in life was to ban people who aren't white from multiple states. Yes? Yeah, so Burnett's lash law did not last long, which is kind of hard to say 10 times fast. The last law did not last long. Not even going to attempt it. Fair enough. Fair enough. So now the good news is that no black people are recorded to have been lashed under it. It apparently was not used even in the 1840s. And Oregon, enough people were like, this seems a little bit too racist. Yeah, that said, you're talking to. In the 1840s, who knows what happened, and especially rural areas where the rule of law was even less than it was in Portland. Yeah, whether or not it was used, the law reflected the values of the first white people who settled in the territory of Oregon. They wanted their state to be slave free, but because that was the only way to ensure the state had no black people at all. In 1848 the Oregon Territorial government passed a law that banned any quote, ***** or mulatto from living in Oregon. In 1850 the Oregon Land Donation Act gave quote whites and **** ***** Indians 650. Makes a plan from the government. All other people of color were banned from receiving land grants. So Oregon was founded as a whites only state that was seen as this is going to be just white people in this chunk. So that was the Pacific Northwest from the get go almost 200 years ago. Absolutely. Yeah. And there's this we'll be talking about. There's some people who still think that ought to be the way things work. Yes. So from the beginning, Oregon was a very rough place to be anything but a very, very white person. There were some extraordinarily brave black pioneers who did try to make a life. Here in 1851, one of them was Jacob Vanderpool. He was a former sailor. I think he came from the Caribbean islands, but I don't think we know exactly. But he came to own a saloon restaurant and boarding house in Oregon City and a white guy named Theophilus Mcgruder, which is quite a name in the name you would expect of a guy who's about to do or who did what we're about to talk about him doing. Reported him for the crime of being black in Oregon and he was given 30 days to leave the state. Now, Mcgruder also owned a hotel. And a bar in the same town. So it's entirely possible that his motive was as financial as it was racist, if not more so. But Jacob Vanderpool was forced to leave and forced to give up his business. In 1857, Oregon wrote a state constitution that enshrined its exclusion of black people into law. Quote No free ***** or mulatto not residing in the state at the time of the adoption of this Constitution shall ever come, reside or be within the state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract or maintain any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such free ******* and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the state and from the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state or employ them or harbor them. They're in. Yeah. So that's the initial law that Oregon is founded under 1857. In 1859, Oregon Territory finally becomes a state. It was the only state in the Union that was officially whites only. So this is the only time that this happened. You know, as much racism as there is in the history of the United States. Oregon the only state that tried to do this, so. That's a yeah. Fame. I guess. Texas has the Alamo and the. Yeah, you go, which is also pretty racist. That was kind of, I grew up in Texas, and they always kind of smoothed over why the Texans were rebelling against Mexico. A lot to do with the fact that they wanted to own people in Mexico. Didn't like people owning people. Yeah. Yeah. They really hide that fact. Yeah, always. Yeah. So, well, Oregon initially ratified the 14th amendment to the Constitution, which gave citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States. Including former slaves. This is why we have birthright citizenship. It was they were trying to figure out a legal solution to we've got all these people that we forced to be here, and now they've got to be citizen. Yeah, so Oregon initially ratified the 14th amendment, but then it almost immediately rescinded the ratification of the amendment. I guess people got angry. Oregon is also one of only six states that refused to ratify the 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote. So fortunately, Oregon eventually got its **** together enough to finally ratify the 15th amendment. You wanna guess when that happened? I've known this before, but I can't think of it. It was eight or 1959. Yes. Yeah, 1959, yeah. They were like, alright, we'll ratify the amendment that let's black guys vote. Yeah, just black guys. But yeah, it did not ratify the 14th Amendment until 1973. Yeah, I definitely remember that date. I think it's important we talk about like why this stuff still lingers because it didn't get. It's not we're not talking about like you know, 118 sixty five really isn't that long ago when you talk about generations because the. Civil war widows pension just stopped getting paid like three years ago. Absolutely. People say that all the time. Yeah. Like, Ohh, racism's done. Slavery is over. Yeah. Ohh. OK. Interesting. Yeah. Let's talk about redlining. Oh well, that was a long time ago too. We will be talking about it. Yeah, I'm sure we. Yeah. Oregon ratified the amendment that gave birthright citizenship to people 15 years before I was born, which is not that long. Disco might have been a thing. I don't know when that I think that may have been a thing. Yeah, it's about as old as disco. It's about as old as disco. Although that does feel now, that does feel old now disco actually feels older than yes, rich white supremacy in Oregon. So it's probably not hard to see why the state of Oregon has stayed so white, even though after 1868 there was nothing legally the state authorities could do to keep black people out of Oregon. So again, it's not whites only. After that point, by 1890, there were only around 1000 black people in the entire state. By 1920, there were just 2000. Now, the 1920s would have been a rough time to be a black person in Oregon, because Oregon was the highest per capita membership of the Ku Klux Klan of any state in the Union. Marched in? Yeah. They gathered in Portland proper? Yeah, all the time. Thousands of them. Thousands of thousands. They're klaverns, I think. Yeah, that's the name. Yeah, they're grand Wizards. Yeah. Cross burnings. Cross burnings. Center in the city? Yeah, I prefer to. It's easier to focus on the ridiculous names, but yeah, it was cross burnings and murders and yeah, yeah. Talk about that now. No, I mean, we can. That's what we're here for. Yeah, that is what we're here. So Democrat Walter Pierce was elected governor in 1922 after receiving the enthusiastic endorsement of the Oregon Ku Klux Klan. In fact, that may have been why he won, according to an article in The Guardian. Quote, photos in the local paper showed the Portland chief of Police, Sheriff, District Attorney, US attorney and mayor posing with Klansmen, accompanied by an article saying the men were taking advice from the clan. So, again, really not weird that it took until the 70s to ratify the 14th and 1590 ratified it. Yeah. So World War Two is when things really started to change demographically in Oregon. This was the first time that a large number of black people began to move to the state. And it was because America was in this whole war thing, and we need to build a **** load of boats. And if there's one thing Portland's great at, it's being a place to build a **** load of boats. You guys, we got our boats. If I ever need to build a Navy, this is the city I'm going to build that Navy in. Go for it. Yeah, we're here. I'm gonna crowdfund it like a like a like a go fund me. But instead of for medical bills for like a like a battleship or three, what are you gonna use it for? I don't know. You'll sail around like what Elron Hubbard did. Just sail around for eight or nine years. Podcasting? Yeah. Podcasting. Just podcast. Podcast boat. Yeah, a podcast boat. A podcast coat boat. USS. The podcast. But I was gonna say US *******. Ohh US. Yeah, that's more catchy than mine. Yeah, exactly. More catchy than mine. I'm not the Namer in this. Well, in fairness, I'm not the Namer either. Somebody else figured that out. OK, there you go. No, I I feel your pain. So by the end of World War Two, more than 20,000 black people had moved to Oregon. Many of them resided in Vanport, a small city between Portland and Vancouver, WA. Calling it a city at first at least. Yeah. Yeah, small town. Small town it was. Most of it was temporary housing that was built because they had so many workers coming in, and they needed the ability to host them. And Portland was a very tiny city at this point. Still, here's how the Smithsonian described the creation of Vanport quote, completed in just 110 days. The town, comprised of 10,414 apartments and homes, was mostly a slipshod combination of wooden blocks and fiberboard walls built on marshland between the Columbia Slough and the Columbia River. Vanport was physically segregated from Portland. And kept dry only by a system of ***** that held back the flow of the Columbia River. So little bit of foreshadowing there. This is built in basically the worst location you could build a town to keep it dry years later. Manly Maven who grew up in Vanport would describe it this way. Quote the psychological effect of living on the bottom of a relatively small area diked on all sides to a height of 15 to 25 feet was vaguely disturbing. It was almost impossible to get a view of the horizon from anywhere in Vanport at least on the ground or in the lower level apartments. And it was even difficult from upper levels, which I can't really imagine this. It sounds like almost something you'd see in like a dystopian movie where these people just have these ***** rising like they're walled in on all sides. And this is the hub of, you know, the black community in Portland. You know for the first time that it really has any size at all. So, yeah, the idea was that once folks had settled into Van Port and, you know, worked at their jobs long enough and earn some cash, they would be able to rent or buy homes elsewhere. It was not intended to be a permanent development, but discriminatory housing policy made it nearly impossible for black people to, you know, live anywhere else in the city. So once the war ended, the Mayor of Portland wrote a newspaper article telling the black people of Van Port that they were no longer welcome in the state. This is the Mayor of Portland basically put up a letter saying, like, OK, thank you for building the boats. Yeah, you can go. You can go now. Yep, yeah. The Housing Authority discussed tearing the town down. A 1947 Oregon Journal article described local attitudes to Van Port this way. To many Oregonians, van Port has been undesirable because it is supposed to have a large colored population. Of the sum 23,000 inhabitants, only slightly over 4000 are colored residents. True, this is a high percentage per capita compared to other northwestern cities, but as one resident puts it, the colored people have to live somewhere. And whether the northwesterners like it or not, they are here. Stay. I think there's a lot to dig into in terms of the phrasing there, both that this this journalist, rather than being like. Kind of confronting the racism is like, well, they're not entirely accurate. It's only 1/4 color. And then also, yeah, whether whether the northwesterners like it or not, they are here to stay. So that's the attitude in 1947. So today, you know, Vanport as Delta Park. That's a sort of the land that it's that's on now because very little of Vanport City still remains. Yeah. In 1948, it started raining very hard. On Memorial Day 1948, residents of Vanport woke up to driving rain. And this letter from the Housing Authority of Portland, the HP. Remember, ***** are safe at present. You will be warned. If necessary you will have time to leave. Don't get excited. I do feel like if the government's sending you all caps notes that say don't get excited, you probably get excited. Should get pretty excited, should get pretty excited. I mean, and what happened next is? Tremendous, yeah. Horrendous in very predictable, yeah. The ***** did not hold a hole opened up shortly after 4:00 PM and roughly one day, Van Port, Oregon, second largest city at the time, was completely wiped out by floodwaters. 18,500 people, 6300 of whom were black, were displaced. Hundreds died. But we don't know how many because it really seems like the HP may have secretly disposed of hundreds of corpses. And even even with the predictability that you were mentioning, people often will trust authority figures and. Even if it seems predictable in hindsight, it at the time it probably didn't. They probably really trusted that that they were safe. Ohh yeah, and I was sorry I was not trying to save the Ohsan port. Should have predicted it. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. The ohhh yeah. The city they did something wrong. They didn't give a **** with this place that was basically built underwater with the water held in by walls. And then the walls start getting flooded with water. There's a rumor that 457 dead people were shipped to Japan for some reason. There's a bunch of weird rumors around. What was. I hadn't heard that. That's very odd. Yeah, it's it's. It's kind of hard to dig into. I heard they're cover ups. I hadn't heard that. It seems like a reasonable guess would be somewhere between 4 and 600 dead, but it's it's very hard to say. Yeah. And we see that cycle repeating itself with Puerto Rico. Yeah. Yep. Where it's it's weird how things rhyme. All of the time in history. Yep. Yeah, all the time. Speaking of rhyming, it's time for an ad break. That was a bad plug. But do you have any products and or services you'd like to plug before we get to the ones that paid us? So it gets to just kind of be anything, anything you want. I usually pick random objects on the table because I just love advertising. Alright. I'm going to say that everyone should read Man's search for, meaning by Viktor Frankel. Ooh, that is much more meaningful than the plug I was going to go with. So, yeah, read Man's search for. Meaning, yeah, well, I was going up your library. Avino daily moisturizing lotion. Only daily moisturizing lotion currently on this table. Love it. Let's let's let's move over to the products and or services that actually paid us for. Excellent. 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 hear 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 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. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. A story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. Story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up you guys? It's your girl Betty who here? And you know this about me. It has always been very important to me to stand out and be authentically me, not only with my music, but my style and my vibe. And JBL really gets that. They know your headphones and speakers should look as original as the music you're listening to, or in my case, making. That's why I'm obsessed with my JBL headphones and speakers that help me reflect who I really am, from true wireless headphones to pulsing party boxes. Ohh yeah, party boxes guys. JBL has a wide and colourful range of products that help me feel myself when I wanna vibe my way. I literally record this entire podcast on my favorite JBL headphones. They are absolutely incredible. So JBL wants us all to listen on our terms living in the moment. Our moment unfiltered. The JBL podcast at jbl.com. We're back. We're back. And we're talking about racism, man. Oregon. Yeah. Now for something completely different. It's well, I mean, compared to your sponsors. Ohh, yes, very different, because none of our sponsors support racism in Oregon. Are you sure? Yeah, pretty sure. OK, good. I mean, like, they make belts like grip 6. I don't see how a belt could be racist. Depends on where they're made. Yeah. Should I be saying this? Should I be talking about consumerism under capitalism? Well, yes. I mean, we do. It's one of those things we, uh, this is the ocean that we live in. So you can't do anything but swim. But you can try to pick products that you feel don't add to the problems as long as you're not sponsored by Amazon. We're not sponsored by Amazon. And I do believe that it's a general good to keep people's pants up. Yes. Yeah. Let's get back into it. Continue back into it. So there's a lot more to say in terms of Portland's history of being terrible to the black people who live there. There was the time when voters in 1956 approved the construction of an arena. That necessitated the destruction of 476 rooms, half of which were black people's homes. Hmm. And of course, black people made-up like less than 2% of the city at this point. So we're not talking about a proportional sort of. Yeah. And the Expressway as well. Yeah. That's exactly what I'm about to say. Well, actually, no, I was about to go into a completely different time that they did that a second time. So yeah, there's even more. Even more, yeah. There was the time also in 1956 when the city of Portland used federal funds to expand a local hospital by bulldozing 76 acres black-owned homes and businesses. A junction of N Williams Ave and Russell Street, which at that point was considered Portland's Black Main Street, which if I'm keeping track is at least the Third Black Main St in a city in the United States that was destroyed. Although since Portland didn't bomb theirs, which is what happened in a couple of other states, I guess it's. Yeah, better than the Air Force, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, it's not, it's hard to to tell better from worse. Slow deprivation is not always. No, yeah. I was reaching for a little bit of levity in a situation that doesn't deserve it. So tell us about this Expressway, which I did not include in here. Yeah. So anyone who's in Portland knows exactly what I'm talking about. But for people outside, there is this very long freeway project that goes past and around the Memorial Coliseum, which you just mentioned that was built the arena. And this Expressway was initially going to be in the West portion of Portland. Anyone who knows? Portland knows that the Willamette River bisects E from West. And so it was initially going to be on the other side of the river. But then people over there were saying, ohh, no, like, we don't want that over here. And it was, you know, predominantly white people who were saying that. And so they decided, yeah, front yard. Exactly, yeah, NIMBY. NIMBY. And so it instead got placed right wrapped around right next to the Memorial Coliseum and resulted in the destruction of many, many, many, many more homes and displaced people there. So it just goes straight. Around northeast Portland and up north. And. But I'm gonna guess most of those homes were upper middle class, you know, occasionally. Right? Ohh, because that's most of that part of Portland, right? Let me check. Hold on a second. No, really? Yeah. Are you surprised? Racist. Racist policies Portland, OR. Oh my gosh, that doesn't sound like what we're about to continue talking about. Ohh, 30 minutes. Oh wait, I thought we were back to the sponsors. We're back to belts. No, no, we're not talking belts. We're not talking melts. So, yeah, really kicking off in the 1970s and 80s was a process called redlining. This is basically banks colluding to refuse mortgage loans to qualified black applicants would be the quick way to sort of sum up the bulk of that process. An investigation published by The Oregonian in 1990. A journalism found that Portland banks were granting loans to Black Oregonians at roughly 110th the rate they were granting them to white people and 110th the rate that they were supposed to be granting them. And for those who don't know, it's literal red lines drawn on a map, very specifically placed. And that's something that I think a lot of people are not aware of. That it is. It really refers to red lines that were written on maps. Yeah. And they're really saying we want to keep black people out of these neighborhoods. Absolutely. To buy houses here. And it's not like they were really granting a lot of loans to the black neighborhoods either. But like, yeah, they were specifically trying to him them in, it was kind of like the zoning version of battling a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. So there were also a series of police shootings of black men in the 1970s in Portland. And in the 1980s an investigation revealed that the local Portland police had been running over possums and leaving the corpses in front of black-owned restaurants, which I don't even know what the to say. It's. The thing that happened. So given all of that, it's probably not much of a surprise to listeners that form much of the 1980s and 1990s. Portland became known in the punk community as a haven for neo-Nazi skinheads. Racist skins would be, I think, the I listen to a lot of that kind of punk music. But yeah, yeah, there's a whole lingo here. I saw the movie Green Room to find film about Nazi skins in Oregon. It is a scary movie. I left feeling all sorts of feels. That's how you're supposed to feel. That's how you're supposed to feel. I don't know. Stewart plays a real good race. Yeah, that was quite close to home. Yeah, yeah, but I was gonna say the possum imagery stayed really would still. You would still see people refer to possums in coded language, even through the 1980s from racist skinheads. They would say. Keep the possums out. Really? Yeah, it was still utilized. I have. I just need. The police were doing this. I have no idea. I thought they were just like, being *****. And there were a lot of dead possums in Portland, but there's a racial element to the tape. Fascinating. Yeah, it was still used as a symbol of terror and racism. Wow. So from the cops to the punk, that's not usually how that goes. I know one thing about pie mean you're not supposed to talk to ******* cops. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, but these are the these are the Nazi pockets. So they're Nazi Skinhead punks. Nazi punks they liked when the cops were being racist. Yeah, that's the thing they want cops doing. Yeah. So on May 12th, 1988, about a month after I was born, Willamette Weekly published Young Nazis, Portland's new breed of racists, about the growing population of young fascists in the city. Reporter Jim Redden interviewed several of these guys and their Southeast Portland apartment and credit where it's due. This was not like the New York Times profile and the Nazi next door thing like it was an important subject was covering it. He seems to have done it a good job of doing it, at least from what I've read. He asked them about an assault on a guy named Sam Chin, a 27 year old Portland resident originally from Singapore. Three skinheads had confronted Chin's family, beat up and stomped on him, and read, and brought this up to the Nazis. I'm going to read a quote from the article. Although they denounced the media's focus on violence, they are not unwilling to completely reject it. While they say the assault on Chin was not representative of their beliefs, they repeatedly stressed that they are willing to fight for their cause. We wouldn't beat up someone for no reason at all, says Kay, a tall male with a tattoo of a heavily booted Skinhead on his left bicep. But we're ready to defend ourselves, which I picked that quote because you could put those words in the mouth of patriot prayers. Joey Gibson, who's the guy running the rallies that have been calling the fights recently? We'll talk about the same. Word of sentiment that comes from Oath Keepers. 3 percenters. All of them. Yeah. So next we're going to talk about what happened on November 13th, 1988 when Mulugeta Sarah, a 28 year old Ethiopian immigrant, a student at PSU and a father of one, was dropped off in the parking lot of his apartment complex by some friends. He was about to head into his apartment when a vehicle holding three racist skinheads and their girlfriends pulled up and these guys had been drinking and handing out racist Flyers from an organization called White Aryan Resistance. Get a little bit more into that in a second. One of the skins who I was originally going to use names because I usually do. But I do like your attitude of not giving these guys the yeah benefit of their name. So I'm not going to name the skinheads. Yeah, but one who's curious can get the book. 100 little hitlers. That's a good title. Yes, that's a real good title. And so I'm all for community education, learning about people. But there is a distinction of putting out the names and repeating them out loud over and over and over again and forgetting the names of victims and heroes who have. Stepped in. Yeah, I agree. That's that's, that's, yeah. So. Chip, sorry, written on the thing. One of these skins you can just believe we'll bleep out. Yeah, yeah, we'll bleep that out. The bleep you heard was a name that we're not gonna say. One of these skins lived in the same block of apartments as Sarah. And I think one of the scripts I heard from a police officer was they could have strung tin cans on strings and talked to each other. They lived that close together. So yeah, the Nazis had been drinking heavily and putting up white supremacist posters around town. They shouted at Sarah and his friends, and then while their girlfriends shouted for them to kill him, the Nazis jumped Mulugeta. Iraq one of them hit Mulugeta in the back of the head. I believe with a baseball bat and there was no ball or Mitt in the car, they did not have that for baseball. No, they had it for me for Nazi reason. Yeah, the reason the Nazis carry baseball bats and he had the initials of the organization carved into the back really so he had war carved in the I don't think he had war. I think it was their own group because they had their own, yeah, so this was a bat meant for doing exactly what he did with committing. Violent assault and in this case murder because they continue to hit mulugeta when he fell to the ground and they also continue to stomp on him with steel toed boots. He died that night from blunt force trauma, so they went to prison. At the time a big deal was made about the fact that one of them, the kid with the bat, was the frontman of a popular local band and also an actor who'd worked with Gus Van Sant. I had to sort of a bunch of articles. We were talking about this talented young actor and the terrible things like, well he murdered a guy, doesn't matter that he was good at acting. Don't write about that. And they still do that too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I, like I said, it's not hard to the way that perpetrators of various crimes, depending on their race, makes a big difference in the headline. Yeah. You see it every time. There's a marked difference of what happens when one of these people commits a crime in the way that they're reported on them is used for or even if you are a young black boy like Tamir Rice, a child. And people are saying, oh, he was a big scary. He was man. Like, yeah, it's horrifying. Yeah. And yet then we see these white men committing crimes who actually did something. Yeah. And the way that they're painting painted is absolutely ridiculous. Well, and there's really old history to that. I remember reading we did an episode where we talked about sort of the US occupation of the Philippines. And there was an island that the. There was a massacre in the US military base where a bunch of U.S. soldiers got killed. And then in response, they matched. Any man over 10 is like, I feel like you're not a man till 20. But that's just my view. I think usually takes more like. 282930 maybe four. I'll let you know when I hit that point. I'm, I'm at 30 right now and I don't I don't feel all the way there. Now. Mulatto Soraz murder led to a legal case against Tom Metzger, a shriveled little testicle of a man and the founder of White Aryan resistance or war. You can see a documentary of him made after this point with a Louis through where he spends several days with him and you get the feeling that he's a ridiculous kind. And I think this is probably this caused a problem because I think that a lot of these people were covered that way as sort of like, look. For this ridiculous. He's racist and he's the things he says are terrible. But he's really just a crazy old coot. He's kind of cute. Look at this little guy. Yeah. Now, what Tom had been doing is sending his son up to Portland and sending a significant amount of written propaganda up there that was not just propaganda on, you know, not National socialism or whatever, but was specifically advocating violence and talking about ways to commit violence. I believe, you know a little bit more about this than I do. Yeah, so war. His white Aryan resistance group. Had these newspapers they would give out that were overtly, horrifyingly racist, and the cartoons that they would have on the covers were just absolutely disgusting. And they would send up stacks to Portland for these young groups of men who previously were not organized. They were just going around and they would get drunk and they would talk about being Arian and racism and all that. Not to say they shouldn't have been taken seriously at all, but they weren't organized at that point, and it wasn't until Tom Metzger and his son stepped in that they. Began to have tools. They began to have these newspapers Flyers. They would pass out fake welfare applications that they would pass out to women of color and humiliate them and attempt to humiliate them. And it wasn't until that point that they actually had these tools and these means of propaganda to pass out that they began to feel organized. And this is where we get into something that's really interesting. To me, it's a little bit difficult to talk about. Are you familiar with the concept of the fewer principle? Umm, I don't think I've heard specifically about it, but I imagine it has to do with having a leader to organize you. That's an aspect of it. Yeah, it was the idea. This was like the central idea behind the original Nazis. It was an individual can embody and electrify a people and bring them up and sort of use them as a tool almost. Yeah, that and that. That's desirable and good and obviously. That's silly when you start talking about like nations, but there's a little to it when you talk about something like you've got these disaffected kids in Portland who have no sort of organizing principle, and a guy like Tom Metzger who has just enough charisma, just enough vision to get them united behind a purpose, and then they become dangerous. And I think that you're seeing something similar with a guy like Joey Gibson, who has I watched his speech, is a good amount of personal charisma. He's good at speaking. He's good at organizing. And these people, the people who show up, these patriot prayer rallies, just like the people who murdered mulugeta Sarah, we're doing ****** racist things in their personal lives beforehand, but it took a leader coming in, and then they're a cohesive whole. Yeah. So I think that's where it's important to understand that concept, because I do think it embodies something. Not that, like the Nazi said that this was how everything worked. I think everything worked, but I think it's how Nazis work across time and whether or not they call themselves Nazis or Patriots or whatever. It's how Nazis were. Yeah, so little digression. Yeah, even though Tom Metzger had not specifically ordered the skinheads to commit that particular murder, he was seen as having vicarious liability for indoctrinated kids with racist ideology, publishing information on how to commit violent crimes and sending people up to talk to them. So he was ordered to pay like 12 and a half, $1,000,000 in damages. Yeah. And he wound up losing. Bankrupted him. He had to sell his house. He lost his house. Yeah. Had to pay amounts every single month up to today and age like 80 something. And they sold. This House to a Hispanic family. Yes, they did they or. No, the. The. I think it was a. It was Sarah's family. Right. Who. No. No. No, it was not. Was it the ACLU who got it or Southern Poverty Law Center was the one. Right. To sue them, if that's what you're asking. OK yeah. And the neighbors were extremely happy. Yeah. To see the new family move. And they didn't like Tom Metzger. Really? Because, gosh, what a likable guy he was. He seemed like he had a lot on the ball. Uh-huh. Sure. He's a bad neighbor, you're saying. Yes, I would imagine. Weird how Nazis are. Yeah. It's like. Neighbors don't like when a bunch of skinheads come in and out of somebody's home. Yeah. Hmm. OK. We'll keep that in mind. Yeah. Yeah. You know what else I'll keep in mind? Yes. Is these products and services that are about to support our show. Hey, it's Rick Schwartz, one of your hosts for San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we sit down with Doctor Jane Goodall to hear her inspiring thoughts on how we can create a better future for humans, animals and the environment. 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And there are rumors that before the funeral that 300 Nazi skinheads might show up to protest. This did not wind up happening. But in spite of the increased visibility of the city's hate problem, Portland's racist Skinhead problem only got worse during the 1990s. In a 2017 article for The Guardian, reporter Jason Wilson quote Ciaran Malloy, a union organizer and anti fascist activist who was active during this. In the 1990s. Quote there were multiple gangs and 300 Nazis in the city of 300,000. The anti racist youth were intimidated and isolated. The Nazis were just openly hanging out on the streets. Down in Pioneer Courthouse Square, they would just. Gather and sit around and people knew to avoid. That entire block, yeah and yeah, there's talk, especially talk from racists about quote UN quote no go zones in places like London or Paris which do not exist and a lot of reporting on establishing that they're not real. There were no go zones in Portland for people of color in this period of time. Pioneer Square would have been one of them. Sierra Malloy added. Quote, it's not hyperbolic to call it a war. There was intense fighting. So again, the street fighting that we're seeing right now in Oregon that might happen literally the day after we record this podcast, is nothing new. The constant fighting between racist and anti racist skinheads. Portland earned it the nickname Skinhead city during the 1990s, which is a cool nickname. I'll give that to Portland. Beats Portlandia. It does beat Portlandia. Yeah. Yeah. You guys are gonna be just because I want us around. Yeah. Right. I'm sorry, what people out from LA keep doing the nice cities in the northwest. They destroyed bend, too. Oh yeah. But I will say about Skinhead City, it's at least accurate. Yeah. Which is a heavy thing to say, but the whole Portlandia, most of you know, there's some truth to that show, but that show is. For getting a very large portion of our population and culture, yeah. Part of what I wonder, depending on how all of this increased political violence goes, is how 20 or 30 years, if that show will just, like, make no sense to people. I hope so. Yeah, well, not in that way. Oh yeah, yeah. If you're if you're going. OK. I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. I was just hoping that I will win this fight against Joey Gibson and then. Diverse culture will actually be celebrated for the first time in Portland. Yeah, that would be nice. Yeah, that would be nice. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. Yes. So now the the Nazi skins who infested Portland and should agree still infest both Portland and Oregon. We're obsessed with an idea that still holds much traction among the fascist right the Northwest imperative. The basic reasoning behind the Northwest imperative is that since Oregon is already super white and filled with fascists, why not try and turn it into a white ethnostate from a Nazi point of view? The last 200 years of Oregon history have already done a really good job of laying the groundwork for this. Oregon is currently the whitest state in Portland, the Whitest Big City in the United States. Yeah, there is today an organization called the Northwest Front dedicated to making the dream of the Northwest imperative a reality. The about section of their website sums them up this way. Quote the Northwest Front is a political organization of area and men and women in the United States and Canada of all ages and social backgrounds who recognize that an independent and sovereign white nation in the Pacific Northwest is the only possibility for the survival of the white race. On this continent. So that's the rhetoric. That's what they're angling for. The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies 18 different hate groups in the state of Oregon. And outside of explicit hate groups, Oregon still has a lot of its old problems with hate. A 2011 audit found that 64% of landlords and leasing agents in the city discriminated against Black and Latino renters, giving them higher rents, forcing them to pay larger deposits, and levying additional fees against them. 64% absolutely. That's. Nuts. And with gentrification as well, the neighborhoods that have been most chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken. Nice. Nice. Yeah, most chicken. They got shipped real good. Yeah, yeah. By gentrification in recent times are the same neighborhoods like the Albina neighborhood that we have seen. A lot of the history you've talked about, of pushing people of color to that center are now gentrified with huge condos. Bands entirely unrecognizable. Yeah. It's, I mean, and this is the, I mean you can trace some of that back to Portlandia to be honest. So black students in Portland are suspended and expelled at a rate of four to five times higher than that of their white peers. And this brings us more or less to the modern era where we are today. Portland is a city with a lot of left wing political activism now and definite reputation as being quote woke. It's seen as a hippie dippie sort of place. But you know, we've as we've covered, there's a very long history of discrimination and a very long history of racist organizing. Over the last two years, though, Oregon has entered what may be a different era. The fighting in the streets is bigger and bloodier than it has ever been before. The group behind it, Patriot Prayer and to a lesser extent, the proud boys, is harder to place and harder to get the mainstream to condemn than a man like Tom Metzger and an organization like White Aryan resistance. Newspapers know what to do when you call yourself White or Aryan resistance, patriot prayer. You covered an American flag and you say you don't support hate, or if you're the proud boys and you're punching each other and naming cereals like it's harder for. Especially casual. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where we are now, and that's what we're going to get to in the next episode, the coming of Patriot Prayer, the story of Joey Gibson and the bloodshed that has gone with it. But before we close out today, I would like to talk with you a little bit about one of what I think is the most promising attempts to kind of fix this problem. That's very deep problem in Oregon, of racism in Oregon, of of, you know, white supremacy in Oregon, the rural organizing project. You want to tell me a little bit about them? Absolutely. Well, first I want to just. Close out our conversation about absolutely, yeah. With a lot of the viewpoints that people think that people in Portland have and Portlanders think that they themselves have, they have let a lot of this just go entirely under the radar. And I think it's because a lot of people in Portland, particularly white people, and I don't mean just particularly, I'm talking specifically about white people. They are silent about this oppression. They think if they put a black Lives matter sign in their yard that they've done. Racial justice work. And that's just not how it's going to solve all this. Yeah. And so people need to get involved in organizations, they need to educate themselves. They need to read more about the history of Oregon, listen to podcasts like this and nice change things. Yes, right. I did that just for you. I appreciate it. Role organizing projects. So I haven't personally organized with rural organizing project. And they want to say that up front because I really think that getting a representative from their organization would be wonderful. But. Basically, rural organizing project focuses on underrepresented rural areas in Oregon that have been disenfranchised and ignored because a big reason why we see this current uprising and problem with these groups like the Oath Keepers 3 percenters. Even groups like Patriot Prayer will have this kind of sentiment in their mission statements. That. Poor white people, especially poor white men, are not being properly represented. They feel like things are being taken away from them and they feel like the right wing propaganda that they are getting radio stations they listen to, podcasts they listen to, and websites that they go on frequently. They feel like they are getting accurate information when they oftentimes are getting very tainted and biased information that is not telling the whole story. Why we have gotten to this point within our hyper capitalistic system and so rural organizing project really tries to bring representation back to those areas. They try to organize with legislators to ensure that we are focusing energy and resources to make sure that people are not being left out in the cold, quite literally not being left out to just rely on these groups to take them in. But to instead feel like they are part of the Oregon community and that they are valued and that you don't have to be in a city to get those resources. And through that they are able to educate people on the dangers of these groups like Oath Keepers, 3 percenters, etcetera. And so the work that they do is so important because it is very true that we cannot ignore rural areas in our communities, not just to fight racism, but because they are human beings that deserve resources and deserve care, and rural areas have been hit hard. By this hyper capitalistic automation and jobs have been stripped away over the course of history. And so people have been just seeing jobs go away. And instead of being given the proper information of, oh, the reason why these jobs have changed is For these reasons, they instead are told by somebody, oh, you know why? It's because of that immigrant. It's because of of women wanting to enter the workforce. It's because of this and that. And so then they hold tight to these traditional ideas of what it is to be an American, which were never accurate. Begin with if we really look at our history. But that is how they're able to be radicalized. So rural organizing project takes that on, and I am very proud to have them in Oregon. And it's it's my opinion just as a journalist that low key and low key because it hasn't been covered enough. One of the most important stories going on in the country right now is the disintegration of society in rural parts of the United States. For example, cattle rustling is the highest it's been in more than 100 years. Cattle rustling, agricultural theft is the highest it's been in quite a long time. You were seeing rising rates of poverty and a lot of chunks of rural America. What you're seeing is a breakdown of social order in these places. And all of these things are, number one, major contributors to the growth of fascist movements, major contributors to the growth of racist movements. And on a human level, there's terrible for the people there, and we most people listening this probably live in cities. It is important to pay attention to what happens out there because they're your fellow citizens and because when their lives get worse, your lives get worse. Absolutely. The way it works in a society so. Listeners, if you've enjoyed this episode, if you find this compelling, please donate some bucks to the rural organizing project. Absolutely can look them up. Yeah, look them up online. We'll include the link to the website on ours. So, yeah, check that out. Check out all of our sources, behindthebastards.com and, you know, open up your wallet strings if you have a couple extra bucks to give. And if you're in Oregon, volunteer. Yeah. Volunteer with rural organizing project. Absolutely. And if you're in Oregon in general? Be more active. There's stuff going on. There's stuff going on, going on. The only thing that'll make it better is the people who aren't, I'll say charitably, on the ****** side of things. Mm-hmm. Getting active, or at least supporting the people who are being active in the streets, because that's really important too. So, well, I'm working on a project to help make that easier for people to have access to what is needed in the area. And I'll send that to you once I have something awesome. Well, you get anything else you wanna, you wanna pitch black man? Search for meeting, right? Yeah. Victor Frankel, Reedman search for meaning? Viktor Frankel, Holocaust survivor, right? Yes. Check it all out. You can check out this podcast on our website, behind the ********. You can check out all the sources. And of course, tomorrow we will be talking about Patriot Prayer, Joey Gibson, and the most dangerous St Gang in America that you probably haven't heard of. Patriot prayer. So all of that coming up next in the week. Have fun with it, check it out. And you can find us on Instagram and Twitter at ******** pod. And that's that's that's all I got for you. Go, go do something positive for the world. Goodbye and I love statistically about 40% of you. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break your handle the hosting. Radiation distribution and monetization of your podcast go to spreaker.com. 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