REVOLT & ANTIFASCISM IN “LITTLE BEIRUT”
REVOLT & ANTIFASCISM IN “LITTLE BEIRUT”:
AN INTERVIEW WITH COMRADES FROM ROSE CITY ANTIFA (PORTLAND)
(from antifa tropikal vol. 2, 2020)
A conversation with comrades from Rose City Antifa, a group with many years of presence in Portland, to talk about the recent uprising and the current situation and how we got here – from the founding of their group to the Trump election, and then to the pandemic condition and the recent riots connected to the Black Lives Matter movement.
You are the first Antifa group in the USA. Tell us a little bit about the initial influences and the main activity and focus of the group before the pre-trump campaign and election era.
Rose City Antifa was founded in 2007 and came out of an ad-hoc coalition that had formed that same year to disrupt a neo-nazi music festival, called Hammerfest, set to take place in Portland. After the coalition successfully shut down Hammerfest (using a combination of call in campaigns to get the festival dropped from its venue as well as mass demonstrations in protest) a small group of the original antifascist organizers decided to continue working to disrupt fascist organizing in Portland. We were inspired by the lineage of European Antifascist movements, and several of our founders had moved from Europe to the States and had ties to those groups. Until the last 5-6 years much of our work was in sub-cultural spaces (like music venues, punk spaces, etc) and was seen as very niche, even amongst leftist organizers here at the time. Our group also found early success in stopping the organizing of a national, neo-nazi prison gang called Volksfront that was based in Portland. Because of the work of our group Volksfront dissolved in 2012 and is no longer active.
Portland has something of a reputation/tradition for anarchist/left politics. Tell us a little about the scene and RCA’s location within it.
As we mentioned before for a long time antifascist work was seen as niche, even for leftists in Portland. More recently though anti-fascism has become more broadly accepted, and it’s not uncommon to hear protesters at the ongoing rallies here in Portland identifying as antifascists.
Are there any other political groups in Portland that you collaborate with? If so, how do your politics and tactics differ from theirs and where do you find common ground?
One group we collaborate with is PopMob (Popular Mobilization), who call themselves “Everyday Antifascists” and try to make anti-fascism more accessible to those in Portland who may be supportive of our work but who can’t participate in some of the direct action tactics our group uses. They often take a less directly confrontational approach but we’ve had a lot of success working with them to draw out more supporters to confront far-right threats to our community.
Portland is viewed as a bastion of liberalism, but Oregon is historically a mostly white populated state, with kkk having a large presence during their peak. How does that influence the politics of the region in the present day?
Portland is a liberal bubble in an otherwise conservative state. It’s made our city a prominent target for far-right harassment and violence. It also means that when the far-right wants to hold a rally in Portland they have to draw on supporters from surrounding areas to get large numbers for their rallies. The Pacific Northwest has a fairly long history of right-wing militia groups that hold a lot of influence in the more rural parts of the state as well.
Trump announces his presidential campaign. The alt-right starts to take shape. How do you see the terrain shift? Were there signs beforehand that were indicating the plunge to the post-trump era we have seen?
The rise of alt-right figureheads, like Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos, was one of the clearest early warning signs of the direction our country was headed. The alt-right helped normalize much of the dog whistle rhetoric that would allow Donald Trump to run on a campaign of hate, while also denying the hateful things he was saying.
Donald Trump is elected president and the post-trump era rolls in. We also see an array of far-right groups engaging in street actions across the United States. In Portland you have groups such as patriot prayer led by joey gibson, the proud boys chapter in the PNW. What was the initial aftermath of the election results? How did this change in the years following?
As you’ve correctly identified the formation of groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys was one of the biggest shifts we saw immediately post election. As we said before, much of our organizing prior to the election was niche and specific to the sub-cultural spaces we operated in. Groups like Patriot Prayer gave a platform for white supremacists and fascists of all stripes to mobilize and gather in ways that we really didn’t see prior to 2017. Since then we’ve only seen escalations in violence from these groups and more explicit collaborations with the state.
What was your response to the pandemic situation? How did local antifascist and anarchist groups react? How did this change the way you act and organise?
As a community self-defense group it’s been important to us to recognize that the pandemic is a very real threat to our community and have altered some of our organizing accordingly (i.e. maintaining social distance for meetings, wearing masks etc). However, we feel a strong obligation to continue to show up to counter the far-right as often as they come around and the pandemic hasn’t slowed our organizing, so much as it’s changed some of the precautions we’ve had to take.
George Floyd is murdered, his killing is recorded and posted online and an insurrection breaks out in Minneapolis. We see nationwide riots, with Portland being one of the main actors with protests being daily, could you tell us a bit more about that and take us through a timeline of how things unfolded?
We don’t feel like we can give a comprehensive answer to this, in part because the current protest movement in Portland has been led by local Black liberation groups and we haven’t been as closely involved. Hopefully our other answers give you some sense of how the past 3+ months have unfolded.
What other factors and situations influenced the revolt, for example, do you think it is connected to the situation with the pandemic? Why do you think more social groups supported the revolt? (e.g. mom/dad blocs)
In the U.S. Black Lives Matters protests against the state-sanctioned murder of Black people have been going on for 6 years (and the struggle for black liberation for much, much longer) and we’ve seen almost no substantive change from our elected officials or systems of government in that time. In short, people are sick of it and this summer, inflamed by the mishandling of the pandemic and by the federal government’s heavy-handed response to protests, tensions have completely boiled over. The cross-currents of people protesting in support of BLM and against the Trump administration has brought more people out into the streets than we’ve seen before in the last 4 years.
Portland is entering its fourth month of protest. What are the factors played a role for its longevity? Is Portland’s history one of the reasons? Why did the revolt lose momentum in other areas?
It’s hard to pin down any one reason why our protests have been sustained for so long compared to other cities in the country. In part tensions here were stoked when the Trump administration ordered federal officers to police the protests, which had largely died down at that point. We have also always had a strong anarchist/organizing scene here and much of the groundwork for these protests was layed over the years of protest culture we’ve seen in our city. In the 90s our city earned the nickname “Little Beirut” from then President H.W Bush, which is a title we still wear proudly.
Tell us a little bit about the state’s response and the repression you faced. What was the mayor’s response during the protests? How do you deal with it?
The mayor has largely taken a pro-police stance over the last 3-months, despite claiming to be for the cause of Black Lives Matter. More concerningly we have seen an escalation in the persecution of both Black Lives Matter and antifascist activists this summer. The Attorney General of the United States, William Barr, recently put out a press release praising the police officers who extra-judicially murdered antifascist Michael Reinoehl and claimed that the streets of Portland were safer because of his death. We see this as a politically motivated killing on the part of the state. We value the work we do and have always known that it comes with its own dangers. As much as it is in so many ways terrifying to organize in the current climate of political repression we believe it is important that our organization still show up to protect our community.
One of the more prevalent elements of the protests were things like riot ribs and snack vans. How did that come about?
Groups like Riot Ribs and Snack Bloc have popped up at protests largely to fill a gap in community support that was missing. We’ve seen similar groups providing medical supplies, emotional support, etc. People want to see these protests sustained until their demands are met and providing care is one way to keep people coming out to them.
Immediately after the breakout of the Minneapolis revolt, liberals started deploying different tactics to quell it. At the forefront of those tactics was the narrative of the outside agitator/white anarchists hijacking those protests. How did you counteract it?
We would say our organization is comprised of people from the city of Portland and we support whatever tactics anyone deems necessary to defend their community. Luckily, at least amongst the current protest leadership, we’ve seen a broader acceptance of a diversity of tactics at the protests. We’re fortunate that there have been a fair number of liberal news outlets who want to know what anti-fascism is and how it differs from the current BLM protests. Most of the bad press we get comes from the far-right who will spin anything to fit their narratives, so we try to not concern ourselves with how our actions will be interpreted and more with what we need to do to defend our community.
How do you see the upcoming presidential elections influencing the momentum brought up by the protests?
If anything we expect some form of protesting to continue from now through the election. The state has doubled down on repressive tactics and many people here are fed up with the current state of our country.
Do you see the right becoming more emboldened with another trump victory? If joe biden wins the election, should we expect an escalation of tactics from the more fringe elements of the far right?
The outcome of the upcoming election will likely be a lose-lose situation. If Trump wins he’ll be able to all but cement many of the oppressive policies his administration has put into place and will continue to wield considerable influence over his violent followers. If Biden wins then we don’t expect the right-wing in our country to accept it as legitimate and we believe there will likely be a violent backlash from the right.
How do you see the escalation of violence that we have seen in late August?
I think we answered this elsewhere but we see it as exactly that: an escalation of violence. We’ve seen escalations in violence from both the far-right and the state for the past 4 years and it’s no surprise to us that they only continue to get more brazen. Our city leaders have done almost nothing to prevent this and so the far-right will continue to commit violence without repercussion.