Another Anniversary, Part 3 of 4
I wish I could say that the drawn-out release of these articles has given me space to put a lot of time into these final installments. But instead, I haven’t written a thing since a week ago and am stuck drafting the last of this on the same day I’d hoped to publish it. (And editing it the day after.)
Hope springs eternal.
As mentioned, the second wave of violence pushed the bloc west down Skidmore, half a block south of the K-Mart. Press were amongst the Proud Boy scatter now, ironically safer there than near the bloc that had just assaulted one of them. This second push was almost indistinguishable from the first: the rhythmic chucking of paintball guns, the occasional crack and sizzle of a firework, shouting, swearing, “Fuck Antifa!”… It had gotten a little mundane to watch by this point, honestly.
The push ultimately led to Parkrose High School’s parking lot. A silver pickups’s car alarm was going off, triggered by Proud Boys smashing at it with baseball bats and axe handles. “He’s Antifa!” Tiny Toese shouted. “He’s Antifa! He’s Antifa!” More Proud Boys rushed the vehicle, tore the doors open, maced the shit out of him, fired paintballs inside, and beat the driver over the head with batons. One climbed in the bed and threw out cases of water that ruptured on the asphalt, the plastic bottles skittering across the lot. It was wonton destruction of person and property. No rhyme or rhythm to it, just: He’s Antifa! Fuck his shit up! I really don’t know how the guy made it out of there alive.
In the aftermath, Tiny gave a speech to at least half a dozen cameras, his scalp, neck, and collar white with what I took to be paint. “To all those cops out there,” he said, voice cracking, “the moment you put that duty down, cuz of the orders from a tyrant,” (Ted Wheeler) “you’re a disgrace to that fuckin’ badge. Throw it down and fuckin’ walk out.” His Boys packed tightly around him, giving him manly, supportive pats on the shoulder. “I’m sick and tired, and if we have to die” he seemed to be gasping from the effort “to defend ourselves, our families, and our fucking freedom in America, we’re gonna do it.”
One of his Boys pushed into frame. “Hey Antifa! You fucked around and you found out today, baby!”
It was pure theatrics, done to fire up sympathetic people out there watching and push them past the point of doing nothing. Meant to radicalize. To recruit. To draw fed-up conservative young men out there in the street with them, fighting Antifa. (Or breaking into public schools at anti-mask protests, I guess?) To be honest, he’s pretty good at the showmanship. And… that’s a bad thing.
“That’s a message to you, Antifa,” Tiny continued. “The Americans are coming out, and we’re sick of this shit. And if we have to fight fire with fire, we’re gonna fuckin’ do it. Fuck Antifa.”
“Fuck Antifa!” the crowd roars. “Fuck Antifa! Fuck Antifa!”
Tiny turned and led everyone back to the K-Mart.
“Fuck Antifa! Fuck Antifa! Fuck Antifa! Fuck Antifa!”
Along with a chant that, up to that point, I had only heard uttered by the left:
“Whose streets?” “Our streets!”
Someone new had arrived while I was waiting in the lobby for my name to be called. A little younger than me, a little bigger than me, wearing a lightweight plaid shirt buttoned most of the way up, untucked over a white t-shirt that hung just below the hem of the plaid. Clean hair, clean beard, clean shoes. Very Silicon Valley. He went through the same check-in process that I had and sat at the other end of the lobby and across from me, looking as nervous as I felt. Was he here for a CHL, too?
The door behind me opened, and I quickly swiped back to my phone’s home screen. Hadn’t found an answer to the question of photographing police stations. Just a whole lot of stuff about video recording officers, which brought to mind the odd and unexpected debate on the left over whether police body cameras are good for police accountability or bad for protester security.
I didn’t know how silly to feel over the panic swipe. Not like this lobby wasn’t under surveillance. How many cameras was I under at that moment? Were they able to see my phone screen? Could they zoom in with enough clarity to see what I was researching? Had they already?
“Alex?” a woman’s voice called out. No one answered. “Alex West?”
A pause.
“Jason Gibbs?” she called. Still no response.
“Michael Conner?”
The tech bro raised his hand. She gestured him into the room she had come from. The door was left open. I could hear voices, but couldn’t make anything out. Still didn’t know if that was for a CHL or not.
Michael left just five minutes later. The woman followed him into the lobby. Then she turned to me. “Are you here for a CHL appointment?”
That answered my question. “Yeah,” I said.
“What’s your name?”
I gave it. She checked a list, then made a mark with a pen.
“Come on in.”
High on Glorious Victory, the Proud boys et al. made for their vehicles. As they were gearing up to leave, a couple people in black showed up at the rim of the parking lot and were quickly fired on with paintball guns.
One man spoke up — a guy I had been seeing through all the videos, but hadn’t put a lot of thought into. He was carrying a huge sign — probably six feet a side — on a ten-foot pole.
HELL IS REAL
GIVE YOUR LIFE
TO JESUS
“Hey stop shooting those people, man, that’s not Christian!” he said to a couple of Proud Boys. I wondered why he was waiting until now to say anything.
“It doesn’t matter,” someone stated. White sweatshirt with the classic republican elephant. No obvious Proud Boy colors or markings. Large guy. Would be imposing if not for the hunch indicative of a lifetime sitting in front of a computer.
“Dude, you don’t shoot people!” the street preacher insisted.
“It doesn’t matter, they’re terrorists!”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” he cried.
“I don’t care! They’re terrorists!
The preacher looks incredulous. I can’t tell for sure but it looks like he might have taken a paintball. He starts to back off the way he came.
“Get over it!” the guy in white continued. “They’re terrorists!”
“Stop shooting people, man…”
“No! No! They’re terrorists! You have to shoot them!”
“That’s in the name of God?”
“It doesn’t matter!”
“You’re going to shoot those people in the name of God?”
The guy dipped his head and clenched his fists by his face, like a child throwing a tantrum, and screamed, “It doesn’t matter!! These are terrorists!!”
A new voice calls from one of the pickups. “Let’s go! Time to go! Roll out!”
The guy in white tries to get a jab in while diesel engines roar. It sounded like, “You’re a fool pussemen!” Like a portmanteau of “pussy” and “semen.” Yeah I don’t fuckin’ know. I’d totally believe that I’m mishearing him. I’d also totally believe that I’m not.
The preacher was left standing in the parking lot with the cluster of press. “They don’t stand for the Lord, man.”
The waterfront, meanwhile, had remained mostly peaceful, though a couple preachers similar to the guy at K-Mart got maced and heckled off. Crowd like that, you can’t really expect “Hitler could have been saved if he had repented” to go any other way.
Word arrived with paint-covered antifascists that the Proud Boys had left the K-Mart and were inbound. Things rapidly got tense. Barricades were built from construction detritus. Road signs were torn off for reinforcement. History textbooks were burned. Paintballs were fired into the air. A pile of bricks arrived. But the dreaded caravan never showed. The Proud Boys had headed across the other river, to Vancouver.
“Stolen people! Stolen land!”
“Black lives matter!”
Except maybe one guy — and this is where I bury the lede. It’s hard to tell if this guy was a part of the Parkrose rally. And it’s hard to tell when led up to the confrontation. The closest I’ve managed is a claim that he had thrown slurs at antifascists, who then chased him off.
The first video I’ve found of the guy has him backing up, arms outstretched, pistol dangling from his right hand. Those in black following him hold handguns of their own. Shouts are thrown in both directions, and I can’t make out any of it.
And then the guy takes cover behind a trash can in front of Mod Pizza and opens fire.
And then someone in bloc fires back.
To be continued…
