Dispatch from Thurston, Oregon: July 29
In a small neighborhood called Thurston on the far eastern edge of Springfield, OR, someone tied a noose around a Halloween skeleton and hanged it from a tree in a yard next to a woman of color’s home. Someone took a photo of the simulated lynching and posted it on Facebook, where it made the rounds and stoked outrage among local activists and community members. And so on July 29, just a few short days after the J25 protests roiled the people of Eugene, the group known as Black Unity called for a march–titled “The Noose is Nuisance”–through a residential area in Thurston in support of the terrorized woman and her family.
Now, I don't usually base my reporting on things people share on Facebook (for what I hope are obvious reasons), but between the simulated lynching and verifiable claims about a robust counter-protest seeking to disrupt the protest, it felt like an event that was worth covering. Beyond that, Thurston is a far cry from downtown Eugene in terms of culture and ideology. Where a street protest through the streets of Eugene is a common–and in most cases, welcome–sight, Thurston, Springfield, Oregon, United States is a pseudo-suburb with a vibrant right-wing reputation and population.
And the people of Thurston sure proved it on the night of July 29.
I arrived at Jesse Maine Memorial Park, a tiny community park in Thurston, with my friend and colleague David Galbreath just before the protest’s scheduled start at 7 p.m. A small crowd of maybe 50 or so people had already gathered by then, most of whom were taking shelter from the still-hot evening sun beneath a stand of trees. Other than the half-dozen Springfield Police cruisers circling the park and a handful of neighbors eyeing the crowd carefully from their driveways, it seemed like it might end up being a low-key evening.
Of course, as soon as I thought that things would remain calm, the first batch of counter-protestors arrived, waving (and wearing) American flags. As is custom these days, a small group of protestors left the park to engage with the counter-protestors–or “start a conversation.” I recognized several of the counter-protestors from their appearance at the J25 protests, though they were considerably less-armed this time.
The initial interaction between the two groups quickly became heated. Though there were some attempts at creating a dialogue, the conversation quickly descended into a tense shouting match. When counter-protestors asked “Why are you here?” the BU organizers brought up the noose found in the woman’s yard, which one counter-protestor dismissed by saying “People of all races have been hung (sic) by nooses.” Moments later, the counter-protestors accused Black Unity of marching with “antifa” and being complicit in property damage throughout the city, which the BU members strenuously denied.
At the same time, a different group of counter-protestors confronted the crowd closer to the park, again accusing Black Unity of being in cahoots with “antifa.” BU members tried to stress their desire to “disrupt, not destroy” and even agreed with the counter-protestors’ condemnations of “destructive antifa actions,” but the counter-protestors didn’t seem to buy their arguments.
"Why do you let antifa march with you?" one counter-protestor yelled.
“We’re not antifa! We don’t do that shit!” a protestor responded.
"Antifa" was the buzzword of the night.. Everyone was saying it, but no one seemed to have any idea what it actually means.
After it became clear that these “conversations” were going nowhere, the crowd gathered to begin marching through the neighborhood. A speaker with a child on her hip led the crowd in a chant of "PEACEFUL PROTEST!" as if to assuage the concerns of the counter-protestors lurking behind the crowd. Some protestors began burning sage, as is custom. As the march readied itself, the speaker called out the counter-protestors for not "protecting the women of color in your community," once again referring to the simulated lynching. By this point, there were roughly 200 protestors and maybe two or three dozen counter-protestors. The SPD watched from a distance.
As the crowd began moving, it became clear that the crowd was under surveillance. A pair of masked men, one of whom I recognized from the J25 protests, lingered at the sides of the crowd with cameras and snapped photos and videos of the protests.
Every few blocks, members of the crowd would stop and engage with people in the neighborhood who came out of their homes to heckle the protestors. It became clear around then that the protestors were unwelcome in this part of Thurston; most of the people in the neighborhood were shouting "Back the Blue" and similar slogans. At one point, a BU organizer called out a trio of white women in their yard, accusing them of being complicit in violence against women for not standing up against the police and the pro-police agitators.
“Lady, you don’t know me,” was the only response.
Meanwhile, the SPD knew exactly where the march was leading, though it’s unclear if BU shared their planned route with the police. SPD cruisers drove about a block ahead of the march, ensuring that the streets were clear and that no vehicles could get through.
Then, as the march turned down 67th St. and started down the hill, it became obvious why they were clearing the road. At the corner of 67th and Dogwood, the protestors were met by a barricade, behind which was a large group of Springfield police officers wearing riot gear.
Protestors quickly took offense to the barricade, and several of them began shouting at the police to let them through.
"This is illegal! This is a public street!" they cried, to no avail. The SPD officers weren’t moving. A small group of protestors splintered off to confront people in the neighborhood who were heckling the crowd, including one shirtless man in the back of a pickup truck who some protestors said was wielding a machete. Most stayed focused on the line of cops, though, and the crowd swelled against the barricade. A few people started leaning on the barricade, demanding to speak to a superior officer, but the cops didn’t budge, and no negotiations took place. I heard someone ask if they could “call the cops on the cops” for some reason.
In a Facebook livestream (that has since been removed), a woman named Geena Hager spoke with SPD officers before the crowd arrived; the officers told the woman that they planned to force the march up Dogwood rather than down the hill toward Main Street.
Once the entirety of the crowd was pushing up against the barricade, the officer that appeared to be in charge of the SPD riot squad got onto his cruiser’s loudspeaker, pierced everyone’s ears with a feedback squeal, and declared an “unlawful assembly,” which infuriated the crowd. BU organizers got on their own loudspeaker and accused the police of acting unlawfully. The police responded by reiterating their order for the crowd to disperse, which only enraged the crowd more. Journalists and streamers took a quick break to mask up and steel themselves against an inevitable police escalation. The counter-protestors took up their places behind the police line, their American flags waving in the dying breeze.
Then the tension snapped and the police charged the crowd, descending things into chaos. The cops used their barricades as makeshift battering rams, slamming them into the roaring crowd repeatedly. SPD attempted to snatch a protestor from the front line, but the crowd swarmed the police and pulled the protestor back. This repeated several times before the police finally pulled Tyshawn Ford, a member of Black Unity, out of the crowd by his legs. At least three officers then descended on Ford, pinning their knees to his neck and back. One officer threw a vicious punch at the immobilized protestor’s head.
Three protestors were arrested by the SPD during the confrontation. The bull-rush of police officers also injured several protestors. One was reportedly transported to a hospital with concussion symptoms, while others suffered minor scrapes and bruises from being hit with construction barricades and subsequently falling to the pavement. The neighbors watching from their yards cheered on the violence, which only further escalated tensions between protestors and the community they were marching through.
After the scrum with the police broke up, the Black Unity leadership got on their megaphone and announced their intention to continue the march in a peaceful manner, though some members of the crowd appeared ready for a lengthy tussle with the police. The crowd turned away from the barricade and marched down Dogwood Street, only to be greeted by another barricade at the corner of Dogwood and 67th Place. Most of the crowd turned away from the second blockade, hoping to avoid another confrontation with the police, but some members of the crowd continued to heckle and engage with the officers against the wishes of BU leadership.
It was a clear example of the SPD attempting to kettle the protest into the back of a residential neighborhood, giving the protest only one possible exit from the neighborhood–an exit being covered by counter-protestors and neighborhood-watch types. By the time the march started moving again, the counter-protestors–who had apparently called in reinforcements–were waiting for them at the top of the hill. In one bizarre moment, a member of Black Unity embraced a woman from the counter-protest side and asked for directions out of the neighborhood. The counter-protest woman, who had been there from the beginning of the march, pointed the crowd back toward Jesse Maine park–where a whole lot of pissed-off counter-protestors were waiting.
Unlike the earlier groups, who had been content to simply argue in bad faith and do some yelling at the protestors, the late-joiners were far more agitated and ready to commit violence against the protestors as well as journalists covering the march (myself included).
Once the crowd returned to the park, the night descended into a half-dozen pitched verbal battles, with different groups of protestors and counter-protestors confronting each other about tactics, ideologies, and other issues from throughout the night. The counter-protestors were emboldened by the actions of the SPD earlier in the night and their realization that the crowd was rather shell-shocked. Though the protestors were trying to disperse from the park, the counter-protestors blocked their exit, causing a bottleneck of cars and people. The SPD parked cruisers in the middle of the street as well, but the cops in them did not exit their vehicles until the very end of the night, despite several incidents between the groups. At least one woman was allegedly slapped in the face by a counter-protestor, another one was allegedly sprayed in the face with bear mace, all while several men from the Back the Blue side were brandishing knives. More than once, the counter-protestors yelled “Go home!” at the protestors, to which the BU members on the megaphones responded “We’re trying!”
The van carrying the Black Unity leadership inched forward down the street while counter-protestors angrily confronted anyone and everyone in the crowd. One man said that every protestor present was a "pedophile” while neighbors heckled BU members who pleaded with police officers to help break the stalemate between the sides. The BU team tried to rally their crowd in the park with a final speech, but everyone appeared to be more interested in yelling at each other. Eventually, even BU leadership was fed up with the scrum, and commanded people over their megaphone to “go the fuck home.”
After maybe 20 or so minutes of non-stop shouting, the SPD finally intervened to separate the crowds–likely after people on both sides of the crowd began waving their Tasers in the air. This allowed the BU van to clear the crowd of counter-protestors, but the bottleneck of cars on 69th Place (nice) prevented a speedy exit. As a result, the counter-protestors lingered behind the van, following them out of the neighborhood, which one counter-protestor described as “returning the favor” for being chased out of downtown Eugene the previous Saturday.
This would’ve been the end of the protest, but the counter-protestors weren’t quite finished. A member of the Eugene Wall of Moms who was walking alongside the BU van was reportedly shoved to the ground by a woman in a tank top, causing her head to hit pavement and likely leaving her with a concussion.
In this video by Tre Stewart, it appears that Geena Hager was the one who shoved the protestor to the ground.
The woman fled the scene, but first took credit for the assault to a counter-protestor that was looking on right in front of me. She disappeared into the crowd shortly thereafter. Street medics attended to the injured woman, but were pushed away by SPD officers–still in riot gear–who called an ambulance for the woman.
A street medic tends to an injured protestor while police officers look on at the end of a Black Unity protest in Springfield, Oregon on July 29.
From here, the remaining protestors dispersed while SPD officers and the counter-protestors watched. One man filmed the license plates of cars leaving the neighborhood, while others lingered around to see if they couldn’t prey on the few remaining protestors. (One man, carrying a baseball bat, asked me if I was with “Black Lives Matter” or “antifa.” When I told him I was a journalist, he asked “with who?” before finally walking away.)
As the crowd dwindled, the neighbors and counter-protestors spent a few minutes chumming it up with the cops, making jokes about the events of the night and shaking officers’ hands. The people of this neighborhood in Thurston considered it a victory for their side, even appropriating the classic “Whose streets? Our streets!” chant as the last cars exited the neighborhood. When the ambulance arrived for the injured woman and medics loaded her in on a gurney, the counter-protestors cheered and laughed; a pair of men even high-fived each other before shouting “fuck antifa!” Neighbors also filed reports with the gathered officers about what they had witnessed while one officer approached journalists asking for footage of the assault.
Then after the ambulance turned to leave, the protestors offered one last “thank you” to the gathered police officers and began returning to their own homes and vehicles. The last thing I saw before heading home was a few American flags being waved in the darkness while a man whistled the tune to “God Bless America.”
