On a hot Tuesday evening in the end of June, I sat at the desk in my upstairs bedroom and discussed the current political situation with a couple of my former students over Zoom. The sounds of the neighborhood – crickets, car horns, and people chatting – drifted in through the open window next to me. Suddenly, an amplified voice joined the other sounds – “this has been deemed an unlawful disturbance. Disperse immediately.” – so loudly that I thought it was coming from the neighbor’s backyard. I closed the window, and we put the conversation on hold to find out what was going on.
My house is near the Kenton neighborhood in North Portland, a few blocks from the building that houses the Portland Police Association, the union that represents police officers in Portland. That night was the first time I realized there were protests in my area.
Soon, Portland’s protests were the focus of national and international news, after federal law enforcement were sent here to protect the Federal Courthouse. I started getting texts from friends in other parts of the country – “Are you okay?” “What’s it like?!” Liberal friends wondered if we were being rounded up by the Gestapo. Conservative friends wanted to know if antifa were burning our houses down.