-- Douglas Perry

Portland's most fascinating radicals

May 19 marks the 35th anniversary of the tragic death of Soledad Brothers lawyer Fay Stender (pictured), who "became radicalized at Reed College in the early fifties." Of course, not just Reed College but all of Portland has a well-established reputation as an incubator of activists and idealists. So let's consider the most fascinating -- not necessarily the most successful or influential -- radicals who spent valuable time in the Rose City. Read on…

Don't Edit

The Oregonian/OregonLive

Honorable mention: Viva Las Vegas

Portland is known for both its radicals and its sex industry. Put the two together and you get Viva Las Vegas. The author/stripper says she was "attracted to the sex industry primarily intellectually, and it was an amazing stroke of luck to land on the West Coast at a time when sex workers were very political and very proactive."

Don't Edit

The Oregonian/OregonLive

15. Jefferson Smith

The preppy Bus Project founder a radical? You bet. Before his disastrous 2012 mayoral campaign, Smith pushed a revolutionary idea: the end of political parties as we know them. "I want to dump the spectrum idea of political thinking," he said in 2008. "It's almost impossible, but I'm going to do it anyway." Politics, he said, should "be about values and ideas, not tribal membership."

Don't Edit

The Oregonian/OregonLive

14. Brig. General Evans F. Carlson and Peggy T. Carlson

Evans Carlson was an intrepid war hero -- he's the man who popularized the term "Gung-ho." But the military censored him for saying the communists were China's best hope, and he retired from the military in 1946 and settled in Oregon. After his death at just 51, his widow Peggy continued to fight for progressive causes, running for Congress in 1948.

Don't Edit

The Oregonian/OregonLive

13. Cameron Whitten

The college student put his health on the line for his beliefs when he staged a 55-day hunger strike outside City Hall in 2012. The Occupy Portland veteran and former mayoral candidate has kept up his activism ever since -- earlier this month he was charged with a misdemeanor after a confrontation with a streetcar operator over a leaky vent inside the car.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

The Oregonian/OregonLive

12. Grace Wick

The former actress vigorously fought against capital punishment and for the New Deal in the 1930s, using her wit to great effect. But in 1935, she turned against President Roosevelt, famously marching through downtown Portland dressed in little more than a barrel. “One of the Forgotten Women of the New Deal!” the barrel read. As she got older, she became increasingly bitter, railing against Jews and communists and immigrants.

Don't Edit

The Oregonian/OregonLive

11. Ralph C. Clyde

A Portland commissioner throughout the Great Depression, Clyde (at left in the picture) was a committed opponent of what he called the "Vested Interests." He was a strong supporter of organized labor and fought for the establishment of a local housing authority. The Portland Red Guide calls him "one of the most outspoken proponents of a Peoples Utility District in the 1930s."

Don't Edit

The Oregonian/OregonLive

10. Dirk De Jonge

Oregon's "criminal syndicalism" law made it illegal to even encourage speech that advocated political unrest. And so when former Communist Party mayoral candidate De Jonge organized a 1934 public meeting to protest the city's response to a maritime strike, the authorities pounced. After his conviction, De Jonge spent two years in prison until the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the jury's decision, a landmark ruling for civil liberties.

Don't Edit

The Oregonian/OregonLive

9. Frank T. Johns

Johns was just 35 years old when the Socialist Labor Party nominated him as its presidential candidate in 1924. Johns, a carpenter, wanted capitalism overthrown through “the use of the ballot,” he said. “But if the will of the people who are workers cannot prevail, then let us apply force.” He meant, he insisted, not violence but union “pressure.” He died in Bend four years later while attempting to save a boy from drowning in the Deschutes River.

Don't Edit

The Oregonian/OregonLive

8. Louise Bryant

The young suffragist and University of Oregon graduate left her dentist husband and took up with journalist (and Portland native) John Reed in New York. She wrote for the socialist magazine The Masses, followed Reed to Russia to cover the Bolshevik revolution and penned the book “Six Months in Russia.” Back in the U.S., she toured the country giving speeches about the Russian revolution, including a raucous appearance in Portland. She died in 1936 at 50.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

The Oregonian/OregonLive

7. Irvin Goodman

A Reed College graduate, Goodman (pictured with client Sherry Fong) was one of Oregon's most prominent defense attorneys in the 20th century. He defended both communist leader Dirk De Jonge and accused Soviet spy Lt. Nicolai Redin, and he successfully took Fong’s appeal of her murder conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Don't Edit

Courtesy Woody Guthrie Archives

6. Woody Guthrie

Guthrie famously sang about downtrodden and overlooked Americans. But in 1941, the 28-year-old Oklahoman came to Portland to herald the Bonneville Power Administration's work. The 26 songs he recorded in the Rose City -- including the iconic "Roll On Columbia," "Hard Travelin'" and "Grand Coulee Dam" -- came to be known as his Columbia River Songs.

Don't Edit

Oregonian file

5. Emma Goldman

The famed anarchist was arrested many times during her long career as an agitator. One of those times was in Portland in 1915 for handing out pamphlets about birth control. A founder of the radical publication Mother Earth and, during World War I, the No Conscription League, she advocated for sexual freedom, freedom of expression, women’s equality, workers’ rights and many other causes. She died in 1940 at age 70.

Don't Edit

Oregonian file

4. C.E.S. Wood

The Oregon Encyclopedia says Wood "may have been the most influential cultural figure in Portland in the 40 years surrounding the turn of the twentieth century." In the 1880s, Wood settled in the Rose City and took up both the law and poetry writing. He supported the arts and helped found the Portland Art Museum. Describing himself as a "philosophical anarchist," he backed Emma Goldman, John Reed and many others.

Don't Edit

OSU Special Collections

3. Linus Pauling

The Portland native (pictured here with his wife Ava Helen) won two Nobel Prizes, one for chemistry in 1954 and one for peace eight years later. The acclaimed scientist worked to eliminate weapons of mass destruction at a time when the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were dedicated to accumulating huge collections of nuclear missiles. Science, he wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.”

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

The Oregonian file

2. Fay Stender

A piano prodigy, she abandoned music and became a lawyer because she wanted "to change things." The one-time Reed College student is best known for defending -- and reportedly having affairs with -- Black Panthers leader Huey Newton and Soledad prison inmate George Jackson. In 1979, she was shot multiple times by a disgruntled Jackson acolyte, paralyzing her below the waist. A year later, in constant pain, she committed suicide. She was 48.

Don't Edit

1. John Reed

He’s had an Oscar-winning movie made about him, starring Warren Beatty. The radical journalist first made his name with an incisive report on a contentious strike at New Jersey silk mills. He subsequently rode with Pancho Villa’s army in Mexico for four months. His book about the Russian revolution, “Ten Days That Shook the World,” remains a classic radical text. He died of typhus in 1920 at 32 and is buried at the Kremlin Wall.