At J30 in Portland, shit got heavy quick. A riot was declared almost immediately after their “march” started, which amounted to an immediate human phalanx of Proud Boys charging, attacking, and violently assaulting folks. It’s probably where you’ve seen the recent viral “meme” of Ethan Nordean punching a person in the face, as they carried a baton to defend themselves from an onslaught of violent, and rabid, and rioting fascists.

It’s also where Portland Police set up a search checkpoint at the ENTRANCE to Patriot Prayer’s event. Considering it was on federal grounds, all people entering Patriot Prayer’s rally were subject to a search by DHS. That’s where this photo comes from.

Considering no anti-fascist was willing to be frisked by cops, nor would entering their rally serve any positive purpose, and considering the idea that the park itself is a sunken pit, completely barricaded off, and full of fascists chomping at the bit to get physical and violent with quite literally anybody not on their side, it’s safe to say that most, if not all of these items were confiscated from individuals entering Patriot Prayer’s event. There were very few anti-fascists in or around that area where searches were being conducted. Plenty of media, however.

Take note of the loaded magazines, confiscated, in those photos. Based on the shape of the magazine, and the black plastic parts around the bottoms of the magazines, it’s easy to identify that the magazines themselves came from a Springfield XDS Series handgun. The XDS series of handguns has been a popular choice for personal, as well as home defense, largely due to the fact that it’s very small, sporting only a 3.3″ barrel, and the grip is shorter. The reason magazines come with those parts, is allow the shooter to have some extra space to hold onto the grip. This handgun is meant to be concealed on your person. It’s compact enough to be low-profile, even more so with the magazine out of the gun, itself.

So, we come to a question. How come ammo was confiscated, but there are no photos of handguns confiscated, that fit these magazines? Surely nobody simply willingly carries loaded magazines on them without a firearm, right? Especially attending a rally, in a Metropolitan area, on federal grounds, directly in the middle of an area swarmed with police of various agencies?

There’s a few theories about this:

Theory A: The cops know how these people feel about the idea of anyone else that isn’t themselves, close friends, or their family touching, using, or physically handling their personal firearms. They’re not entirely willing to make a gigantic stink about it, so they’ll confiscate as much as they possibly can, without removing the *actual firearm,* as to avoid a major conflict with Patriot Prayer. Maybe the person(s) that had these loaded magazines confiscated was then told to either exit the park, the rally location, or leave the the general area. Maybe they were still allowed into the rally.

Theory B: The cops withheld the images of confiscated firearms from this specific published photo set, potentially. Knowing the growing political heat of this situation not only citywide, but statewide, nationwide, and to a degree, worldwide, it’s possible that the cops conveniently did not include photographs of firearms in this, because they would feel that it might spark an escalation of the violence during these occurrences, if the general public knew that these men were for sure, carrying concealed and loaded firearms, while assaulting protestors. Given the Second Amendment nature of most if not all cops, they might feel that this would give “The Gun-grabbers” more ammo. No pun intended.

Theory C: The gun was never there, at least not on the person the magazines were confiscated from. Just the same way the PDX Stormers/LARPers were carrying shields, outside of the event, and then told to lose them or leave the city, there could’ve been a second or third person carrying the gun, milling around nearby, avoiding police. Or, it could’ve been stashed away somewhere nearby, potentially guarded by someone on watch. Think for a moment: Would it make sense for someone to leave their gun in their car, but bring their ammo? At that rate, if they were say followed to their vehicle, and felt the need to try to open fire, it’d make MORE sense for them to keep the gun and ammo in the car, because at that rate, they could already keep it loaded.

Theory D: It was an honest mistake. However, we seriously doubt that.

There’s chunks of this story that are missing, and all of these theories are viable – one of them happened. Regardless of which theory occurred, one thing is for certain: these people are bringing firearms to events in Portland. We know they do it all the time in Washington, at conflicts such as Patriot Prayer’s continued harassment of Planned Parenthood, their open-carry events in Seattle, and at a variety of events that occur in places dotting the I-5 corridor, and scattered across northern Washington. Their carrying of weapons is nothing new to any of us. Some of us have been chest-to-blade with these people.

Anti-fascism and guns don’t mix. At least, not in any offensive, in-person-at-rally setting. The evidence that these magazines belong to a Patriot Prayer member is overwhelming. You’d have a far better chance finding a Snickers bar at Whole Foods, than you’d ever have finding an anti-fascist carrying an operable, loaded firearm to a protest, or any type of lethal projectile weapon. While anti-fascist groups such as the John Brown Gun Club, Redneck Revolt, and Socialist Rifle Association put an emphasis on responsible gun ownership, teaching people how to react to, understand, and feel safe around firearms of all types, and have at times legally and safely open-carried firearms well within their constitutional rights at events where other anti-fascists were present, the idea that any anti-fascist would ever conceal a loaded firearm, and at that, walk directly into a search and seizure checkpoint defending 150 proven violent Fascists, Nationalists, White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis, Ethnonationalists, whatever you may call them – is incredibly unlikely, so much to the degree that the thought of it is essentially arbitrary.

We’re strong believers in the idea of arming yourself with knowledge. The current effort to starve and destroy the flow of Fascism in the United States is a battle hardly fought by melee – though it may seem otherwise. It’s fought with information, acts of intelligence gathering, deployment of counter-intelligence systems, platforms, and ideas. Hell, why do you think after a few months of standing up to defend our communities, you tend to wind up with stacks of zines, so many that you don’t know what to do with? It’s because we wish to inform the public about our intentions. We care about people. We want them to know everything. We want them to be safe, and to understand what to do in the event of a crisis. We understand people. If you were on the opposite side of the conflict, you’d more than likely find little to no support, as most of these Conservative and right-wing “activists” believe that when someone makes a decision to do something violent, that they’ll have to live with their decisions. These ideas are driven home and engranied into these people’s brains, because of their hero complex. The idea that they demand power, they want to be seen as “shepherds,” because they believe that we’re sheep. They reach deeply for power, believing that it brings them honor based on courage – and meritocracy. They want to be put in settings where a hard decision has to be made – and while they’d like the public to believe that the decision to take someone’s life is monumentally tough – we all know the truth – for them, it’s not. They want to kill you. They want to shoot you. They’re just waiting for the right conditions. That could be a day where laws become so lax against firearm usage in self-defense situations, that it creates an even shallower threshold for how easy it is for these people to get away with killing you. That could be a day where the existing remnants of McCarthyism in the state weave a net based on fake evidence, fear, terror, us-vs-them-ism, alarmism, fascism, and nationalism set the stage for these people to attempt to take lives as they please, in order to “preserve” their “way of life.” Killing conditions set by these people, and the state, in conjunction with fear and the concepts of self-preservation could spell the ends of lives for many innocent people that simply are no longer willing to submit to the bullshit of nationalism, and the rampant toxicities of capitalism.

What can we do about it?

We have to learn, and train. Anti-fascists bring a wide array of skills to any given table, because we truly are working-class folk. Unlike right-wingers, who, while also filling a variety of roles, tend to only fall into a select few skill-based categories, because of such an ideology being passed between friends and families traditionally. Listen to your father, do well in school, toe the line, don’t act out. He won’t pay for you to go to College unless you take up what he either wants you to, due to money, or maybe he wants you to follow in his footsteps – do just as he did. Or maybe, it’s something he failed at himself, and now wishes to live vicariously through either your failures or successes. Join the military, because it’s what your family did. Traditionalism breeds uniformity in human tendencies. The same way eugenics, and ethnonationalism breeds uniformity in humans, period – all of these concepts go hand in hand.

What resources do we have?

Plenty. Many of us bring different skills, to the table. Some of us are certified medics, first response, crisis response, veterans, responsible firearm owners, educators, too.

You can tell that we, as a collective group, extending beyond CCA, are far better trained in helping each other out, than others. First-hand accounts exist of reporters, photographers, and bystanders getting caught in the cross-spray of mace and pepper spray, running to the Fascist crowds so their medics can help them, only to be given ineffective care. Then, they run to the crowd of anti-fascists, and receive far better, helpful, and comprehensive care. Such a phenomenon was documented firsthand by Mike Bivins, a freelance photographer that documents protests in Portland closely, and very often. We function more efficiently, and far more skilled, than a fascist medic ever could. And it’s highly important that we continue this practice, or else the cops’ weaponized “medics,” who are just cops with medical patches on, will rush to go “assist” an anti-fascist with their injuries or wounds, only to immediately arrest and detain them the moment they’ve “rendered aid.”

Here’s some literature.

Click to access IS0871-CALMS.pdf

While this is a very long-winded, and also a military document, this is the self-study book given to soldiers that take Combat Life Saver (CLS) courses, for a certification. This is meant to teach someone with no medical experience whatsoever, how to render aid in a time and place where proper medical assistance may not be available, or viable for the situation. It has some good points in it. If things get to the degree where bullets need to be removed from our friends, you’d more than likely want to remember what’s in this book, or what other medics may have told you. It also holds useful information that is worth knowing for a whole range of topics, from burns, to broken bones, to bullet wounds.

Stay safe, and stay vigilant, because as we all know:

There’s no discharge, in the class war!

In Solidarity,

Clark County 161

ClarkCounty161 [at ] riseup.net

http://www.instagram.com/ClarkCounty161

We go by ClarkCounty161 on all mediums. If you find an account that doesn’t use that name scheme, or claims to be an anti-fascist group in the same named geographic region, chances are it isn’t us.