The second half of my day started on the south end of the waterfront. I’d pulled out my phone to get an Uber down to the ICE facility, about two or three miles away, and when I saw the prices my jaw dropped. $40 – $60 a ride? Apparently I wasn’t the only one wanting a pair of wheels to take me down to the area. “Fuck this,” I thought to myself, having remembered I was paying barely a dollar a mile during my time in Austin only a few weeks back; hopefully my ride home wouldn’t prove equally expensive. So I called a friend to keep me company and started humping south.
The gathering wasn’t quite as big as I’d expected. Sure, there were a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty people overall, but given the day I’d expected it to be much bigger (for comparison, it was about 50 people when I checked it out a couple weeks ago). As before, it was peaceful, minus verbal slurs directed towards the ICE agents on the roof, and a band of raggedy teenagers giving the local police (who were and are very professional, by the way) unnecessary verbal “shit”, but otherwise it was mostly a lot of people holding signs expressing their discontentment with the Trump administration alongside enough people in blow up costumes one would otherwise think it was halloween. And so it was for hours and hours, nothing in particular exciting happening, some flipping the finger and telling ICE to go fuck themselves, sometimes threats coming over the ICE loudspeakers, and me exploring the crowd, getting pictures, and talking to anyone that looked interesting.
Sometime around midnight (I wasn’t really paying attention to the time, to be quite honest, only getting good shots) ICE started firing tear gas and munitions into the crowd? Why? You’ve got me. They’re professional, surely they can take some insults. But nope, for some inexplainable reason the tear gas began streaming. I quickly turned around to assess my own safety then started diligently taking photographs, a few of the crowd, the roof, the explosions, and one munition that landed just feet from me (it appeared, from what I could see, the officer had fired it intentionally in my direction despite almost no one being where I was). There was no rhyme or reason to what they were doing, who they were shooting at, and so on. There was no immediate threat to them (ICE). It was, quite frankly, nothing more than a show of force, something that seemed doubly true given this is when the black hawk decided to swing in for a close pass (I waved and took pictures because, well, that’s what I do).
I got some great photographs of people I consider extremely brave. Me? I was there to capture true moments of the human condition. But they were there to fight for something they believed in. Well, I guess you could say I was doing that too, but in my own way, as I was just as likely to talk and take photos of the white supremacist agitators screaming “Sig Heil!” as I was anyone else (ironically, quite a few of them really didn’t want a camera near them, despite being all too happy to take pictures of everyone around them–and even more shock when I’d tell them I supported their right to free speech and treated them with just as much respect as anyone else I’d spoken to that day). High functioning autistic that I am I found it curious that tear gas, which I’d never experienced in any way or shape before, smelled just like a certain kind of cheap halloween firework and also, that even when there was no visible smoke anywhere near you the effect on your breathing was absolutely pervasive–couldn’t imagine what the people in the thick of it had experienced (though I do have a few pictures of the aftermath, posted here for posterity).
Not too long later it was raining cats and dogs and I tried, yet again, to get an Uber, but they kept telling me no rides were available. After walking a mile and trying every other block I realized they must have shut down all ride sharing to this area of town, possibly as a response to ICE’s show of force, so I walked and I walked, met up with someone who guided me to the nearby Max station, one I’d never used before, but somehow made it back to a convenience store near my old work where I picked up more smokes before hitting the pavement again in a desperate search for a bathroom at whatever god awful wet Portland hour it was. A lot of walking that night, sore feet, sore legs, sore back from carrying a heavy back pack, but all the pictures were worth it. Eventually I got an Uber home. $43 this time, for a 15+ mile trip. Cost and demand, eh? Cost and demand.
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