In Search Of The Shanahan Offense

By Nate Jackson

https://defector.com/in-search-of-the-shanahan-offense

I wouldn’t say Denver is a steak town. Green chile, sure. Weed? Absolutely. But steak, not so much. That’s not to say you can’t get a good one. Del Frisco’s has been the gold standard since I moved here two decades ago.

My rookie year as a wide receiver with the Denver Broncos, in 2003, the veterans took us to Del Frisco’s and made us pick up the check. I’m sure the filet was delicious that night, but it wasn’t the most memorable part of that meal. That’d be the bill: over $26,000.

Twenty years and many steaks later, the general consensus is that the best ribeye in Denver is about a mile away at a place called Shanahan’s—as in, Mike Shanahan. Winningest coach in Denver Broncos history. Back-to-back Super Bowl champion. Father of current San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. Purveyor of fine slabs of beef.

It isn’t a surprise to anyone who knows Mike that his restaurant gets it right. I played for him for six years. We needed to do the little things the right way, he’d say, and if we did that the big things would take care of themselves. Big things like Super Bowls. Big things like crab cakes.

He hasn’t coached football in almost a decade, but the “Shanahan Offense” is used by some of the most potent offenses in the league, including four playoff teams led by guys who learned it directly from Mike: Matt LaFleur in Green Bay, Sean McVay in Los Angeles, Mike McDaniel in Miami, and Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco. It works. But what is it? I mean, what characterizes this self-evidently effective way of advancing a football?

Is it the West Coast offense?

The “wide zone” running game?

Do people even know what they mean when they say it?

Shoot, I played in it for six years and I’m not sure how to describe it. We ran all sorts of stuff. We had packages with five wide receivers, and we had packages with none. We did power runs, we did toss plays. We did inside zone, we did play action. We worked the sidelines, we worked the middle of the field. We ran three-step drops, we ran seven-step drops. We ran screen passes and we threw deep. We rolled right, we rolled left, we rolled right and threw back to the left. And if something was working, we’d run the same play four times in a row until they proved they could stop it.

So what do people mean when they talk about the Shanahan Offense? I wanted an answer to this question. Thankfully I knew the man to ask: the guy who owned the steakhouse.

I texted Mike and asked, “What is the ‘Shanahan Offense,’ Coach? I hear the term a lot, but I don’t think anyone knows what it really means. If you’re willing, I’d love to get together and discuss.”

He was probably busy, though. He wouldn’t be able to—

“Sure,” he said. “We can meet at the restaurant.”

I’d seen Mike here before, at the restaurant’s grand opening in 2009. He’d been out of football for a year after being let go by the Broncos, and was about to take over as Washington’s head coach. “I can still play, coach,” I told him that night when I finally got a moment with him. “I’m feeling great. Been training. I’m ready to go.”

“Really?” he asked graciously.

“Yep!” I insisted.

This was not accurate. I wasn’t “ready to go.” I was having an existential crisis. My hamstrings were barely attached to my pelvis. Football was over for me, I just didn’t know it yet. Mike did.

This time, Shanahan’s was empty as we took a seat in a back room. The waiter brought me a lemonade and Mike a Diet Coke as I made some idle chit-chat about Kyle and the 49er offense that was chewing up the league. He gave me a look as if to say, Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You asked a question, and I’m going to answer it.

For Mike, this meant starting at the beginning, when he was a wishbone-running quarterback at Eastern Illinois. He suffered a career-ending injury in practice and went into coaching a few years earlier than he expected. But it was always his expectation.

And what do coaches do when they’re not coaching? They attend coaching conventions. While some go to schmooze, some go to drink with their buddies, and some go to campaign for a new job, a few, like Mike, take it seriously. The 1972 Coaching Convention at the Hyatt Regency in Rosemont, Ill., just outside of where he grew up, included some of the brightest minds in the sport, and Mike was eager to soak it up. There was one coach in particular who would take the stage that day and plant a vital seed. It was a young assistant coach for the Cincinnati Bengals named Bill Walsh.

Mike’s eyes lit up as he recounted for me Walsh’s speech, almost word for word, 52 years later. And my eyes lit up hearing it. Bill Walsh was the skipper of the 49ers team that made me fall in love with the sport. When I was coming out of Menlo College, Walsh, serving as a consultant for the 49ers, was instrumental in getting me signed to my childhood team. And when I was stuck down on the S.F. depth chart, he picked up the phone and called Mike Shanahan, orchestrating my trade to the Denver Broncos, where he thought I’d be a better fit.

Walsh took the stage that day in Rosemont and asked how many head coaches there were in the crowd. Some hands were raised. Then he asked how many were coordinators. Some more hands raised. How many were position coaches? Even more hands went up. Then he asked how many of the assistants wanted to be head coaches someday. Everyone raised their hands, including a 21-year-old Mike Shanahan. Then Bill said the thing that Mike didn’t know he was waiting to hear, and the thing that most football coaches don’t understand, or don’t have it in them to pursue—even though they say they want to be great.

“If you coach wide receivers,” Walsh said, “and you can’t coach offensive line, or you coach linebackers and you can’t coach running backs or quarterbacks. If you are an offensive coach and you can’t coach defense, or you are a defensive coach and you can’t coach offense, then you’ll be fired in five years. You have to know every position on the field.”

To be great, you have to know the whole machine, and most football coaches don’t. They get into coaching, find their lane, and never leave it. The sport is so complex, with so many moving parts, that you need a coach to coach each of the parts, and then you need one or two guys who understand the big picture, and that’s it, generally. Often, the head coach’s ego is so big and his job so tenuous that he feels threatened by assistant coaches who understand the whole machine. But Mike would learn later, only after years as a head coach, that the more coaches he had who understood or were hungry to understand the big picture, the better off everyone would be—smarter coaches equals smarter players. Smarter players equals better football teams.

Walsh also had some more advice for young coaches who wanted to get their foot in the door: “Go to a winning program, so you can see how it’s done.”

The journey of a coach is not for the weak: city to city, team to team; two years here, one year here, three years there. After two seasons in Oklahoma learning the Wishbone at the feet of Barry Switzer, Shanahan accepted a job coaching running backs at Northern Arizona. His wife, his college sweetheart, was with him every step of the way. The objective was clear—learn everything—no matter where it took you.

Northern Arizona appealed to Coach Shanahan because they were running the “Air Coryell” three-number system, popularized by Hall-of-Famer Don Coryell. This was a passing system based on timing and rhythm that used the tight end to run wideout-type routes, and put receivers in motion, which, because of rules that prevented defensive players from jamming them, gave receivers free releases. This stretched the field vertically and forced defenses to cover the whole field, which, if you called the plays right, could open things underneath and give you more opportunities in the run game, too.

The “three-number system” meant that each route in the route tree had a designated number—we often hear the term “9 route.” “9” is a “go” route. Go long! The three numbers—like 329—told the three receivers what routes they were running. This makes it easy for a pass catcher to know what to do: listen for your number and run that route. It doesn’t, however, teach the receiver to understand the big picture—to understand why he is running the route he is running. That’s up to the coach to explain it, or not.

One thing I learned about the Shanahan Offense when I played in it is how each route is tied to every other route on the play. There is a reason for my route. If I don’t take an outside release, the corner’s eyes will go inside and he will see the slot receiver coming into his zone and will decapitate him. That sort of thing. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

After one season at NAU, Mike’s alma mater, Eastern Illinois, came calling. After one year there as the OC and one national championship, Mike then accepted an OC job at Minnesota.

During this time, in 1979, the run-and-shoot offense was entering the marketplace, but no one was really running it well except for Mouse Davis at Portland State, so while at Minnesota, Mike took a trip to Oregon and spent three days at Portland State observing. The run-and-shoot used similar concepts to the Air Coryell, but often had four wide receivers on the field and those receivers would adjust their routes based on the coverage they were seeing, and the quarterback had to understand these adjustments as well. This required a great deal of practice—lots and lots of reps, and lots of watching film together to get on the same page. It is one thing for a quarterback to read coverage from the pocket, where he is stationary, but for a wide receiver, reading coverage while running a route is a different skill. Most people, when they decide to read a book, for example, don’t do so while sprinting. Your eyeballs are bouncing. You are straining your body. You are concentrating on your own movement. To also be deciding whether the corner is in man or cover 2, or deep third versus quarters coverage, requires a great deal of patience and practice, and that extra something special that connects a quarterback to his receiver—the shared mind that sees the same things and reacts accordingly.

Of course, every advantage must be gained, and during this time, the use of wide receiver motions was pioneered to give the offense crucial pre-snap reads. This, more than most other things in my mind, defines the Shanahan Offense. Shifting and motioning players before the play forces the defense to reveal whether they were in man or zone coverage, a vital component to understanding where to run the route and where the open man will be. If they are in man coverage, a defender will run with you as you motion. If they are in zone, he’ll stay put. Those three days at Portland State were very productive. Shanahan came back to Minnesota and began to implement the concepts in his own offense.

In Minnesota, the Shanahans had a son, and they named him Kyle. Soon after, the three of them hit the road again, this time to Florida. After a successful stint there, Mike was finally ready for the NFL.

Or was he? As it turned out, Mike still had a pretty big blind spot, one you never really discover until you come in second place.

When Mike arrived in Denver in 1984 and met Broncos defensive coordinator Joe Collier, he was blown away by Collier’s expertise and the ease with which he described any and every football concept under the sun. Collier was someone who embodied the spirit of Bill Walsh’s directive to “know everything.” But not every coach on the staff was like that. In fact, most weren’t, which made Mike realize that there was an opportunity for a guy like him.

After a 13-3 campaign that year, coach Dan Reeves, who wasn’t an Xs and Os guy, promoted Mike to OC. The next year they went 11-5 and missed the playoffs—at the time the only team to ever win 11 games and miss the postseason. But the next two years the Broncos were the best team in the AFC and earned back-to-back trips to the Super Bowl. And both times, they got their asses kicked. Why? What was missing?

In the offseason after those Super Bowl losses, Mike was asked to speak at clinics, and when he was preparing cut-ups of his offensive film to accompany his talk, he said to himself, “My offense is shit! I don’t have anything good here! It’s just No. 7 [John Elway] making a bunch of plays.”

In the first of the two Super Bowl losses, 39-20 to the New York Giants, the Broncos had thrown for 320 yards. Pretty good! But they rushed for only 52. Pretty bad. Conversely, the Giants threw for 263, rushed for 136, and won the time-of-possession battle by almost 10 minutes.

Hmmmmm.

Next season, the Broncos lost the Super Bowl, 42-10, to Washington. The Broncos threw for 230 yards and rushed for 97. Washington threw for 322 and rushed for 280, a Super Bowl record, and controlled the time of possession again by 10 minutes. Yes, the Broncos were having success in the regular season. Yes, they had the best QB on the planet. It wasn’t enough.

How do you win the big one? You dictate the terms. Establish control, and keep your defense fresh, so they can attack. Ten minutes more of ball possession means 10 fewer minutes that your defense is on the field. They feel good while the opposition wears down.

And how do you keep your defense off the field? Run the football, something the Broncos offense hadn’t done particularly well.

Mike was already seen throughout the league as a hot head coaching candidate, and, like so few of those assistants 15 years earlier who raised their hands when Bill Walsh asked who wanted to be a head coach, he was about to get his chance.

Growing up as a kid in the Bay Area, as I did, you were either a 49ers fan or a Raiders fan. The Niners were the wine-and-cheese crowd and the Raiders were the bad boys who would fuck you up. The renegades. The assholes who wore black. And the man steering the pirate ship was owner Al Davis. Davis is a legend for his contributions to the NFL—some good, some bad, but Davis was not just an asshole; he was a winner.

Davis went 10-4 as head coach in 1963, 5-7-2 in 1964, and then the Raiders wouldn’t have another losing season until 1981. His first year as a GM, they went 13-1 and lost the Super Bowl. They would go on to make the playoffs in nine of the next 10 seasons and between 1976 and 1983, they won three Super Bowls, one with John Madden and two with Tom Flores. But in 1986 and ‘87, Flores missed the playoffs, and Al decided to make a change. He set his sights on the up-and-comer, offensive coordinator of the back-to-back Super Bowl runner-ups, Mike Shanahan.

“Everyone told me not to do it,” Mike told me with a smile, recounting his short time as a Raider. “I got there and realized immediately everything was different.”

Al Davis, Mike quickly learned, did things his own way, and when Mike wanted to explore the cutting edge of offensive football, Davis bristled. For anyone used to modern football, shotgun formation doesn’t seem like anything fancy, but there was a time when it was new on the scene, and no matter how effective it might have been, Davis wouldn’t let Mike run it.

Al also moderated the offensive line protections that Mike was running. During the Madden and Flores years, protections relied on an archaic system of man-to-man, keeping a running back and a tight end in to help the offensive line when they were threatened. But Mike had identified a new protection (2 Jet) that slid the offensive line to the defense’s strong side, which gained a blocker on offense and allowed the tight end to run a route or a running back to exit the backfield and become a receiver.

John Madden, by then working in the media and still with a good relationship with Al, thought this was crazy. “What is this? I’ve never seen this before!” Madden said to Shanny. “How do you release a back? What is a hot route?”

Madden had never studied this stuff so he didn’t know it yet, and he admonished Mike for trying something so out-there. Years later, Madden would apologize to Mike. Some coaches, despite their successes, were stuck on what had worked for them, and never explored what was working for others. Now we hear the NFL called a “copycat league” because everyone steals everyone else’s shit, but that wasn’t always the case.

It wasn’t just formational stuff that Davis wanted control of. He chose the players. He chose the coaches. And he chose which players played. Marcus Allen was the team’s lead back, but after a falling-out with Davis, Mike was instructed not to play Allen and instead make Bo Jackson the lead back. “You don’t understand,” Mike said. “Marcus has to be in there because Bo doesn’t know the plays. He has to be able to ask Marcus what to do!”

Because of Al’s particularities, Mike was only able to bring a few of his own coaches onto his staff. One of them was “wide zone” blocking run guru Alex Gibbs, whose expertise would be a building block of the running game that thrives in the modern NFL, and a staple of the Shanahan Offense. The old way was the “gap scheme,” in which the run is designed to attack a certain “gap”—The A, B, or C gap, for example. A is between the center and guard. B is between the guard and tackle. C is between the tackle and tight end. Every blocker’s job is to keep their defender out of the gap.

The wide zone is a whole different animal. It wasn’t something I paid much attention to as a wide receiver. (As a wideout, your run blocking rules are pretty simple. When you are split out wide, you either block the corner or the safety, based on the play and coverage.) Down in the trenches, which I learned when I transitioned to tight end in my third season, the identifying characteristic of the wide zone is that you are blocking an area, not a specific man, and it requires communication to make it effective. We are blocking them, but I don’t know which of them I’ll end up blocking, and won’t know until the play develops. The running back must read this development and pick the hole that reveals itself; often there are more than one to choose from.

The key is the use of synchronized lateral movement by the entire offensive line at the snap of the ball, which gets the defense moving laterally, too. Then we block whatever bodies are in front of us as we move, often double-teaming the man in front of us until one of us has control of him, then the other guy “climbs” to the next level to block the next threat—first through defensive linemen, then linebackers, then defensive backs, always keeping your hips square to the sidelines. This creates multiple holes for deft running backs to exploit, including large cutback lanes behind over-pursuing defenders.

This lateral movement off the snap also creates unique opportunities for play-action passes, or “keepers,” that exploit over-pursuing defensive players who have found themselves wildly out of position. When working in concert, the run setting up the pass, the pass setting up the run, the wide zone running game is line after line of gorgeous gridiron poetry.

But it doesn’t matter how innovative or effective your scheme is if no one is on the same page, and the Raiders coaching staff, aside from Mike’s assistants, were hand-picked by Al, including Art Shell, who ran the defense. One day Mike went into a defensive meeting room and a coach was sleeping in the back while the players were fucking around and throwing shit at each other.

“What is this?” Mike asked, pointing to the slumbering slacker.

“Oh he gets tired sometimes, Coach,” one player replied. “So we just let him take a little nap.”

It was a marriage made in hell, and ended as such. After starting the next season 1-3, Mike was fired. You live, you learn.

After Shanahan was let go by the Raiders in 1989, the Broncos picked him back up as an assistant mid-season, and returned once again to the Super Bowl, where they suffered an even worse defeat at the hands of the 49ers, 55-10. I remember the game well because everyone on my street was a 49ers fan—well, everyone except Zack, who lived two doors down and bled orange and blue. It was a bad day for Zack, but those were good days for the Niners. This was the first year of football without Bill Walsh at the helm, but he had passed the keys to his protégé George Seifert. Just press play—and the machine hummed along.

And three years later, after finding himself in the middle of a feud between John Elway and Dan Reeves, Shanahan was onto his next role: offensive coordinator for my San Francisco 49ers.

His first day on the job, before any of the other coaches had arrived, he sat in on an organizational meeting with 100 people in the room, where everyone’s job was laid out in detail. Each department head broke down what they did and how they did it, and it was articulated that if you weren’t among the best at what you did, you would not be there very long. No matter what it was you did—marketing, grounds crew, trainers, sales, food service—everyone. It wasn’t just about holding the players to a certain standard, it was about holding everyone in the organization to that exact same standard.

Prior to Mike’s arrival in 1992 the Niners had won four Super Bowls in nine years. How did they do it? For the fan, it was pretty easy to identify—Joe Montana and Jerry Rice. Great. That’s exactly what Bill Walsh wanted us to think, because the truth was the opposite. The 49ers were winning the same way the Broncos had lost their Super Bowls: dominating the run game, controlling possession, exhausting opposing defenses.

But there’s more to it, isn’t there? There is more than your system. There is the human element. And Mike was getting a crash course in that part, too, with some of the best athletes and biggest egos on the planet.

Mike is one of only a handful of coaches to coach three Hall of Fame quarterbacks. Two of them were on the same 49ers team that Mike took over play-calling duties for in 1992: the still relatively unproven Steve Young, and the beloved Joe Montana. Joe was the type of legend that is impossible to truly replace, but it became clear after he got hurt and Steve took over and played well, that the team was going to look toward its future and do the unthinkable. The NFL is a dirty business, something I learned long before I ever put on a uniform. I was in middle school when I found out that the 49ers had traded Montana, my hero, to the Kansas City Chiefs for, well, it didn’t matter who or what for. You traded god.

When I asked Shanahan about it, he made it clear it wasn’t just us kids on Heppner Lane who saw Montana as a deity—he was viewed that way in the locker room as well. They loved Joe. He was “one of the guys,” a term that gets thrown around a lot, but the value of having your best player also be one of the guys is hard to quantify. You just thank your lucky stars when that turns out to be true, because it often isn’t.

When Joe left and Steve Young took over, Steve’s teammates were having a hard time with it. They weren’t comfortable around him yet, so they didn’t show him love. He wasn’t one of the guys. Steve came to Mike and said, “I don’t get it, Coach. I can’t get close to these guys.”

“Well,” Mike said, “you have to get to know them. Go out with them. Have some fun with them. Let them get to know you and see you outside of the locker room.”

“But I don’t drink, Coach. And I have a girlfriend.”

“You don’t have to drink, Steve. Just go out with them and hang out while they drink. Shit, you can be their designated driver!”

So Steve took Mike’s advice and went out with the fellas. Steve was the awkward sober guy at the bar while his buddies let off some steam, but sure enough, as the nights would wear on, there was Steve, having fun, laughing, listening to the drunken ramblings of his teammates, being a shoulder for them to lean on, and then delivering them home safe and sound. I can’t imagine that was easy for Steve, but he did it for the sake of the team, and he was rewarded with their trust. Football, in the end, is about trust. More often than you might think, these truths aren’t established on the field.

Back in Denver, things had come to a head with Elway and Reeves, and owner Pat Bowlen decided to part ways with Reeves, a coach who had led them to three Super Bowls but couldn’t get over the hump. And Pat knew who he wanted as his replacement. He called Mike and offered him the job. Mike turned it down.

Why? I asked him. Well, Pat wouldn’t commit to doing what it took to win. That meant, among other things, spending the money it took to compete with the best and wealthiest teams in the league. There was no salary floor back then, so teams didn’t have to spend money if they didn’t have it, or if they didn’t want to.

So Mike declined the Broncos’ head coaching job and stayed in San Francisco, where over the next two seasons he cemented himself as the brightest offensive mind in the sport.

During his three years with the Niners, they were the No. 1 scoring offense in the league each year, and always either first or second in yards. The most dynamic element of their offense, for the first time in Mike’s career as an OC, was the ground game. They were first or second in rushing scoring every year. They controlled the pace of the game and kept their defense fresh. Steve Young won All-Pro honors three years straight and finished off 1994 with a Super Bowl MVP.

The Niners beat the Chargers 49-26 in that Super Bowl, applying the lessons of his previous Super Bowl losses and controlling the game when and where it mattered most. San Francisco had 32 carries for 139 yards and one score, and Steve Young went 25-for-38 for 331 and six touchdowns, still a Super Bowl record. The Chargers managed only 19 carries for 67 yards, while quarterback Stan Humphries went 27-for-55 and 301, with one touchdown and three INTs. The Niners won the turnover battle 3-0 and allowed their defense to feast that day, forcing six sacks and three takeaways.

As Steve Young got the monkey off his back, so too did Mike Shanahan, finally winning the big one. In the days that followed, Pat Bowlen called again with the same job offer, only now he was ready to do it Mike’s way. The rest, as they say, is history.

It’s hard to think about football without remembering what it meant to you as a kid and the moment you became a fan, or, in my case, a disciple. I was 9 years old on Jan. 22, 1989, and lying on the shaggy green carpet of my living room, a pillow behind my head, a bowl of Cheetos on my stomach, watching Super Bowl 23. There was 3:04 left in the game and my 49ers trailed the Cincinnati Bengals, 16-13. The posters were on my wall. The hats, the shirts, the jerseys, the plastic Huff helmet—I had them all. Every chance I got, I was out in the street playing two-hand touch. My elementary teachers knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, and it wasn’t an astronaut.

But when Joe Montana stepped into the huddle that day at Joe Robbie Stadium, 92 yards separating his team from victory, something happened to me. I felt myself transformed, pulled into the action as if it were me on that field, and it was my life on the line. I understood the stakes, and I knew what it would take to finish the job. And when the 49ers did, indeed, finish the job on a 10-yard strike from Joe Montana to John Taylor in the end zone, I felt the grass under my feet and I smelled the sweat and heard the crowd roaring as I embraced my teammates in ecstasy.

I jumped up off the carpet, spilling Cheetos all over the room, and ran through the house, arms raised in triumph. All the while, my father was seated on the couch behind me, one eye on the game, one eye on the book in his lap.

Fourteen years later, I would walk into the 49ers facility in Santa Clara to sign a free-agent contract. The space between these two events has closed in my mind. Now, 15 years removed from my last season in the NFL, I see the journey as a series of moments.

My arrival in that 49ers locker room was, perhaps, less likely than going to space would have been. I didn’t play Pop Warner. Swimming was the sport that sharpened my competitive spirit. I learned to rely on myself, to believe I was going to win, and to completely empty my mind and wait for the BANG of the starter’s pistol. As soon as I touched the other side, there was my dad with a towel and a video camera in my face, asking me my time.

When I wasn’t swimming, I was playing soccer for the South San Jose Lions. Weekly games and tournaments all over California. Wherever it was, my dad took me there, no matter the conditions. Either in his light blue Volkswagen Rabbit or our red Toyota van—through fog so thick we couldn’t see the front of the car—we’d be there on time, with the proper equipment, well-fed and ready to compete. Something I never saw my dad do? Yell at the refs, or get in an argument with opposing parents, or lobby the coach for a more prominent role on the team for me. He just showed up and stood behind me. His dreams were his dreams, and mine were mine.

At night I dreamt of a different sport. My parents weren’t keen on the violence, though, so they made a rule: I had to wait until high school to play football. I think they hoped I’d forget about it.

When freshman year came around, I signed up. I hadn’t hit puberty and I had never put on a helmet and shoulder pads before, and there I was practicing against sophomores with mustaches who had been playing tackle football since they were kids. I got my ass kicked every practice then rode the bench every gameday. After the game, there was my dad, to put his arm around me and take me to get something to eat. All along my football journey, there was my dad, up in the stands, one eye on the game, one through the viewfinder, recording it all so I could watch it later.

He was there when I switched to quarterback my sophomore year and rode the bench that year, too. He was there when I moved to wide receiver for the last game of the year. He had the camera on me when I caught a five-yard hitch that I turned into a 10-yard gain.

He was there the next two years when I came into my own as a wide receiver and safety, and despite all-league honors and a solid performance in the local all-star game, received zero interest from college programs.

He was there when I decided to walk on at Cal Poly after speaking with their head coach and getting a good feeling about him. When my dad and I showed up at their spring game to see that coach, we found out that he had just taken a job in the NFL. We introduced ourselves to the new coach and my dad was standing next to me when that coach said that there wasn’t room on the team for walk-ons, but to try again next year.

He was there for the next spring game, having gone through the entire winter and spring programs, pushed into the corner with the rest of the would-bes, where we all stood around, getting no reps, no coaching, beginning to see the writing on the wall. I was moved to tight end with one week left in spring ball, and when the spring game came, there was my dad up in the stands, underneath an umbrella, camera on his shoulder. I stood on the sideline, soaked to the core, for the entire game, until the last drive, when I got in for three running plays. He was there when I cried in his arms on the 50-yard line, and when I called a few days later to let him know I had been cut.

He was there the next year when I decided to transfer to Division III Menlo College in order to keep playing the game I now loved. He was there when I led the team in receiving my first year, and when I led the nation in receiving the next two. He was there the day I scored three touchdowns and my coach told me after the game that Bill Walsh wanted to talk to me. I dropped my helmet and jogged over to meet my first coaching hero, who told me to keep doing what I was doing, and that I’d get my chance to make an NFL team.

My dad was there when I got that chance, and when I got cut and had to move back home. He was there when the Niners signed me back after the season, and saw me off when I was traded to the Broncos. He was there when I got sent to NFL Europe to play for the Rhein Fire.

He was there four years later when I finally scored my first regular-season touchdown. He had been there the night before the game when I showed him the play in the playbook that we would run if we got down on the goal line; a play in which I was the primary receiver. And he was there when it played out exactly as planned, in the end zone directly in front of their seats. I caught the one-yard score and pointed up to the stands where he was sitting—both his eyes on the game this time.

And when my career came to an end a few years later, he was there to help me understand that I was more than a football player, and that now the real work of life began.

My dad was not a football man—his heroes were poets and statesmen. But in the 15 years that have followed my NFL career, I’ve sat in the same room and watched more NFL games than I can count, my dad sitting next to me in his big brown chair (they’d long ago replaced the green carpet), still watching out of one eye—this time because the other didn’t work anymore.

This football season marks a new milestone. It’s the first one without my dad. He died in May at the age of 94. You never know how it will feel to lose your father until you do—until you walk down the hall and into the living room, and his chair is empty.

Life moves along; my own son just turned 4. For the last three years, I had a job in Denver sports radio. Every few days, I’d get a text from my dad, commenting on one of our segments or complimenting me on my usage of a certain word. But then one day in September, I got fired. “We’re going in another direction,” I was told, and this time, my dad wasn’t around to see me through it.

And so here I am, jobless and fatherless, trying to make sense of who I am, where I’ve been, and where I’m going. Who’s there for me.

A few days before my firing, the Denver Broncos had an alumni event. Word had gotten out at work that changes were afoot and I had a feeling I was about to get canned. I didn’t want to go to the event, but I did. I’d met my wife after my NFL career was over, and she doesn’t know that Nate. She doesn’t know the football player. I wanted to show him to her.

I saw a lot of old faces. Old friends. Lots of laughs and hugs and an ease that I don’t find anymore. When Mike Shanahan took the podium and spoke about his time with the Broncos—our time—we all got quiet. Like magic, there we were again, seated in front of our head coach in those rolling leather chairs in the team meeting room, preparing to tackle the day. As I listened, I couldn’t help but think of my dad, and how proud he was of what I had become under Mike.

After his speech, I shared a few words with my old coach. He asked how I was. I told him I thought I was about to get fired. He told me if I ever wanted to get together and talk ball, to call him.

Jury Rules Against Andy Ngo in Activist Lawsuit
Right-wing media figure sought damages stemming from attacks in Portland.

https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2023/08/09/46651345/jury-rules-against-andy-ngo-in-activist-lawsuit

A Portland jury ruled against right-wing media figure Andy Ngo Tuesday, Aug. 8 in a lawsuit seeking damages from antifascist activists for two separate attacks.

After nearly a week of hearing testimony from witnesses, watching video footage and hearing from defendants, jurors concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to fault them for the attacks.

Ngo is a prominent right-wing social media personality and editor at large for the Canadian-based Post Millennial website, which has often featured conspiracy-laced stories and been accused of spreading disinformation. He filed a civil complaint in 2020 seeking damages from Portland activists for their alleged role in two separate assaults of Ngo that he said ultimately aimed to suppress his media coverage. The complaint was later amended to include additional claims and plaintiffs.

Ngo’s antics have landed him on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch lists, which describes him thusly:

“What Ngo has portrayed as his journalistic work largely consists of publishing anti-antifa, Islamophobic and transphobic tweets and articles to his sizable Twitter following, along with disseminating the arrest records and personal details of left-wing demonstrators.”

Ngo’s lawsuit for assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress laid the blame on six people, as well as Rose City Antifa. The lawsuit initially included a RICO claim against Rose City Antifa, but the charge and defendant were dismissed from the case after it was determined the group isn’t an organized legal entity subject to being sued. Ngo initially sought $900,000 in damages, to compensate for medical bills, lost income, and emotional distress.

In court, Ngo said he grew up in Portland and later moved away to attend UCLA. He moved back and started work on a graduate degree at Portland State University, where he joined the staff of the PSU Vanguard student newspaper and took an interest in journalism. Ngo was later terminated from the Vanguard for alleged ethical breaches. He told the jury he wanted to platform voices that were often ignored in mainstream media.

Around 2018, he began reporting on the city’s protest movement. He eventually began accompanying right-wing groups like Patriot Prayer—a group known for instigating violence against antifascist protesters.  Ngo said he eventually became a direct target of assault.

“I’ve been the victim of an ongoing campaign of hate and death threats because of my reporting on violent extremists in the United States organizing their political ideology,” Ngo told the jury.

Attorneys for the defendants named in Ngo’s lawsuit noted Ngo is known for driving online hate and harassment toward antifa protesters and activists, often by posting their names and mugshots online for scrutiny and potential doxxing.

Ngo alleged the people named in his lawsuit were directly or partly responsible for physical attacks on him–one of which took place at a gym in May 2019 and another which took place after a gathering in downtown Portland in May 2021, on the first anniversary of George Floyd’s death.

With three named defendants defaulting in the case, and one settling out of court, a jury found the two remaining defendants, John Hacker and Elizabeth Richter, not liable for the attacks on Ngo.

The trial, which lasted nine days, was marked by unusual security measures and privacy protocols. Ngo could be seen roaming the court’s hallways with a plainclothes private security guard, wearing glasses and a mask anytime he left the courtroom.

Citing ongoing security concerns, Judge Chanpone Sinlapasai barred the public from being able to observe the case inside the courtroom, ordering them to instead watch a live recording in a separate area. An attorney in the case said the judge also barred both legal teams from discussing even basic facts about the trial to anyone until long after the trial was scheduled to conclude.

Attorneys for Ngo argued Richter and Hacker were among a group that despised Ngo for his coverage of Portland protests and sought to suppress his coverage. Defense attorneys for Richter and Hacker noted Ngo’s reporting has led to the local activists, including Richter and Hacker, being doxxed and threatened.

In court, Richter’s attorney, Cooper Brinson, characterized Ngo as “a provocateur that manufactures controversy.”

Brinson argued Ngo was a polarizing, controversial figure who was recognizable, particularly to activists who blame him for stoking conspiracies and misinformation.

Ngo’s legal team argued Richter and Hacker were partly responsible for causing assaults on Ngo, one of which left him badly beaten and hospitalized in 2021.

The attacks

Hacker, a Portland-based activist who told jurors he often attended protests to observe police, film and photograph, described an incident in 2019 at a 24 Hour Fitness center in Portland. Hacker spotted Ngo and poured water on him while standing near a stairwell above Ngo. He confronted Ngo over what he said was distasteful and irresponsible media coverage of a recent protest that left an acquaintance seriously injured by a known white supremacist. Ngo pulled out his cell phone to record the interaction with Hacker, against gym policy, and Hacker smacked the phone out of Ngo’s hand.

Gym staff eventually intervened and revoked Hacker’s membership.

In court, Hacker said he’s been the frequent target of doxxing by Ngo, which has led to threats against him and his family, as well as photos of his home published online. At one point, Hacker said one of Ngo’s followers obtained his child’s phone number. He said Ngo’s reporting over the years has caused harm to him and many activists in Portland.

Hacker admitted he reacted out of anger that day at the gym, telling the jury he regretted his actions.

“I don’t think it was appropriate. I wasn’t thinking,” Hacker said. “I was just like, ‘I hate this guy. Fuck this guy.’”

Hacker said the gym incident was “a ridiculous way to resolve grievances” and apologized to Ngo in court.

While Hacker acknowledged his role in the 2019 incident, he and his attorneys said he doesn’t seek violence against political foes and wasn’t responsible for a group that jumped Ngo in 2021.

“He works on progressive causes. He feeds the hungry. He protests ICE…” Michelle Burrows, Hacker’s defense attorney, told the jury, describing a man who’s overcome a near-death crash that left him severely burned and now fights for causes he believes in.

Hacker said he sees himself as anti-fascist, but doesn’t identify as antifa, calling it “a pejorative used by far-right movements to discredit the movement.”

Ngo’s legal team argued the attacks made him unsafe and diminished his ability to continue providing on-the-ground coverage of Portland protests, thus interfering with his ability to draw revenue.

Defense attorneys noted records documenting Ngo’s income were incomplete, but showed he drew about $462,000 in royalties from a 2018 book deal and continues to draw $5,000 to $6,000 a month from a Patreon account. Ngo has also amassed paid subscribers to his Twitter page and maintains a legal fund with the Center for American Liberty that had “at least $200,000 in it” at one point.

Regardless of damages sought, attorneys said the defendants didn’t provoke or engage in Ngo’s assault in 2021.

On May 28, 2021, Ngo showed up to a gathering downtown at Chapman Square, where activists were commemorating the first anniversary of George Floyd’s death. Ngo attempted to blend in with the antifascist crowd, to gain access for filming and reporting. He showed up in black bloc attire, with goggles and a Black Lives Matter flag. At some point, Ngo was recognized and called out.

He was then chased by a group of people and punched, kicked, and beaten, eventually getting away and seeking cover in The Nines hotel nearby. Richter later caught up with Ngo at the hotel and taunted him, attorneys said. The assault was reported to police, who later testified that a lack of evidence prevented criminal prosecution of any suspects involved.

Lawyer says political climate fueled tensions

While defense attorneys condemned the 2021 attack on Ngo, they said neither Hacker nor Richter took part in the assault, nor did they instruct others to attack Ngo.

“She wasn’t there. She didn’t follow him. She didn’t hit him… touch him,” Brinson, Richter’s attorney, told the jury.

Hacker said he spotted Ngo that night in 2021, but had no part in the attack, and had moved toward a different block when Ngo was being assaulted.

“My client is not responsible for the bad things that happened to Mr. Ngo that day,” Burrows, Hacker’s attorney, told the jury.

Burrows said the harm caused to Ngo and the targeted online harassment faced by parties in the lawsuit can be traced to the current American political climate.

“I’m having a hard time in this case, wondering, who took the high road here? Who really is the villain?” Burrows said. “What the real villain is, I think, is what we’ve become in this country, that we can’t anymore, have different viewpoints on anything, so instead of just yelling at each other, or having combative politicians waving the flag in Congress, we have people go out in the street, and we have people throwing tear gas, spraying bear spray, and having to wear gas masks.”

Immediately following the jury’s verdict, Ngo’s legal team moved to have the verdict dismissed, on the grounds that Hacker acknowledged his 2019 interaction with Ngo and apologized for it, but the judge didn’t allow it.

It’s unclear whether the judge will order Ngo to pay the legal fees of the defendants he tried to sue.

Ngo took to social media and his Patreon fundraising account later Tuesday, calling the verdict “disappointing.”

“Though I am deeply disappointed in today’s verdict, I am considering my legal options,” Ngo stated.

My 2021 NBA Mock Draft for July 28, with some trades. A bunch were made beforehand.

1st round

1. Detroit Pistons – Cade Cunningham PG/SG Oklahoma State
2. Houston Rockets – Jalen Geen SG G-League
3. Cleveland Cavaliers – Evan Mobley C USC
4. Toronto Raptors – Jalen Suggs PG Gonzaga
5. Orlando Magic – Jonathan Kuminga SF G-League
6. Sacramento Kings f/OKC Thunder – James Bouknight SG UConn
7. Toronto Raptors f/ Warriors via Wolves – Scottie Barnes SF/PF Florida St.
8. Orlando Magic f/Bulls – Franz Wagner SF Michigan
9. OKC Thunder f/ Kings – Moses Moody SG Arkansas
10. New Orleans Pelicans – Davion Mitchell PG/SG Baylor
11. Indiana Pacers f/Hornets – Kai Jones C Texas
12. NY Knicks f/Spurs – Josh Giddey PG Australia
13. Memphis Grizzlies f/Pacers – Keon Johnson SG/SF Tennessee
14. Toronto Raptors f/ Warriors – Corey Kispert SF/SG Gonzaga
15. Washington Wizards – Jalen Johnson SF Duke
16. OKC Thunder f/Celtics – Tre Mann PG Florida
17. Indiana Pacers f/ Grizzlies – Zaire Williams SG/SF Stanford
18. OKC Thunder f/Heat – Isiah Jackson PF/C Kentucky
19. San Antonio Spurs f/ Knicks – Alperen Sengun PF/C Turkey
20. Atlanta Hawks – Jared Butler PG/SG Baylor
21. San Antonio Spurs f/ Knicks via Mavs – Trey Murphy SG/SF Virginia
22. LA Lakers Joel Ayayi PG/SG Gonzaga
23. Houston Rockets f/Blazers – Ayo Dosunmu PG/SG Illinois
24. Houston Rockets f/Bucks – Day’Ron Sharpe C North Carolina
25. LA Clippers – Sharife Cooper PG Auburn
26. Denver Nuggets – Quentin Grimes SG Houston
27. Brooklyn Nets – Miles McBride PG West Virginia
28. Portland Trailblazers f/Sixers – Charles Bassey PF/C Western Kentucky
29. Phoenix Suns – Joshua Primo SG Alabama
30. Utah Jazz – Usman Garuba PF/C Spain

2nd round

31. Milwaukee Bucks f/Rockets – Jaden Springer SG Tennessee
32. OKC Thunder f/ Knicks via Pistons – Isiah Todd PF/C G-League
33. Orlando Magic – Cam Thomas SG LSU
34. NY Knicks f/ Thunder – Nah’Shon Hyland PG/SG VCU
35. New Orleans Pelicans f/Cavs – Ariel Hukporti C Germany
36. OKC Thunder f/Wolves – Joe Wieskamp SF Iowa
37. Detroit Pistons f/Raptors – Neemias Queta C Utah State
38. Chicago Bulls f/Pelicans – Josh Christopher SG Arizona State
39. OKC Thunder f/Kings – Isiah Livers SF Michigan
40. New Orleans Pelicans f/Bulls – BJ Boston SG/SF Kentucky
41. Brooklyn Nets f/Pacers – Jericho Simms PF Texas
42. Detroit Pistons f/Hornets – Jason Preston PG Ohio
43. New Orleans Pelicans f/Wizards – Juhann Begarin PG/SG France
44. Brooklyn Nets f/Pacers – Daishen Nix PG G-League
45. Boston Celtics – Filip Petrusev C Serbia
46. GS Warriors f/Raptors via Grizzlies – Jeremiah Robinson-Earl PF/C Villanova
47. Toronto Raptors f/Pels via Warriors – Ibou Dianko Badji C Senegal
48. Atlanta Hawks f/Heat – Vrenz Bleijenbergh PF Belgium
49. Brooklyn f/Hawks – EJ Onu C Shawnee State
50. Philadelphia 76ers f/Knicks – Herbert Jones SG/SF Alabama
51. Indiana Pacers f/Grizzlies – JT Thor PF/C Auburn
52. Detroit Pistons f/Lakers – Aaron Wiggins SG Maryland
53. New Orleans Pelicans f/Mavs – Kessler Edwards SF Pepperdine
54. Indiana Pacers f/Bucks – Rokas Jokubaitis PG Lithuania
55. Oklahoma City f/Nuggets – Greg Brown SF Texas
56. Charlotte Hornets f/Clippers – Amar Sylla SF Senegal
57. Charlotte Hornets f/Nets – Derek Culver C West Virginia
58. NY Knicks f/76ers – David Duke PG/SG Providence
59. Brooklyn Nets f/Suns – Aaron Henry SG Michigan State
60. Indiana Pacers f/Jazz -Mario Nakic SG/SF Serbia

This is my predictions for November 18ths NBA draft

I’m doing it without trades, because they are hard to do.

Round 1
1. Minnesota Timberwolves- Anthony Edwards SG Georgia
2. Golden State Warriors – Obi Toppin PF Dayton
3. Charlotte Hornets – LaMelo Ball PG Illawarrawa Hawks
4.Chicago Bulls – Killian Hayes PG France
5. Cleveland Cavaliers – James Wiseman C Memphis
6. Atlanta Hawks – Issac Okoro SG/SF Auburn
7. Detroit Pistons – Deni Avdija SG/SF Isreal
8. New York Knicks – Tyrese Haliburton PG North Carolina
9. Washington Wizards – Onyeka Okongwu PF/C USC
10. Phoenix Suns – Davin Vassell SG Florida State
11. San Antonio Spurs – Cole Anthony PG North Carolina
12. Sacramento Kings – Tyrese Maxey PG Kentucky
13. New Orleans Pelicans – Josh Green SG Arizona
14. Boston Celtics f/ Memphis – Jalen Smith PF/C Maryland
15. Orlando Magic – Aaron Nesmith SG Vanderbilt
16. Portland Trailblazers – Saddiq Bey SF Villanova
17. Minnesota Timberwolves f/Brooklyn – Precious Achiuwa PF Memphis
18. Dallas Mavericks -Patrick Williams SF/PF Florida State
19. Brooklyn Nets f/Philadelphia – Vernon Carey C Duke
20. Miami Heat – Jaden McDaniels PF Washington
21. Philadelphia 76ers f/ OKC – Theo Maledon PG France
22. Denver Nuggets f/Houston – Tyrell Terry PG Stanford
23. Utah Jazz – Nico Mannion PG Arizona
24. Milwaukee Bucks f/Indiana – R.J. Hampton SG New Zealand Breakers
25. Oklahoma City Thunder f/ Denver – Aleksej Pokuševski C Serbia
26. Boston Celtics – Kira Lewis PG Alabama
27. New York Knicks f/ LAC – Leandro Bolmaro SG Argentina
28. LA Lakers – Malachi Flynn PG San Diego State
29. Toronto Raptors – Zeke Nnaji C Arizona
30. Boston Celtics f/Milwaukee – Robert Woodard PF Mississippi State.

Round 2
31. Dallas Mavericks f/GSW – Desmond Bane SG TCU
32. Charlotte Hornets f/Cleveland – Filip Petrusev C Gonzaga
33. Minnesota Timberwolves – Payton Pritchard PG/SG Oregon
34. Philadelphia 76ers f/ Atlanta – Elijah Hughes SG Syracuse
35. Sacramento Kings f/Detroit – Tyler Bey SF Colorado
36. Philadelphia 76ers f/NYK – Josh Hall SF Moravian Prep(NC)
37. Washington Wizards f/Chicago – Xavier Tillman PF Michigan State
38. New York Knicks f/Charlotte – Isiah Stewart PF Washington
39. New Orleans Pelicans f/ Washington – Daniel Oturu C Minnesota
40. Memphis Grizzlies f/ Phoenix – Udoka Azobuike C Kansas
41. San Antonio Spurs – Ömer Yurtseven C Georgetown
42. New Orleans Pelicans – Jordan Nwora SF Louisville
43. Sacramento Kings – Reggie Perry PF/C Mississippi State
44. Chicago Bulls f/ Memphis – Paul Reed SF/PF DePaul
45. Orlando Magic – Tre Jones PG Duke
46. Portland Trailblazers – Isiah Joe PG/SG Arkansas
47. Boston Celtics f/ Brooklyn – Marko Simonović C Serbia
48. Golden State Warriors f/Dallas – Devon Dotson PG Kansas
49. Philadelphia 76ers – Immanuel Quickley PG/SG Kentucky
50. Atlanta Hawks – Vernon Carey C Duke
51. Golden State Warriors f/Utah – Austin Wiley C Auburn
52. Sacramento Kings f/Houston – Cassius Winston PG Michigan State
53. Oklahoma City Thunder – Grant Riller PG Charleston
54. Indiana Pacers – Mamadi Diakite PF Virginia
55. Brooklyn Nets f/Denver – Jahmi’us Ramsey SG Texas Tech
56. Charlotte Hornets f/Boston – Skylar Mays SG LSU
57. LA Clippers – Nick Richards C Kentucky
58. Philadelphia 76ers f/LAL – Quinten Rose SF Temple
59. Toronto Raptors – Karim Mané PG/SG Vanier College(JUCO)
60. New Orleans Pelicans f/ Milwaukee – Markus Howard PG Marquette

• This topic was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by JackPMiller.
• This topic was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by JackPMiller.

This following article was on the front page of the L.A. Times this morning under the title “Portland anarchists spark backlash”

“Portland’s anarchists say they support racial justice. Black activists want nothing to do with them

Activists break windows at a Democratic Party office in Portland, Ore., on Nov. 8.(Brenda Griswold / For The Times)
By RICHARD READSEATTLE BUREAU CHIEF
NOV. 16, 20202 AM
PORTLAND, Ore. — The day after President-elect Joe Biden delivered his victory speech, telling the nation it was time to heal and unite, a clandestine Twitter account — @safePDXprotest — summoned Portland anarchists.
Meet at Laurelhurst Park at 8 p.m. and “Wear Bloc & Be Water,” the message said, calling for black garb and vigilance to evade police for a protest “in solidarity with BLM” — Black Lives Matter.

The 50 or so people who showed up — nearly all of them white — looked like ninjas as they put on balaclavas, hoods and scarves. Some carried gas masks.

The call to action had declared “No Masters” — leaders, in the parlance of 19th century European anarchists — but the crowd huddled around one young man as he lambasted liberals for celebrating the defeat of President Trump while capitalism and the political system remained entrenched.

“They can show up to dance ’cause of Orange Man bad, but they can’t be out here fighting with us,” he said. “So that’s why we’re going. … I’m tired of liberal complacency.”

Word spread through the group that the target tonight would be the local headquarters of the Democratic Party.

Somebody started beating a drum as a chant broke out: “F— Joe Biden!”

Then the anarchists marched into the upscale neighborhood, intent on destruction.

Portland anarchists say they see no real difference between President Trump and President-elect Joe Biden.
Portland anarchists say they see no real difference between President Trump and President-elect Joe Biden.(Richard Read / Los Angeles Times)
For months, Portland has been a significant face of the Black Lives Matter movement, in part because of the national attention that self-described anarchists brought to nightly protests throughout the summer.

They set fires, launched fireworks at authorities and spat in their faces to draw them into violent confrontations that made headlines around the world.

The election of Biden has only antagonized the anarchists — and exposed their differences with the Black activists they claim to support.

Black activists and community leaders, who generally view the defeat of Trump as an opportunity for change within the system, said the anarchists are hijacking the movement and undermining the push for racial justice by continuing to commit violence.

“When people set fire to a building, it really does not liberate me one bit,” said Mingus Mapps, a Black resident who won a seat on the Portland City Council this month. “It does the opposite. It fuels the political culture that makes racism possible.”

The former political science professor, who peacefully participated in several demonstrations, plans to advocate for police reform beyond budget cuts passed by the council and a measure approved by voters to create a police oversight board.

“We’re going to get out of the game of smoke bombs and rubber bullets and dressing cops up like they’re Marines as we stand outside public buildings and yell at each other,” he said.

The anarchists believe working within the system is futile and say the political order and capitalist economy must be torn down.

Biden, as head of a party supporting the free-market system and private property rights, is no better than Trump, more than a dozen said in interviews.

Distrusting the media, all refused to give their names. But pamphlets distributed at a recent rally outline their far-left philosophies.

“Abolish All Mayors” — the title of one booklet — advocates “the complete democratization and community control of all city bureaus and the abolition of the police.”

“Why We Break Windows” advocates an end to private property and invokes the Boston Tea Party to explain the point of “political vandalism” during revolts.

“Shop windows represent segregation,” it says. “To smash a shop window is to contest all the boundaries that cut through this society: black and white, rich and poor, included and excluded.”

In some ways, the anarchists have served the Black Lives Matter movement in Portland, creating a spectacle that drew attention to the cause of racial justice after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

Some of the anarchists have also been involved in antifa, the movement that clashes with far-right groups.

But the violence has also caused problems for Black Lives Matter.

In June, Black community leaders denounced an arson attack by protesters on a building that houses a police station and Black-owned businesses on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

“When I hear about somebody burning something down, I think about that as an act that’s always been used against Black people,” Ron Herndon, a longtime Black activist, said at a news conference the morning after police used tear gas to disperse protesters firing paintballs. “You are not helping us.”

The Trump administration soon deployed federal agents to the city. Their tactics — which included secret detentions of activists and the wholesale use of tear gas and flash-bang grenades against growing crowds — were widely seen as excessive and drew more protesters into the streets.

Video of street battles became fodder for Trump, who chastised city and state politicians as part of his campaign theme calling for law and order.

The anarchists reveled in the limelight. Each night they would provoke authorities, who would eventually declare a riot or illegal assembly and start making arrests as protesters fled.

The protests grew less frequent by the fall as demonstrators tired, nearby wildfires shrouded the city with smoke and the presidential election — with its possibility of ousting Trump — drew nearer.

For the anarchists, the election was no time to let up as they sought to make their point that a change of power was meaningless. The night of Nov. 4 — the day after voters went to the polls — anarchists rallied in a park, then marched into downtown.

They briefly intersected with a peaceful demonstration calling for all votes to be counted — a cause that meant nothing to them. Proceeding with their march, some smashed windows at downtown businesses and a church that provides food and services to homeless people.

Kristin Van Buskirk, whose gift shop window was shattered, said the incident did not diminish her support for the Black Lives Matter movement and did not blame it for the damage she suffered.

“Black lives matter more than my business,” she said.

The next day, about 60 people marched to the home of Dan Ryan, a City Council member who had voted that day against police budget cuts.

They chanted “Black lives matter,” shattered a window and chucked eggs and a paint-filled balloon at the house.

“I don’t know what their goal is other than just destruction,” said Officer Derek Carmon, a Portland Police Bureau spokesman. “My hope is that we’ll see less of this, but it’s difficult when you’re dealing with a group of people who don’t want to engage the police in a conversation about change.”

Shirley Jackson, a Portland State University professor of Black studies, said the violence seems senseless.

“With the BLM protests there were clear demands, but it’s very difficult to see an end to something when it’s not clear what the demands are,” she said.

In interviews, several Black community leaders who had marched in protests over the summer said that it was crucial to condemn the violence and dissociate Black Lives Matter from the anarchists.

“Clearly it’s not Black folks going to Commissioner Ryan’s house and busting out his windows,” said Rukaiyah Adams, chief investment officer for Meyer Memorial Trust, a foundation funding a $25-million racial justice initiative.

“I don’t think those windows were smashed because they were thinking about my life and the lives of my children,” said Toya Fick, Oregon executive director of Stand for Children, a nonprofit that advocates for equal opportunity in education.

It took the anarchists 20 minutes to make their way through the Laurelhurst neighborhood Nov. 8 and arrive at the county Democratic Party headquarters.

Tall plate-glass windows lined the former car dealership on two sides, festooned with campaign posters for Biden and other candidates.

Two activists approached the building, one holding an umbrella to conceal the other, who spray-painted an anti-Biden epithet on a wall, adding an anarchist symbol. In red, he wrote “ACAB” — short for “all cops are bastards.”

Six more protesters pounded on the windows, shattering 13 of them before rejoining the group keeping watch in the parking lot.

“Stay together, stay tight, we do this every night,” the group chanted before marching back across the avenue and dispersing into the neighborhood.

Police in riot gear arrived, riding troop trucks and bicycles to search for suspects. Scouring the neighborhood, they arrested three white men in their early 20s and 30s on accusations of criminal mischief.

The next day, Rachelle Dixon, who heads Portland’s Black Lives Matter chapter, called a reporter to say that the activists had nothing to do with the social justice movement.

She said that in the minds of the public, anarchists have “melded with Black Lives Matter, but they’re 90% white and they don’t reach out to Black organizations.”

Dixon also serves as a vice chair of the Multnomah County Democrats.

“I didn’t destroy my own building,” she said.

Rachelle Dixon, who heads Black Lives Matter in Portland, says her volunteers are giving out food, not smashing windows.
Rachelle Dixon, who heads Black Lives Matter in Portland, says her volunteers are giving out food, not smashing windows.(Richard Read / Los Angeles Times) ”

Pennsylvania’s blue-collar voters see danger — and back Trump

By NOAH BIERMANSTAFF WRITER
SEP. 14, 20208:56 AM
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — There are no protests over racial injustice or police brutality here, and the only fires or violence Wendy Williams encounters are on television and online. Yet the spotty images of unrest in faraway Portland, Ore., and Kenosha, Wis., linger in her mind.
If anything, she’d like President Trump to crack down harder, to follow through on his threats to send more troops to quash the protests. She wishes he didn’t say so many inflammatory things, yet resents those who label him a racist.

“There’s always been racism. There’s always gonna be racism, but it’s not him that’s doing it,” Williams, a white, 53-year-old stay-at-home mom, said outside a Walmart. “It’s the Democrats and the media that are getting it out there and keeping it out there. And if the riots don’t get taken care of, it’s just making it worse.”

Williams said she did not vote in presidential elections before Trump came along in 2016. Now, she is an essential part of his 2020 coalition. She lives in Wilkes-Barre, in blue-collar Luzerne County, one of three Pennsylvania counties that flipped from blue to red in 2016 and helped give Trump the state — and a narrow electoral college victory.

Trump’s racially loaded calls for “law and order” in the face of mostly peaceful protests, and his dire warnings that Democratic nominee Joe Biden will “demolish the suburbs,” have alienated some voters in the actual suburbs, where Black and Latino populations are growing and many educated white women are abandoning the Republican Party.

But Trump’s appeals to the grievances of white supporters — including his recent order to purge the federal government of racial sensitivity training — appear to be resonating with voters in down-at-the-heels industrial cities such as Wilkes-Barre, where his campaign hopes for a surge of white working-class voters.

Trump’s promises to crack down on “chaos” in cities “actually play better with voters that are far away from the unrest,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Poll.

Polls show Biden leading Trump by 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to an average compiled Friday by FiveThirtyEig

Both campaigns agree that Trump’s best chance to overtake Biden in the state is to get more rural and small-town voters to counter Biden’s strength in and around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Luzerne County is overwhelmingly white, although it has grown more diverse in the past decade. Black and Latino residents comprise 21% of the population of 317,000.

Most residents live in single-family houses or duplexes, many with freshly mowed lawns and a few stray tires, well-used porches and American flags. Railroad tracks, Catholic churches and views of billowing smokestacks and the Pocono Mountains are never far.

The old Sears and Bon-Ton stores in the Wyoming Valley Mall are vacant, along with much of the food court. A pair of universities have taken over many of the buildings in the downtown. Most shopping takes place at big-box stores and supermarkets at the top of the hill.

Interviews with voters here largely confirm what polls say about Trump. People either love him or hate him, with even fewer persuadable voters than four years ago, despite a flailing economy and a coronavirus outbreak that has killed 190,000 Americans and continues to spread.

Those who like Trump tend to overlook or forgive his flawed handling of the pandemic, along with the scandals and character issues cited by Biden supporters. Many of Trump’s supporters get their news from Trump-friendly sources and agree with the president that Biden is too far left or mentally frail, ignoring Biden’s efforts to reassure voters that he is neither.

Trump “is the first one, the first president in my lifetime — and I’m 53 — to actually keep the promises that he said he was going to do,” Williams said. Research shows Trump has fulfilled fewer of his campaign promises than other recent presidents.

Those who oppose Trump say they are frustrated that his supporters don’t see that he’s “the biggest phony that ever existed,” as Cynthia Bhagat put it.

The 80-year-old retiree volunteered for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and plans to make calls for Biden. But Bhagat said she no longer recognizes her community, and not just because the coal mines that dominated the region decades ago have been replaced by warehouses for Adidas and Chewy pet foods.

“This was all Democratic when I was born and it’s now Trump country and I don’t understand it,” she said, pointing to Trump’s supporters among her cousins as evidence of that shift.

She said her children, whose father was northern Indian Sikh, faced “very subtle in-grown racism” when they were growing up, and she sees racial prejudice as pernicious.

“Trump just presses that button,” she said.

Ashley Murray, of Sherman Hills, Pa., plans to vote for Joe Biden.
Ashley Murray, of Sherman Hills, Pa., plans to vote for Joe Biden. She says people in her community support Trump because it is largely white and “they feel like he’s saying things that they want to say.”(Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)
Ashley Murray, a 33-year-old nursing home employee, sees a similar dynamic, even as she notes the irony that at least some Trump voters here helped put President Obama in office twice.

Trump is “the part of them that, because most of the county is basically white, and they feel like he’s saying things that they want to say, doing things that they want to do,” she said. “They feel like he’s standing up for them, even though he’s not for them.”

Appeals to racial and cultural identity here predate Trump’s rise.

In 2006, Lou Barletta, then mayor of the second-largest city in the county, Hazleton, championed an ordinance that he said was designed to make life intolerable for immigrants who came to the country illegally. It included provisions to fine landlords and deny permits for businesses that hire them.

Courts ruled the ordinance unconstitutional, but Barletta was elected to Congress in 2010 and was one of the first House members to endorse Trump, largely on the issue of immigration. He left office for an unsuccessful Senate run in 2018.

Trump continues to rail against immigration this year but now uses his harshest rhetoric against protesters and Democrats. He argues that the country’s real race problem is bias against white, not Black, Americans.

“The Democrats never even mentioned the words LAW & ORDER at their National Convention,” Trump tweeted Thursday. “If I don’t win, America’s Suburbs will be OVERRUN with Low Income Projects, Anarchists, Agitators, Looters and, of course, ‘Friendly Protesters.’”

Biden has tried to make inroads here, delivering a recent speech in Pittsburgh about the unrest, and speaking often of his childhood in Scranton, just north of here.

Trump has come more often, holding a campaign event in nearby Old Forge the night Biden accepted the Democratic nomination and sending Vice President Mike Pence soon after. Both candidates visited Shanksville on Friday, the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, for a memorial event.

Trump’s focus on the county, while potentially boosting support, raises questions about whether the president’s campaign is as confident as it claims.

Democrats hold advantages in new registrations and mail-in ballot applications, although Trump overcame the registration advantage in 2016. Even if Trump repeats his victory in Luzerne, Biden can make up the difference with increased turnout in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs.

Michael Truchon, a retired prison maintenance worker, applauds the president for putting “the hammer down” to stop people from tearing down monuments of Confederate generals and others.

Truchon believes racism exists but says “the statistics are being skewed” when it comes to police shootings.

“They’re oppressed by the Democrats,” he said of Black Americans. “They have the same opportunities I have.”

Tim Merli, of Jessup, Pa., says he has never voted in a presidential election but plans to vote for President Trump.
Tim Merli, of Jessup, Pa., says he has never voted in a presidential election but plans to vote for President Trump. He is rebuilding the curb at the old mall in Wilkes-Barre.(Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)
Tim Merli, 29, plans to vote for Trump after skipping previous elections. He said the president has no choice but to threaten the protesters.

“I understand where they’re coming from but, like, completely destroying something — that’s just going to make more anger and more retaliation and more problems to come,” he said while repairing a curb at the mall.

Some Trump supporters are uncomfortable with his rhetoric surrounding race.

Alicia O’Donnell, a retired business analyst, points to Trump’s work on sentencing reform as evidence he has helped Black inmates and said the president is simply offering to help cities deal with vandalism and violence when he calls for “law and order.”

“I just think he spews to Twitter quicker than he should,” said O’Donnell, who voted in 2016 for the Libertarian candidate and plans to vote for Trump this time.

A sign along the road in Mountain Top, Pa., in Luzerne County.

A sign along the road in Mountain Top, Pa., in Luzerne County, one of three counties that flipped from blue to red in the 2016 presidential election.(Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)
But in the hills overlooking the Susquehanna River, a highway is flanked with Trump signs and pro-police flags. A homemade sign shows a picture of Biden, scowling, surrounded by Democratic leaders and three members of “The Squad,” prominent liberal lawmakers of color.

“OPEN BORDERS, SANCTUARY CITIES, MOB RULE,” it warns.

if we have any hope to defeating Trump. We can always march in protest after the election.

Column: These Black activists could be pawns in Trump’s evil reelection plan. They don’t care

President Trump tours Kenosha, Wis., in the aftermath of protests against the police shooting of Jacob Blake in August.
President Trump tours a block in Kenosha, Wis., that was damaged during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in August.(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)
By ERIKA D. SMITHCOLUMNIST
SEP. 5, 20205 AM
James Butler isn’t backing down.

The 22-year-old founder of the upstart Black Future Project spent the summer protesting police brutality in downtown Los Angeles before moving on to get arrested on allegations of disrupting the tranquility of residents in Beverly Hills.

He has heard all about President Trump’s recent attempts to smear Black activists like himself as “anarchists” and “looters.” He knows that the stakes are high in this election, especially for Black people, and he’s aware that some suburban voters might actually buy Trump’s claims about Democrats being the enablers of “anti-American riots.”

But he — like many activists in California — still isn’t backing down.

“All of this rhetoric is an attempt to have these right-wing groups look at the Gen Z and millennial people who are predominantly hitting the streets and make us look like uneducated nuisances,” Butler told me by phone from Boston, where he’s planning yet another protest. “But we’re upset and angry, and we see the wrongdoings of the system and we are sick of it.”

These are the kind of words that will surely give baby boomers and some of the Gen Xers in the Democratic Party an ulcer. People such as Willie Brown, former California Assembly speaker, former San Francisco mayor and confidant to Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

He recently declared in the San Francisco Chronicle that “the biggest threat to a Democratic election sweep in November isn’t the Republican in the White House, but the demonstrators who are tearing up cities in the name of racial justice.”

And then, as if on cue, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden released an ad that begins with images of vehicles and buildings that were presumably set ablaze in some riot somewhere.

“I want to make it absolutely clear,” Biden intones. “Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. And those who do it should be prosecuted.”

It’s a message he echoed during a campaign stop in Kenosha, Wis., where a handful of city blocks have been ripped apart by protesters enraged over the gruesome and wholly unnecessary police shooting of Jacob Blake.

“Protesting is protesting, my buddy John Lewis used to say. But none of it justifies looting, burning or anything else. So regardless how angry you are, if you loot or you burn, you should be held [as] accountable as someone who does anything else. Period,” Biden said. “It just cannot be tolerated, across the board.”

Easy there, Joe.

Allow me, for just a moment, to inject a few facts into all of this political fiction.

According to a recent analysis from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, violence occurred at only about 7% of the thousands of protests that popped up across the country this summer after a Minneapolis cop kneeled on George Floyd’s neck.

Put another way, the vast majority of people who took to the streets in support of Black lives did so peacefully and only a tiny fraction of those protests drew police intervention. And this is true despite what has happened in downtown Portland, Ore., and likely will happen again this weekend as that city reaches 100 consecutive nights of protests.

Meanwhile, about 12% of the hundreds of counterprotests that have occurred this summer — many led by belligerent Trump supporters — have ended in violence, according to the analysis.

“We’ve seen people in MAGA hats show up at our weekly protest,” said Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. “We’ve seen people come at us very violently on social media. We’ve had to ramp up our security protocols.”

It’s no wonder then that activists aren’t exactly consumed with worry over whether Trump will use them to win reelection. Rather, they are fed up, as all of us should be.

“How the hell did one minute we were talking about defund the police and killer cops, and now all of a sudden the whole narrative across the nation has been looting and rioters?” said Berry Accius, an activist with Voice of the Youth in Sacramento. “Why are we here? Let’s talk about that.”

The reason, of course, is that the political reality — er, political fiction — of this situation seems complicated. I have enough friends living in the suburbs in the Midwest to believe that what the president is saying will, in fact, resonate with some voters. Especially those who haven’t ventured into “the city” for months and what they know of the protests is limited to what they see on TV and read on Facebook.

But the real question is how much will it resonate? And so far, the answer seems to be not a whole lot.

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 59% of Americans said Biden would do a better job handling the protests, compared with about 39% who said the same about Trump. When it comes to handling racial discrimination, 64% said Biden would do a better job as opposed to nearly 34% for Trump. And on reducing violence in the country overall, Americans favored Biden over Trump, 59% to 39%

All of which makes me wonder why Biden and Harris are giving so much air to Trump’s law-and-order narrative?

Why, at a time when we learn of another Black man shot by police almost every week and when police unions are scuttling legislation in Sacramento to bring about criminal justice reform, make a big stink about being endorsed by law enforcement officials, as the Biden campaign did on Friday?

Why even talk about protests that have been overwhelmingly peaceful?

And why release ads promising to punish the very few who turn to vandalism and theft, instead of solely focusing on why they are out there at all? Didn’t we settle this back in May when everyone lost their mind over people stealing stuff out of a Target in the mayhem after Floyd died in Minneapolis?

“Joe Biden is giving his own version of the ‘very fine people on both sides’ narrative,” Abdullah said. “He should take an unshakable stance on the side of those of us who are protesting police brutality and violence against white supremacist terrorism, but he hasn’t done that.”

To be fair, the former vice president has called out Trump for inciting violence with his rhetoric and for refusing to denounce his supporters who have shown up at peaceful protests with guns and, in at least one case, killed people. The Biden campaign, with Harris at the forefront, also is pushing for police reform.

One thing seems clear, though. If fretful Democrats were hoping that activists marching for Black lives would take a hint and take a break between now and election day, that’s not going to happen. Not in California anyway.

“Nobody’s going to ever make me not protest,” Abdullah said. “The one way they can be sure that we’ll protest harder is to tell us we can’t.”

Perhaps that’s the thinking behind one of the findings in the ABC News/Ipsos poll. When asked if what Biden has been saying is making the protests better, worse or having no effect one way or the other, about half said he hasn’t had much of an effect.

“Hearing a Democrat say something like that, like the rioting is crossing the line? Well, killing Black people is also crossing the line,” Butler said. “What do you expect people to do?”

Right now it’s a rallying point for the law and order campaign of Trump. I would hope that it can stop now and wait until , hopefully, Trump loses.

Just seems so simple to me.

Far-right leader wants Portland mayor to apologize for ‘culture of lawlessness’ that he says killed a follower

By RICHARD READSEATTLE BUREAU CHIEF
SEP. 5, 20207:54 PM UPDATEDSEP. 5, 2020 | 9:39 PM
VANCOUVER, Wash. — As social justice activists prepared Saturday for the 100th consecutive day of protests in Portland, Ore., the leader of a far-right organization called on the city’s mayor to apologize for “a culture of lawlessness” that he said resulted in the death of one of his followers last weekend.
Joey Gibson, founder of Patriot Prayer, a local group considered an extremist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center, spoke at a memorial gathering just north of Portland in Vancouver, Wash., for Aaron “Jay” Danielson, who died in a shooting Aug. 29. Gibson also called on Oregon’s governor to apologize for calling Danielson a white supremacist.

Michael Forest Reinoehl, a self-described antifascist who had been providing security for protesters who have gathered nightly since the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, was accused of shooting Danielson, 39.

Reinoehl, who had a Black Lives Matter raised-fist tattoo on his neck, died Thursday in a hail of gunfire as members of a federal fugitive task force confronted him in Lacey, Wash. Court documents seeking his arrest described both Danielson and Reinoehl as carrying firearms at the time of the street shooting.

On Saturday night, in apparent reference to federal agents’ killing of Reinoehl, President Trump, who earlier offered excuses for the actions of the firearm-toting 17-year-old accused of killing of two Black Lives Matters protesters during a demonstration in Kenosha, Wis., tweeted, “Congratulations to the U.S. Marshals on a job well done in Portland. LAW & ORDER!”

The marshals actually shot Reinoehl dead near Lacey, Wash., 120 miles north of Portland.

On Thursday night, in a tweet apparently sent after the suspect was killed, Trump tweeted criticism of Portland police for not arresting him. “Everybody knows who this thug is,” Trump wrote. “No wonder Portland is going to hell!”

Meanwhile, on Saturday night, Portland officers were blocking hundreds of protesters who tried to march to demonstrate at a police precinct building, ordering them to return to a city park where they had initially assembled.

Gibson spoke earlier Saturday as activists prepared for their nightly rally and march. Members of Black Lives Matter and other groups demand deep cuts or dissolution of the Portland Police Bureau; the City Council has trimmed the budget and instituted limited reforms.

Months of clashes between protesters and police — and for a time, federal agents blamed by city and state officials for making the violence worse — have outraged Trump and his followers who say Portland has descended into anarchy. Trump supporters organized a caravan of trucks Aug. 29, some of which drove into the city, their occupants firing paintballs and mace at left-wing protesters who threw objects back at them and tried to block vehicles.

The shooting took place on a largely quiet street in the wake of the protest and counter-protest.

Gibson told more than 300 people, some standing by with assault rifles, who gathered at the memorial beneath tall cedars in a Vancouver city park that he didn’t want to see anyone commit violence in retribution for Danielson’s death.

But Gibson had blunt words regarding Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, both Democrats,

“Because of his policies, Jay was murdered,” he said of Wheeler, adding that city leaders had failed to crack down on protesters. “He’s built a city of lawlessness, they’ve built a culture of lawlessness, they’ve allowed them to get away with whatever they want.”

He said of Brown: “The way that she talked about Jay is a million times harder than anything that she ever said about the people rioting in Portland every single day.”

Asked for a response, Tim Becker, a spokesman for Wheeler, said in a statement that “lawlessness has never been acceptable in our city. We cannot truly move on together and make the positive changes we want to see until the violence is stopped.”

In a statement Friday, Brown called for an end to the violence in Portland. “The only way through this is if we all work together,” she said.

In Portland, south across the Columbia River from the Vancouver memorial, Black Lives Matter activists and supporters gathered in a city park Saturday afternoon for talks and music.

Among them was John Sullivan, 39, an activist from Salt Lake City who said he had come to take part in a few days of demonstrations including the 100th nightly protest.

“We’ve got to support each other in different regions to push a larger message, that is to stop the brutality and killing of unarmed Black people,” he said. “That’s how you bring change nationally.”

Sullivan, who is Black, said he had started a group called Insurgents USA, some of whose 150 members openly carry semiautomatic rifles at rallies in Utah — just as members of far-right organizations do.

“You’re now carrying a gun, and you can speak their language,” Sullivan said. “And they’re less likely to shoot at you, because you can shoot back.”

Sullivan added that he had not brought his AR-15 to Oregon, and said that while he had worn his protective vest, he left its ceramic armor plates at home because they would have been too heavy to carry on the flight to Portland.

Average people living next door in Wisconsin. Two separate views.

Two Kenosha neighbors, two views of the nation’s political divide

Mary Morgan initially posted her Trump sign and flag at the edge of her lawn, but moved it back.
Mary Morgan initially posted her Trump sign and flag at the edge of her lawn, but moved it back at the request of her neighbors “because we’re friends.”(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)
By MOLLY HENNESSY-FISKEHOUSTON BUREAU CHIEF
SEP. 4, 20205:37 PM

KENOSHA, Wis. — The Morgans and the Hanneses fly their political colors — one for President Trump, the other for Joe Biden — on adjoining front yards that have remained a neighborly, if intense, battlefield in the nation’s culture wars.
At the Morgan home on Third Avenue in Kenosha’s historic Harbor Side district, a Trump flag waved in the breeze Friday next to a “Women for Trump” sign and a carved wooden bear wearing a homemade plastic “Make America Great Again” hat. Mary Morgan keeps close watch on things, as people have stolen her signs and shouted epithets toward her.

On the other side of the yard, where former flower child-turned painter and grandmother Susan Hannes lives, the breeze stirred “Biden 2020” flags near a sign that said “Black lives matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal, science is real, love is love, no matter your faith or ability kindness is everything.”

After protests and violence erupted in Kenosha, the competing messages on the front lawns have forced the longtime neighbors — who avoided talking politics for years — to confront political and ideological divisions roiling this crucial swing state and the country. At one point recently they, too, inevitably, clashed.

Kenosha natives Susan Hannes and Dick Hannes unfurl new “Biden 2020” flags

The Morgans and the Hanneses live in a moment of reckoning. They are not on the front lines of protests featured on the nightly news. But they have their fears, angers and resentments. And like millions of Americans, they are digging in and clinging to their politics even as they acknowledge they must live side-by-side ahead of what is certain to be one of the most bruising elections in the country’s history.

“I don’t talk politics with her at all,” Susan Hannes said of Morgan. “I just don’t want to get into any kind of confrontations with her.”

Morgan, 69, moved back to Kenosha six years ago from a nearby town to live on Lake Michigan. A retired office manager, grandmother and poll worker, she wears her strawberry blonde hair cut short and prefers casual tank tops and sneakers. She’s been a Trump fan since before the election in 2016, undeterred by his rhetoric, tweets and “locker room talk.” That’s when she put up her first, homemade Trump signs, near her garden of Dahlias, marigolds, geraniums and moss roses. The signs were stolen and she got harassed by protesters in the nearby park and stopped replacing them.

Last month, though, she visited a Trump campaign office and picked up new signs to add to her leftover July Fourth decorations

“I regained courage,”
Mary Morgan wasn’t political for years but supported Trump before he was elected in 2016. Last month, she installed new Trump signs and a flag. “I regained courage,” Morgan said.(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)
Passing drivers still curse and flip her the bird when she’s on the lawn. Morgan finds relief in Trump supporters who stop to talk, strangers who thank her for her passion for the combative 45th president. They call her “a bright spot.” When her Trump/Pence sign disappeared last month, a neighbor around the corner brought her a replacement. It got stolen again last week.

“They don’t take the Biden ones,” Morgan said as she sat in a pink lawn chair with her dog Charlie, a caramel-colored schnauzer mix, at her feet, waving to neighbors and explaining why she backs Trump more strongly than ever, tweets and all, because of the protests and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“He’s been out front,” she said. “He’s handled it well.”

When the president came to town this week, Morgan — who calls herself a “never masker” — went to see the motorcade. Later, she held a watch party at her house. Her son and ex-husband are former police officers, and the recent antipolice brutality protests a few streets away following the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by police on Aug. 23 scared her.

Mary Morgan and her neighbors both like to garden, and have added not just political signs but also lawn ornaments
Mary Morgan and her neighbors both like to garden, and have added not just political signs but also lawn ornaments.(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)
“These poor police, they have no desire to shoot somebody. When they get up in the morning, all they want to do is to come home to their families,” she said, noting a police officer friend was fatally shot in the line of duty.

Trump has said he wanted to send the National Guard to Kenosha but local officials resisted, and Morgan faults the Democratic governor and mayor for not listening.

“It was frightening to be down here, to hear the helicopters and see the smoke. The police were overwhelmed,” she said. “You could smell the tear gas and hear the cars exploding. All of this could have been avoided.”

Morgan said she’s troubled to see people judge the Blake shooting based on a 20-second video. She sees Kyle Rittenhouse, a white Illinois 17-year-old charged with shooting and killing two protesters, as a defender of local businesses. Her 20 year-old granddaughter — working at a gas station near the protests — was called a racist, and had a window broken during the melee and her car totaled.

Morgan’s son and daughter pleaded with her to leave the neighborhood at the height of the conflict, but she’s a gun owner, and stood her ground.

“Every window that was broken, every building that burned, is a vote for Trump,” she said.

Her daughter, who voted for Obama, is now a Trump supporter, she said, “because of the riots.” Morgan’s trying to persuade her granddaughter, who’s also liberal, to vote for Trump, too. Morgan doesn’t see America as prejudiced, and can’t understand why her neighbors or other white Kenoshans support Black Lives Matter.

“What is it about our country that they don’t like? Why is the white percentage of Black Lives Matter so big? What is it that drives their anger? What is systemic racism?” she said.

That anyone could ask such questions baffles Morgan’s neighbors, Susan and Dick Hannes. Susan said the nation is in desperate need of fixing and that “it gives me hope” to see Blacks and whites protesting together against racism.

“I just can’t understand all the violence and the hate — it’s Trump’s America,” she said as she sat on her porch. As the couple discussed their views Friday, one stranger spotted their signs, beeped and waved at them. Another driver shouted her displeasure with Biden. “I don’t know why people can’t just respect.”

The couple posted a Black Lives Matter sign because it summed up their beliefs. They added the Biden flags after Morgan planted hers. They also added a mask to the concrete cat statue in their garden, a counterpoint to Morgan’s bear.

Dick Hannes retired after a career working for automakers and the autoworkers’ union, while his wife of 55 years, Susan, is a painter whose work fills her home studio.
Married 55 years this month, the Hanneses were just as scared by recent violence as was Morgan. Richard Hannes voted Republican until Reagan ran for reelection in 1984. But they sympathized with Jacob Blake’s family and the larger Black community. They were heartened to see Joe Biden meet with the Blake family when he visited Kenosha Thursday and condemn violence by Rittenhouse and other vigilantes.

“Somehow, we have to get along, even if we don’t agree with each other,” Dick Hannes said.

Like Morgan, Dick Hannes, 79, a U.S. Army and National Guard veteran who worked most of his career for Chrysler and the United Auto Workers union, is a gun owner, but his are packed away somewhere in the basement. When protests erupted, he went out and brought a different kind of protection: A fire extinguisher. Their son, a Kenosha fire battalion chief, was out battling blazes that consumed dozens of local businesses. Some of their other children pleaded with them to leave, just as Morgan’s did, but they were not abandoning their home of 25 years.

Dick Hannes— who regularly wears a mask and doesn’t go to protests because he fears COVID-19 — has researched hate groups and the country’s growing economic disparities, and tries to discuss them with conservative childhood friends and golf buddies — “throwing darts” he calls it. But he said they quickly shut down conversations.

“They don’t want to hear it,” he said as he sat on the porch in his slippers.

The couple worry that the country is so tense, so divided and armed, that the upcoming election could spark a civil war, especially with militias in the streets from Portland to Minneapolis.

“If Trump is elected, we will become a fascist dictatorship,” said Dick Hannes.

Sitting across from him in flowing skirt and blouse secured with a seashell, his wife grimaced.

“I fear for our country,” she said.

But there’s another possible future they hope for, one where Americans, despite their political differences, get along.

Last month, when Hannes first noticed Morgan’s new Trump sign and flag, they were planted close to the property line. Soon, Hannes and her husband started to receive complaints from neighbors and passing drivers who thought they were the Trump supporters.

“Technically, the flag was waving on our property,” Dick Hannes said.

So his wife went next door to ask Morgan to move the sign and flag back.

At first, Morgan refused.

“It’s my property — I can do what I want,” she thought.

Hannes was disappointed, but ready to accept her decision.

“I really believe in our democracy. I respect that we all have a right to support whoever we want,” she said.

Morgan thought about how, despite their political differences, the neighbors frequently relied on each other. In the summer, they conferred about plantings. In the winter, they shoveled each other’s sidewalks. When Morgan had a bat infestation and asked to pitch a tent in their yard to sleep, the Hanneses urged her to stay in their studio.

And so, she changed her mind.

Before leaving the yard, Morgan agreed to move the sign and flag farther back, “because we’re friends.” Hannes thanked her.

White people have gentrified Black Lives Matter. It’s a problem

By ERIN B. LOGANSTAFF WRITER
SEP. 4, 20203 AM
WASHINGTON — In July, a woman folded her body yoga-style onto the asphalt of a Portland street, her breasts and vagina exposed before a line of police officers. She said the movement for racial justice provoked a “very deep feminine place” within and that her “nakedness is political.” We don’t know the woman’s identity, but she has called herself a “non-Black person of color.” Some on Twitter described her actions as “stunning and brave.” I found it a grotesque display of privilege.
Black Lives Matter was once shunned by the white establishment. But now, it’s chic. And that’s a problem.

Here in Washington, where the phrase is plastered on the street that runs perpendicular to the White House, white Black Lives Matters protesters joined Black colleagues in shouting at a restaurant patron who had declined to raise her fist in solidarity. One of the white people there, Chuck Modiano, 50, a journalist, told me: “In the moment, it was hard for me to understand that though she said she supported BLM, she did not raise her fist.”

BLM banners fly from homes in Silver Lake. BLM posters are taped to the windows of Portland coffee shops. BLM hashtags fill users’ bios on Twitter and Tinder.

Institutions including Uber, Airbnb and the National Football League have embraced Black Lives Matter. (Yes, the same NFL that shunned Colin Kaepernick four years ago for kneeling in protest of police brutality now issues calls to “end racism” in their endzones.)

This jolt of white solidarity is not imaginary. According to a June poll from Monmouth University, 49% of white Americans now say police are more likely to use excessive force against a Black culprit. In 2016, that figure was 25%. But will it last?

White people have been involved in Black liberation efforts for centuries, from abolition in the 19th century to civil rights in the 20th, according to Hasan Kwame Jeffries, a history professor at Ohio State.

Some white supporters bolstered the original Black Lives Matter movement, which emerged in response to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014. And in this second big wave of BLM protests that began in May after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, an unprecedented number of white people flooded the streets.

Young people like me (I’m 25) were the largest age cohort among the protesters. One reason young people protested is that they had been cooped up in their homes due to the global pandemic, said Douglas McAdam, a sociologist at Stanford who studies social movements. He told me that the dire economy, coupled with disdain for the current president, is also a factor in a large number of young people in the streets.

In other words, it can be hard to disaggregate young people’s rage about the loss of life, hope, jobs and opportunities from their righteous solidarity with Black protesters.

But Jeffries told me that, in broad terms, there is a distinction between the motivations of white and Black protesters.

Historically, when Black people protest, they are responding to intolerable and immediate injustice — say, the water crisis in Flint. In contrast, Jeffries said, white Americans tend to protest over more abstract goals — like the Occupy Wall Street protests against economic inequality or the melting of Arctic glaciers — and are driven by the “fierce urgency of the future.”

“What you’re willing to sacrifice, demand and compromise is going to be different,” Jeffries said. “There is a shared sense of the problem but your immediate objective is fundamentally different.”

This is certainly true for AJ Lovelace. The 28-year old activist filmmaker felt the marches over the summer started off coherent and then devolved into being performative.

“It was obvious to me that people were out there to say they were out there,” Lovelace said. “White girls would agitate the police and then cry when they responded. This isn’t how a protest works.”

“Saying Black Lives Matter is about the present,” Lovelace said. “If we are alive and breathing now, we are entitled to having a future. And I feel like white people get caught up in the game of politics and they lose the focus that this is not just about that. What it is about is changing a racist and oppressive system so there can be real measurable equality and equity,” he said.

“It’s bigger than one presidential candidate,” he added.

As a Black woman, I agree. It’s hard for white people to grasp that Black people have suffered from systemic racism under every president, including Barack Obama. Black America knows this struggle began long before Trump and will persist once he’s gone.

William Sturkey, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that when Black liberation movements emerge, there always “comes a point when white allies realize the gravity of the movement and want to make sure they are on the right side of history.”

“Their presence in the civil rights movement did help shine more of a light on protests but it overshadowed the courage of the original Black activists,” he said.

White co-optation can overshadow those involved in grassroots efforts, and it creates the illusion that “everyone was part of this movement the whole time,” he said. After the dust settled in the 1970s and public opinion shifted, everyone claimed to have been a civil rights activist.

Anti-racist author and lecturer Tim Wise said he is “cautiously optimistic” about the onslaught of white faces in crowds but also “nervous about what happens when people who really up until May weren’t particularly engaged in this issue are all of a sudden ‘ready for the revolution.’”

Wise said that while protests can be cathartic, “95% of what needs to happen is not in the streets.”

That’s true. Most of what needs to change happens in a civic setting often void of TV cameras. And it is an improbable place for a white woman spreading her legs for the whole world.

It’s going to take drastic changes in policy and laws. It will also require everyone’s attention.

Jeffries told me that if history shows one thing to be true, it’s that white attention and sympathy for Black social justice is fleeting. It wanes when cameras disappear.

I fear that may be happening now.

According to a June poll, 45% of white people surveyed found racism to be a “big problem.” By early August, that number had fallen to 33%.

I suppose I’m not too surprised … because … white people.

OPINIONENTER THE FRAY
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