Today is the four year anniversary of the release of my illustration “Portland — Year of Protest”.
↑ Download the full-res art for free.
I created this piece out of sheer necessity. May 2020-2021 following the murder of George Floyd was a whirlwind that left me with a disorganized pile of intense and significant memories unlike anything I’d ever experienced, and lessons to go along with them. I knew if I didn’t reflect and record them somehow, they’d begin to fade.
These memories are not mine alone. I could think of no better way to express my gratitude to every person who I struggled alongside, and who shared their own impactful stories with me, than to create a tribute to our shared experiences through art. I still stop and gaze at it from time to time with astonishment that it all happened.
As our current protest season ramps up, I hope it helps you reflect on your own your own lessons from those days, and your role in the continuing fight.
The following highlights were later featured in Willamette Week 47/35 for the week of June 30, 2021, along with a statement from me and a centerfold print of the full illustration.
Throughout June, marches originating at Revolution Hall drew crowds of thousands, who traveled along various routes holding signs, chanting, and drumming. Though the marches occasionally concluded downtown where police clashes took place, they more often ended with speeches in parks. On the edges of many marches, teams of bike corkers protected protesters from vehicles at intersections.
Starting in July, federal agencies began to make appearances downtown near Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse. Though the first groups of protesters to face off against them were small crowds of dedicated nightly protesters, increasing public awareness of the violence and abductions by federal agents resulted in a massive wave of renewed engagement.
Tensions between antifascist protesters and various white supremacist groups escalated to a brawl in front of the Justice Center on August 22nd. Hours of intermittent fighting, which involved paintballs, smoke bombs, fireworks, and copious amounts of pepper spray, came to an end when antifascists advanced victoriously to push the disjointed adversaries out of the area.
On September 5th, to celebrate the 100th consecutive night of protest in Portland, protesters gathered for speeches in Ventura Park. When they left to march toward the East Precinct, police quickly intervened with tear gas, impact munitions, and violent bull rushes. Protesters responded with fireworks and misthrown Molotov cocktails. By the end of the night, 59 protesters had been arrested.
Occasional protests at the ICE facility in South Waterfront usually lead to battles with federal agents, who would emerge from inside the building with a volley of impact munitions and tear gas against protesters with umbrellas and plastic shields. However, despite claims to the contrary by mayor Ted Wheeler, attacks by Portland Police often appeared to be coordinated with those of federal agencies. On one such occasion on September 18th, Portland Police charged the back of the crowd and made several vicious arrests under the cover of smoke deployed by the feds.
Mutual aid networks have been essential to sustaining the protests and beginning to build the kind of world that many protesters are fighting for. Community members came to depend on these groups for food, protective gear, mechanic work, firewood, clothing, prescription eyewear, and many others specialities. The mutual aid groups that arose in response to the protests eventually provided necessary support to those displaced by unprecedented wildfires in September 2020.
As crowd numbers began to dwindle and the remaining community became more connected, there were opportunities for new protest tactics. On October 10th, a group coordinated through secret channels to silently march to the North Precinct. Information about the plan was leaked publicly, and police were ready to attack protesters immediately upon their arrival. The group struggled to hold onto each other as they were pepper sprayed, violently pried apart, and arrested.
The ongoing protests necessitated many different specialized support roles. Community members performing jail support have been continuously posted outside of the Justice Center, providing aid to anyone being released from the jail, as well as the nearby homeless community and anyone else in need of assistance. Medics have also been present throughout the protests, providing everything from ear protection, to eye wash, to treatments for critical injuries inflicted by police.
On the night of October 11th, an indigenous-lead march from Waterfront Park to South Park Blocks culminated in the toppling of two statues. The first, a statue of Theodore Roosevelt, an expansionist who sought to erase Native Americans from their ancestral lands, and the second, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, who ordered the mass execution of 38 Dakota men.
On the night of October 27th, protesters marched to Portland City Commissioner Dan Ryan’s home to urge him to vote in favor of a 18 million dollar police budget cut. Despite the heartfelt stories protesters shared with him in support of their pleas for defunding, and a prior stated interest in reallocating police funding to other programs, Commissioner Ryan cast his tie-breaking vote against the cut, prompting subsequent protests at his home.
As increasing numbers of Portlanders were affected by homelessness throughout the year, a disproportionate amount of them being non-white, many people involved in racial justice protests also directed their efforts toward preventing homeless encampments from being destroyed by city contractors. The protest in response to the sweep of Laurelhurst Park on November 19th was one notable effort among many similar ones at various other camps.
Early in the morning on December 8th, after months of community gatherings facilitated by the Kinney family to resist their eviction from the Red House, police initiated a long-anticipated raid. Despite several arrests, and efforts to render the Red House uninhabitable, the community responded by constructing their own barricades to defend the home and the surrounding encampment. Protesters occupied the fortified area for multiple days until a tentative agreement was reached that would allow the Kinney family to keep their home.
On March 12th, a group of over 100 protesters moving through the Pearl District were indiscriminately detained in a kettle by Portland Police. Press and legal observers were asked to leave before protesters were singled out to be photographed and identified as a condition of their release from the area. Many resisted, and several were ultimately arrested.
Artistically, this was the most intensive project I’ve ever taken on. Planning the layout, developing the style, sketching and positioning each individual element, carefully inking, systematically coloring, and accounting for a standard allowance of time spent staring at my own drawing immersed in vivid warzone flashbacks, this single piece took me approximately 350 active hours to complete. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started it.
Given that I intended this piece to be printed at 18”×24”, and I was working almost entirely in Procreate, I was constrained to 6 layers to render the entire illustration up until the final stages. Thoughtful planning went into layering the detailed sketches of each different object category over the rough composition.
For efficient coloring, I broke the illustration up into an ink layer and four brightly colored masking shapes, painting alpha locked, layer-by-layer. The final color palette came together cohesively through a series of adjustment layers and blend modes, with texture applied throughout.
The title was lettered based on warped type set in Ohno’s ‘Obviously’.
I’ve made a few alternate colorways for various occasions and purposes over the years.
The line art version was made available to download as a coloring page.
The ‘Riot Night’ variant was printed in a limited run of three exclusively for an auction to benefit the Ted Wheeler recall campaign.
The ‘Pastel’ variant was printed in a limited run of 30 to give out at the Summer 2022 Anarchist Solstice Mutual Aid Fair.
The ‘Color Anomaly’ variant was printed off once to be accessible for a comrade’s particular type of color blindness.
You can still buy a print of the classic variant, if you like.
