Federal Officers Are Leaving Portland — But Heading To Other Cities
The Justice Department announced Wednesday it would send officers to Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cleveland to fight violent crime. Detractors say the federal crackdown is political.

David Mack BuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on July 29, 2020

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

The Trump administration has agreed to withdraw federal officers from Portland, Oregon, officials announced Wednesday, following weeks of controversy about their presence in the city.

But the announcement came shortly after the Justice Department said it would send agents to Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee in what it described as a bid to fight violent crime, but which detractors of the administration have dubbed stunts designed to help the President Donald Trump campaign for reelection on a message of law and order.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, said the withdrawal in her state came after discussions she had with Vice President Mike Pence about the presence of the officers in Portland, who were ostensibly sent by Trump to restore order to a city besieged by "anarchists," but who Brown and many locals say are themselves an occupying force.

"They have acted as an occupying force & brought violence," Brown said in a tweet Wednesday. "Starting tomorrow, all Customs and Border Protection & ICE officers will leave downtown Portland."

The governor said local state police would still patrol the city's downtown to "keep the peace" and allow demonstrations to continue.

Chad Wolf, acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a news release that an "augmented" force would remain in Portland to protect the federal courthouse that had been at the center of protests, but he added that "should circumstances on the ground significantly approve due to the influx of state and local law enforcement, we anticipate the ability to change our force postur

Wolf later told reporters that agency law enforcement personnel will remain in Portland until they are “assured” that the courthouse will not be attacked nightly and that officers would remain “in the area” in case they get any indication that the plan with Oregon officials is not working.

Wolf said Brown reached out to him recently and offered the use of Oregon State Police. “It’s what we’ve been asking for,” he said.

The state police, according to Wolf, will deploy a robust force in the streets surrounding the courthouse along with Portland police officers.

The development seemed to contradict comments made by Trump just hours earlier outside the White House, where he told reporters federal agents were in the city to protect a federal building from "nasty and vicious people."

"Either they clean out Portland — the governor and the mayor, who are weak — either they clean out Portland or we're going in to do it for them," he said.

For weeks, the presence of the more than 100 agents — many wearing camouflage uniforms without any form of identification as they detained people in unmarked vans — has sparked anger both locally in Portland and nationally. Both the offices of the inspector general for the departments of Homeland Security and Justice are now investigating the actions of the federal law enforcement officers there.

The federal crackdown on crime in several states, dubbed Operation Legend, has already seen federal officers sent to Kansas City, Missouri, as well as to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico

As part of what the Justice Department said were efforts to combat gun violence, violent gangs, and drug trafficking, more than 25 federal investigators with the FBI, DEA, and ATF will now be sent to Cleveland, while another 42 will be sent to Detroit and 25 more will go to Milwaukee.

All three cities are run by Democratic mayors, with Trump previously denouncing "Democrat-run" cities.


Matt McClain-Pool / Getty Images
Bill Barr at Tuesday's congressional hearing.


At a heated congressional hearing on Tuesday, Attorney General Bill Barr defended the work of federal officers and their presence in Portland, describing attacks on the courthouse there as an "assault on the government of the United States."

“Rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims,” he said.

But Democrats assailed Barr for the federal crackdown, arguing it was politically motivated.

“The president wants footage for his campaign ads, and you appear to be serving it up to him as ordered,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler said. “You are projecting fear and violence nationwide in pursuit of obvious political objectives. Shame on you, Mr. Barr.”

Hamed Aleaziz contributed to this story.


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David Mack is a deputy director of breaking news for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Trump Administration Will Start Charging Immigrants Fees For Applying For Asylum
The US now joins the ranks of Iran, Fiji, and Australia in charging the fee, which one asylum officer called "disgusting."

Hamed AleazizBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 31, 2020,

Gregory Bull / AP
An immigrant looks on with his children as they wait to hear if their number is called to apply for asylum in the United States at the border in Tijuana, Mexico, Jan. 25, 2019.


The US will become just one of just four countries to charge asylum-seekers a fee to apply for protections, according to a finalized policy announced Friday.

The move is just the latest by the Trump administration to target and restrict protections for those fleeing their home countries. The US now joins the ranks of Iran, Fiji, and Australia in charging a fee. In the US, asylum-seekers will be charged $50 on asylum applications starting in October.


“A $50 fee is in line with the fees charged by these other nations,” the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) explained in the final rule posted Friday.

However, one asylum officer who spoke with BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity said the fee was discouraging.

“The larger problem is that humanitarian applications by their nature should be free,” the officer said. “The idea of charging people who are fleeing — and not helping if they don't pay up — is disgusting.”

Another asylum officer said it will cost the agency more to collect the fee than $50, “which doesn’t come close to covering the cost of adjudicating an asylum application.”

“This is a penalty against asylum applicants,” the officer added.


Ryan Remiorz / AP
Asylum-seekers cross the New York border in Hemmingford, Quebec, March 18.

The asylum fee is just one of many changes included in the rule issued by USCIS, which is primarily funded by immigrants’ applications, such as filing for a green card or work permit. The agency is required to review its fee structure every two years.

The final rule will make it so immigrants seeking to naturalize and applying to become US citizens will have to pay upwards of $1,170, a jump from $640.

Agency officials said Friday the rule was increasing fees for many applications to recoup money it needs to remain functioning.

“USCIS is required to examine incoming and outgoing expenditures and make adjustments based on that analysis,” USCIS deputy director for policy Joseph Edlow said in a statement. “These overdue adjustments in fees are necessary to efficiently and fairly administer our nation’s lawful immigration system, secure the homeland and protect Americans.”

The agency has been in the midst of a financial crisis for the last several months, warning that it will furlough upward of 70% of staff if it does not receive emergency funding from Congress by the end of August.

The reasons for the funding shortage, though have been debated — agency officials cite a massive decline in immigration applications due to the pandemic, while immigrant advocates and experts argue that the Trump administration’s restrictive policies have played a part in the budget issues.

Hamed Aleaziz is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

Facebook Bought Instagram To Neutralize A Competitor, Emails Show

The revelation from Mark Zuckerberg's emails was a flashpoint during the congressional hearing on tech antitrust.

Craig Silverman  BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 29, 2020,

AP
Mark Zuckerberg at the hearing.


When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was considering buying Instagram in 2012, he told his company’s CFO that it would neutralize a competitor, according to emails obtained by the House Antitrust Subcommittee and released Wednesday.

The emails, which were first published by the Verge, were cited by House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler while questioning Zuckerberg at a Capitol Hill hearing into antitrust.

Along with Zuckerberg, the top executives of Amazon, Google, and Apple appeared via videoconference to be questioned about the market power of and consumer harm caused by their companies. Republican members of Congress also pressed Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai about alleged anti-conservative bias on their platforms.

The hearing came after the subcommittee spent roughly a year investigating possible antitrust violations by the big technology platforms. As part of the process, the committee gathered records from the companies, including the emails sent between Zuckerberg and Facebook’s former CFO, David Ebersman.

In an email sent in late February 2012, Zuckerberg told Ebersman he was thinking about how much Facebook should pay to acquire smaller competitors like Instagram and Path, which were then upstart social networks. Facebook would eventually acquire Instagram in April that year for $1 billion.

“These businesses are nascent but the networks are established, the brands are already meaningful, and if they grow to a large scale they could be very disruptive to us,” Zuckerberg wrote.



House Judiciary Dems@HouseJudiciary

Documents from the Hearing on “Online Platforms and Market Power: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google"06:21 PM - 29 Jul 2020
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Ebersman replied that it typically made sense to acquire another company for one of three reasons: neutralizing a competitor, acquiring talent, or integrating products.

Zuckerberg said it was a combination of the first and third reasons.

“There are network effects around social products and a finite number of different social mechanics to invent. Once someone wins at a specific mechanic, it’s difficult for others to supplant them without doing something different,” the CEO wrote.

He added that acquiring one of these companies would buy Facebook time to ward off other competitive threats.

“Even if some new competitors springs up [sic], buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again,” he added.

Zuckerberg emailed Ebersman again 45 minutes later to walk back talk of “neutralizing a competitor.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that we’d be buying them to prevent them from competing with us in any way,” he wrote.

But Nadler seized upon the email exchange as evidence of anticompetitive behavior.

“Facebook saw Instagram as a threat that could potentially siphon business away from Facebook. So instead of competing with it, Facebook bought it,” he said. “This is exactly the type of acquisition the antitrust laws were designed to prevent. It should never have been permitted to happen and cannot happen again.”


Zuckerberg disagreed. “I've always been clear that we viewed Instagram both as a competitor and as a complement to our services,” he said, adding that the FTC did not block the acquisition at the time.

“Congressman, I think the FTC had all these documents and reviewed this and unanimously voted at the time not to challenge the acquisition. I think it looks obvious Instagram would have reached the scale it has today, but at the time it was far from obvious.”

After Zuckerberg cited the FTC in his answer, Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, the subcommittee chair, weighed in to say the FTC’s decision was irrelevant.

“I would remind the witness that the failures of the FTC in 2012, of course, do not alleviate the antitrust challenges the chairman [Nadler] described,” he said.

House Democrats released additional internal Facebook communications about the Instagram acquisition, including one from late January 2012 in which an unnamed employee said “Instagram is eating our lunch.”

Months later, on the day its acquisition of Instagram was made public, Zuckerberg wrote to the employee to acknowledge that “Instagram was our threat.”

“You were basically right,” he said. “One thing about startups, though, is you can often acquire them.”



House Judiciary Dems@HouseJudiciary

Documents from the Hearing on “Online Platforms and Market Power: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google"06:21 PM - 29 Jul 2020
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Aside from the previously unreleased Facebook emails about Instagram, the hearing did not provide many new revelations. Democratic members of the subcommittee questioned the CEOs about their products and businesses, while many Republicans pressed them on alleged anti-conservative censorship.

In one exchange, Rep. Frank Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee, asked Zuckerberg about action taken against Donald Trump Jr.’s account after he had shared a video filled with potentially harmful falsehoods about the coronavirus.

Zuckerberg pointed out that the account and incident in question happened on Twitter, not on any of Facebook’s products. "So it's hard for me to speak to that,” he said.


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Craig Silverman is a media editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in Toronto.

A Judge Blocked Trump's "Public Charge" Policy On Immigrants During The Pandemic

"As a direct result of the rule, immigrants are forced to make an impossible choice between jeopardizing health and personal safety or their immigration status," the judge wrote.
 

Hamed Aleaziz BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 29, 2020,

David Goldman / AP
People line up at a food distribution site in Chelsea, Massachusetts, which has a large immigrant population hit hard by the coronavirus, July 10.

A federal judge in New York on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a policy during the coronavirus pandemic that allows the government to deny permanent residency to immigrants who officials believe are likely to use public benefits.

The ruling, issued by US District Judge George Daniels, is the latest in the back-and-forth legal saga over the “public charge” policy.

“Doctors and other medical personnel, state and local officials, and staff at nonprofit organizations have all witnessed immigrants refusing to enroll in Medicaid or other public funded health coverage, or forgoing testing and treatment for COVID-19, out of fear that accepting such insurance or care will increase their risk of being labeled a public charge,” Daniels wrote in his ruling. “As a direct result of the rule, immigrants are forced to make an impossible choice between jeopardizing health and personal safety or their immigration status.”

Daniels said the block is in effect for any period during which there is a “national health emergency in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.”

The New York attorney general’s office had gone to the Supreme Court in April with a request to block the public charge rule in light of the pandemic. The request, which was denied, came several months after the conservative Supreme Court justices voted to allow the Trump administration to implement the policy as a legal challenge continued in the federal courts.

“We secured an injunction to block the Public Charge rule from taking effect during the #COVID19 pandemic and while our legal challenge is pending,” New York Attorney General Letitia James tweeted. “This is a major victory to protect the health of our communities across New York and the entire nation.”

The Immigration and Nationality Act has long allowed the government to reject granting permanent residency to immigrants who were determined to be a financial burden on society, or a public charge, meaning they’re dependent on the government for financial support.

The Trump administration’s rule, however, altered how the government decides if someone is a public charge, allowing officials to deny green cards to those who are determined likely to use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Section 8 housing vouchers and assistance, public housing, or most forms of Medicaid. Experts have said that the policy will change the face of immigration and discourage people from seeking public benefits.

The policy was implemented in late February.

The effects on COVID-19 prevention due to the public charge rule are not speculative or hypothetical, the attorneys argued, citing multiple declarations from doctors, attorneys, and community advocates.

Hamed Aleaziz is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

Breonna Taylor Is On The Cover Of O Magazine — The First One Ever Without Oprah

"Breonna Taylor had dreams," Oprah Winfrey said. "They all died with her the night five bullets shattered her body and her future."

Julia Reinstein BuzzFeed News Reporter


Posted on July 30, 2020, at 11:58 a.m. ET

For the first time in its 20-year history, Oprah Winfrey will not appear on the cover of the latest issue of O Magazine.

oprahmagazine

Verified

For the first time in 20 years, @oprah has given up her O Magazine cover to honor Breonna Taylor. She says, “Breonna Taylor. She was just like you. And like everyone who dies unexpectedly, she had plans. Plans for a future filled with responsibility and work and friends and laughter. Imagine if three unidentified men burst into your home while you were sleeping. And your partner fired a gun to protect you. And then mayhem. What I know for sure: We can’t be silent. We have to use whatever megaphone we have to cry for justice. And that is why Breonna Taylor is on the cover of O magazine. I cry for justice in her name.” Tap the link in our bio to read more about Oprah’s tribute to Breonna—and her recent conversation with her mother, Tamika Palmer. Breonna: This one’s for you 🙏🏽 The September issue will be available wherever you buy or download your magazines on 8/11. (🎨: @alexis_art)

Instead, an image of Breonna Taylor — who was killed by police in March — is being featured.

“Breonna Taylor. She was just like you," Winfrey said in an announcement of the cover on Thursday. "And like everyone who dies unexpectedly, she had plans. Plans for a future filled with responsibility and work and friends and laughter."

Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was asleep in her bed on March 13 when police broke down the door of her Louisville home as part of a drug investigation. Thinking the police were home invaders, Taylor's boyfriend fired his weapon. Police then fired at Taylor, who was unarmed, eight or more times.

One of the officers, Brett Hankison, was fired for misconduct. The other two other officers, Sgt. Jon Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, were placed on administrative reassignment. None have been arrested or charged in connection with her death.

For months, calls to "arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor" have been a constant refrain at protests and on social media.

Taylor was an emergency room technician with a bright future, her family told BuzzFeed News in June. She was working toward buying a house and starting a family with her boyfriend, and she had plans to go back to school to get her nursing degree.

In a tribute to Taylor, Winfrey shared details about how her loved ones will remember her.

"Breonna Taylor loved cars and treated her 2019 Dodge Charger like a trusted friend," Winfrey wrote. "Breonna Taylor loved chicken any way you could cook it. Breonna Taylor put hot sauce on everything, especially eggs. Breonna Taylor appreciated every kind of music and the dances that went along. Breonna Taylor treated all her friends like besties. Breonna Taylor was a force in the life of her 20-year-old sister."

"Breonna Taylor had dreams," she said. "They all died with her the night five bullets shattered her body and her future."


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Salvador Hernandez · July 15, 2020

Julia Reinstein is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Obama Used His John Lewis Eulogy To Condemn Trump's Response To The Portland Protests

Barack Obama gave a powerful eulogy for Rep. John Lewis at his funeral service.

]Tasneem NashrullaBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 30, 2020

Alyssa Pointer / AP



Barack Obama used his eulogy at the funeral for Rep. John Lewis on Thursday to compare President Donald Trump's sending of federal officers to quash protests in Portland, Oregon, to the tactics of George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor who sent state troopers to violently break up peaceful civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s.


Lewis, a civil rights icon who died on July 17 at age 80, was nearly beaten to death in Selma by Alabama troopers authorized by Wallace to stop a historic march for voting rights on March 7, 1965, in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday.


Speaking at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Obama also compared the current use of force by police against Black people to the racist actions of Bull Connor, the commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s who was known for using fire hoses and police dog attacks against civil rights activists in Alabama.

"Bull Connor may be gone, but today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans," Obama said, referring to the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.

"George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators," he added.



BuzzFeed News@BuzzFeedNews
Barack Obama at John Lewis' funeral: "Even as we sit here, there are those in power doing their darndest to discourage people from voting"06:14 PM - 30 Jul 2020
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Wallace, a Democratic politician and the 44th governor of Alabama, was a staunch segregationist who, as Lewis wrote in a 1998 New York Times opinion piece, "fought the civil rights movement with every fiber of his being."

"He was a demagogue whose words and actions created a climate that allowed for violent reprisals against those seeking to end racial discrimination," he wrote.

In March 1965, civil rights leaders, including Lewis, planned to lead a 54-mile march of around 600 activists from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery to protest a Black man's fatal shooting by troopers and to demand full voting rights for Black Americans.

Wallace, citing concerns of traffic flow, ordered state troopers "to use whatever measures are necessary to prevent" the march.

"Such a march cannot and will not be tolerated," Wallace said during a press conference at the time, according to a newspaper clipping from the Los Angeles Times.

Cameras captured state police violently breaking up the demonstration, using tear gas and clubs to beat up hundreds of marchers. Lewis, who said he nearly died that day, suffered a fractured skull, among other injuries.




Uncredited / AP, AP Photo/File

In Portland, dozens of widely shared videos have captured federal officers quashing what had been largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests by using tear gas, "less lethal" munitions, and batons.


Zane Sparling@PDXzane
Here’s the longer version of the protester being struck repeatedly by federal police tonight in Portland06:17 AM - 19 Jul 2020
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Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

A demonstrator tries to shield himself from tear gas deployed by federal agents during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield US Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, July 29.

Trump has repeatedly described protesters in Portland as "anarchists and agitators" and emphasized the need for federal troops to "protect" federal property in the city.

But the Trump administration agreed on Thursday to begin withdrawing federal officers from Portland as long as Oregon authorities take steps to protect federal buildings.

In the 1998 Times piece, Lewis wrote that when he met Wallace in 1979, he was a "changed man" who acknowledged his bigotry and "wanted to be forgiven."

Lewis wrote a final opinion piece for the New York Times prior to his death, which was published Thursday to coincide with his funeral. In it, the late Democratic lawmaker compared Black Lives Matter to the civil rights movement of his era.

"When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century," he wrote, "let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression, and war."

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Tasneem Nashrulla is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Omaha Police Arrested An Entire Black Lives Matter March. Protesters Said That’s Just Fired Them Up.

A new generation of leaders is looking to change how the city protests. “Omaha isn’t a city that’s known for its resistance.”

Amber Jamieson BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 31, 2020


Anna Reed / AP
Protesters march to the Old Market in Omaha, June 3. He and others were demonstrating against the death of James Scurlock.

Police in Omaha, Nebraska, trapped an entire Black Lives Matter protest march on a bridge last Saturday night, funneling all 120 people, including journalists and a legal observer, into police custody and long stretches in jail.

They shot pepper balls at protesters. They tackled the march leader, Bear Alexander, and “started kneeing me in the stomach, kneeing me in the ribs,” he told BuzzFeed News. By the end of it all, every protester was charged.

“It’s psychological warfare,” said Alexander, 23, who is a leader at ProBLAC, a new local Black-led protest group. “They wanted to discourage any future thought of doing direct action.”

Instead, it’s had the reverse effect. Organizers and protesters recently activated by the Black Lives Matter movement in Omaha told BuzzFeed News they are more determined than ever to take to the streets.

Facebook: video.php



Now, four members of the Progressive Black-Led Ally Coalition, or ProBLAC, are currently in Portland, Oregon, where federal officers have brutalized protesters for weeks, to learn best practices for protesting and organizing.

On Thursday, a workshop organized in part by the American Civil Liberties Union offered legal advice to the 120 protesters facing charges.

And earlier this week, protesters testified at a city council hearing about funding night vision goggles for the Omaha police, calling on the city government to slash the police budget.

It has been a long and hard summer of protest in Omaha, where the movement’s new leaders are reacting to the huge cultural forces shaping the nation while fighting the entrenched cultural forces embodied in the state’s now-defunct tourism slogan, “Nebraska Nice.”

“‘Nebraska Nice’ is not protesting. ‘Why would you ruin someone’s Saturday morning?’ ‘Nebraska Nice’ is not talking about race. ‘Why would you do that? Think about all the good things we have in Omaha,’” said Halley Taylor, a 34-year-old biracial Black woman who works as an English teacher at Nebraska’s largest public high school. “It is a cancer.”

Saturday’s march was the first one Alexander has ever led, and it was the first in Omaha since early June. It took place shortly after a white bar owner shot and killed James Scurlock, a 22-year-old demonstrating during the first weekend of Black Lives Matter protests after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis.


For the protest movement, Scurlock’s death — one of their own, during a demonstration calling for an end to violence against Black bodies — was a major shift.

Jake Gardner, a white bar owner, stood armed outside one of his businesses in the Old Market neighborhood during the protests. After an altercation with two men, Gardner began shooting — he later told authorities they were “warning shots” — and Scurlock, who was not part of the original altercation, jumped on his back to stop him. Gardner shot and killed him. Multiple associates have since come forward to say Gardner was known for making racist comments. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine declined to charge Gardner, announcing that his actions were in “self-defense.” After public outcry and protest, Kleine announced on June 3 that he would petition for a grand jury.

Even though Scurlock was a young Black father who many believe jumped on Gardner to protect others, protests in his name didn’t begin straight away.

“The night James Scurlock died, the next day we didn’t do anything. It goes to show the type of city Omaha is,” Alexander said. “We were told by our local Black leaders to not do anything — to calm down and go home and to rest, and to let them all handle it.”

Alexander calls himself “a prime example of systematic racism.” At age 20, he spent a year in state prison for selling marijuana. He’d been a third-year college student, wanting to be a teacher, but the felony charge ensured that was impossible, so he learned videography.

The 2020 Black Lives Matter movement shifted his life.

“Me going to prison, it didn't fuel me enough,” said Alexander. “It added a little fire in me, added knowledge and perspective. Those George Floyd protests were what really, really got me. That’s just what took me into hyperdrive.”

Now he’s determined to help lead the movement in Omaha. “Omaha isn’t a city that’s known for its resistance,” he said. “It’s almost a city of obedience.”


Halley Taylor
Halley Taylor and her little sister hold protest signs.


Taylor, the English teacher, agreed. “Nebraska Nice,” she said, is evidence of the community’s history of upholding the status quo.

“Because of the toxicity of the message of ‘Nebraska Nice,’ what you do not see is a historic culture of protesting here,” she told BuzzFeed News.

Until this summer, Taylor’s activism had been strictly in the classroom, where she leads her school’s “Young, Gifted, and Black” group and teaches her students to stand up against injustice.


It was watching videos of her students and other young people being brutalized by police during the May’s George Floyd demonstrations that compelled her to drive 30 minutes to the protest with water and supplies.

“I saw them screaming for help,” Taylor said. “Begging to be treated humanely by police officers treating them like rag dolls. As a teacher that was horrifying.”

That first protest she was teargassed and shot with pepper balls. The next night, she was one block away from Scurlock in the Old Market area when he was killed.

That shooting, she said, “gave us an opportunity to directly use this injustice he faced to continue why we are protesting.”

“To continue why we were there in the first place — to continue, period,” she said. “This is my Black life, too.”

Taylor grew up in West Omaha, one of the few biracial families in the predominantly white and wealthy area. It’s the same part of town that Kleine lives in, and where she spent 12 days protesting him in June.

For 36 straight days — in response to the 36 hours it took the Douglas County attorney to decide not to press charges after Scurlock was killed — protesters stood outside Kleine’s gated community in West Omaha. The “Justice for James Scurlock” protests were organized by Culxr House, a local creative group and event space.


Cole Christensen
Cole Christensen, whom police shot with pepper balls last Saturday night, volunteered as a shift leader during the Scurlock protests, attending 34 days. The 28-year-old knew the man who killed Scurlock personally. He said knowing Gardner’s racist background and that he hasn’t been charged yet moved him into action.

“The message in our eyes being sent to everyone in Omaha is ‘If you are wealthy and white and bring this city money through multiple tacky bars, we will give you a different set of rules, and this is your playground,’” said Christensen, who is white. “We don’t find that acceptable.”

Saturday’s protest was one of many held around the country in solidarity with Portland — but local organizers ensured it was also to honor Scurlock. “We will stand in solidarity with Portland as a call to action to end police brutality while also demanding JUSTICE FOR JAMES SCURLOCK,” read ProBLAC’s announcement.

Protesters gathered on Farnam Street in Midtown at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, an area with more foot traffic and businesses than where protests are traditionally held. After an hour of speeches and chants, Alexander led the group of 150 to 200 on a march through the streets.

Omaha police, in a timeline released Wednesday, said the event’s organizer “did not contact police for safety assistance and had not obtained a parade permit.”

ProBLAC did not work with police nor inform them of their plans in advance — that’s the point. “We will never ask the oppressor how to protest or when to protest against their oppression,” Alexander said.


“This is not a parade,” Taylor said. “This is a protest.”

During the protest, police drove ahead and blocked off cross streets to keep everything orderly. But police said the very act of protesters being in the streets caused them to shut the demonstration down.

“This is the Omaha Police Department; this has been declared an unlawful assembly,” an officer said, according to the police timeline. “You are all subject to arrest. Failure to disperse now will result in your arrest.” Police announced it over a cruiser’s speaker system 10 times between 8:50 p.m. and 9:09 p.m.

Then, 27 minutes passed, and protesters marched an additional 1.2 miles. They were one block from their end point, where the plan, they said, was to hold a minute of silence for Scurlock and then go home. It’s there police used a “kettle” maneuver — condensing a group of people and sometimes funneling them in one direction — with their cruisers on a bridge over the interstate.

Police confronted the protesters.

“It looked like they were ready to go to war,” said Riley Wilson, a 31-year-old law student and veteran who attended the protest as a legal observer. “They had weapons pointed up at people and they said, ‘Everyone is getting arrested; you’re all getting arrested.’”

There was no warning about mass arrests or a call to disperse before arrests began, according to the police’s timeline and eyewitnesses.

When asked why people were arrested, Omaha Police Capt. Mark Matuza told the Omaha World-Herald, "It leaned toward the potential of getting violent." Police also said some construction barrels and barricades had been placed by protesters to stop police cruisers following them. Wilson disputed the police narrative: “There was no violence, no property damage, no fires, no vandalism. Nothing.”

Police also told the World-Herald on Sunday that they deployed one pepper ball, a “less lethal” form of ammunition, and rubber bullets that also contained a chemical irritant.

But eyewitness video shows multiple shots were fired. The timeline released Wednesday by police acknowledged that “PepperBalls,” plural, were deployed.

Christensen, who was at the front of the march when arrests began, sent BuzzFeed News photos that show four separate injuries from pepper balls across his body.

“I was bleeding through my shirt the entire night I was in jail,” Christensen said. The chemical irritant in the pepper balls remained all over his body and mask while he was detained. He could not remove it, even with multiple showers and bottles of soap after returning home.

“It was unreal how aggressive these officers were,” he said.

Police kept Wilson and protesters on the bridge for two hours before leaving them waiting another four hours in a parking lot outside the correction facility and charging them, he said. In that time, their hands were still in zip ties and they were not given any food and only occasional water. Minors were also detained with them, he added.

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When Wilson was arrested, he was wearing a high-visibility yellow vest with the words “legal observer” written across it. He spent 22 hours in custody.

Alexander also spent 22 hours in police custody, most of that in solitary confinement. “It was really diminishing and demoralizing,” he said. At one point, he feared he’d been forgotten or that legal services had been unable to help.

A reported computer delay at the Douglas County Correctional Center meant some protesters were imprisoned up to 24 hours, kept in cramped holding cells with more than 40 people and overflowing sewage.

“A deliberate decision was made by [the] Omaha Police Department. The process was as slow as it could possibly be,” said Wilson, a second-year law student at Creighton University. “They could have ended that night and nobody could have been harmed or injured, and they made a willful decision to do what they did.”

Wilson said that when a doctor at the correctional facility was giving him a medical check, a corrections officer leaned in and said to the doctor: “What percentage of these guys do you think are going to do this again after tonight?”

The correctional officer replied to herself, Wilson said: “I bet zero. I bet they’ll see the $500 [bail] and decide it’s not worth it.”

“When she said that, it cemented in my mind the way the whole process is being treated is just to make it as slow and arduous and difficult as possible, and do that deliberately to send a message,” Wilson said. “To make it clear, ‘if you're going to protest the police, if you’re going to protest us, this is the price you’ll pay.’”

After the arrests on Saturday night, the ProBLAC members at the Portland protests suggested that Omaha had to be back out again in the streets the next day.

“They told us, ‘Why aren’t you out? You need to be protesting right now,’” Alexander said. “Omaha just isn’t ready for that — protests back to back to back to back.”

He’s currently organizing a protest calling for the city to defund the police on Aug. 11, during a public hearing on the city’s 2021 budget.

“We have a ways to go,” he said, “but we’re getting there.”

Riley Wilson is with Stacy Gravning and 33 others.

July 27 at 8:52 PM · 

As some of you may or may not have heard, I was arrested by the Omaha police over the weekend while I was acting as a legal observer during the protest that took place between the Midtown and Downtown areas.

As a legal observer, I was wearing a yellow reflective vest clearly marked with "LEGAL OBSERVER" on both the front and back. I am bound to the same laws as any other citizen, and for this reason, I was very careful to adhere to all applicable laws as I observed a protest as it was occurring, not taking part in it. This means I kept on the sidewalk, observed all crosswalk signs, etc., however, none of this mattered to Omaha police when an officer grabbed me by the upper arm/shoulder and kick swiped me to the ground and yelled at me and others to stay down.

As the protest moved back towards Midtown, and was only blocks away from where it started, the police, comprised of Omaha SWAT and Omaha Police Gang Unit members, blocked the protesters, journalists, and myself in on both sides of an overpass bridge and proceeded to conduct mass arrests. They pointed weapons at the crowd, shot pepper bullets at people, and indiscriminately arrested those in the area. Among some of the first to be attacked by the Omaha police was Mark Benjamin Vondrasek and Bear Alexander. I heard one officer bragging to a group of predominately women who were zip-tied and on the ground that he was strong enough to beat any of them up.

I, along with roughly 100+ protesters, were zip-tied for approximately 6 hours. During this period, protesters were denied water for a long period of time, and one protester even passed out, hit his head on the concrete, and was hospitalized, before eventually being brought back to Douglas County Corrections. Trans individuals were placed in solitary confinement (ostensibly for their own protection). At one point, 43 of us were placed in Holding Cell 1, a holding cell fit for perhaps 15 to 20 people maximum if I had to guess. The cell became increasingly hot, and request after request for keeping the door open for fresh, cool air was denied. One of the correction officers told the women being held in Holding Cell 6 that their conditions could be blamed on "Sinéad O'Connor," referencing Taylor Leigh.

Despite being eligible for bail, many of our friends, family, and The Nebraska Left Coalition (NLC) were unable to actually pay for people's bail, as they were told that the "system was down." I would like to thank NLC for their assistance this weekend. So many of us in jail were very thankful for their nonstop work on the outside to ensure that our bail was posted. If you can make a donation to them, know that your money is going to a good cause. In addition, I would also like to thank Peyton Zyla (who should be credited for the video below), Jazari Kual of Kualdom Creations, and Melanie Buer for documenting the events that took place on Saturday night.

All in all, I was detained for roughly 22 hours before finally being released shortly after 7pm on Sunday night.

For those who have told so many of us for so long that they do not disagree with the message that we offer, but simply disagree with the tactics and wish to see peaceful protests over violent riots, this is exactly the type of protesting you should be applauding. Acts of civil disobedience that bring attention to the most abhorrent acts of our government are noble and deserve the respect of any decent human.

The Omaha police arrived to the scene ready to escalate and harm people who were taking part in a peaceful protest; they made the willful decision to cause harm to peaceful protesters when they had the opportunity to escort protesters along the route and ensure the safety of drivers and protesters alike, but they did not. If you truly believe that violence is not the answer, I hope to hear you make a forceful stand against the behavior of Omaha police that we all witnessed in our city this weekend.

The police continue to be the source of the problem, which is exactly why it is so necessary for us to defund the police, with a move towards abolition, and reallocate those resources to actual programs within our city that help people, not hurt them, such as affordable housing, libraries, healthcare, skills training and jobs programs, education, mental health resources, crisis and substance abuse counselors, and social workers. There is a better future for our city, and it can begin when we choose to make a policy decision that elects help over harm and people over profit.

Lastly, if you were arrested on Saturday night or know somebody who was, please let me know so that I can tag you/them in this post.

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Amber Jamieson is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.