This is popular front, a podcast focused on the niche details of modern warfare and

underreported conflict with me Jake Hanrahan.

Today we're speaking to journalist Robert Evans from Behind the Bastards podcast

and he's going to be talking to us about these clashes in Portland, Oregon, USA between protesters and now federal

agents. The police have left and the federal agents have taken over. It's a very

weird situation. Robert has been on the ground for more

than 60 nights covering these clashes. The demonstrators have attacked the

courthouse. The police have been spraying untold amounts of tear gas. The whole thing is

getting very out of hand and Robert is going to explain to us why this is

happening. If you like Popular Front, please subscribe to us at

Patreon.com

slash Popular Front.

Before we get into like how this all built up and why it kind of is happening

maybe you can explain to us firstly what is happening because everything I look at it just seems to be

escalating every day like what's happening at this stage? Well you know the last day

or two things have ebbed down a little bit and they just announced that the feds are being withdrawn which just means that they're going to have police officers assaulting us again.

Basically we had a general uprising kind of against the police as part of the George

Floyd uprising start in Portland and for a variety of reasons largely local they just kept going right like people

kept coming out and fighting the cops every night and eventually people started

assaulting the federal courthouse which brought the feds and that

turned into something of a war on the streets and it's been pretty high intensity.

You know, we had once the federal agents came out and got

...