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🗓️ 3 March 2021
⏱️ 33 minutes
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Few anti-fascists were as influential on Portland’s recent protest scene as Sean Kealiher. He rarely missed a protest, and he would have been front and center last summer when the insurrectionary activism he had long advocated for became a staple on Portland streets. But he wasn’t. In October 2019, at 23, he was killed in front of the state Democratic Party building, which protesters vandalized on Inauguration Day this year. Kealiher’s death, which was ruled a homicide, shocked Portland’s activist community. But no arrests were ever made, and no persons of interest were ever named. Those in Kealiher’s circle saw his unsolved murder as further confirmation of the police’s double standards and antagonism toward the left.
This week on Intercepted: While it was largely former President Donald Trump who elevated antifa, short for anti-fascists, to a household name, generations of Portland anti-fascists have for decades opposed far-right, racist extremists as well as police. Reporter Alice Speri dives into Kealiher’s ideology and murder, Portland’s legacy of anti-fascist activism and its deeply intertwined history of white supremacist violence, and how law enforcement’s obsession with antifa led to intelligence failures like U.S. Capitol riot.
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0:00.0 | This is intercepted. |
0:30.0 | The video posted on Facebook goes on for 10 minutes. |
0:53.0 | The video then shows Floyd repeatedly telling the officer that he can't breathe but there are officers remains with his knee on Floyd's neck for around 7 minutes. |
1:11.0 | The federal agents sent to restore order in Portland of Port Petrol of Disorder. What was a largely peaceful protest has escalated into violence. |
1:34.0 | Very quickly, Portland became the epicenter of the George Floyd protest movement this summer. There were almost uninterrupted protests for 120 days, basically, like 4 months of protests non-stop. |
1:47.0 | The police responded brutally to them. There were tear gas almost every other night and there were hundreds and hundreds of arrests. Trump really kind of fixated on Portland as the example of what was happening. |
2:00.0 | He's the one that really trained at the spotlight to Portland. |
2:03.0 | Portland is a disaster. It's been a disaster for many, many years. Lawless writers and agitators and anarchists. That's what they are. Sick, disturbed people. |
2:15.0 | The Trump administration reassigned dozens of Justice Department investigators and FBI agents who have been busy working on investigations across the country, including mostly on white supremacist far-right violence. |
2:27.0 | He sent all these people to Portland in an effort to build this case against Antifa, which had become Trump's fixation really. |
2:37.0 | The violence and vandalism is being led by Antifa and other radical left wing groups who are terrorizing the innocent, destroying jobs, hurting businesses and burning down buildings. |
2:54.0 | It's just so interesting that they were just fixated on this threat. Antifa that just never materialized the way that the far-right threat did. |
3:02.0 | My name is Alicia Spheri and I am a reporter at the Intercept. |
3:09.0 | This is the story of Sean Kellier, who was 23-year-old anarchist, anti-fascist activist, who was very well known on Portland's protests scene. |
3:20.0 | It was the story of an unsolved murder. |
3:24.0 | The mystery began around midnight and police say an SUV crashed into a building and then they say at some point someone fired shots into that car. |
3:32.0 | A known Portland area activist killed on the streets. Tonight officers say the 23-year-old's death is linked to a car crash and gunfire. |
3:41.0 | A victim had been taken by friends to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. Police, now naming him, is 23-year-old Sean Kellier. An autopsy concluded his death was a homicide, caused by blunt force trauma. |
3:53.0 | Kellier was active in the anarchist community. He also went by the name Arminio. And there are reports he may have just left the nearby Citer-Ryad Bar. |
4:01.0 | There had been a brawl there several months ago between left and right wing activists. |
4:05.0 | That's where he was injured. You can see there's his nickname there. Arminio, rest in power, written on the building in chalk, and then below that roses and candles to memorialize him. |
4:15.0 | Right now, police are not saying exactly what led up to the crash and also the gunfire here. They say if you have any information about this incident, you should call Portland police back to you. |
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