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Members of Moms United for Black Lives, on July 29 in Portland, Ore.Our president wants yOu tO believe i am a terrOrist,
a professional agitator stalking the Pacifc Northwest.
Four days before federal agents shoot me in Portland, Ore.,
I riffle through the garage, shooing spiders from my son’s
snowboarding helmet. Will it buckle beneath a steel baton?
I press my daughter’s swim goggles to my face, testing the ft.
Can they repel tear gas? I run my hands over my husband’s
life jacket. Can it stop a bullet?
I don’t yet realize how many other moms are slipping oven
mitts into backpacks (to minimize burns when tossing aside
flaming grenades and tear-gas canisters), how many dads are
hoisting leaf blowers from sheds (to clear tear gas), how many
teens are gathering plastic toboggans to shield themselves
from officers in combat fatigues aiming stun-grenade launch-
ers through temporary fencing around the federal courthouse.
This is what happens when you rattle the barricade that
policy makers hide behind, screaming “Black lives matter,”
protesting for 60-plus nights the brutal tactics officers use
to kill Black men on camera and Black women in beds.
The night I am shot, the sky shimmers with a leftover
Fourth of July frework lit by a privileged son whose college
closed in the spring. He is here because Black lives matter to
him but also because he senses the video game he now plays
nightly has sprung to life and he won’t be left out. That boy
is pretext, he and his friends tossing plastic water bottles at
stone walls, justifcation for an elite force to quell a gathering
of Black people and their allies at the door of the same court-
house where four years earlier the white militiamen who led
an armed takeover of another federal building in Oregon were
acquitted of any wrongdoing in a 41-day siege.
I lIsten to a Black man on the Justice Center steps invoke the
memory of John Lewis while thousands of doctors, veterans,
teachers, attorneys stand peacefully, our hands in the air. It is
Lewis’ words—“Freedom is the continuous action we all must
take, and each generation must do its part to create an even
FIRST PERSON
I was shot by federal agents
while protesting in Portland
By Ellen Urbani
If they are
willing to
fire on me
for standing
with my
Black
neighbors,
what havoc
will be
wreaked on
the Black
bodies left
behind if
I vacate
this street?more fair, more just society”—that echo
as the gas swallows me. I feel men crash-
ing into me as they flee pepper bullets
and fres from flash-bang grenades, drag-
ging choking, bleeding bodies away, but
I hold my ground because I know the
law: a federal injunction prohibits the
use of gas unless the lives or safety of the
public or the police are at risk, and that
is obviously not the case here. I listen
and am prepared to obey dispersal orders
from authorities, but they never come.
But I am also naively stunned by the
suspension of my lifelong privilege.
Those federal agents are the brothers-in-
arms of men I love—my father the Navy
submariner, my former father-in-law
the disabled Marine, the police officer
I swooned over in my youth—and I am
a white woman, the high school cheer-
leader those feds once fell for, the so-
rority girl they courted, the one person
those officers truly referred to when they
swore an oath to serve and protect. If
they are willing to turn on me, to fre on
me, for fnally breaking my silent com-
plicity and standing with and for
my Black neighbors, what havoc will
be wreaked on the Black bodies left
behind if I vacate this street?
For a second the gas lifts, and it
seems there are only a few women left,
standing arm in arm in the yellow shirts
those agents know mark us as mothers,
just empty asphalt between us and the
men some other mothers raised.
And that is when they shoot us,
point blank, with impact munitions.
The woman on my right falls forward; the
woman on my left is struck in the head; I
feel my bone break. My right ankle is en-
cased in a bulky cast after a fall the previ-
ous week, and those American sons shoot
my other foot out from under me.
Today, now that federal agents have
withdrawn, our protests go on peace-
fully. But America, be wary. Forget
Portland at your peril. Everyone thinks
they’d have joined the Resistance if they
lived in 1940s Europe, when we know
that most stayed inside, served supper,
tucked the children into bed with a kiss
and a lie: “All is well, close your eyes.”
Don’t wait to be knocked off your feet.
It may be you they aim for next.Urbani is the author of Landfall and When
I Was Elena