It Did Happen Here – Portland Now is Something That Was Fought For
Longtime friend to Wow Cool Erin Yanke (of the bands Light Brigade, The Curse and Things I Hate, Life During Wartime radio show and tape zine and the Remote Outposts blog) has launched a new show and podcast on the history of Portland’s fight against homegrown fascism called It Did Happen Here.
I could not possibly dream of doing better than Erica Dawn Lyle in describing the context behind the show:
When I was a kid, Portland, OR was not the cutesy Etsy capital satirized on Portlandia, but was, instead known far and wide as the Nazi skinhead capital of the USA. How did the community band together to drive away the violent thugs? My dear friend, Erin Yanke’s new podcast, It Did Happen Here, takes a deep dive into the grimy lost world of old Burnside and downtown Portland of yore, unearthing “a people’s history of an unlikely collaboration between groups of immigrants, civil rights activists, militant youth, and gay organizers in the late 80s and early 90s in Portland, Oregon who used a diversity of tactics to confront neo-nazis and chase them off the streets of the Rose City.” Check it out here!
And in the show description:
It Did Happen Here is a people’s history of an unlikely collaboration between groups of immigrants, civil rights activists, militant youth, and gay organizers in the late 80s and early 90s in in Portland, Oregon who used a diversity of tactics to confront neo nazis and chase them off the streets of the Rose City.
These are memories in the words and voices of citizens who endured and then responded to violence; It Did Happen Here, to these people.
The show will run in weekly installments. The homepage looks like your best source for that, but you can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts and presumably elsewhere. It Did Happen Here is presented by Mic Crenshaw and Celina Flores.
