12: Grants Pass Daily Courier

The Grants Pass Daily Courier in southern Oregon was targeted by protesters for its three-part campaign-season series, “Out of the Closet.” 

Among the harrowing scenes captured in the documentary Ballot Measure 9 are several from the Southern Oregon town of Grants Pass. A generally conservative I-5 town in between the liberal bastions of Eugene and Ashland, the rural reaches of the community included Radical Faeries, back-to-the-land lesbians, pot farmers, goldminers, survivalists, and more. 

The impact of the Measure 9 campaign was documented by Grants Pass Daily Courier reporter Russell Working, who went on to report for The Chicago Tribune. His three-part October series, “Out of the Closet” – not available through any online archives – is recapped in Pat Young’s master’s thesis. 

“The first story described what it was like to be gay and living in Josephine County,” Pat Young recounts. “The article also focused on the fears that many gays lived with, by opening with this sentence: ‘Along a rural road where a handful of local gays live, fear whispers with the mountain breezes. You feel it at the mobile home of Tom Tadlock, whose bedroom wall was blasted by a shotgun in July.’ … Some gays thought a minority of people had taken Measure 9 ‘as an excuse to declare open season on them.’” 

The second piece in the series focused on Jim and Elise Self, a prominent local couple (Jim was a doctor) and their lesbian daughter, Jennifer. Describing them as an “all American family,” the article shared details of Jennifer’s coming out process, and how her parents had offered her their full love and support.  

The final piece, “Measure 9: Moral or malicious?” offered perspective from both religious conservatives and local LGBTQ folks.  

A few days later, according to Pat Young’s summary, the paper “published a front-page story on Lon Mabon and his reasons for sponsoring the measure.” Despite this balanced news reporting, the Daily Courier came under immediate fire from Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) proponents. About two dozen began a picket of the paper. 

OCA supporter Glenn Diller told the documentary crew, “Today they [the gays] are coming forward. And what’s caused a big controversy here locally: a doctor’s daughter came forward and said ‘I am a lesbian’ and the father and mother and daughter were pictured on the front page of our paper, all of them smiling.” 

The protest organizer was Paul Walter, a member of Foundation of Human Understanding, a far-right organization founded by radio evangelist and hypnotism proponent Roy Masters. Masters moved the foundation from Southern California to Grants Pass in 1982. According to The Washington Post, “About 2,000 supporters followed him to the rural Oregon town of 17,000, where they have clashed repeatedly with local residents.” 

“The protest organizer,” recounts Pat Young, “said the series was too sympathetic toward gays. He criticized the paper for not publishing a story about a conservative ‘straight’ family to balance the story on the family with the gay daughter. The newspaper editor defended the series by saying he was showing both sides of the debate.” 

In the documentary, Elise Self says, “The newspaper was picketed for days and days. We went and talked to the editor shortly after our article came out, and he confided in us that the OCA was the angriest about our article, because it showed everyday people, a family.” 

The Daily Courier wasn’t the only target of the protesters. The Selfs received hate mail stating their daughter should be “put to death.” As Jim Self told the documentary crew, “It’s the first time in my life that I felt like having a loaded gun in my house. And I don’t like to say that. I was scared.” 

This painful experience of a divided community earned a mention in the 2010 celebration of the Daily Courier’s 125^th Anniversary. In a review article titled, “Newspaper proudest of times it’s helped community,” it noted, “The newspaper has often found itself at the center of controversy and community.

“In 1992, Foundation of Human Understanding member Paul Walter organized a picket of the Courier for what was characterized as a too-liberal slant, especially related to two series, one on [Roy] Masters and another on Ballot Measure 9, which would have required the government and educators to teach children that homosexuality is ‘abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse.’  Walter was again among the pickets who protested in 1993 after the newspaper continued to publish ‘For Better or for Worse,’ even though the comic strip included a homosexual character. Walter again picketed in 1994, when the Courier published an article about a lesbian-containing comic the paper didn’t carry.” 

“When we first found out about our daughter we thought we were the only people in Grants Pass who even knew a gay person,” Elise Self says in the documentary. “That’s how closeted the community was then, how unaware we both were, and how isolated you feel. And then you start reaching out – a whole new world has opened up for us.” 

Despite the hate mail and threats that resulted from telling their family’s story in the Daily Courier, Elise told the film crew, “The overwhelming response we received was positive. We even got a letter from the local Methodist Church signed by well over 100 members of the congregation, thanking us for being willing to stand up publicly for our daughter.” 

As they say on The Moth Radio Hour, “Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller.”  Read more about the benefits and challenges of historical memory.  

Reading the digital archive of Just Out – Oregon’s leading LGBTQ monthly for nearly 30 years – will bring you back to the day-in, day-out of the nearly two-year campaign to defeat Ballot Measure 9. So will talking to Just Out co-founder and publisher Renée LaChance. 

The first thing Renée recalls about that time is how the external attack fueled a painful internal division: 

“I remember how the community separated right off the bat,” she says, “grassroots activists in the street and then the more mainstream types who wanted to take the conventional political campaign route. They kept warring with each other. There was so much internal bickering. Each side thought theirs was the only correct way to do it. It was our biggest obstacle, the inability to realize that both sides of our divided community could do their thing.” 

Renée tried to use Just Out to paint a bigger picture, to say, “We’re all on the same path here, or at least parallel paths. We do not have time for this infighting.”   

Just Out had already spent eight years trying to build a foundation for a fully inclusive LGBTQ paper by presenting both sides of an issue. “We worked hard to let every voice be heard even if we didn’t agree with it,” Renée says. Now she looks back with amazement on the differing views they ran – “We printed that!” – and says, “I don’t see that being able to happen in today’s environment.” 

In that pre-internet era, if people wanted to express their opinion through print media, “They had to write a letter, find an envelope and a stamp,” Renée reminds us. “They had to make an effort instead of getting mad and blasting people with no thought of the consequences.” 

“Listen more and talk less, as they say in Hamilton. It’s very brave to sit and listen to someone who disagrees with you and not react.”  

Renée LaChance

Providing a forum for a range of views and strategies “allowed people to debate and to learn about each other,” Renée says. “That prepared us for the fight against the OCA; without that foundation, I’m not sure we could have survived Ballot Measure 9.” 

Just Out’s Internal Community Mission  

Renée saw Just Out’s mission during the long No on 9 campaign as two-fold: trying to keep the community informed and trying to keep the community together. 

Each month’s paper was stuffed with reporting, announcements, and opinions covering the range of campaign activism and opportunities. 

“We tried to provide a way to get the word out so people would have the best resources to deal with the attack,” says Renée. One example: How do you write a letter to your parents asking them not to vote for Measure 9? 

Along with providing tools and an open forum, a lot of the editorial team’s time was spent sorting through misinformation. “It was hard to keep ahead of the lies,” Renée remembers. “People would latch onto rumors, thinking they were true and reacting before doing the research. We did the fact-checking and tried to tell the truth the best we could, to slow people down to remember that – even if we disagreed on tactics – we were all on the same path.” 

Renée took a lot of flak for her attempts to be objective in the “grassroots versus mainstream” contest over how to defeat Measure 9. “I went to the Edward R. Murrow school of journalism,” she says, “where you present the information and let people make their own decisions. I refused to get up on the stage and take a side about how the ballot measure should be fought.” 

The internal community debates were felt so passionately, Renée says, “Some of my closest friends felt like I was betraying them – like I was actually pro-Measure 9.” 

The Struggle to Stay Alive 

During the time when print journalism was a primary source of news and community-building, each copy of Just Out was read by an average of three or four other people. Did you see Just Out? People would ask each other. It got passed around. 

With few LGBTQ businesses outside of the bars – and the bars spending their advertising dollars on more narrowly targeted ‘’bar rags” – the majority of Just Out’s advertisers were community allies. Both queer and straight readers of the paper were known to switch their buying loyalties to patronize the businesses that supported Just Out. 

Building that base of support for an inclusive, free community paper took a lot of pounding the pavement and working the Rolodex. “The economics of being a small press meant we were constantly struggling to stay alive,” says Renée. Then the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) filed the petition that became Measure 9. “We were in the fight from the signature-gathering phase. The mainstream media didn’t start covering it until it became real. But we knew, if it could possibly happen, we better do something.” 

“Having the energy and bandwidth to do the work when we were all depressed and worried – it was really hard to come in everyday and write. We tried to play as well as work; we were great support for each other as a staff. But we were just so stuck in it.”  

Renée LaChance

The OCA’s attack on the community “was what we ate and breathed for those years,” says Renée. “It was never not in the forefront of our minds, that we were fighting this battle. And it really was a war – there was so much violence and hate. The allies weren’t there yet at the start. It was just us. We hadn’t made those connections yet with the churches and other community and business groups; we had just started to. Straight but not narrow – that was a big deal.” 

Attacks on the paper were personally threatening. “People who knew us knew who we were,” Renée says. “There were death threats left on our answering machine, on our door. Vandals broke into the typesetters in the office beneath us. It was a scary time. We had the police on speed dial, a private number for someone who would help us. I made friends with police officers, which I’d never done.” (Renée credits Chief Tom Potter, whose out lesbian daughter was also part of the force at that time – a story we’ll tell in June.)  

Priscilla Martin, who Renée describes as “our Anita Bryant,” was known to regularly steal and throw away full stacks of Just Out. Even when she was caught, she couldn’t be prosecuted – technically, you can’t “steal” a free paper. Instead, Just Out exposed her by printing their version of a “Wanted” poster. Martin responded by suing the paper for libel. Renée settled by making a statement in the newspaper to satisfy the legal requirement. 

Learning to Be Allies 

While the community infighting and the overall violence and threats of that time are hard memories, Renée credits the fight against Measure 9 with building broader support for the LGBTQ movement. 

“The various campaigns did such great work in liaisoning with other groups,” she says, “not just We need your support, but making a personal connection with someone in that group. You know me, I know you, this is happening in my community and we need you – and then working it. [Read Kathleen Saadat’s example of this process in African Americans Voting No on 9.] 

“Offering them education, giving a workshop, facilitating dialogue. Not just asking for their endorsement but taking the time to find out, What are your concerns, what’s the barrier to our being in community together? Then giving them what they need to get past that barrier. Do we do that anymore?” Renée asks.  

“Some communities were obviously going to jump on bandwagon, like progressive Jewish congregations,” she recalls. “Others took longer. Some may not have approved of being gay but came to agree that the OCA’s language shouldn’t be in the state constitution. The range of groups working against Measure 9 provided an opportunity for people to find their place to be. If you weren’t comfortable in one group, you could find another.” 

Even though Just Out was printed primarily in black ink on newsprint, the range of voices addressing Measure 9 in its pages formed the full spectrum of the rainbow. 

“Over time seeing all these different groups come out to support the LGBTQ community was very validating,” Renée says. “You could see the evolution in each year’s Pride. At first it was just us and PFLAG and a few churches; then over time, group after group joined us.” It was an antidote to the hateful messaging of the OCA and the Christian Right. “It was like, We’re okay. We deserve love too.” 

For Renée, this became a well-worn two-way street. “Because I learned first-hand how important it is to have community allies, I’ve always supported other communities, gone to their events, supported their initiatives. It’s been a very mind-opening experience. I’ve felt comfortable there as a butch lesbian, welcomed. If I had to, I would feel comfortable going to those leaders and organizers to say, I’ve supported your community, can you join us in this fight?” 

The commitment to internal and external community dialogue that infused Just Out is harder to come by these days, Renée observes. “It’s frightening how little listening there is these days, how little dialogue there is that doesn’t blow up into a battle. I just want more communication – intergenerational communication, communication between communities and within our LGBTQ community.” 

For Renée that extends across the ideological divide. “I have a rightwing friend. Mostly we’re able to remember our history together and accept that we can’t agree. Mostly we try to remember that we all want to get to the same place – for everyone to be safe and sound and secure. We just might not agree on the way to get there.  

“These days we’re all getting brainwashed by the media to feel like we want to kill each other,” Reneé says. “What do we do about it? We have to have people with the energy to sit through some crap and not take it personally. How do you teach people that?” 

Watch Renée LaChance’s interview with Pride Table Talks, where she discusses the origins of Just Out and some of the 1980s-era community dynamics that preceded the No on 9 campaign, including the fight to get the word “lesbian” into Gay Pride, the infamous Aunt Jemima incident, the TKO (Technical Knock Out) dialogue series meant to bridge these differences, and the Alpenrose boycott that seems long ago indeed now that the dairy’s home delivery marketing features LGBTQ families. 

As they say on The Moth Radio Hour, “Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller.”  Read more about the benefits and challenges of historical memory.  

“A bold campaign to defuse myths and prejudice promoted by an anti-homosexual constitutional amendment” is how the Pulitzer Prize judges described “Oregon’s Inquisition,” the unprecedented 12-part editorial series published by the state’s leading daily, The Oregonian. Read the series here.  

Your writer Holly Pruett interviewed the author of that series, editorial page editor Robert Landauer. Edited for clarity, this is his story – the story of a bygone era of editorial independence and accountability for the rights of all. 

I was drafted to the job of editorial page editor; I hadn’t sought it. The job was in part to be a community conscience. That required me to have the capacity to speak to the person who had the authority to replace me [publisher Fred Stickel], but my judgment was what would appear on the editorial page. 

Fred was a member of the editorial board. He sat in on the big endorsements but always made it clear that his weight was no more than that of any other argument in the room. It created a phenomenal capacity for decisions based on the merits. I was familiar with the editorial page editors in Los Angeles and New York and in private conversations almost all said that, among major metropolitan papers, I probably had more freedom than almost any other.  

In almost 40 years at The Oregonian, more than half connected with the editorial department, not once did ownership or management overturn an editorial decision I made. We disagreed on some issues – for example, reproductive choice. [Stickel was a devout Roman Catholic.] You never ambush your boss, so I always let him know in advance when we were editorializing in an area of social controversy. Fred would come into my office and say, “I don’t want to get a call from the Archbishop at 5:30 in the morning. As a courtesy, could you invite an opponent or provide the Archbishop an opportunity to rebut on the Op Ed page?”  

When it came to The Oregonian’s position on Ballot Measure 9, there were no dissenting voices. I told the staff I was going to write the editorials myself, though I wasn’t sure how I was going to approach it. 

An Apology for a Shameful History

How did I come into my frame of mind on this issue? I had been aware that The Oregonian had been shameful in its behavior at the start of WWII regarding the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry. They absolutely cheered on President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 and Lt. Gen. John DeWitt who had taken the first actions against these citizens. That was really terrible.  

As the most junior editorial writer on the staff by at least 20 years, I had tried to raise my concern about the newspaper’s misbehavior towards Americans of Japanese ancestry, but there was no way I could make progress with the editorial board at the time. My predecessor had been an adjutant to the general who was centrally involved in sending Aleuts, the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, to the internment camps.  

But then I was drafted to run the newsroom as metro editor. When a Congressional commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians held hearings around the country in 1981 to deal with redress of the treatment of Americans of Japanese ancestry, I was able to send a reporter to every single hearing on the west coast, from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska to Southern California, feeling the The Oregonian had been central to this problem.  

I still remember one of the stories we reported: a woman who spoke Japanese in her congressional testimony in Seattle. She had six or seven sons fighting for America in the war. She said, “I never understood why the machine guns were pointed toward us rather than away from us if the camps were supposed to be for my protection.”  

About that time I was moved into the editorial department, and I wrote the formal apology of the newspaper for its role in that shameful time. 

When I took on the job as editorial page editor I spent some time studying the Oregon Constitution. Not that many people who aren’t lawyers read the state constitution or know it. But I saw myself as a gatekeeper who had to be a defender of the noble principles of the constitution.  

Bob Landauer

I used to think about it at the start of every work day, that one of my major obligations was to be a defender of Article 1, Section 20: “No law shall be passed granting to any citizen or class of citizens privileges, or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens.” 

I saw this as derivative of Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal. In my own mind, I turned it into the Golden Rule of Reciprocal Decency. I walked two miles to work for almost 40 years, thinking remember this, remember this. 

Child of Refugees

I am the child of refugees, a first-generation American who is absolutely grateful every single day that this country took in my relatives. When I was a youngster in rural New York state, my father and uncle dug out our root cellar and built bunk beds into it. Jews who couldn’t legally get into the U.S. but could get into Canada, were smuggled across the border, and came down the Hudson River into our root cellar. There they learned survival English and eventually assumed the legal identity of a U.S. citizen who had died.  

One of my strong memories is from 1952 when my grandfather died. He was the patriarch of our community. Standing in the cemetery receiving line, I met a stream of people coming back to that town to pay their respects, saying, “I was sent by my family to honor the patriarch who saved our lives.” 

I’m a person who has been profoundly shaped by the refugee experience. My wife and I fostered kids of all colors. I believed the newspaper had to give a much stronger presence and awareness to minority voices and hired some of our first Black reporters and the first Black editorial writer, a woman.  

I knew nothing about the gay community. I’d say I probably had a neutral attitude. I believed what people did in the privacy of their own homes was their own business if they didn’t inflict on others. But minority voices had to be protected and heard.  

Bob Landauer

The Oregonian had a great group of photographers back in those days. After Measure 9 was defeated, one of them was offered a prestigious job in another part of the country. She asked for an appointment with me before she left. She came into my office and introduced her female partner. They said they had never let anyone know they were a pair. They said, “Your editorials enabled us to be open at The Oregonian for the first time.” 

Today our family is a part of the gay community. We have a granddaughter who came out; she has a wonderful partner.  

Making the Case Against Ballot Measure 9

Ballot Measure 9 was not a referendum on homosexuality; it was a referendum on civil rights. 

There was no intention or permission to intrude on your personal reaction to homosexuality. But your personal belief doesn’t give you rein to limit someone else’s freedom. 

I wanted to defend the ability of the conservatives to hold their point of view but not their freedom to limit others’ freedom. We have to have deep respect for people who differ from us. They have a right to their personal beliefs. But they cannot violate Article 1, Section 20. No one can be denied contracts, licenses, the ability to foster and adopt children, their custodial rights – as Measure 9 would have done.  

Interspersed with this conviction was my growing awareness of how to communicate complex issues. I had been studying learning theory, the thought process, how people take in, absorb, and integrate information. Typically, The Oregonian would pontificate and give one or two statements from Mt Olympus and that’s it. But people take in information in small bites. Especially when that information doesn’t fully accord with their beliefs, it creates a lot of cognitive dissonance. 

I decided I had to go through the anatomy of Measure 9 and pull out different elements, then create a series to deal with each of those elements individually – in a very distilled manner, using simple declarative sentences, to give people time to integrate the information. Show how A leads to B, leads to C.  

I offered my drafts of these editorials out to my co-workers to critique. On the editorial staff I had liberals and conservatives and middle-of-the-roaders. On this, there was no static. They said we ought to break our rule, that there ought to be a byline. But I felt really strongly that this was a values-setting movement that required the voice of the newspaper, not an individual. 

When I review the series today, I think, ‘Hey, it’s pretty good.’ 

Pushback

“A Portland police car was often stationed outside Landauer’s home that summer.” 

Steve Duin, “Still Dedicated to His Craft,” The Oregonian, May 17, 2020

We were always aware of security; during Measure 9 was no different. There were times when I took editorial stances – such as during the Vietnam war – when there were bomb threats against my house with my kids in it. The police would drive up and get my kids out. When I dealt with Second Amendment gun issues, I got lots of threats. The Postal Service frequently had to trace the sender of threats that came by mail.  

There were always people who cancelled ads or subscriptions. I had done some research, though, which indicated that people would tend to cancel for only about two weeks. Or they might give up their subscription but go on to buy single copies.  

If you’re going to have strong opinions on controversies, there’s no way you can avoid offending some of the people who disagree with you. The important thing is not to offer gratuitous or unnecessary offense. Your chief sin, though, is to dodge taking a stand on principle once you have achieved clarity. A corollary is you always have to be open to a right of rebuttal.  

The Publisher Weighs In

In the week before Election Day, the publisher Fred Stickel told me, “I’m sticking something on Page One of Sunday’s paper; see if you can see anything wrong with it.” It was a very clear, concise, admirable personal statement. Very, very powerful.  

Today, I am making a personal appeal to the people of Oregon: Ballot Measure 9 in Tuesday’s election must be defeated. My appeal to you is unprecedented in the years that I have led The Oregonian as its president and publisher. I speak out now because Measure 9 is also unprecedented – an assault on human rights and human dignity that should have no place in the Oregon Constitution.

Fred Stickel, Oregonian Publisher 

He wrote, “I do not and cannot endorse homosexual acts. But my longstanding religious and moral views as a conservative Roman Catholic are one thing and my lifelong commitment, both in peace and war, to defend and exult in the inalienable rights granted our citizens under the U.S. Constitution is another.” Read Stickel’s full front-page statement. 

He had been a Marine crawling through the South Pacific during WWII and the erosion of civil rights embedded in Measure 9 was not the freedom he and his men had battled for.  

A Pulitzer Prize, Awarded to No One

After I was informed I’d been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing for the series, I got personal statements of support mailed to me by the others nominated in that category that year. They all said, “Congratulations, you deserve it.”  

But the Pulitzer judges decided not to award a prize in that category that year. Research into what happened was published later in a trade journal. The researcher found that some of the publishers on the Pulitzer board felt there had been too much recognition given to the gay movement. There were two other areas in which issues dealing with the gay movement had already received Pulitzer Prizes. There were members of the board who created an impasse even though, reportedly, there was no disagreement on the board that “Oregon’s Inquisition” was the best of the nominees. 

I would have loved to have been awarded, but it was their prize. 

That Was Then, This Is Now

Liberty is always an unfinished business. You could take our Measure 9 editorials and apply them to a bunch of issues today. The various pushes to control what children read in libraries and what teachers teach, crippling our schools in their ability to present a complete palette of ideas for discussion. No one is denying you the right to have your personal opinion, but you are denying our right to a range of free expression. 

We were in a period of evolution in 1992. Measure 9’s passage would have been the first time since the Civil War that a state would do something to withdraw, versus add to, civil rights. We’re talking now about the same thing with voter suppression and banning of books.  

Common to these efforts is a phrase I keep thinking of – a campaign of defamation. Not just fighting the idea, but the people who carry an idea. In Measure 9, it was sexual missionaries declaring that a militant homosexual agenda was attacking our values, claiming that homosexuals wanted special rights. I’m struck by how much commonality there is to what’s happening today, including commonality of the consequences.  

It’s a hackneyed phrase, Where are you Walter Cronkite? But there’s no longer an intermediary group of people who distill, filter, and come up with a plausible synthesis that most people can relate to. The eyes and ears of the public are drawn first to those who angrily promote discord. We’ve fragmented our sources of information – whether 200 channels on cable or social media, information is more siloed. Now we seek out the information that reinforces our views and causes us the least discontent. It’s very challenging to build commonality and community in those circumstances. 

There is a notion that Oregon is a very progressive state. And it is in some regards – the initiative, referendum, and recall process; the beach bill and bottle bill. But in matters of civil rights, we have portions of the Oregon populace that are not just conservative, but retrogressive.   

The vote count in Measure 9 – 44% in favor, 56% opposed – wasn’t far off the sociopolitical divide that exists in Oregon. 

As they say on The Moth Radio Hour, “Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller.”  Read more about the benefits and challenges of historical memory.  

Decades before “Say her name” became a rallying cry for a new generation of activists, we said her name. Hattie Mae Cohens. We said his name. Brian Mock. We said their names. Hattie Mae Cohens and Brian Mock. 

Your writer doesn’t remember that we called Hattie Mae and Brian martyrs but the November 1, 1992 New York Times article, “Violent Backdrop for Anti-Gay Measure,” reported that the No on 9 campaign and other gay rights groups “sent out press releases describing the victims of the Sept. 26 firebombings as martyrs of the campaign.” 

In years to follow, the direct-action group Lesbian Avengers enshrined the memory of Hattie Mae and Brian into a protest ritual. The Boston Dyke March History & Archive Project describes the origin of the political performance art that became the groups’ signature: “In response to the Oregon firebombing, Lesbian Avenger Chapters across the U.S. began a fire eating ritual. The Boston Lesbian Avengers performed it at the first Boston Dyke March in 1995 and it has been part of every Boston Dyke March since then. Its purpose is to memorialize and honor all the LGBTQ folk who have experienced hate crimes, and to call upon our collective strength and power in the face of bigotry and hate.” 

Extreme Intolerance 

While the debate over Measure 9 was raging there were people just trying to make it through their day and night alive and with some measure of community. 

Hattie Mae Cohens, a 29-year-old Black lesbian, and Brian H. Mock, a 45-year-old white gay man, had met and become friends in a day program for adults with disabilities. She moved into his basement apartment in a run-down rental not long after serving a six-year sentence in the nearby state prison. Hattie was known for her good sense of humor and many friends. Brian was called “a gentle giant” for his mild demeanor and burly stature. 

Despite his gender, race, and size, Brian was frequently subject to harassment. A neighbor told the Ballot Measure 9 documentary crew, “Brian got beat on all the time. He’d walk by here every day with new bruises. His face was fractured, beaten brutally this last time he was beaten for being gay.” 

That year, the number of racist skinheads in Salem had nearly tripled over the prior year, from 23 to about 70 members, according to police. This followed a “low profile” period after the 1990 convictions for the Portland murder of Mulugeta Seraw. (One of those convicted, Kyle Brewster, went on to brawl with the Proud Boys and participate in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.)  

The Salem paper reported, “before the firebombing, police received constant complaints about skinheads harassing, intimidating and assaulting people.” 

Brian was one of their victims. As reported in the Statesman Journal (“Neighbors say beating led to fatal fire”), the assailants continued to taunt Brian after that last beating as he sat in his yard. Four friends of Hattie’s, all Black, set out to confront one of the skinheads who had attacked Brian. The skinheads in turn, came back for a showdown with Hattie and her friends. 

“There was an argument and a short scuffle, and the group left, shouting racial slurs,” the press reported. “Later, the residents were awakened to the sound of breaking glass and the smell of smoke.”  

Another newspaper account summarized the sequence of events: 

“Edwards and Tucker, who are white, were seeking revenge after an earlier confrontation with four friends of Cohens, who were all Black and were sleeping in the apartment. According to trial testimony, friends of Cohens kicked in the door of an apartment Tucker and Edwards had visited earlier. They confronted the pair over a racist insult yelled loud enough to be heard in the other apartment. 

“Edwards, who was punched in the mouth, drove with Tucker to an apartment shared by Wilson and Cotton. There the firebombs were assembled. 

“Tucker and Wilson testified they neither had a plan nor intended to kill. Tucker and Edwards claimed they moved from one window to the next to avoid tossing the bottles where someone might be sleeping. 

“David Kramer, Marion County deputy district attorney, dismissed that explanation. He said Tucker boasted to friends at a party after the firebombing, saying: ‘Mess with the best – die like the rest.’” 

Hattie’s four young friends escaped the blaze through windows. Hattie died in the fire even as her cousin tried to rescue her through the smoke. Brian died the next day. 

Racism and Rage over Sexuality 

“What Ballot Measure 9 has done is open up a window for people who are bigoted to display those feelings, and that’s what happened in the Salem slayings,” Suzanne Pharr told The New York Times in her capacity as a spokeswoman for No on 9. “Measure 9 has lit a match to a fuse that was already there.” 

“Ms. Pharr said the group was using the firebombings in their advertisements and mailings as an example of extreme intolerance. When asked if the killings were motivated by hatred of homosexuals, Ms. Pharr said, ‘I would say race was a primary factor, combined with rage over their sexuality.’” 

The New York Times

The misleading question of racial versus homophobic bias and intent was debated throughout the investigation and trial. The same law enforcement that was prosecuting the four racist skinheads arrested for these murders had declined to prosecute Brian’s earlier gay bashings. Within a week, the FBI had joined the investigation “to focus on civil rights issues and the possibility that the fire was motivated by bigotry.” 

Guilty/ Not Guilty 

In March, 1993 the Marion County District Attorney’s office spent two weeks making its case before a jury against 22-year-old Leon Tucker, 21-year-old Philip Wilson, and Wilson’s fiancée, 20-year-old Yolanda Cotton. (The fourth defendant, 21-year-old Sean Edwards, had pled guilty the month before.) The defense spent a week presenting its case. 

The Statesman-Journal “Firebomb Verdict” coverage on April 9 summed it up with this headline: “Jurors say their job was tough; the decisions please both the prosecution and defense.” Tucker and Wilson were found guilty of two counts of felony murder, four counts of assault, one count of arson, and two counts of racial intimidation – but not guilty of aggravated murder. Of beating the aggravated murder charge, one defense lawyer said, “we would have pleaded guilty to [felony] murder without all of this.” Another said, “We’ve said from the beginning, and on the record, that this was over-charged. We are elated. It was obvious the jury worked incredibly hard on their decisions.” 

Yolanda Cotton, the only one to deny her involvement, was accused of helping make the firebombs by pointing to a source of bottles. She had been held in county jail for the six months since her arrest. The jury found her not guilty on all counts. 

One juror told reporters, “I keep thinking how tragic the whole thing was. They were just kids mixed up in things that they shouldn’t have been.” 

In the profiles of the victims and the defendants that accompanied the verdict coverage, the Statesman-Journal summarized the troubled early years of the three guilty men: more than a half-dozen foster homes, dealing drugs by age 14 to support his habit, did not finish high school, alcoholic mother, drug and alcohol abuse…. 

Yolanda Cotton had been raped in her mother’s home for years before the age of 7, ran away from her adoptive home, and attempted suicide twice. She got her GED while in jail awaiting trial. She described herself during the trial “as living two lives – one in which she had minority friends; the other, racist friends. She said she gravitated towards racist friends because they loved her and treated her like family.” 

Demonizing the Demonizers 

“White supremacists recruit teens by making them feel someone cares.” This post-Charlottesville TODAY Show headline is one of many featuring stories like Yolanda Cotton’s. Stories like well-known former racist skinhead Christian Picciolini who was recruited by a neo-Nazi when he was 14 and friendless. “The way he approached me is that he cared,” Picciolini told TODAY.  

Picciolini hadn’t been raised in a home with racist dogma but “after being told over and over that minority groups were ruining his life, [he] started believing it. And feeling that he belonged to a powerful organization gave him something he never had before. ‘That feeling of power was so intoxicating, because I was powerless,’ he said.” 

Recognizing the damage done to so many young people by abuse, poverty, limited opportunity, and other social ills does not excuse the violence they may commit or the violent ideologies they may adopt. But it does create a more complex picture of what fuels political violence, and what’s needed to prevent it upstream. 

As the bloodsport of politics has become more than metaphor, as political violence becomes increasingly normalized in Donald Trump’s America, the demonization that took hold 30 years ago in Oregon is a cautionary tale. 

A city councilman in Springfield, Oregon reflected on finding himself on both sides of the demonization dynamic at the time. Springfield was a base-building practice field for Ballot Measure 9; the OCA passed a local anti-LGBTQ ordinance there during the primary election in May of 1992 (read the New York Times coverage,  A Blue-Collar Town Is a Gay-Rights Battleground). 

When the Oprah-precursor Phil Donahue Show filmed an on-location episode about Ballot Measure 9, Springfield Councilman Ralf Walters argued the pro-OCA position. The Oregonian reported, in an October 17 piece titled “Ballot Measure 9 Creates Climate of Fear,” that one of Walter’s critics “wore a button with Walters’ picture and a slash through it. ‘Basically it scared me,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t take much imagination to see a bull’s-eye in that button.’” The next day he found a pink triangle painted on the sidewalk outside his home. 

“What’s happening here? What kind of climate are we living in? Is this what the United States has become? It’s just frightening.” Those are Rafe Walters’ words, reflected one-hundred-fold by those subjected to anti-LGBTQ violence and violence targeting No on 9 supporters. 

Walters went on to reflect on his own role in the dynamic which now threatened him. 

“People are not identifying with each other as evil. I’ve caught myself referring to the opposite side as ‘those people.’…It’s dangerous referring to the opposite side as ‘those people.’ When you isolate them like that, you dehumanize them and that creates a situation when people can get hurt because they are less than human.”

Rafe Walters, Yes on 9 proponent

Just as political violence has become far more normalized in the 30 years since Ballot Measure 9, demonization has deepened across the political spectrum. 

Reflecting on those times as ancestor to the ones we’re in now, anti-authoritarianism expert Scot Nakagawa says, “When I think back to those years, the thing I am constantly reminded of is that we did some good work. But that good work merely slowed the slide to authoritarianism. It did not interrupt the key dynamics driving us in an authoritarian direction. 

“Rather than interrupt those dynamics, many of us assimilated to them,” Scot says. “For instance, we reacted to being demonized by demonizing our demonizers. That act does many damaging things.  

“One of the most serious consequences of demonizing those who demonize us is that demonization makes pluralism appear unappealing or impossible. You can’t compromise with the devil without going to hell, can you?” 

“I love everybody the same way” 

A year after Hattie Mae and Brian were killed, the local paper ran a headline, “Bad publicity stunts growth of Salem gang.” A police sergeant said of the effect of the firebombing, “It basically stopped the skinhead movement in Salem. They’re not getting new members, and they had to curtail their activities.” 

Police said they didn’t know “if the firebombings woke them up, or they went in separate directions.” But they believed the response of the community was essential.  

“Overall, the community just stood up and said, ‘We don’t want this kind of activity. We’re not going to tolerate it.’ Basically, that made it come to a halt,” the sergeant said. “Now how long that will last, we don’t know.” 

This is my life 
Why people have to be so ugly 
And make people feel anger and different 
From another person 
They are no better than the next person 
We are still people 
We have feelings like everybody 
I love everybody the same way 
We should be together 
We should be the best of friends 
I just want to say I love everybody the same way 
This, me myself, 
I mean that from the bottom of my heart. 
~ Hattie Cohens, February 14, 1991 

From poetry salvaged after the fire, read at the candlelight vigil held to honor and mourn Hattie Mae Cohens and Brian Mock; printed in The Statesman Journal on Sept. 30, 1992. 

As they say on The Moth Radio Hour, “Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller.”  Read more about the benefits and challenges of historical memory.  

“In a strange way, it allowed ordinary people to say, ‘No more. They’re destroying our community. We have to say something.’ This was no longer a philosophical discussion. It impacted real people’s lives, community life. It forced faith communities to say, ‘What are our true values?’ and to move beyond our comfort zone.

“It was such a different era then,” says the Rev. Cecil Charles Prescod, a United Church of Christ minister and a brother in the  Order of Corpus Christi, an evangelical catholic religious order. “Thirty years ago very few churches were welcoming of LGBTQ people and most mainline denominations had laws forbidding queer clergy. Clergy and laity who stood up for the LGBTQ community felt very much like trailblazers, facing backlash not only from others in their faith community but also the church hierarchy. The threats and withdrawal of financial support, the physical intimidation and destruction of sacred spaces – it was terrible, a very scary time.”

Among the less expected allies opposed to Ballot Measure 9 was the Roman Catholic Church. “The Church was late in responding,” says Father Jim Galluzzo, “though they did come around.” 

Portland had several progressive Catholic churches that had “pushed as far as they could,” Father Jim says, and the Archdiocese of Portland publicly voiced its opposition to Measure 9. 

But Hillsboro was a different situation. Then a farming community of 39,000 (its population has since tripled) on the outer western edge of the tri-county Portland region, the Hillsboro of that time was characterized by “a lot of old Dutch farmers,” says Father Jim, a priest at St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in Hillsboro during the Measure 9 campaign. 

Father Jim and parish leaders had laid the groundwork for conversations about the OCA through a group they had formed called Allies: People to People “to teach a way of living and thinking that honors human liberation based on gospel values and works to end oppression of any kind: e.g., sexism, racism, classism, adultism, or homophobia.” 

“Most of the leaders were well prepared to talk about homophobia in coffees and luncheons, in people’s homes,” Jim says – “that’s the way they are in Hillsboro. They wouldn’t come out to a rally. They were not people who would protest.” 

The night of October 5 changed that. 

The Night of October 5 

“On the night of Oct. 5, vandals spray-painted anti-gay and pro-Measure 9 graffiti on the exterior of the church. Five nights later, vandals struck again. This time, epithets aimed at homosexuals, minorities, Jews and Catholics were painted in red in 12 places inside the church. Vandals also broke into the church office and lit a fire on the pastor’s desk. A smoke alarm startled the assistant pastor, the Rev. Jim Galluzzo, who was asleep in an upstairs bedroom.” (The Oregonian, “Ballot Measure 9 Creates Climate of Fear,” Oct. 17, 1992) 

Jim remembers that morning and the changes it wrought like this: 

“That Sunday morning, I was exhausted. The night before the parish house I lived in was set on fire, so I couldn’t stay there. I called People to People leaders and together we called close to 1000 people to let them know what had happened. I didn’t want them to arrive for mass unprepared and be traumatized.  

“Mass that day drew far more people than the usual Sunday. It was like a reunion. You saw people there for the first time in years. Some were gay and hadn’t felt welcomed. Many showed up let people know this wasn’t right. From that day to the election, the community provided 24-hour surveillance; they parked their campers around the church. No one was going to hurt the church again.  

“There had been people who didn’t like our People to People work, thought we were a little too liberal for St. Matthews, that we’d all be better off if we just didn’t talk about it. But now, after the vandalism, all of a sudden it was, ‘Now we hear what you’ve been saying for the last two years’ – to love everyone. 

“That event angered or moved people enough to say ‘we need to speak out.’ The police told us we’d brought this on ourselves. But parishioners saw that if we remain silent, we feed the despair and anger. Hearing my homily that Sunday morning with those hate-filled messages in red on the white marble behind me – it gave people courage. It gave them courage to tell their own stories.” 

Their Own Stories of Discrimination 

“People in Hillsboro are storytellers. The older people in the church, the old Dutch farmers and others, were children in the classroom at St. Matthews when the Ku Klux Klan would come searching for guns. They had to hide under their desks. They had stories to tell from that time that they’d never told anyone, not their children or grandchildren. But now they were talking about their own experience of discrimination.” Once someone shares that breaks the silence 

In the 1920s Oregon had led the nation in per capita Klan enrollment, tapping anti-Catholic sentiment as part of an anti-immigrant, nativist reaction to WWI. “The Klan rhetoric portrayed the church as having special interests and political ambitions,” scholar David Horowitz told The Oregonian after the 1992 attack on St. Matthews. “There is something of a similarity in the way the OCA portrays homosexuals as a special-interest group.” 

“After the older people started sharing their stories,” Father Jim says, “I heard things like, ‘My 15 year-old grandson came out to me. He knew I was safe because I told my story.’ Having their church under attack once again helped them to see see that all forms of oppression are not right. 

“Hillsboro ended up supporting gay rights in that election 60-40% after what happened, the complete inverse of where opinion had been previously. We won! But did we really change people’s hearts? 

“I want to change people’s hearts, for them to see things in a different way, versus just winning an action. That Sunday morning surrounded by the hateful graffiti, I didn’t have to talk about the injustice – it came into our world, plain to see. The next step is, what are we going to do about it? How do you want the world to be and how do we make that happen? That should be the work of the church. Hospitality.”  

Radical Hospitality 

Hospitality – Father Jim provides a few more examples. 

“There was a secret AIDS house in Hillsboro, hidden away. Visiting someone I knew there, I ran into a church employee whose son was also a resident. She was afraid she would be fired if anyone knew her son had AIDS. We planned a memorial celebration of life for all the people in Hillsboro and the neighboring town who had died of AIDS – 33 people, and no one knew it. You couldn’t even put it in the newspaper. Over 400 people showed up to the memorial. It has continued annually for many years.  

“At one of the big No on 9 rallies in Portland I approached a Yes on 9 table on the outskirts to tell them that they were welcome too, and that I’d like to understand better why they felt the way they felt. I met with them six times and barely said a word, just listened. I remember when I went to two tables, you are also welcome, you didn’t have to sit on the outside. Why don’t we meet for lunch and you tell me why you believe what you do. 

“They became my biggest supporters, escorting me to all the conservative churches I went to speak to. Before that I’d had things thrown at me. They came to 15 talks as my escort, drove me there, protected me.  

“During those initial listening sessions with them, every time I struggled I looked down at what I’d written on my hand – ‘They are fully human.’” 

Since No on 9, Father Jim says, many more Catholic centers have become more welcoming to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender peoples – hospitals, churches, high schools, higher educational institutions. This has helped staff, teachers, students and parishioners see others as fully human. 

As they say on The Moth Radio Hour, “Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller.”  Read more about the benefits and challenges of historical memory.  

After the OCA filed Ballot Measure 9, homophobic attacks and violent anti-LGBTQ rhetoric skyrocketed. It wasn’t just the queer community that was targeted for opposing Measure 9. This month’s stories recount desecration of churches; break ins at campaign offices; threats against synagogues, businesses, journalists, activists; destruction of property and animal abuse; and a deadly fire bombing.  

A note of caution: This story, and its sisters 8 and 9, are very tough terrain to revisit. We don’t do it lightly. We tell these stories to honor the incredible bravery of those who defend civil and human rights even in the face of political violence meant to weaken or deny those rights.   

“People died in Oregon, because of the campaign.” 

These words of Donna Red Wing’s open the award-winning documentary Ballot Measure 9. We encourage everyone to stream this video or obtain a copy, look through the transcript, and share it as a teaching tool. It depicts, in ways that memory can’t, the terror of those times. 

For those of us who lived through those times to tell the tale today – not all of us did – the fear we lived with but weren’t stopped by remains unforgettable.  

“After two weeks of harassment, break-ins and death threats, this morning at 4:30am somebody put their death threat around a rock and threw it through the window. Two times they pried the back doors off the house… and took all kinds of files, including unlisted phone numbers and my personal schedule. It makes me very angry. And with my background as a cop and as a marine, if I feel this way then I can imagine why other people are hiding and going back into the closet, just scared to death.” 

~ OUTPAC founder Scott Seibert, Ballot Measure 9 documentary footage 

Performer and cultural organizer Howie Bierbaum says, “I remember the fear of being out and how terrifying it was.” As a founding member of the direct-action group ACT UP in the late ‘80s, Howie was used to fighting back. “I thought that energy would transfer over to OCA stuff but it was harder,” he says. “I didn’t feel I could be as up front as with ACT UP. I found it to be a very scary time.” Howie had just purchased his first home which was already being vandalized – “petty stuff by neighborhood juvenile delinquents.” Despite being out on the radio and stages for years, he remembers being terrified to put a No on 9 lawnsign in front of his home. “I understood how Jews in Amsterdam and Germany must have felt, under the microscope. Not ashamed of who I was, just sad that others would be so hateful in response.” 

For queer newspaper publisher Renée LaChance, there was an ongoing sense of being targeted. The Just Out offices routinely received death threats; the neighboring typesetting office was broken into by vandals. “The threat of violence was what we ate and breathed in those years,” Renée says. “It was never not in the forefront of our minds, that we were fighting this battle. And it really was a war – there was so much violence and hate.” 

In the early days of the OCA’s attack against the LGBTQ community, Renée reminds us, “the allies weren’t there yet. It was just us. We hadn’t made those connections with the churches and other groups – we had just started to. The emergence of ‘straight but not narrow’ as a whole category of support was a big deal. When the corporate LGBTQ employee groups, the religious and community groups and all the rest got involved, it changed everything.” 

“Rise in Hate Crimes Worries Police” 

That was the Oregonian headline on October 27, one week before the vote on Measure 9. The rest of the story: 

“Hate crimes are on the upswing, and the controversy over Ballot Measure 9, the statewide anti-gay rights measure, is contributing to the increase, several police officials told a legislative committee Monday. Portland Police Chief Tom Potter said people in the gay and lesbian community were buying guns to protect themselves because they feared the outcome of the Nov. 3 election. 

“’It has created a real climate of fear in our community, and I’m quite concerned about that,’ Potter told the Senate Interim Judiciary Committee. 

“The legislative committee met to discuss hate crimes Monday, after the Sept. 26 firebomb killings of Hattie Cohens and Brian Mock in Salem. Cohens was a lesbian, and Mock was a homosexual. [Read more in Story 9.] 

“The committee also expressed concern about the desecration of St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church in Hillsboro. Graffiti on the church’s walls targeted Catholics, Jews, Hispanics and homosexuals. [Read more in Story 8.] 

“But Hillsboro police chief Ron Louie warned, ‘You haven’t seen anything yet.’ With a change in Oregon’s cultural mix, high unemployment and the migration of Blacks and Hispanics with jobs into the state, ‘It’s not going to get any better,’ Louie predicted. 

“During the first half of this year, hate crimes were up by 12% over the same time in 1991, according to a report issued Monday by the state Criminal Justice Services Division. Between last January and June, 282 hate crimes were reported to police agencies; during the first six months of 1991, 251 hate crimes were reported. Hate crimes are acts motivated by prejudice against a person’s race, national origin, religious background, sexual orientation, social status or political beliefs. [Read more about the difficulty of counting hate crimes.] 

“Skinhead groups that push white supremacy and heterosexuality are recruiting members through schools, police officials told the committee. The groups tout their philosophy on dedicated telephone lines and on posters. ‘Ethnic groups outside the white race are their potential enemies,’ said Major Dean L. Renfrow, of the Oregon State Police. 

“Hate crimes – including those sparked by the Measure 9 debate – even are being committed on students wearing No on 9 buttons, Louie said. He cited a young woman who was beaten up and her leather jacket torn by other students after she wore her button to school, he noted. 

“Hate crimes must be taken seriously, added Stan Robson, chief deputy of the Benton County Sheriff’s Department.”  

“The 1992 fall campaign has become a mean season of vandalism, harassment, X-rated videotapes and violence. Churches have been defiled. Car windows punched out. People harassed….Gays and lesbians say a cloud of fear and suspicion has settled over their lives. Proponents of 9 say they are afraid to speak out. Hate crimes are increasing and the national and world media have come running to glimpse this bitter fight in the green Pacific state that gave America the bottle bill.”

~ The Oregonian, Sunday, November 1, 1992 (two days before the vote) 

The legislative hearing, news coverage, and the documentary Ballot Measure 9 detailed LGBTQ organizations’ membership files and donor lists being stolen, brake lines cut and tires loosened on cars, gunshots and rocks through windows, beatings, vandalism of homes and businesses, a brutal attack on a straight ally’s horse. (Read more about the interplay of mainstream and political violence during this period.) 

Just Out’s October editorial recapped some of this violence – “not to scare you, or to further victimize anyone, but to show what the perpetrators of homophobic violence are doing. And to show the courage of lesbian and gay Oregonians in the face of this violence” – with this message:  

“We cannot afford to give in to our terror and fear. That’s what they want us to do. We must come out in great numbers and then block our closet doors so that we cannot retreat. It is not just people like Donna Red Wing, Scott Seibert, Kathleen Saadat, Sandy Shirley, Peggy Norman, or Scot Nakagawa who are on the front lines in this war, we all are. Whether you are standing in front of a microphone or your closet door, we are all targets in this war.”

Just Out, Oct. 1992

“’They’ll win if we stop, so we’ll just keep going. We have to do everything we can to keep this poison from spreading,’ said Scott Seibert, just days after the break-in of the OUTPAC office…. 

“The determination and courage that each of us wears as we face these personal and public assaults deepens the pride in all of us.” 

Violence Then & Now 

Speaking personally as your writer, Holly Pruett, it’s been difficult to revisit the terrifying times we went through as a community, fighting Measure 9, the local OCA measures, and Measure 13, the sanitized version of Measure 9, a campaign I co-led in 1994. 

I myself had the bomb squad come to my front door to check out a package left there for a high-profile campaign staffer who was staying with us. It turned out to be a care package from an admirer, but the times were such that everything had to be treated as a potentially mortal threat. 

These days I rarely feel at risk for being an out lesbian – I’m white, comfortably middle-aged, middle-class and married, femme-presenting and only recognizably queer when engaging in public displays of affection with my butch spouse who is frequently misgendered with “Sir” and still faces public scrutiny and sometimes hostility when using a public women’s bathroom. 

My vulnerability as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and teen date rape remains with me. More so, I am excruciatingly aware of the risks taken these days by showing up to the political protests that were spaces of solidarity and relative safety back in the ‘90s.  

The rise of political violence in response to the candidacy of our nation’s first Black President was on our minds when our chosen family attended a huge Obama rally on Portland’s waterfront in 2008. My Asian American friend detailed our safety plan if shooting were to start – we would dive under the nearby stage equipment truck with the kids who were with us. 

As longtime civil rights organizer and No on 9 leader Scot Nakagawa puts it, “The violence of the ‘91-92 campaign – and the violence that was rising all around us in Oregon in the late ‘80s through the ‘90s – was very real and could be very scary. But it was nothing when compared to the level of violence possible now. White nationalists and other violent rightwing factions today are better trained, more likely to be armed and have better guns – and, importantly, the context has changed such that they’re more likely to use those guns.” 

“Back then,” Scot says, “if someone waved a gun in my direction, I considered it a threat that was very unlikely to be followed up on. Today, if someone waves a gun in my direction, I duck, assuming that it will be fired.” 

As we revisit the pervasive, terrifying, and deadly violence of 30 years ago, our hearts are heavy with the death of a beloved LGBTQ activist, murdered while supporting a racial justice protest in Portland on February 19, 2022.  

June Knightly is the fourth person to have died in Portland in the midst of far-right provocation in the past five years, and the third white Portlander in that time to be killed while putting themselves in between Black people and a violent white person fueled by misogyny and racial hatred.   

We knew June by her chosen name Amazon in the late 1990s when she chaired the Lesbian Community Project board. LCP carried a heavy load during the violence of the Oregon Citizens Alliance’s attack on the LGBTQ community.   

“June Knightly embodies the feminist lesbian community’s unwavering support for human rights for all. I am proud to call myself June Knightly and proud that I tried to show up for her community when they were under attack – just as she showed up again and again for Black lives.”  

Eric K. Ward  

With June’s killing so recent, this is very tough terrain to revisit. We don’t do it lightly. We tell these stories to honor the incredible bravery of those who defend civil and human rights even in the face of political violence meant to weaken or deny those rights.   

People like June “Amazon” Knightly, Ricky John Best, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, and Micah David-Cole Fletcher. The people you’re reading about in No on 9 Remembered.  

For more analysis, see our Addendums on The Interplay of Mainstream & Political Violence and The Difficulty of Counting Hate Crimes. 

As they say on The Moth Radio Hour, “Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storyteller.”  Read more about the benefits and challenges of historical memory.