Why Did Those Minivan-Driving Feds Snatch People From Downtown Portland?

There were many moments from the summer of 2020 that have lodged in Portlanders’ collective memory, not to be easily forgiven or forgotten. Perhaps the most indelible is grainy footage of federal officers piling out of rented, unmarked minivans like circus performers from clown cars—and abducting protesters from the streets.

Video of the incident, spread by social media and national newspapers, highlighted the absurdity of the federal response, which had turned a civil rights protest into something more resembling a battlefield. Wednesday’s article in the Verge by two Portland journalists—former New York Times editorial board member Sarah Jeong and sometime WW contributor Sergio Olmos—revisits what happened and attempts to answer the simple but elusive question: Why?

The answer, of course, is not so simple. Jeong and Olmos weigh several hypotheses: right-wing instigators, alarmist news coverage of desecrated statues, federal ownership of one of the park blocks where protesters set up camp. In the end, perhaps, it’s impossible to make sense of the senseless.

Regardless, the story is worth revisiting. Jeong offered this summation on Twitter: “The feds did not succeed in quelling the protests,” she wrote. “But they absolutely succeeded in terrifying the shit out of two people who might as well have embodied the culture war—a transwoman vegan cook and a recent Reed College graduate working at Trader Joe’s.”