KEPW discusses live interview about protesters breaking Federal Building window

Presenter: KEPW’s Jana Thrift interviewed a protester during the declared riot Jan. 30 while broadcasting live in downtown Eugene:

Jana Thrift: It’s interesting that everyone is put into the position of being told that they must leave if a certain group of people make a choice, like busting a window. I don’t know what the right answers for you guys is. You know what I—

Okay, so it wasn’t an intentionally broken window. It sounds like it was the process of banging on those windows that caused—the oscillation of it all actually broke a window. So I would imagine that that surprised the person at the window probably as much as it did the people inside.

Presenter: Jana discussed that experience at length on her KEPW program Legalize Survival Feb. 11. Jana Thrift:

Jana Thrift: We have what was declared a riot in Eugene. I was there personally livestreaming the day that it was declared a riot and I was actually there before they declared it a riot, and I stayed there almost till they had successfully smoked the whole place out.

I want to just right off the top, I’m going to tell everybody: I did not see what happened to that window. I had a child with me when I showed up and I was told by the legal observers when the police began to get ready across the street—which is what legal observers do.

So for those people who are afraid that, ‘Oh my God, this is a reason I should never bring my kids to a protest, ever,’ there’s a reason that protests have legal observers because legal observers are on that stuff, man.

The second they realized that I was there, a legal observer came over, said that the police were coming and that I should know, and so I moved away from there, you know, immediately, ’cause she noticed as legal observers do, ‘Oh you have a kid, there’s something going to start brewing.’

They are really careful about making sure people can get to safety way before anything happens. So that’s important for people to know. ‘Cause a lot of people don’t know that about protests.

And of course, there’s always something unexpected could happen, but that’s been my experience and I’ve had a good 15 years worth of going to a lot of different protests.

So we moved way out of the way and I stayed for a little while longer, and then my husband took her home. But while we were moved quite a ways away, we seen all the police showed up, all the cars were out there, a car pulled up and then all of a sudden there was a ‘Pop pop.’ Super loud. ‘Pop, pop.’ 

And I was like, ‘Oh.’ And it was, it was flash, you know, flash, flash. And I’ve never been around those flash-bang things. So that’s apparently what that was. And then people started moving and I was like, ‘Wo.’ And that’s when the car pulled up. The cars all pulled up after that happened. I forgot to mention that.

And so then the car pulled up within minutes, and then the one is announcing that it’s been declared a riot and everybody needs to leave.

And at the time I didn’t know that the window had gotten broken, and I’ll have to tell you that nothing I had seen up to that time seemed violent to me.

Now inside the plaza, when it gets up close where you’re next to the windows where everybody is in there, I was there last week and those (federal) guys in there (the Federal Building) were like mocking and laughing at people and it was, you could tell that you really had to control your temper if you were going to hang out up there.

And they did start pounding on the windows. And I was like, ‘Oh, pounding on the windows, you know,’ they’re like, bam, pow, pounding on the windows. And that is apparently what happened again yeah, on Jan. 30. I did witness that happening last week.

So that is what I was told had happened. I interviewed somebody who, later on in the evening who had clearly was part of the tear gas moment because he had ran out and he was really in it when the tear gas moment actually happened, understanding what the police said by their report, basically they waited for some sort of backup while they announced that people should leave.

And then when the backup showed up, which was probably an hour after, it seemed like a good hour after those first two flash-bangs happened, and I assume that that is when the window got broken because that’s when the police showed up, that’s when they declared it a riot.

Right. And even still, I remember standing there because I walked over to where the police were and tried to talk to some of them. I looked at somebody and I was like, ‘Why is it that the police have to tell us? It’s a riot? I can’t even tell it’s a riot. This, this is a riot? This is the most mellow riot I’ve ever thought a riot could look like.’ I was just like, ‘What is happening right now?’ It was the feeling that I had.

And around the edge of the Fed and across the street, and this is when I say the Fed, I’m talking the 7th and Pearl, it’s the old federal building. ICE is detaining people when they show up for their meetings, and that is why it is a point of contention.

And there’s been people protesting there five days a week, several different. So then I interviewed this guy. I was like, ‘Were you there when the window got broken?’ Because, you know, eventually somebody told me the window was broken. He said, ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘What happened?’

He said, ‘Well, they were pounding on the window, but I think it was an accident. Like I don’t think anybody intentionally broke it, but when it broke, everybody was like, get back from the damn windows.’ 

You know, the rest of everybody, so like the majority of the people that were there. There were definitely people angry enough to be telling the police, especially all those teenagers, they’re like telling the police how furious they are and they’re not using the best language, I can promise you that was part of it.

Does foul language and expressing your anger at something that is very appropriate to be angry at, is it appropriate? It’s not my choice of tactics. It doesn’t really equate to violence to me, and we were going to talk about it. I have lots of mixed feelings about it.

Julie and I might slightly have different feelings about parts of this issue, which is okay. And I feel really happy that we can, like, sit and talk about these things, ’cause these are the conversations when I first was turned on about the idea of having the radio station and really being involved with multimedia a lot came around Occupy.

And I thought the discussions that went on at Occupy, and I remember thinking we have to just sit and have these every day and record them and capture what people really thought and the difference of opinions and the process of sharing from way different kinds of people trying to find that middle ground is just so important in these times, in my opinion.

Not everybody is ever going to believe everything we believe, so we have to find a way to have unity with people that don’t necessarily believe just everything we believe.

Presenter: Jana Thrift discusses her live interview during the declared riot Jan. 30, as an eyewitness acknowledged that a window was broken by protesters banging on the windows of the Federal Building. 

You can hear Jana Thrift on Legalize Survival every Wednesday at 7 on KEPW 97.3, Eugene’s Peaceworks Community Radio.