Black protester on the racial complexities behind the city’s 100 days of protest

Faith Lightsy says her first instance of activism was to challenging a teacher in fifth grade.

Aged 10 or 11, she confronted the teacher who awarded a higher grade to a white girl who had got the same marks. So she organised a petition and collected 60 signatures. The other girl was moved to a different class.

Was it racism? Perhaps. What it certainly represented was an early consideration about the discrimination faced by millions of people for colour in the United States. Sometimes by their own families.

The daughter of a black man and a white woman, Lightsy, 46, says after her father left, some in her mother’s side of the family initially wanted nothing to do with her. As Portland marks 100 days of protests, triggered by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis, Lightly is preparing to be among those taking to the streets.

As such, she is also well placed to reflect on the complexities of the protests, which have been made up largely of white people demanding justice for black lives. Some protesters of colour have accused white participants of trying to co-opt the events, others have viewed them as vital allies, taking to the streets night after night, risking arrest and violence from the police.

As tensions have escalated – last weekend a 39-year-old, Aaron “Jay” Danielson, was shot dead at a pro-Trump rally in Portland – so has the anxiety of those involved in the protest. On Thursday night, the suspect in the Danielson shooting, Michael Reinoeh, was shot dead by federal agents as they sought to arrest him south of Seattle, ratcheting up the nerves even further.

“It’s easily explained – we have mostly white people in Portland. You can’t expect black people to come out when there aren’t black people here,” she says. “We are doing our part. We’re just outnumbered. So that’s why you see white people in support of black lives. Because there just aren’t a whole lot of black lives in the area.”

Given official data suggests just 3 per cent of Oregonians are African American, and only 6 per cent in Portland, the largest city, it may be the protests that have been taking place every day, are probably more diverse than the general population.

Lightsy, who protested the first Gulf War and the second Gulf War, and demonstrated in support of action against climate change and in support of Occupy Portland, says it feels she has been an activist all her life, even if she has not been part of a group.

She says that when Philando Castile was shot by Minneapolis police during a 2016 traffic stop, she wept out loud. When she watched the video of George Floyd being killed – or least the first minutes of it before deciding she did not want to watch it all – she joined those taking to the streets.

“For me personally it was different, because it takes a lot of effort, a lot of work, to suffocate someone,” she says, sitting in Chapman Square, a park located Portland’s federal building that has been home to many of the protests.

“He wasn’t resisting. He wasn’t running away. He wasn’t in the middle of the commission of a crime. He was pinned down on the ground, handcuffed behind his back, and still he was killed.”

Lightsy, who was tear-gassed and whose nephew was was shot with a non-lethal round by police during some of the first, angry protests in early June, sees an important role for white people who want to support the fight for racial justice.

Yet she says protesting is not enough. They must educate themselves, they must vote, they must support black businesses and be genuine in their commitment.

This summer, there was controversy in Portland after a group of mostly white women received a lot of headlines and media attention, for coming out, and linking arms to confront the police. The woman who established the so-called Wall of Moms, Bev Barnham, who said she identified as Mexican-American, was criticsed when she allegedly failed to hand over leadership positions to women of colour.

Lightsy, who works in retail, was briefly part of the organisation that came in its place, Moms United for Black Lives, but now is linked to another activist group that is located across the river in Vancouver, Washington.

Mostly she does what she can as an individual woman of colour to educate others, including her children, a three-year-old granddaughter who she took to one of the protests, deciding she should see history in motion.

“I think that protesting is one avenue, it’s one thing you can do to create change. But I don’t think the most important. I don’t think it’s the only thing that could be done,” she says.

“And I think it is just the beginning of a long road we’ve got to go down before we successfully establish racial equality in this country.”

She has also been reflecting of her own place in all of this. In a gradual process that began five years ago, Lightsy has seen herself – and demanded others see her – as a black woman, rather than the “multi-racial daughter” her white mother viewed her.

She says that earlier this summer, as she took to the streets of Portland, adding her voice and passion, she called her mother and spoke with her about her identity. She says she asked her mother to accept her a black woman, something she says her mother could not do. They have not spoken since.

As Donald Trump continues to denounce Portland and its protesters as anarchists and terrorists, Lightsy says she is proud of her city and those seeking change.

“People can say a lot of things, but that doesn’t make it true. I’ve been down here. I don’t think he has,” she says. She believes the so-called terrorists or anarchists, many have descended on the protests at some point, but that they are not in the majority.

“The people who are genuinely down here night after night, being gassed repeatedly – I’ve been gassed repeatedly – the people who are really here for the movement that is Black Lives Matter, are not anarchists and are not terrorists,” she says.

“They’re radical. I would say I’m absolutely radical and desiring change, but no, we’re not terrorists, we’re not anarchists.”