A Story of Violence
On August 29th, in Portland, Aaron Danielson, member of an extreme right group, was killed by Michael Reinoehl, a security guard for Black Lives Matters demonstrations, who himself was killed by the police six days later. One was a former professional snowboarder; the other, a businessman. The fatal story of two men in a country that slowly but surely is sinking deeper and deeper into political violence.
On the occasion of the American presidential elections of 2020, the aim was to probe more closely the fractures caused by Donal Trump's mandate within American society. It was the time of the great upheavals of the Black Lives Matter uprising, and the increasingly violent gesticulations of a very conservative - and very white - part of the country. In Portland, the big city in the state of Oregon, such divisions were, in this respect, more intense than elsewhere. And the sad story of Michael Reinoehl and Aaron Danielson seemed to capture perfectly what was going on in the streets and in the air at the time. In order to understand the personalities of these two men, to understand their journey and how they had each been radicalised to death, I set out to travel around the city of Portland for several days in the early autumn of 2020. Taking buses and taxis from one end of this humid metropolis to the other, surrounded by huge trees, I met those close to Reinhoel and Danielson, those who saw them harden and those who hardened with them. Their stories tell of lives, but also of how America became tense at the time of the vote.
Along Alder Street, a beggar picks up big handfuls of small white pebbles that decorate the bases of oak trees, unaware that a few steps away, in the shade of one of those trees, is a chalk outline of a man on the sidewalk. That’s where they’d found the body. “I was on the other side of the street when I heard two gunshots, one after the other. Terrible sounds that seemed to echo between the walls of the buildings,” said Justin Dunlap, who was broadcasting a live demonstration on social media that evening of August 29, 2020. “Through a cloud of teargas, I saw a guy take four steps before collapsing. I was in a complete state of shock: I’d just filmed a murder.”
The victim’s name was Aaron Danielson. According to the press, he was an extreme right militant, and his death was the first act of a sad wild ride. Act two: the alleged murderer is called Michael Reinoehl, who is considered an activist of the extreme left. Act three: while on the run, he confesses his crime during a television interview aired at prime time. Act four: Michael Reinoehl is killed by the forces of order. The End. “It’s the sad reality of the city where we live,” today says an angry Justin Dunlap. “From the beginning, Pandora’s Box was opened. It was all inevitable.” With the many flowered gardens that gave it the name “Rose City”, Portland is normally a good place to live. But for several months now, it’s been a powder keg.
“There have always been radical and conservative cultures deeply rooted in the city, and demonstrations in the street, but what’s happening now is not comparable”, notes Alexander Reid Ross, a Professor in the History Department of Portland State University, and a member of its Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. “Portland is the nerve center of a kind of political tension that is today cropping up all over the country. (All over the country, or is it coming from Portland and spreading everywhere else?)” The rallies by citizens who filled the streets downtown to honor the memory of George Floyd and denounce systemic racism were soon followed by a cycle of general and virtually continual violence. Every week, within a barricaded town center, Black Lives Matter supporters confronted militias waving Trump flags. A cauldron of tension, shouting, tear gas, and blood as well, where each side blamed the other for lighting the fuse, where hardliners imposed their actions on people who simply wanted to wave banners and placards. It was in this context that Aaron Danielson, 39, and Michael Reinoehl, 48, eventually ended up running into each other. Fatally.
***
A long time before, Aaron Danielson had pinned a large American flag to the ceiling of his bedroom. The son of a veteran, he had a visceral love of his country. Continually quoting the First Amendment of the Constitution, he hammered home the idea that citizens should be free to live however they want. So the idea of raising taxes, and more generally any interventionist measures said to be leftist, got under his skin. He loved proclaiming “Down with Communism”. “Aaron was a true conservative. He didn’t like anyone telling him what to do, not ever,” his friend Chandler Pappas says today.
For some time, Aaron Danielson had been attending rallies under the eloquent label “Patriot Prayer” organized by Joey Gibson, a local figurehead of what was called the Radical Right, a form of nationalism crossed with undertones of Evangelicalism. Against an omnipotent government and for Trump. For the legalization of marijuana but against immigration and abortion. “Joey Gibson received a call from God to make His ideas known and fight for a proud America,” passionately affirms Michelle Dawson, a loyal member of the movement. Aaron admired Gibson for that. “He loved that we were forming a family of tight-knit patriots.” Apart from his fervent speeches, Joey Gibson had drawn attention to himself in recent years for barging onto a university campus waving a gun, precisely to protest its ban on carrying weapons, and for also provoking a brawl with the regulars at an anti-fascist bar. Each time he’d ended up at the Police Station, but that didn’t seem to bother Aaron Danielson.
Michael Reinoehl also had a favorite symbol: a raised black fist tattooed all along his neck. Reinoehl called himself an anti-fascist, “100%, to the bitter end”, as he once wrote on-line. “To be Antifa is to stand for a certain conception of justice and equality rather than being against something. And it signifies using every means possible to have that idea respected. That’s who Michael was,” according to Reese Mooson, one of the principal figures in the Black Lives Matter movement in Portland. In the long posts he regularly published on social media, Michael Reinoehl liked to talk about the need to behave in such a way that would allow future generations to evolve in a world in which humanity and decency would prevail. “As human beings, we are all part of the universe and even more (…). Know that you are here to help the innocents who don’t have the same awareness,” he posted one day. It was to make his commitment concrete that he’d taken part in demonstrations that spring, until he became a fully-fledged figure, recognizable by everyone, thanks to his tattoo. “There was something strong about his presence. He’d never lived through what we did as Blacks, but he felt it deep in his heart,” stressed Teal Lindseth, another famous face in the BLM movement. “He was our best ally.”
*
Born in an ordinary suburb of Portland, as a teenager, Michael Reinoehl became an avid snowboarder, practicing on the high hills along the eastern side of the city. The way he flew very high in the air earned him the nickname ‘Big Mike’ and allowed him to take up the sport as a professional career. Reinoehl had a few sponsors and travelled from one slope to another throughout the vast American West. He made a living at it for several years, though not a very good one, until he had to retire, which plunged him into a deep depression. To provide for his wife, son, daughter and dog, a Siberian Husky, Michael Reinoehl got occasional odd jobs on construction sites. He also borrowed money. After a long dispute and painful legal battle, his wife divorced him. And his creditors were cutthroat. Michael Reinoehl was backed into a corner, in dire straits. He forwarded all the mail from debt collectors to his sister, and harassed his mother, who’d never been rolling in money, so she’d give him anything she had. “Michael was a very troubled person who came and went in our lives,” his sister recently said in an article in The Oregonian, the local newspaper. “He could be very cruel to my mother if he didn’t get what he wanted. He made her feel guilty.” He also ran with the tough guys in the Black suburbs of the East Side.
He sold drugs, and in his old Cadillac, carted around “enormous bags of weed, but also acid and cocaine,” according to Xavier Warner, one of his fellow demonstrators. “Mike had known people from the ghetto for a long time.” Michael Reinoehl often even robbed rival dealers. He gradually lost contact with his mother and sister. All he had left were his children, his dog, and his accomplices from the East Side.
As for Aaron Danielson, he was originally from Spokane, in the state of Washington, a few hundred miles north of Portland. He grew up in a wooden house set on top of a hill that his father had built with his own hands. After High School, he left to move to Portland, where he earned a living working for a small moving company before starting his own business – North West Specialty – with one of his roommates. The idea was to move anything that no one else wanted to move, from the most bizarre to the heaviest items. “His business was doing well. He knew everyone and everyone knew him,” remarked Stephanie Wilcox, one of his first fiancées. During the week, “Jay” as he called himself, was a regular at the counter of the Pit Stop Grill, where he liked to make toasts and spout off about the theories of the physicist Stephen Hawkings. But every Sunday, or almost, he’d drive several hours to a small country park where his friends from the Patriot Prayer group organized collective prayers “for peace”. The members were exactly what you’d imagine right-wing militants would be: gun lovers, racist and potentially looking for hook-ups. Professor Alexander Reid Ross adds a nuance: “The groups of the far right are always divided in two. On one side are the people like Danielson who detest massive immigration but have nothing against immigrants. On the other side are the militant racists who want to exterminate the left. The first group values the physical strength of the second group. And the second group uses the people in the first group to win an audience.”
Despite their ideas and diametrically opposed paths, Aaron Danielson and Michael Reinoehl could agree on one point. As soon as they could, the two men would venture deep into the vast Oregon countryside. Reinoehl still loved snowboarding. “He’d get in his car and leave for the mountains in a flash. He promised he’d take me with him one day so I could see the snow,” said the young Randy McCorkle, who got close to Big Mike during the demonstrations. As for Aaron Danielson, he’d explore the innumerable hiking paths that led to the nearby ocean, or circle around the heights of Portland. This unmarried man who dreamed of having six children often went alone: he’d drink water from the springs, make a fire with a few tree branches and a little melted wax and sleep under the stars, even in winter. “Aaron never said where he was going,” according to Michael Hamilton, his former roommate. “It was his own private world.” And then came the spring of 2020, which changed everything. Aaron Danielson and Michael Reinoehl didn’t have time, and even less desire, to go to the countryside. All that mattered to them, from that point on, were the streets of Portland and the history being played out there.
***
On the evening of Friday May 28th, dozens of demonstrators were protesting the death of George Floyd beneath the windows of the Justice Center of Portland, the general headquarters of the municipal police. The beginning of a long series of daily rallies that continued to grow. Michael Reinoehl wanted to be there. One evening, he made his way into the crowd that was swaying behind “Black Lives Matter” banners and joined the front lines with the most prominent members of the movement. “Michael showed up out of nowhere. According to Reese Mooson, he said: “‘Black Lives Matter, that’s who I am, it’s my life. I want to be useful.’” The sturdy fellow became the lookout for the procession, a kind of general security guard. “He was always there to have our backs, even when we went to the bathroom,” affirmed Antifa member Tiffany Wickwire. “We felt safe with him.” During one of the first marches, when a man in a car was brandishing a gun through the window, Big Mike managed to talk him into putting it away with a few witty words and a smile. Which didn’t prevent the bust-ups of other days. The police fired tear gas and went after people manu militari; some demonstrators attacked police stations while others tore down statues. The city center looked like a war zone.
Aaron Danielson had no problem choosing his camp. He loathed these demonstrators and held them responsible for the chaos. “Aaron saw them as a band of sociopaths on the road to hell, junkies who were a little too emotional. He was a small businessman and couldn’t stand that shops were closing because of them,” summed up Chandler Pappas. Aaron Danielson didn’t trust the media, so he also filmed the demonstrations. He said it was his patriotic duty. Every night, he closely followed the crowd, his phone held straight out in front of him, a Velcro badge praising the police on his bag. Danielson even cancelled the two days of camping in the mountains he’d arranged with friends for his birthday. He let himself get completely caught up by what was happening on the streets. “Aaron adored adrenaline, it was his sinful little pleasure,” according to Michael Hamilton. “We’re talking about someone who had 19 motorcycle accidents, but that didn’t stop him from getting back on the road each time.”
As for Michael Reinoehl, he liked nothing better than spending time with all the young activists who fondly called him Uncle Mike. Teal, Xavier, Randy, and the others were his new family. Apart from the times he was out demonstrating, Michael Reinoehl took them to the university or the doctor in his Cadillac with the shaky hood, and they’d go have enormous stacks of pancakes and weak coffee for lunch; or they’d spend hours walking along the edge of the river. One night, when they were stretched out on the grass looking up at the stars, Uncle Mike confided in Xavier Warner. “He thanked us for being there.” He said his eyes had been opened to another view of the world. I had the impression that his life had changed with us.” A little while later, Michael Reinoehl got his tattoo of the famous black fist. Xavier Warner: “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I asked him if it had hurt and all he said was: ‘The revolution hurts. I got this tattoo for the revolution, for you.’”
*
It was summer now. It was getting hotter and things were going from bad to worse in Portland. On top of the police repression that was getting more and more violent, several battalions of militiamen were surfacing: the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, and certain people loyal to Joey Gibson. Often hiding behind thick sunglasses, sometimes wearing bullet-proof vests, a camouflage sweatshirt, or a Donald Trump T-shirt, they would harass the Black Lives Matter people. “At first, the violence was from the extreme right. Mainly groups from the suburbs of Portland wanting to bring down the liberal morale of the city, the way they did after Obama got elected,” clarifies Professor Alexander Reis Ross. In his role as the Guardian Angel of the BLM movement, Michael Reinoehl was always on the look-out. “He knew things could degenerate at any moment. There was the risk of getting injured or ending up in jail. Like all of us, he was incredibly tense,” said Teal Lindseth.
One day, when Xavier Warner met him, his face bleeding and covered in cuts after being ambushed by some strangers, Michael Reinoehl flew into a rage: “Screw it; I’m getting a gun. Too bad.” From then on, he’d march in the city with a black Glock hidden in his bag. But he was the one who ended up taking the bullet. On the afternoon of July 26th, while ordering food with his daughter and a few Antifa members, two men who looked like they were Proud Boys appeared on the corner of the street. One of them called Xavier Warner, Uncle Mike’s young protégé, a “nigger”. The boy replied with a punch. A fight broke out, and in the chaos, the one who’d sworn at him pulled out a gun. “Michael rushed over to protect me. The bullet grazed a rib before going through his arm. Otherwise,” said Xavier Warner, “I’d be dead.” There was blood everywhere. In the small local hospital, the wounded man, in terrible pain, fainted. Barely a few days later, his arm bandaged but still stained with blood, he’d returned to the demonstrations.
*
The tension continued to mount. On August 8th, one Louis Garrick Fernbaugh, a former soldier in the Special Forces, set off three home-made bombs in a park where left-wing activists were known to meet. There were no victims. On August 15th, the driver of a big black car threw another explosive device at a small group meeting in a parking lot, with the same result. The same day, a member of the Proud Boys, draped in an American flag, hurled paintballs at the demonstrators, causing everyone to panic. On August 22nd, the same man this time pulled out a real gun in front of a Black Lives Matter trailer. Again, no one was hurt. But deep in Michael Reinoehl’s gut, he felt the terrible certainty that the worst would inevitably happen. In a comment posted on the Internet, he wrote: “We have a chance to change things. But it will take a battle like never before. It will be a war, and just like in all wars, there will be losses.”
Aaron Danielson did not participate in these attacks led by the “Alt-right”. “Aaron was someone who’d rather prevent a fight,” said Chandler Pappas, to defend him. “One evening, in a grocery store, I nearly got into a fight with the owner because I didn’t want to wear a mask. Aaron stepped in to calm me down. He didn’t want any violence.” Nevertheless, he was armed when he went to the demonstrations. He carried a tear gas bomb in his belt that he bought at a local hardware store. To defend himself, he said. According to him, it was the Antifas who were pouring oil on the fire. He filmed them as they were throwing balloons full of urine onto Donald Trump sympathizers, or when several of them attacked a truck driver. “Aaron was more agitated about all that violence,” according to his former fiancée Stephanie Wilcox. “He told me that something terrible was going to happen.” That wasn’t the first time that Aaron Danielson dangled the possibility of an apocalypse in front of her. When they were together, he’d made sure they always had a survival kit with filtered water, a gas mask, and several cans of food, in case there was some natural disaster.
From that point on, Aaron Danielson feared that a kind of revolution had begun. In long emails dripping with paranoia, he explained to his parents that The United Nations or China, through Joe Biden’s election, could soon take over the country. He was seen one day shouting at BLM protestors gathered at a gas station. Another evening, he had pepper spray shot at him. He sent a photo of himself afterwards to Stephanie Wilcox, who was terrified when she saw her former lover’s swollen face and eyes full of tears. At 3:32pm on August 29th, she texted him: “Shit, stop going into the center of town. Everything’s getting worse. You don’t want to end up wounded or hurting someone else. I’m worried about you.” She never received a reply.
***
It was very sunny in Portland on that Saturday of August 29, 2020. Which delighted Donald Trump’s supporters, who announced they’d ride down the wide avenues of the town center in about a hundred vehicles. The “Trump 2020 Cruise Rally” had to be a show of strength. Aaron Danielson envisioned documenting it, along with Chandler Pappas. Wearing a baseball cap with the Patriot Prayer logo, he picked up his friend; the two buddies stopped off at a hardware store to buy tear gas, as well as a knife and paintballs. Danielson was also wearing protective gloves. On that day, he looked like he was getting ready for war. At the end of the afternoon, as soon as the “Trump Cruise” entered Portland from the south, the Black Lives Matter activists slowed down their march under a barrage of taunts. To clear a path, the Trumpists fired a hail of paintballs. In return, people spit and threw scoops of ice cream at them, as it was summer. “To tell the truth, the atmosphere wasn’t particularly tense. “It seemed to be a day like any other, with the guys from the right setting off some minor violent actions,” noted the videographer, Justin Dunlap.
At exactly 8:55, Aaron Danielson and Chandler Pappas crossed Third Street, determined to head down Alder Street to the south, where there were still pockets of disturbances. What followed was like a series of flashing images. Someone in the crowd, perhaps an Antifa supporter, pointed at the two friends and shouted: “Watch out, there are two of them over there!” Michael Reinoehl then appeared under a streetlight, holding an assault rifle. Crossing over to the other side of the street, Aaron Danielson pulled out his tear gas bomb. And Big Mike, Uncle Mike, fired twice, then ran off. “It all happened in barely a few seconds,” said Chandler Pappas, who was a few steps away from his friend. “The first bullet hit the tear gas bomb, that exploded, before hitting Aaron in the heart.” A young Black woman, a nurse in the ranks of the Black Lives Matter group, rushed over to Aaron Danielson to give him emergency first aid. But it was pointless: he was already dead.
After requisitioning Justin Dunlap’s video and watching the surveillance footage in the area, the Portland Police Department had no trouble identifying Michael Reinoehl, mainly thanks to his tattoo. Most importantly, the footage pieced together how the events had unfolded. At first it looked like Aaron Danielson and Chandler Pappas were walking alongside the Antifa group without anything happening. Michael Reinoehl then ran to hide in an entrance, waiting for the two others to pass him. Once behind them, he was again visible; he pulled out the gun from his backpack. To the investigators, it was clear that Michael Reinoehl intended to attack Aaron Danielson. “It was an execution,” shouted Chandler Pappas, who stood screaming next to the victim on the sidewalk. “I absolutely wanted to find the murderer; I wanted to kill him!”
While the Portland police and vigilantes searched the city for him, Michael Reinoehl was calling his friend Xavier Warner from a burner phone bought in a small supermarket. As night fell, Warner headed north with Uncle Mike’s daughter, first on the highway, then taking small, winding side streets. He parked in front of a motel. Michael Reinoehl was waiting for him in the parking lot. “He didn’t express any regret at all. He just said he'd done what he’d had to do, that it was a question of life and death. But he was shaking, he wasn’t calm,” according to Walker. Uncle Mike also told him he had no intention of turning himself in. He was too afraid that once in prison the police would let the vigilantes bump him off. Hadn’t Portland’s Chief of Police been censured the year before for providing information about the Antifa group to Joey Gibson, a member of Patriot Prayer?
To Michael Reinoehl, there was no choice but to go on the run. In the motel’s parking lot, his daughter started crying and asked him what was going to happen to them. He told her he’d find a way out. An hour later it was time to go. “I took Uncle Mike in my arms and told him we’d always be his family,” continued Xavier Warner. “On the way home, I cried. I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again.”
However, on Thursday, September 3rd, Michael Reinoehl appeared on live television. From his hiding place, he’d agreed to be interviewed by a journalist from the Vice channel. He explained that he’d shot Aaron Danielson because he was about to attack a BLM protestor. “I could have just sat there and watched my Black friend get killed,” he said. “But in the end, I told myself I couldn’t let that happen.” An account that no evidence could ever corroborate.
Once Michael Reinoehl appeared on television, members of the US Marshals Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Taskforce knew where he was. According to an anonymous witness statement given to the Portland Police, Michael Reinoehl was living in an apartment in Lacey, more than 125 miles north.
On the phone with his friends from Black Lives Matter, Michael Reinoehl asked if they would take care of his children as best they could. Tiffany Wickwire started an on-line fundraiser that she told Michael about by text at 6:27pm on Friday September 4th. She also told him to be careful. At 7:04pm, the fugitive ventured outside when two enormous vehicles came hurtling down both sides of the street. Four men jumped out, holding assault rifles and guns. When they saw Michael Reinoehl pull out his gun, they fired as many bullets as they could. Big Mike collapsed next to a letterbox.
In a statement published after the operation, Attorney General William Barr applauded the taking down of “a dangerous fugitive (…), as a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order.” When the shooting was announced, Michael’s friends and family gathered at the steps of the Center of Justice, to denounce the slur. A report on the investigation did, in fact, establish that Michael Reinoehl was not holding a gun when he came face to face with the police; it was a cellphone. Moreover, according to the witness statements of 21 out of 22 people in the area, the US Marshals never identified themselves, or shouted out the legally required warnings. According to the investigators’ calculations, out of the 37 bullets fired by four agents, one was lodged in a neighbor’s kitchen wall and another on the lawn of a private garden.
*
Since that ill-fated time, none of the four police officers have been subject to any legal proceedings. The friends of Aaron Danielson and Michael Reinoehl mourn them and honor their memory. They say they miss them terribly. At the beginning of October, Chandler Pappas and a few other acolytes rushed into the center of Portland to steal the metal statue of an elk symbolically erected by Antifa supporters. Soon after, the Antifa supporters tore down a hundred-year-old statue in honor of the conservative president Theodore Roosevelt and painted “Dakota 38” on the statue of Abraham Lincoln, a reference to the largest mass execution in American history. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
