December 3, 2024

Laura Jedeed

Freelance Journalist

When Right-Wingers March in Portland, It’s Really All About the Clips

IMAGE: SAM ISLAND

The full version of this article appears at Portland Monthly Magazine

As rush hour crawled along I-5 near the Rose Quarter, I helped Eric—a tall, bearded Iraq combat veteran in a MAGA cap—unfurl an enormous banner over the Broadway overpass. It bore a simple demand, in hand-painted letters: FREE ALEX JONES.

Eric set up his phone to shoot footage. Responses to his sign flickered between approving honks and middle fingers. “Trump loves you!” he shouted at the haters.

This wasn’t Eric’s first time on an overpass in protest of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube’s bans on Jones, the multiplatform conspiracy theorist. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said to me. “I thought I was going to get thrown off last time.”

I was not, in fact, there to free Alex Jones.

Read more at Portland Monthly Magazine