Ed Calderon's first hand accounts with the Portland and Atlanta Riots
24:10 Share

Finding suitable mental health medications can be a challenge. The GeneSight test may help. Did you know that genetics can play an important role in gaining insight on how a person may respond to various medications? Understanding this may help reduce medication trial and error. GeneSight is a genetic test that analyzes variations in DNA. It shows how genes may affect someone's metabolism or response to medications commonly prescribed to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.

Visit genesight.com for more information. All right, Ed, we'll just do a quick warm-up real quick. But I'd like to do a warm-up before we dive right into it. Sure. So with all the shit that's going on in the country right now and the protests and the riots, you actually went to the Portland one. Yeah. And you also were in Atlanta. Yeah.

Are there any other ones you showed up at? I mean, L.A. I was in L.A. during some of the initial parts of that protest and some of the looting going on in L.A., so I got to see some of that as well. Did you get anything good? That's a good one. No, I didn't get anything good. I don't know. So when I was in Atlanta, that was the initial push of those nightly protests and looting and rioting.

I was actually there to do a class on urban movement, traveler safety, and social engineering. So I got there and the host called me right after I got out of the plane and told me, we're probably going to have to cancel this class because Atlanta is burning. And I told them, well, that's a pretty good backdrop and learning experience for people to kind of go through. Yeah. So...

In the words of Bill O'Reilly, fuck it, let's do it live. So we actually use the rides as a backdrop.

sent some of the students out there to kind of piece together who was in charge on the protester side. You took the class out there? Yeah. Oh, shit. Nice. I took the class out there. Obviously, everybody signed a waiver. Everybody knew what they were in for, and everybody wanted the learning experience, and I didn't want to pass up the learning experience for myself to kind of see some of that stuff directly. Immediate things became apparent to the students and to myself.

A lot of conductors, people orchestrating things within the scope of the protest and some of the looting going on on both sides. Even the cops and the police and the government were doing things to kind of move certain narratives and certain things along. Protester side, you could see people being bussed in or driven into the protest in Atlanta. You can see

certain elements, certain things bought at Home Depot that were pretty suspect. So it was surprising to me that on the law enforcement side, none of that was being monitored. So basically, breaching kits were sold out in Atlanta. Crowbars, angle grinders, that type of stuff. All that shit was gone. All that stuff was kind of being distributed in some of these places with some of the looters.

On the protester side, there was a lot of communication, a lot of people utilizing things like during the, a lot of the students were within the crowds. They could see over shoulders and would see what the messaging devices that people were using were.

So they were using Snapchat, they were using Signal, they were using Seyo, which is like a, it turns your phone into like a radio thing. And they were using headsets to kind of orchestrate some of these things. So it was actually pretty fucking organized. Some of it was. And on the, you know, and not to just talk about the protesters, there was a group of people that rolled in at one point during the night.

handing out water bottles and being very pro-police, pro-blue line. And they were driven there inside a police car and they were driven out of there inside a police car after they made an appearance on the news. So, you know, everybody, it was a circus with a lot of rings in there. It's interesting. How did your students feel? I mean, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change. Yeah.

You know, people are usually told to avoid these types of incidents and spaces. You know, my whole thing is that I want to teach people how to look at things differently, to look things from an adversarial type of way. So when I used to do training for bodyguards in Mexico, I used to take them through a full ambush class first and then showed them how to counter that, right?

I take that kind of that same approach with students coming into some of the urban survival classes where I'm like, hey, so I'm going to show you how to get out of a bad situation where maybe civil unrest is a thing.

So I have to show you how civil unrest kind of acts and how it coordinates and how the Hong Kong protesters are a quantum leap when it comes to civil unrest. And how you're seeing some of their methodology kind of now being transferred through the interwebs into the methodology that are now being expressed by groups like Antifa, groups like Black Lives Matter, some of the elements within Black Lives Matter. And...

and some of the people around these protests that basically use them to do what they do, which is loot, you know, property damage. And it's just an excuse or an outlet for them to do what they do. Do you think those protesters that went there went with bad intentions? Or do you think that they were manipulated after being there by a certain group and kind of handed...

what they needed to turn it into what it wound up being. A pretty good example of this, well, I was in Portland and I actually was at the 100, the 100, the 100, Day 101 of the protest when the, when the Molotov cocktail was thrown at one of the, by one of the protesters and landed within the protesters and one of them, their feet, their feet caught on fire. The memes that came out of that, you know, the internet wins, you know.

Pretty horrific sight for most people I've seen worse, but that happened. Interesting thing about that is the protesters immediately looked around and said, somebody call the police, basically. You got to be shitting. And the state police rolled in, put him out, and there was an unspoken truce happened in that moment, right? And they put this guy's shoes out with an extinguisher. And then they went back to the whole bus against them.

I've been through riots. I've been through two riots, prison riots, some riots outside of the prison in Tijuana, a bunch of other civil unrest situations in Mexico where people do get killed and people do have nefarious intent and the cops will shoot back. A repressive, true repressive government. I don't see that in Portland. 5% CS gas being used

which is, you know, it makes you sneeze, you know, uh, snack carts being, uh, pulled through the, uh, the protester line. They have fucking snack carts. Yeah. Red bull, granola, uh, water, Gatorade bottles being offered to the protesters there. Lots of Kool-Aid. A lot of Kool-Aid. Um,

Mostly young people. So I look at things a different way. So I was going through that protest, and one of the first things that I did was smell some of the people there. You would think that a protest that's lasted 100 days would mean that a lot of people have been out there just sleepless, just fighting the good fight.

All these people smelled like they took a shower in the morning. All these people smelled of Vax body spray and Old Spice. They smelled like they've been living comfortably, maybe couch surfing in the area. Mostly Caucasian. Mostly all of them had pretty good dental work done on them. A lot of them had a pair of expensive frames on their glasses. A few very expensive, not expensive shoes, but upper middle class is what I saw there.

And it was all about Black Lives Matter. And I did not see a lot of black lives in that environment. The black lives that I saw in that environment, I saw a few African-Americans honking their horns because they were getting back from work into their suburban houses in the area. And it was interesting seeing that nonsense, nonsensical kind of a struggle that they were going through where the black lives they're fighting for honking their horns, trying to get through the crowd to get back home.

And they're there protesting for... Yeah. Against the police. And the police are using 5% gas and engaging in the... Like, you want to talk about restraint. I've never seen such a restrained riot police force in my life. I mean, they did everything they could not to damage anybody at that riot. So...

speaking to some of the members of law enforcement that were working. - Did they accomplish that real quick? Just backtrack, like did they harm anybody? - Not at all. I mean, some people got knocked to the ground just by scattering when some of the police kind of moved in on the protest. But it was, I mean, I'm three years into the American dream myself, so I still have the perspective of an outsider and I can make heads or tails of what I was seeing.

It seemed like a play being acted out in front of me, some sort of show. And the show became louder and rowdier when the cameras were there. Okay. So, and on the police officer's side, I actually went over and talked to some of them. And desperation on their end. They don't have leadership in Portland as far as their police forces. They don't have the backing or support of the government there. The government says, well, just be there, but don't do anything.

Property damage is happening. Don't worry about it. We'll pay for it. That's the thing, you know? So I feel for them. I feel for the protesters too. I mean, I feel for what the fight that they think they're fighting for, the motives that they have for being there. And they were sold something that might not be what they think it is. And I think most of these things were probably going to

flare up or fade away once November passes. That's kind of the feeling I get. How many people were out there? Was it like, was it shoulder to shoulder? Was it that crowded? It's probably just a crowd, just...

probably somewhere in the vicinity of 2,000 people, maybe, kind of moving around randomly, a few leaders in the protest, screaming out directions. What kind of directions? Let's go over to the park. Let's form a line here, gather all the dumpsters, put them in the middle of the street, gather rocks, back up, disperse, regroup. Oh, shit. Yeah. And everybody listens?

So everybody listens to the best abilities usually a few people listen and the rest of them follow the crowd Okay, so it's a lot of herd mentality Not even close to what you see in Hong Kong though, you know them, you know, they're Asian So there's something there about then there's something about their organization. So I don't know It's not even close to what you see in Hong Kong It's where the organization goes and some of the sophistication shown by the protesters. Yeah, but it's pretty interesting, you know interesting in

Interesting how they're basically being busted and relieved and something is maintaining that. There has to be something maintaining that financially. Yeah. Did you feel like you were in danger at all being in there? No. No? Completely. I had a few people tell me, Ed, what are you doing there? And then protest. I'm not telling people to be reckless with their safety in lives. I know people, I usually tell people to avoid that.

I'm a non-permissive environment specialist. I train people on how to be safe specifically in places where they're not supposed to be or places that turn into places not supposed to be. So who would I be doing those types of classes if I don't go to those places and learn from them, right? So to me, it was a learning experience. But in my experience, being in very dangerous places,

That was not even close to the scale of danger that I've been in my life. That was pretty tame. I didn't feel threatened by the law enforcement. I saw some of the canisters go off and get a whiff of some of that CS gas prepared for CS gas. And I sneezed a bit and rubbed my eyes a little bit and then learned it was 5% CS gas.

Right. So no, I did not feel in danger. I felt for the people that live there. That's a sympathy I got, you know, some, some of these people, some of the property damage that I saw, um, some of the people coming, uh, coming back from work, some of the people going to work, getting their lives interrupted by all these kids playing rage against the machine in the middle of the street and just knocking over, uh, knocking over, um,

knocking over trash cans and stuff like that for a cause that they feel very, very deeply about and how that gets manipulated by some people out there maybe. And on the other side, desperate police officers going on inhumane shifts and having no support of the people that were elected to lead them. So it was, I mean, to me, it was a sad state of affairs. Something that is very...

familiar to me as far as somebody that comes from the third world, from a country like Mexico that has a lot of that type of strife. You can see elements of that in there. So it was surprising to me that I saw that in Portland, a few blocks away from a bunch of restaurants where all these protesters were having lunch before they got there. The vegan restaurant, the noodle restaurant, there's a bunch of hipster places. And all of a sudden,

ah that was a great um vegan um you know pizza now let's go protest how bad we have it yeah that was like i just i i my brain doesn't uh isn't able to comprehend exactly what's going on there did it get worse at night uh you know it it kept uh it kept ramping up and then lowering down ramping up lowering down a lot of it was actually provoked by media being there filming that's what

That's what made a lot of the people just kind of good rowdy again. Yeah. But you can see some of the desperation on the cop side. I mean, they don't want to be there every night, you know. With their hands tied behind them. Yeah. Was there, when you said there was kind of a, like, a momentary truce when...

That guy's leg caught on fire, but were the cops, were the police officers intermingled with him or was there like a clear line? That's a clear line. Uniformed, all black riot police with some of the subdued patches on there. They saw the Molotov cocktail being thrown and this guy catching on fire, basically running through the crowd and the protesters with all their infinite wisdom telling him to roll.

And he kept rolling, but his feet were on fire. So that rolling thing doesn't work when your feet are on fire, apparently. It's fucking gas, buddy. And you could see their helplessness coming in from the bottom up until their voice said, somebody call the police. Yeah. Which was insane for that environment. And they did come and they did put him out with extinguishers.

And then they had to go back to their line and start getting pelted again, even after they did their deed. Again, I saw some of the faces in that police line. Again, Black Lives Matter. There's a lot of black faces on the police line as well. So I don't know. I don't know what to think about all that. What do you think would stop it? I don't know.

That's a big question. I think it's beyond my understanding. I would advise that a lot of the people that talk about police repression or a repressive government would take the time to travel a bit abroad. I think some of us that have had the opportunity to travel or that are not from this country

have experienced what that actually feels like. What being tossed into the back of a car without your rights being read and actually being tortured in a cell somewhere because you belong to a different political party than they do. What that actually is.

What being a reporter somewhere and being killed because of something you reported is. What having a grove of armed men coming to your house and taking your prettiest daughter to a party and never seeing her again, what that's like. The U.S. is not that, no matter how much they try and push that narrative.

Um, like I'm not from here. I travel every weekend. I'm in a different state every weekend. And I, a few cases that I've seen a few cases that I've experienced, but mostly the, the, the, there's no, they not experienced what true hopelessness is when it comes to the government. Yeah. What true repression is when it comes to the government. And, uh,

Most places in the country, you bathe in drinkable, potable water in the morning. Yeah. You know, I think people should start there. Yeah. I mean, the police can't really do much. You know, their fucking hands are tied behind their back. And what about the future? Like, how many people are going to sign up to be...

in the police in Portland in the next few years. What about the people that retire? What I've heard is the salaries aren't too attractive. The work they're doing right now is inhumane for what they're doing. They don't get any support. So eventually, you know, people are fighting, they're trying to cancel the police. Yeah. I mean, it's unfortunate, but, you know, sometimes, sometimes I feel like the best thing you can do is just

let people live in uh exactly what the fuck they created as harsh as that sounds but hard times produce hard men yep hard men will produce good times and good times will produce soft men and the snake will bite its tail i think we're at that point right now in history where the snake is biting its tail i think we're there too um and it's to me it's a

People ask me about, you know, what I think about these things and what's happening in the U.S. The world has ended for me several times over in Mexico. From my job ending to seeing a whole generation of young kids that I grew up with being consumed by a drug war. I mean, consumed by it. Their bodies are no bodies to bury.

So my world has ended a few times over. Coming up here and seeing some of the strife that the country's going through is, I still have hope. I still have a vision or an idea of what the U.S. is. I remember getting gifted a copy of the Constitution when I started going through my immigration process by a dear friend of mine, Dan, NSW reservist. And he gave me a copy of the Constitution, told me to read it.

And I read it and it's a pretty amazing document. It's probably the closest thing to a divinely inspired document that I've seen. And you can see its effects on the country you have now. But again, you start getting into what it's churning into. The clear line of separation between this side and that. And somebody like me getting caught in the middle, just...

I'm new here. How can I help? You're supposed to be on that side or you're supposed to be on this side. And that's just disheartening. Well, that's pretty interesting to hear from another standpoint, from an immigrant. So thanks for sharing that. And let's get on with the show. ♪

Finding suitable mental health medications can be a challenge. The gene site test may help. Did you know that genetics can play an important role in gaining insight on how a person may respond to various medications? Understanding this may help reduce medication trial and error.

GeneSight is a genetic test that analyzes variations in DNA. It shows how genes may affect someone's metabolism or response to medications commonly prescribed to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. Visit genesight.com for more information.