How timely that Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum should kick off her new Hate Hotline while the murder trial of Jeremy Christian is under way.
Christian is the “white supremacist” (as the media call him) who stabbed three white men on a Portland, Ore., MAX train on May 26, 2017. As the story went, he yelled racist insults at two black teenage girls – one wearing a hijab – and when the men intervened, Christian killed two of them and wounded the third.
All three men were hailed as heroes. The man who survived the attack became the star of the narrative and, with cooperation of the media, turned it into a tale of how brave men saved the lives of two strangers during an afternoon commute.
Portland’s proud progressive values were in full bloom.
Almost three years later, Christian is now on trial for charges including two counts of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and hate crimes of second-degree intimidation. As the second week wrapped up, a different story of what happened on the train is emerging. Christian is still the knife-wielding monster. But it turns out he wasn’t the only one on the train obsessed with race or hate.
When the man who survived the attack, 24-year-old Micah Fletcher, took the witness on the sixth day of the trial, he cut a striking figure. Unlike other witnesses called to testify the same day, Fletcher didn’t wait outside the courtroom in the hall. He was ensconced in a room adjacent to the judge’s chambers. He appeared at the front of the courtroom near the witness box like an actor’s arrival on stage.
Slender and intense, he wore a black suit, black shirt, black-and-grey striped tie and a white, ornamental boutonniere in his lapel.
The prosecutor guided him through a brief bio. Fletcher was diagnosed with autism when he was eight years old and was given an Individualized Education Plan by Portland Public Schools. By middle school, he said, he was picked on by other students because he was different. He got into fights.
Fletcher graduated Madison High School in 2014. At the time of the attack he was attending Portland State University majoring in music. He likes to play the drums. The noise calms him, he said.
“Are you a person that holds strong beliefs?” prosecutor Jeff Howes asked.
“I would say so,” Fletcher said.
The prosecutor brought up the election of Donald Trump and Fletcher’s participation in protests against what he considered right-wing groups. Through the prosecutor’s questioning, Fletcher acknowledged he participated in a protest in Clark County in Washington state where he threw a smoke bomb. He said he accepted responsibility for his actions.
He also acknowledged dressing in a clown costume and attending protests where horns are used, presumably to drown out others’ speech. At one free speech rally in his neighborhood, he saw Christian give what looked like a Nazi salute but did not address him.
On the day of the attack, Fletcher was at one end of the train’s car when Christian – near the center of the car – yelled at two teenage girls, ordering them to go back where they came from. The girls moved away from him.
In initial news accounts in 2017, the story was that Fletcher intervened to protect the girls and then Taliesin Namkai-Meche jumped in to assist and, finally, Ricky Best joined the fray to fight off Christian.
Fletcher gave a different accounting on the witness stand. Some of his testimony sounded rehearsed. When he heard Christian yelling about Saudi Arabia, Fletcher said, “I turned to assess the situation.”
That sounds like something a cop would say.
Based on previous testimony from other witnesses, at the time Fletcher was assessing the situation, Namkai-Meche was on his cell phone, telling his aunt about the man on a racist rant. She suggested he record it on his cell phone and show the evidence to police. Namkai-Meche moved up to where Christian was and held up his phone. Christian knocked it out of his hand.
Fletcher testified he thought “violence was imminent,” that Namkai-Meche looked like someone who had never been in a fistfight and needed help. So Fletcher moved to get between the two men and force Christian off the train.
“I pushed him,” Fletcher said.
Christian mocked him and told Fletcher to push him again – and still again. Fletcher obliged by shoving him two more times. The third time, Christian came back with a 4-inch folding knife he carried in his pocket.
He went for Fletcher’s throat, then slashed Namkai-Meche’s neck and face. Best, who had been seated behind the men, stood up. Christian plunged the knife into his face and neck.
Neither Fletcher nor Namkai-Meche knew what they were getting into when they thought they could teach Christian a lesson about racism and hate.
While Fletcher tried to portray himself as having street smarts from his schoolyard fights, he was no match for an ex-con like Christian. Or, as social justice reformers prefer to call such men, “persons involved in the criminal justice system.” (Another politically acceptable euphemism is “an adult who has experienced incarceration.”)
In many of the videos and pictures of the attack, the teenage girls are not visible. In retrospect, they handled the situation fine on their own.
There was another narrative offered by a fourth man who received nowhere near the media attention of Fletcher and the other two “heroes.”
I missed the testimony of passenger Shawn Forde, but according to news accounts (some failing to note he is black, which is curious given the emphasis on race in this case), this 6-foot-4 ex-Marine placed himself between Christian and the teenage girls.
When Fletcher walked over, Forde said he told him, “It’s all right. He’s (Christian) just talking now. It’s cool.”
Forde testified that when Christian proclaimed he had free speech and could say whatever he wanted, he agreed: “You have freedom of speech and so does every other citizen. I also have the freedom to ignore you.”
Then Namkai-Meche arrived holding up his cell phone to record Christian, and everything escalated.
One of the most unusual things about this trial is the number of seats reserved for the victim and victims’ families. Five of 10 benches in the spectator section are reserved for them. I’ve never seen that much seating reserved for the victim side of a case, especially in Multnomah County.
“It’s because it’s a high-profile case,” a court staff member told me.
Yes, but it’s high profile because the two deceased men were not typical homicide victims. Namkai-Meche comes from a very prosperous family in Ashland. He attended the private Stevenson School in California and graduated from Reed College. He had just bought his first home at age 23 when he died.
Best, 53, was a highly regarded employee for the City of Portland, a husband and father of four and an Army veteran.
And, there’s the racial angle that so captivated the media and Portland progressives eager to cast Christian as a stand-in for Trump.
“Tell everyone on this train I love them,” were supposedly Namkai-Meche’s last words as he was dying. They even made the recent cover of Oregon Historical Quarterly’s exploration of white supremacy.
Namkai-Meche was bleeding badly, but maybe he managed to utter those words. If he did, it’s doubtful he meant them. He obviously didn’t love Jeremy Christian.
While the victims’ side of the courtroom fills up during the trial, the day I attended (plus earlier pretrial hearings) it appeared that no one was there on Christian’s behalf except his legal team.
Yet for the past couple of decades criminal justice reformers – Democrats and Republicans alike – have pushed the general public to be more accepting of criminals. Not just drug-addicted thieves and burglars – but violent men like Christian. The intent is to end mass incarceration. Stop arresting. Stop prosecuting.
The day before the attack, Christian had an altercation with a black woman. She Maced him, and he threw a bottle at her, injuring her eye. Despite witness corroboration and police response, Christian moseyed on his way.
Had the officer who responded been threatened by Christian and, as a result, shot and killed him, the story would have been: Portland police shoot another mentally-ill transient. Christian could have been a martyr.
The media and politicians, in their zeal for social justice reform, have politicized crime.
Had Christian been black and his victims white, systemic racism would have been invoked as an excuse. But Christian’s pathology hasn’t aroused much interest; he’s dismissed as a white supremacist.
A homicide detective who interviewed him immediately after the attacks testified about the contents of Christian’s backpack. Inside were three books: “The Book of Mormon,” “Saga of the Icelandic Vikings,” and “The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick.”
The reference to Philip K. Dick prompted me to get out my old copy of “The Man in the High Castle,” a book I read in college and had mostly forgotten. It’s an alternate history in which the Japanese and the Germans won WWII. The U.S. has been divided into three sections – the Pacific States of America are governed by the Japanese, the East Coast is ruled by the Germans, and the Rocky Mountain States in the middle are neutral territory.
Reading it now, what stands out is everyone’s obsession with skin color, place and tribe. Today in 21st Century Portland, we are as obsessed with race as if the Nazis had won the war.
Now we even have a Hate Hotline (1-844-924-BIAS), the result of the state’s new hate and bias crime law, which went into effect this year.
“For the first time, victims have a statewide hotline number to call when they have experienced hate or bias incidents in their own community,” says Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum in a press release.
What exactly is a hate or bias incident?
I attended one of Rosenblum’s “listening sessions” last year when she toured the state with a hate crime task force to prepare the new legislation. In Portland, about 100 people showed up at Unite Oregon, a nonprofit organization whose executive director, Kayse Jama, is from Somalia and ran unsuccessfully for the legislature. Many hate complaints at this listening session concerned poor service by retail establishments and disrespectful treatment by employers – for example, referring to a hijab as a “do-rag.”
While the state is minimizing the severity of felonies like burglary, robbery and assault, it’s pursuing hate crimes.
Want justice? Call the Hate Hotline.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
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Excellent article. I have been trying to spread the truth about this case for a few weeks now but the mainstream press loves the original narrative so much everything is slanted towards it.
I know Jeremy Christian from my experience as a person “involved with the criminal justice system.” He would not have done what he did had he not feared for his safety. He is a loud mouth but not one that seeks physical fights.
I’ve been on a news diet and hadn’t followed this recently. I don’t understand how this story changed so much. When the two men were killed, I had friends who visited the memorial at the Hollywood station. Didn’t PSU give the survivor free admission?
I found a story in the Portland Tribune. It’s so different from when the news first happened. I don’t want the killer out free. I’d like to know what really happened so we could learn from it.
The lessons from this case? This is Portland politics on trial. Had Jeremy Christian jumped on the MAX train screaming that the CIA was controlling his brain, and Donald Trump was refusing to help him, how would the people around him have reacted?
I suspect they would have left him alone. Later they would have told their friends about the crazy guy on the train during the Friday commute. Ricky Best and Taliesin Namkai-Meche would have gone on to enjoy the Memorial Day Weekend. Instead, Christian uttered words politically disagreeable to Micah Fletcher, who reacted. (You’re correct. PSU did offer Fletcher a scholarship.)
To show you how political this case has become, Monday’s session — the first day of the defense’s case — brought Teressa Raiford into the “victim” side of the courtroom. She is a black woman, founder of Don’tShootPDX, has sued the Portland Police Bureau and is running for mayor. She frequently turns up at protests of officer-involved shootings. On Monday, she appeared to be in court on behalf of Demetria Hester, the black woman who had an altercation with Christian the day before the MAX train attacks.
The defense brought Hester back briefly to acknowledge she had criminal convictions for theft and forgery from 2008.
What’s revealing about Hester’s encounter with Christian is that even though she Maced him, and he hit her with a Gatorade bottle, he did not bring out his knife on her.
I’m sure you know who Rosenblum’s married to. Willamette Week has blood on its hands. It fosters racial hate. Always pointing fingers at white privilege. If you’re white you’re guilty. A sick puppy like Christian grows up and wants to know where his white privilege is. The Nazis and KKK will show him where.
I would say your recollection of ‘The Man in the High Castle’ has been fully forgotten. It’s probably his most readable book but it’s hardly an action packed read considering the premise. The main characters are mostly involved with reproducing counterfeit Americana for wealthy Japanese officials who have created a rich market for Civil War memorabilia and Mickey Mouse watches. Everyone is obsessed with consulting the I-Ching. There is a Nazi character but he’s a spy out to find and assassinate the writer of an alternative history titled ‘The Grasshopper lies Heavy’ about America winning WWII. It’s a banned book but everybody reads it. Philip K. Dick considered writing a sequel about the Nazi occupation of the American East Coast but never did. Near the end of the novel a Japanese character lost in San Francisco temporarily enters a parallel universe where he wanders into a bar and is called a ‘Jap’ by the bartender and kicked out. I recall my first reading of the book in a college class in 1975 at PSU. It made no sense to me but it did spark an interest for more works by Dick and to eventually figure out how to consult the I-Ching with Yarrow straws just as they do in the novel. I don’t recall the book having much to do with an “obsession with skin color, place and tribe.” I think you might be “projecting” a bit which is another major theme of Philip K. Dicks (see Ubik). Several of his books deal with parallel realities and the conflicts that arise when they collide.
As I stated, it was “a book I read in college and had mostly forgotten.” What you’re describing is the plot. I’m talking about the characters. Maybe you have forgotten lines like these scattered throughout:
” ‘I see,’ Mr. Ramsey said; his Caucasian face twisted with painful concentration. ‘Therefore we will cater to his prejudice and graft a priceless American artifact to him instead.'”
“You, sir, are of American ancestry. Although you have gone to the trouble of darkening your skin color.” He scrutinized Mr. Ramsey. “A tan achieved by sun lamp. … I assure you I retain authentic roots… .”
“Is it easy to get a good job back there (Philadelphia)?” “Sure if you have the right color skin.”
“Only the white race endowed with creativity, he reflected. And yet I, blood member of same, must bump head to floor for these two.”
The characters in the book know their place, and their place is defined by their tribe. If I’m projecting, maybe it’s because I’ve been living in Portland the past several years.
I didn’t read the book for a class. I spent my college summers on forest fire lookouts, and friends always recommended books I should read. A friend of mine was (and still is) besotted with Philip K. Dick and calls him brilliant. He gave me a copy of the book.
For some reason, when I read it in my college days I wasn’t intrigued by the I-Ching references. This time I found myself thinking that it was something I should check out.
I’m sure Philip Dick would love that people are still reading and thinking about his work. I don’t know that he would want Jeremy Christian as a fan.
I’m sorry Tom missed so much about MITHC = The book was just a framework for a very good 4-season AMAZON series. It addresses very big issues – authenticity, what it is to be American, the whole idea of bric-a-brac becoming “folk art?”
It was written in 1963 when the obsession was “who was a real American.” It is also about how easily so many people will 1) collaborate 2) give up supposedly “cherished” values and 3) the idea of what is “authentic is the real thread that runs through ideas, art, politics, virtually everything.
To cite another great alternate reality TV show from that era….”Be seeing you…….”
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I missed so much when I read “Man in the High Castle” the first time, but it was a different world then — or so it seemed.
My friend who is the Philip K. Dick fan told me most people have no idea how many movies and TV shows were inspired by him — “Minority Report,” “Total Recall,” “The Adjustment Bureau.”
Unfortunately, like Tom said, he died broke. He was authentic, but it didn’t reward him in his lifetime.
You’re right. I needed to find my copy of The Man in the High Castle and thumb through it to see what you mean that race and ethnicity structure the society the characters live in much like America in 1962 when the book was published. In the novel White Americans have to accustom themselves to defeat and lost status. The scene I recalled where one of the Japanese characters finds himself lost in an alternate San Francisco where he is no longer a powerful official enters a lunch counter where all the seats are occupied by “whites” he demands one of them to give up their seat to him. “I insist! Mr. Tagomi said loudly to the first white; he shouted in the mans ear. The man put down his coffee mug and said, “Watch it Tojo”. Mr. Tagomi looked to the other whites: all watched with hostile expressions. And none stirred.”
Philip K. Dick was way ahead of his time and was unfortunately unappreciated while he was alive like many great writers. He was broke all of his life and died before his work started getting attention following the release of the film ‘Blade Runner’ based on his novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’. Ridley Scott in adapting Dicks book said he couldn’t get much further in it than 30 pages but he said in those 30 pages he had plenty of ideas for his movie. Sorry to take you off topic. Never mind.
Don’t ever apologize for going off topic, Tom. This isn’t The Oregonian, and I’m not Therese Bottomly. Off topic is where you might find the truth.
“Blade Runner” is one of my favorite movies, and I have the soundtrack by Philip Glass, which is also terrific. I love the Bradbury Building in downtown L.A. where “Blade Runner” was filmed. When I lived down there, I used to go into the Bradbury just to wander around.
Like many, I’ve often been disappointed when Hollywood gets hold of a nuanced true story and reduces it to its most salable point. “When the legend…”
The Oregonian and its ilk have long had a default position of any story w/POC and etc.
Recall some years back a Mexican man was shot dead after he charged PPB officers in a confined space or room? Had a metal bar in his hand. Turned out to be aluminum, but when you’re on the deck looking up with an irrational adult male charging at you with a metal bar you might not be making accurate distinctions. Believe he was in a psychiatric facility, too.
Anyway, The Oregonian’s headline was to the effect that he was shot for not having the two-bits for bus fare. White people will do that, you know.
I have a passing acquaintance with Mr. Fletcher. If anything in person he’s a touch too voluble withal. Consequently, I admired his spoken restraint in an interview that I’d read.
However, your deeper and expanded discussion of the events that day is valuable, extremely valuable.
I see Namkai-Meche as not understanding what, even approximately, he was involving himself in. Years ago I worked the Galapagos and marveled at some of the tourists walking right up to a bull sea lion as he lay with his harem. They got off light and toddled off with ignorance intact.
Micah might be a scrappy little fella, but most of the nuts and true hard bellies I’ve ever met regard weapons as a first choice with fists running a poor second.
Mr. Forde had his shit in one sock.
EXACTLY:
Had the officer who responded been threatened by Christian and, as a result, shot and killed him, the story would have been: Portland police shoot another mentally-ill transient. Christian could have been a martyr.
The role of Fletcher in foregrounding himself in the drama seems accurate.
I worked the Illinois Central Gulf down out of Jackson as a young man and one bar wouldn’t let us in because one of our guys was Creole. I asked our guy if he wanted a scrap. Ventress said, no let’s go. So we went.
I think if more guys had been in the service more guys would act with perspicacity. The barracks teaches you things about men you otherwise would not learn.
Hate Hotline. Hate Hotline? Hate Hotline! Yeah, there are more immediate problems close to hand I’d say. I deal with catch and release police efforts every day. I don’t blame the cops. I blame a population that embraces bullshit: see no bail New York.
I also encounter the race card, a lot. I just blow past it and don’t even acknowledge the accusation. I got a job to do and getting bogged down in race pity when I’ve caught you stealing or fixing in the toilet is a waste of my attention.
Jesus, did Dick have personal problems. And, if I recall aright we had more or less matching drug abuse profiles for a time. He’s dead and I’m unpublished. Go figure.
Now there’s an evocative picture: a bull sea lion, his harem and the naive tourists. I wonder how many of those tourists were Americans.
You raise an important consideration: “I think if more guys had been in the service more guys would act with perspicacity. The barracks teaches you things about men you otherwise would not learn.”
A couple of decades ago when I was a reporter in Southern California, I did a routine story about police recruiters from the Anchorage Police Department who were in the area soliciting applicants at a local college. I asked the recruiters if there were any significant differences in today’s recruits.
Aside from the fact that there were more women and minorities, the recruiters told me that one of the standard questions on the application was, “Have you ever been in a fight?”
It used to be that many applicants replied, yes, they had gotten into a fight at school or at a game or at a bar. But no more. Most of the recruits had never been in a fight — unless they had been in the military.
It’s an important question because in police work you will likely have to take or give a punch. How do you react in a physical confrontation? Most Portlanders probably don’t know how they would react — but they are happy to tell others how to react.
So, a day or two after you posted this I actually experienced your hypothetical on the Max. I was riding a very crowded Blue line from downtown to Gateway and an African American man got on at the Convention Center. He was clearly mentally ill as he ceaselessly mumbled to himself and often would scream out obscenities and laugh hysterically. Most of his ranting was racially based, offensive, and threatening. At one point, my disapproving gaze lingered too long and he looked right at me and told me, “White boy need to go home. I’ll slice you if you look at me.” I didn’t see a knife in his hand, so I figured it best to do what everyone else was doing and ignore him. He continued his crazy ranting. End of story.
Had I reported him would intimidation charges have been filed? Had I forced a confrontation would I have been the victim or the villain?
My take-away on the Jeremy Christian murders is::::… A mentally ill man feeling threatened was able to kill two (and almost a third) before any of them knew a knife was even involved. If you were a cop, what would you learn from this event?
If I were a cop, I would learn to assume that crazy-acting people (especially men) have a weapon.
Come to think of it, that is my assumption when I occasionally cross paths with folks like that, and I’m not a cop. I think that’s why the two teenage girls instinctively moved away from Christian. The police, of course, don’t have that choice when they’re answering a call — like the one last year involving Koben Henriksen, the mentally-ill man armed with a knife, wandering around in traffic, who was finally shot by police.
I regularly attend meetings of the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing (PCCEP), one of the city’s police oversight groups. Last year they started a practice of offering a moment of silence for those killed by violence and inviting anyone at the meeting to write the name of a “victim” on a piece of paper and then drop it into a basket.
At the the January meeting I happened to be sitting at the table where they placed the basket. I noticed one of the names dropped into the basket: Koben Henriksen. In another context, that could have been Jeremy Christian.