The Portland Van Abductions
by Sarah Jeong from The Verge - All Posts on (#64X5W)
Some hours before he was abducted by a squad of feds in camouflage tactical gear, Mark Pettibone was playing a pickup game of Frisbee.
It was what had become a normal night for the summer of 2020 in Portland, Oregon. The city was now four months into the pandemic and two months into the ongoing protests against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd's death.
At this point, Mark and his friend Connor O'Shea - whom he knew from his job at Trader Joe's - had made a habit of going regularly after work to protest at the Multnomah County Justice Center, a downtown building that houses a jail and the local district attorney's office. It had been weeks - almost two months - of tear gas and flash-bangs. That was the new normal.
This...