Mike Strickland is asking for his Second Amendment rights to be restored in a Portland courtroom on Thursday. The request comes ten years after his 2016 assault on the streets of Portland by Antifa and Black Lives Matter's activists at a "Don't Shoot Portland" event. I've reported on his case multiple times since the incident.
Strickland seeks to have his multiple felonies reduced to misdemeanors so he can begin the process of clawing back his Second Amendment rights.
He asked friends to write letters of support. Strickland thought mine would be too triggering to a Multnomah County judge.
You can be the judge of that:
Dear Judge,
My name is Victoria Taft and I write today in support of Mr. Michael Strickland, a man I’ve been acquainted with as a fellow journalist since 2010, and who has won my respect for his comportment, professionalism, and consequential and dazzling journalism. His journalism has been seen on national U.S. media and internationally.
I beg you now to restore Mr. Strickland’s First and Second Amendment rights by reducing his charges to misdemeanors.
You may wonder why I bring up Mr. Strickland’s First Amendment rights. This is because the loss of Mr. Strickland’s First Amendment rights led to the loss of his Second Amendment rights. These profound losses by a man who is deeply patriotic, and who has been nothing but a good citizen, stem from a Portland incident in July of 2016 in which he lost his Second Amendment rights and rights to exercise his First Amendment rights.
He has suffered from these disproportionate, unfair, and unjust losses for ten years. Mr. Strickland’s rights should be restored. I don’t ask for the restoration of his rights as a person without portfolio.
[I go into detail of my journalistic experience just to let the judge know I'm not a weirdo, which you already know.]
Journalism can be a tough — and sometimes deadly — vocation. We’ve seen journalists killed while covering wars. They’ve been spied on by our government. They’ve been blown up by mobsters.
It has been only in the past ten years, however, that Antifa has been allowed to freely silence, assault, and, in the case of Mr. Strickland, foment the arrest and prosecution of a man who defended himself in the face of certain bodily harm.
We’ve learned a lot about Portland’s Antifa members in the intervening years.
We, and by that I mean sentient Americans, now see them for what they are. Far from being “anti-fascist,” Portland’s Antifa members use fascistic tactics in their violent revolutionary destruction of civil society and American order.
They use the threat of violence to cow lawmakers and city officials.
They attack reporters to stop them from telling the truth about this radical terror group.
Indeed, “Antifa” should be an acronym for Anti-First-Amendment.
Mr. Strickland, along with several other journalists over the years, have recorded Antifa and gotten sent to the hospital. I, personally, have received death threats from Portland Antifa members for the revolutionary act of reporting what they’ve done. Katie Daviscourt, Andy Ngo, Nick Sorter, “Real Black Rebel” — a black reporter whom Antifa stabbed on the Portland streets — were attacked multiple times for exercising their First Amendment rights in this city. The city did little to nothing to find and prosecute the attackers.
An innocent man was assassinated on the streets of Portland by an avowed Antifa member who lay in wait for him. Why? He liked the current president.
The local police do nothing because a decision has been made in Institutional Portland to support Antifa. The City of Portland sided with Antifa against citizens in a noise complaint lawsuit. The city claimed that Antifa’s drum beating, violent attacks on the ICE HQ, fireworks setting, and screeching through the night trumped citizens’ rights to a peaceful night’s sleep. The city refused to enforce its own noise ordinance. Antifa routinely incites and carries out violence. That’s not protected speech. Furthermore, cities have the right to set time, place, and manner restrictions on speech. Portland fails to do this with Antifa.
A woman committed a drive-by shooting of conservative live streamers near the ICE HQ. It’s on video. Has that woman, who was shown on video shooting the reporters — it was discovered after the fact — with a BB gun and striking her political opponents been prosecuted for this February 2026 assault on people? No. The last time I checked with the District Attorneys office, the issue had not been brought up to a grand jury yet.
That’s not justice, that’s a choice.
Meanwhile, Mr. Strickland, who, unlike that woman, fired no gun and who faced more than 50 years in prison for this obviously overcharged prosecution, spent 40 days in jail and lost his First and Second Amendment rights in his unjust and politically charged prosecution.
It is beyond time to restore his rights.
I have implored the head of the Civl Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Harmeet Dhillon, to investigate Portland’s law enforcement for its support — tacit or overt — of the group's abuse of the civil rights of reporters trying to cover Antifa protests. The current administration has designated Antifa as a terror group, and Antifa members, some of whom are from Portland, have engaged in violence in New Jersey, Minneapolis, Seattle, L.A. and Georgia.
Reporters beaten up by Antifa know they can’t fight back to stop attacks because they don’t want to end up in jail like Antifa’s “patient zero,” Mr. Strickland. They accurately perceive the Portland system of justice as systematically unfair to those covering Antifa or holding differing political views.
One journalist, covering the ICE HQ assault, used chemical spray to stop her imminent beating by a flag pole-waving Antifa radical and is now being sued by the Antifa activist, using the free services of the National Lawyers Guild.
This group has been responsible for billions of dollars in physical losses in the U.S., and Portland Antifa is responsible for killing Portland’s downtown businesses. In a way, the group got what it wanted. It ruined downtown capitalists and drove out thousands of people from Multnomah County who wanted to flee this lawless city.
Unlike the court system in Portland, Mr. Strickland was aware of Antifa but unacquainted with their violence until that day in July, 2016, when Antifa elements surrounded him and assaulted him on a city street near the courthouse steps while he was exercising his First Amendment right to cover the news.
He was not hectoring, harassing, or fomenting violence whatsoever, as Mr. Strickland and video of the events that day can attest.
During the protest, one of many Mr. Strickland had covered, a gang of Antifa “security”— which included a 300-pound man — ran up, surrounded, and assaulted him.
To be clear, Mr. Strickland was assaulted for covering the protest for his news-based, legal YouTube channel. His work was seen on national news programs and on “stringing” services. Mr. Strickland was exercising his First Amendment rights to cover the news.
In addition, he had every expectation of safety, since Mr. Strickland had observed a nearby uniformed police presence, and plainclothes officers were in the crowd. But Mr. Strickland’s safety was not a priority that day for the Portland Police Bureau, even when he was assaulted.
Indeed, Antifa manhandled Mr. Strickland, who was physically thrown out of “their” protest, on a public street, in front of a government building, as punishment for his coverage of the news.
As is his First Amendment right, a few moments after being tossed out, Mr. Strickland attempted to record the event from afar. Speakers at this event, who were stationed high above the audience, noted Mr. Strickland’s presence at the end of the block and gave the order to remove him again. This is recorded on multiple videos from that day.
Now fortified with more people, the pack of some of the original assaulters — including the 300-pound multiple state and federal felon — came back to assault Mr. Strickland. This time, knowing that he was outnumbered and about to be assaulted again, Mr. Strickland pulled his legally owned and licensed Glock pistol from its holster, and, keeping his finger away from the trigger, exercising extraordinary trigger discipline, pointed his weapon to back off the oncoming assault. The presence of a gun succeeded in backing off the onslaught of attackers. And Mr. Strickland was safe.
Safe, that is, until he landed in the justice system.
Mr. Strickland was arrested for pointing his gun at his attackers.
Those people who denied Mr. Strickland his rights to cover the news by beating him up were not arrested.
The conspirators who ordered the attack on Mr. Strickland were witnesses for the prosecution at his trial.
Far from being excoriated for their lack of tolerance, which was the trendy raison d’être of the day, the Portland Rose City Antifa gang was feted along with anti-Second Amendment activists in the major media coverage of the event.
Mr. Strickland was unable to publicly defend his actions because he was under a judicial gag order. Indeed, the judge did what Antifa wanted all along: Mr. Strickland was ordered to stop recording and reporting. His livelihood was taken from him by judicial fiat. Sounds unconstitutional to me, but Mr. Strickland obeyed the order because he obeys the law.
The same people trying to shut him up with a “heckler’s [rioter’s] veto” got their wish; indeed, they were allowed to freely speak and fill the void while Mr. Strickland’s speech was censored.
The Antifa activists who attacked Mr. Strickland were considered to be “victims.” A couple of those “victims” were witnesses for the prosecution and were named. What of the other “victims”? The prosecution preferred to identify his “victims” as ‘a guy wearing hoodie,’ ‘a man with handkerchief in back pocket,’ ‘a man with backpack.’ Mr. Strickland was not allowed to face all of his alleged accusers. Who were they? The prosecution never identified them. The DA’s sealed superseding indictment seemed more interested in protecting the identities of violent Antifa members than doing justice.
A change of venue motion went nowhere.
Prospective Multnomah County jurors included anti-gun activists and people who were protesting at the very same event at issue in the case.
Mr. Strickland’s Second Amendment lawyers asked for and received a bench trial.
But this wasn’t really a Second Amendment case. This was a denial of First Amendment rights that Mr. Strickland attempted to protect through use of his Second Amendment rights.
During the trial, Mr. Strickland’s own exculpatory video of the first attack was sealed until the end of the trial, allowing the leftist activists and anti-gun activists to fill the information void.
The time to restore Mr. Strickland’s rights has long since passed. Please do the right thing and give him back his civil rights. They should never have been removed.
Victoria Taft
Mike's probably right. The letter may have done him more harm than good in a Portland courtroom.
And that's a problem.
Editor's Note: Do you enjoy PJ Media's conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member