After organizing a protest, she got racist threats.

When the town's police chief called her a liar, things only got worse.

Ppl in the town rallied behind the chief, yelling at her to go home, while insisting they are not being racist.

Let's take a trip to Prineville, OR...

Shortly after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, 28-year-old Josie Stanfield organized a Black Lives Matter protest in the Central Oregon town of Prineville, home to about 10.5K residents.

Fewer than 1% are Black.

“The reason I did this was because I went to high school here, and I didn’t have a good time in the community. I’ve always been targeted for being Black since high school,” Stanfield said. She remembers classmates throwing food at her, or whispering the N-word in the hallways.

2 wks after the 1st protest, Stanfield met w/ local police chief Dale Cummins to talk abt race and policing. It didn’t go well. The next day Cummins responded with his own video on the police department’s official Facebook page.

“Josie Stanfield made a video, and quite frankly completely lied about the conversation. And the things she didn’t quite lie about, she twisted around,” Prineville chief Dale Cummins said of the activist.

Stanfield got a slew of threatening Facebook messages. One from June 18 reads: “I promise I will run you over in my lifted chevy… Don’t like it here go back to Africa.”

Screenshots Stanfield provided show her asking Prineville PD to pursue harassment charges against an entirely different man, who posted menacing comments and sent josie a message asking if it would be okay to smash her windows.

The conflict spread offline into weekly protests and counterprotests.

In front of the county courthouse distinct groups face off from either side of a state highway. Passing traffic revs and honks.

on Aug. 15 people on one side of the road held handmade cardboard signs supportive of Black Lives Matter, or Stanfield specifically. They chanted: “No justice, no peace,” and “Say their names.”

Across the street, a crowd waved flags: American flags, pro-police flags, Trump 2020 flags, and the Confederate flag. They chanted: “Go home commies, go home.” One woman’s t-shirt read: “Lying Josie has got to go.”

More than a dozen members of the Three Percent militia showed up with assault rifles and zip tie handcuffs. The group’s local leader, Jerrad Robison, said some people from the flag side of the street had asked them to come and keep the peace.

These confrontations are happening across the street from police hq. The police chief's video calling the BLM activist a liar was viewed more than 39,000 times on FB.

I asked Chief Cummins if Black lives matter.

Chief Cummins said he did not violate any department policies by targeting Stanfield on social media. He was not apologetic, either.

The video came down Friday with/o Cummins responding to a request for comment.

He posted this the afternoon it was removed.

Speaking broadly, the Prineville PD chief said he doesn’t believe systemic racism is an issue for local dept, and that the implementation of bias training and body cameras are evidence of progress already achieved.

Stanfield said she's lost some hope.

“I’ve had so many people say we didn’t have racism here until I started the protest.”

full story: https://www.opb.org/article/2020/08/24/in-rural-oregon-a-backlash-to-black-lives-matter-includes-threats-of-violence-racist-speech-and-indifference-from-local-police/