Thread by @theintercept

Few anti-fascists were as influential on Portland’s recent protest scene as Sean Kealiher, a young anarchist who became a fixture on the city’s streets after he joined an Occupy Portland encampment in 2011, when he was 15. theintercept.com/2021/03/03/ant…

Over the years, Kealiher moved in and out of many of the city’s leftist groups, as he kept reelaborating his belief system to be more radical than most others’ in his circle.

“Once other people caught up to him, he would look for ways to go even further left.”

“He was incredibly influential, potentially more so than almost anybody in our protest scene,” said @GregoryMcKelvey, a well-known Black Lives Matter activist who became friends with Kealiher despite their political differences.

Sean Kealiher, whom most people knew by the pseudonym Armeanio Lewis, rarely missed a protest, and he would have been front and center last summer when the insurrectionary activism he had long advocated for became a staple on Portland streets.

Cynical as he was about electoral politics, Kealiher would have certainly been there on the day of Biden’s inauguration when protesters vandalized the Democratic Party building. But he wasn’t there then, or last summer: He was killed in October 2019, at 23.

“The first thing we heard is that he had been killed right outside the bar that we all go to.”

Kealiher’s death shocked Portland’s activist community. Because it happened so close to Cider Riot, many on the left immediately feared that the attack had been politically motivated.

The death was ruled a homicide, but no arrests were ever made and no persons of interest named.

“In the beginning, we really didn’t know who did what … I just wanted people to be quiet and let the police do their job,” his mother Laura Kealiher said.

The apparent lack of a robust investigation underscores the political bias of which many in Portland have long accused police, and those in Kealiher’s circle saw his unsolved murder as further confirmation of the police’s double standards and antagonism toward the left.

More than a year after her son’s death, Kealiher regrets trusting police, whom she now believes had no interest in solving the murder of an activist who made no secret of his contempt for them.

Read the full story: theintercept.com/2021/03/03/ant…

“It really felt like the police didn’t care that much. Had he been someone else his murder would’ve been solved. Especially because he’s white.”

@GregoryMcKelvey, Black Lives Matter activist and friend of Sean Kealiher, joins @alicesperi for @intercepted. theintercept.com/2021/03/03/int…