‘Captain Portland’ grew up in Arizona
Christopher David called his parents last weekend with bad news. “Mom, Dad,” he said, “I have become famous.”
That’s how Mesa residents Sonja and Richard David learned their 53year-old son, a Navy veteran, was being heralded as “Captain Portland” around the country and across the web. A video of David standing strong against blows from federal agents at a Portland protest has been viewed more than 13 million times on Twitter alone.
In the aftermath of the beating, which broke his hand in two places, David has been likened to a stoic defender of the movement against bru
tality in law enforcement.
He may live in Oregon, but he said his childhood in Arizona forms “a core part of who I am.” David credits his free-spirited years in Arizona, where his family lived for five years on the San Carlos Apache Tribe’s reservation, for giving him the self-confidence and independence on display at the protest on Saturday.
“There’s this horse that would roam around the reservation that we’d, you know, try to make a rope bridle for and then we’d all pile on its back and then ride it around,” David said. “We’d get on our bikes and we’d ride all over that reservation. We’d go down to the street, we’d go fishing, we’d go to the garbage dump. We’d go wherever we wanted. And I think to a great degree that built a lot of self-confidence when I was young.”
The family lived on the reservation while David’s father worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Many years later, the Navy veteran moved back to Arizona and lived in Chandler for most of a decade while working in the semiconductor industry.
David was also raised by parents who were lifelong advocates for civil rights. He remembered how they intervened when a white high school principal tried to force a student from the San Carlos Apache Tribe to cut his long hair.
When his parents were young, they had picketed for peace and volunteered with “Operation Breadbasket,” a movement led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to improve economic conditions in Black communities. “The current struggle is an extension of what we were involved in back in the ’60s,” said Richard David. “In fact, we’ve lost so much ground it makes me want to cry.”
Protests against police and racial injustice had simmered in Portland for over six weeks, as they have in Arizona, when David donned his Navy sweatshirt and attended for the first time. He’s lived in Portland for the last 14 years.
Federal troops had recently arrived in the city to protect property around the federal courthouse and earlier had fired “less lethal” munitions at a protester’s head and detained others in unmarked cars, according to news reports from Oregon Public Broadcasting.
In what has now become lore, described in national stories that his parents have dutifully saved, David went to the protest to ask federal officers if they had taken an oath to honor the U.S. Constitution. “It was outrageous what they were doing. I believe it was unconstitutional,” David told The Arizona Republic.
The federal officers weren’t having the dialogue he envisioned, though. David saw one officer train a gun at his chest, and another “bashed” into him and knocked him backward a few steps. “So I just stood there and put my arms down,” he said.
He hardly flinched when a federal officer raised a baton to start beating him, dealing three blows in quick succession, according to video clips. Another officer sprayed a chemical agent in David’s face and he was struck two more times before he finally turned and walked away, raising his middle fingers at the officers.
Before videos of the beating went viral, David said he had just eight followers on Twitter. He opened an account this summer just for fun. “Now I’ve got so many followers, I have to behave,” he said.
David’s parents have marveled at his newfound fame, and said the “Captain Portland” label is fitting for him. They weren’t surprised that their son, a former heavyweight wrestler, could stand still while others attacked him.
“It shows perfectly who Christopher is,” Sonja David said. “He’s nonviolent, he’s a peace-loving person, and yet he served in the Navy. That this would happen to him, I’m just horrified. I’m truly horrified. I’m furious.”
David balks at the heroism that others have bestowed on him. He will do a few more interviews with the media and will have surgery on his broken hand, but he doesn’t wish to be lionized any longer. “I’d like to try to shift the discussion back to Black Lives Matter,” he said.