We began the show with the Eric Garner case and the firing of a New York City police officer, which became a flashpoint for larger issues involving law enforcement around the country. Portland, Oregon has had its own history with racial discrimination and tension with the police. There's a new effort underway to address those tensions. Special correspondent Kat Wise reports on a theater company's attempt to change the city's racial ecology through the arts, so to speak.
It's part of our ongoing series on arts and culture, Canvas. On a recent morning, an old fire station turned playhouse was packed with theatergoers. But this was not a typical theater crowd. It was a who's who of Oregon law enforcement. Police officers, FBI agents, district attorneys and judges.
They were joined by prominent community and civil rights leaders. Thank you so much all of you. I'm a little overwhelmed just by just looking out and seeing who's in the room.
Kevin Jones and his wife Leslie Moniz are the co-founders of the August Wilson Red Door Project, a Portland-based arts organization. This is Bob or Robert Day, retired deputy chief of the Portland Police Bureau and our partner in crime. We really have believed that there is some opportunity here and some work to be done, both on behalf of the black community and on the criminal justice system. Over the last few years, the three have formed an unusual partnership to spark new conversations and ways of thinking about race relations in Portland.
And they're using this stage. to help bridge the divide. When you're talking about issues of race, you can't just say that we all go through the same thing because we don't.
Stopping you because you're black is against the law. Hey, profiling is against the law. Are you saying I'm breaking the law? The performance that day was a collection of first-person monologues from two different plays.
One is called Hands Up. It was written by African-American playwrights about their life experiences and being racially profiled by the police. They slammed me to the ground. One of the officers had his foot on the back of my neck.
Another officer pointed a gun to the back of my head and said, move one inch and I'll blow your f***ing head off. Oh, I went into survival mode. I tried to convince them that I was one of the good ones.
The other play is called Cop Out, and it too tells personal stories of police officers and the challenges they face at work and when they take off the uniform. I used to think that nothing about being a cop would shake me up. But when you arrive on scene and watch your partner pull an infant out of a microwave because his meth head father couldn't stop the kid from crying. Your lens gets colored.
We were there for the first time the monologues were performed together. We had one, you know, story on one side and one story on another, the police story, the story of people of color, and then we're like, well, this is really one story that needs to be connected. It's where these stories intersect that is the, I guess for us, it's the greatest chance of finding truth. We're not dividing the story into two sides, right?
Good guys and bad guys. On both sides, we have a group of people who feel that their stories are not being told, that they're being vilified, that they're being shunned. and nobody wants to really hear their story.
But those stories are being heard, and they are powerful, poignant, and at times painful. Hands Up was originally commissioned in 2014 by the New Blackfest Theater Group in New York following the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. I'd like to start with a showing of solidarity. If you would all please raise your arms straight up in the air. During a monologue called How I Feel, the audience is asked to keep both hands raised during the entire performance.
Hands up. Don't shoot. Hands up. Don't shoot.
More than 12,000 in the region have seen Hands Up in the last few years. But the producers also wanted to tell the stories of police officers. They contacted Deputy Chief Day, then head of the police training division, and asked for his help. Voice quivered and he said to us you could do that? Wow that would be amazing.
Playwrights from around the country, many of them black, interviewed officers and wrote monologues about their experiences. They also spent a day going through police training. They showed us what they face day to day and It changed me. I was blown away by the the kinds of instantaneous decisions they need to make and I felt the vulnerability in what they do.
The only reason I carry a gun is for protection, primarily mine, sometimes yours, sometimes in highly specific circumstances like an active shooter or a... nope, that's about it. For 66-year-old Jones, some of the monologues hit close to home.
He's had more than 100 encounters with law enforcement, ranging from being questioned to arrested. But he says his views of the police have evolved. That was what was in the back of my mind when I said to Bob Day three years ago that I want to tell your story.
Because in your story, I'm going to find my story. I'm going to find the commonality. And then, you know, we will become closer.
And I will see you beyond your whiteness and you'll see me beyond my blackness and we will be two human beings. That newly forged human connection has had a big impact. It's changed my life. My relationships are different.
My worldview is different. Day, who retired earlier this year, spent nearly three decades with the police bureau. We're touching on sort of the third rail conversations of race and policing. And I think there are conversations that are happening in African American families and homes and communities.
And I know they're happening in police communities because I've heard them, been a part of them, I've seen them. But they're not happening publicly and they're not happening generally across with each other because of the sort of high voltage nature of them. So the theater allows us to put it all out there. We can sort of speak what has been left unsaid. We get calls from newly settled white residents.
about suspicious behavior all the time. We get there to see it's an older black male and he's just walking to his mailbox. Actor Brian Bentley understands the complexities on both sides. He performs roles in Hands Up and Cop Out. And in real life, he's worked in law enforcement and has also been racially profiled by the police.
What I want is really for everyone, put a mirror in your face and a self-check. You do a self-checking. you know, and really ask some serious questions.
And I know the hardest thing for someone, even a black person, to ask yourself is, am I a racist? Those involved with the project believe what they are doing may be a model for tackling other issues that divide Americans. And they're hoping to perform the combined monologues around the country starting later this year.
For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Kat Wise in Portland, Oregon.