My name is Michael Strickland. Some of you may remember me from my stints at TGP affiliated site Progressives Today and my YouTube channel Laughing At Liberals. I used to film political events around the Portland area and report on them. What started off as a hobby blossomed into my actual job in 2015 after “documentarian” Skye Fitzgerald, who was caught lying to the mother of a disabled kid and the family of a shooting victim for a very biased documentary project on guns, stole two video cameras from me and body slammed onto the pavement, shattering my arm and leaving me too disabled to go back to my old line of work.

Since covering political events in the area had now become my job, I began covering more and more events. I was basically just filming wackjob leftists in the area saying and doing the things they say and do. Several of my videos and stories started going viral. News networks started buying my footage. International news distributors starting hiring me to cover local events. My videos were getting played on FOX news, MSNBC, and several local news broadcasts. I was becoming a serious problem for the left simply because I showed the world what they were all about.
This all came to a head on July 7th, 2016, when I was filming a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland. This was before one could assume that violence and destruction were going to happen. I was just standing there, holding a video camera on a monopod, filming the speakers on the steps of the Justice Center. I wasn’t there to argue with anyone or instigate anything, as I preferred a fly-on-the-wall style of filming protests.

A gang of antifa thugs made the conscious and deliberate decision to stage a physical altercation with me. They made a b-line right for me and started attacking me. I tried to get away, they kept coming after me, and with no police around, I eventually drew down on them with my legally carried Glock 27. Fortunately they all stopped coming at me at that moment, they ceased to be threats, and I reholstered, without firing a shot. Every move I made was in reaction to what other people were doing to me. Had I waited another second or two, until their bodies were on top of me, there would not have been that buffer zone, and there’s a significant chance that I would have had to do the unthinkable. I’m very thankful they all finally stopped and backed away from me at the point that I drew, and that that was the amount of force necessary to prevent them from doing further harm to me.

I reholstered after having my gun out for 7 seconds, just enough time to neutralize the threats. I was in a bit of a state of shock. I couldn’t believe I was in that predicament and I had to draw.
I continued to retreat up the block until police eventually showed up. To arrest me.

I attempted to explain that I had been attacked and that my actions were in self defense and that I had a Concealed Handgun License, but they didn’t care about anything I had to say. They didn’t even want to watch the video of it on my camera. They threw me in jail.