Good morning, I am at Lownsdale Square for a press conference with Dr. @JuniperLSimonis: "Cover-Ups of Health Risks Caused by Law Enforcement Munitions Smoke"

We begin with an acknowledgement that this land belongs to the indigenous people it was stolen from by @cozca503 and someone whose name I missed because I cannot be on time to anything, sorry

Both speak about the importance of water. This is about to be tragically relevant

Dr Juniper L. Simones begins to speak. They go over their extremely impressive credential list--two decades of experience and degrees in biology and ecology from Cornell University

All of the research we are about to hear about was self-funded

Dr. Simonis shows videos from @tuckwoodstock of tear gas and munitions smoke pumped into crowds

They speak about the many symptoms experienced by the people in those crowds: vomiting, difficulty breathing, chemical burns, hair loss, weight loss, etc

(Yours truly as well)

Dr Simonis points to the trees around us while they show us pictures of those trees from the summer, when they lost their leaves from being constantly exposed to these chemicals

They talk about tested levels of heavy metal toxicity from storm drains--drains that go to the Willamette river and poison salmon and those who eat them

These metals do not go away: they build up and stay there

Dr. Simonis discusses the history of HC smoke

It was originally developed after WWI to hide ships and make it more difficult for them to be hit by airplanes. It was NOT designed to be used as crowd control

HC gas, which was used constantly all summer in Portland, was designed for use in open fields, not casually and frequently in city streets surrounded by tall buildings

The lethality of HC smoke is well-docunented by the US Army engineers as early as 1944

Alt text: a small gathering in Lownsdale Square with a small projector