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M Artin l uther K ing J r .
January 16, 2019
2019 special edition
photo by
D anny p eterson /t he p ortlanD o bserver
Jordan LeDoux accidentally signed up as coordinator if a protest was needed to defend Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation of President Trump
and Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. LeDoux had already been involved in political actions, but took it to a new level when he got
the call last November in response to the resignation of Jeff Sessions and Trump’s appointment of Attorney General Matthew Whitaker.
The Accidental Organizer
Activist reflects on
Martin Luther King Jr. his role in protest
by D anny p eterson
t he p ortlanD o bserver
Most of us have mistakenly
clicked on an unwanted option
while online shopping or doing
other activities on the web, usu-
ally a minor inconvenience and
easily corrected. But for Jordan
LeDoux, a misplaced click sent
him down the path to reluctant-
ly organizing the local chapter
of a national protest in support
of maintaining the integrity
of a special counsel investiga-
tion into ties between Donald
Trump’s 2016 presidential cam-
paign and Russia.
It all started when LeDoux,
a computer programmer from
Portland, signed up for the po-
litical group MoveOn’s rapid
response tool.
LeDoux clicked on Tom Mc-
Call Waterfront Park in down-
town Portland on a digital map
on the MoveOn website, think-
ing he was marking his location
should a future protest be held in
the Rose City, he told the Port-
land Observer. But rather than
marking himself as a potential
participant, LeDoux inadver-
tently signaled he was volun-
teering to organize and host the
event should it be needed.
He said he didn’t really real-
ize what he had signed up un-
til a few months later, when he
got “some emails about tips for
organizers, things like that,” he
said.
“I looked at the thing that I
created and realized that there
were over 2,000 people signed
up. And at that point I was like,
well, I really have to do basic
organizing,” LeDoux said.
Luckily “basic organizing”
was part of his pedigree due to
being a key figurehead in the
Occupy Portland movement
against economic inequality
C ontinueD on p age 16