Survivor of Racist Portland Attack Forced to Rely on GoFundMe to Pay Health Care Costs

The sole survivor of the racist hate crime attack in Portland, Oregon, that left 23-year-old Taliesin Taliesin Myrddin and 53-year-old Ricky Best dead, is now having to rely on a crowdfunding campaigning to cover the cost of his life-saving medical treatment.

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Friends of Micah Fletcher started the GoFundMe page shortly after Friday's incident that saw him injured when white supremacist Jeremy Christian attacked him, along with Myrddin and Best. The three were standing up to Christian’s verbal assault of two women of color passengers, one Muslim.

Myrddin and Best both died from their stabbing injuries.

"Our friend was stabbed and critically injured while being a good Samaritan and heroically intervening during the racist terrorist incident that left two men dead," reads the GoFundMe page. "He bravely did what anyone should do when confronted with terrorism and stepped in to stop the harassment of Muslim women by a known White Supremacist."

Fletcher is a poet who writes frequently about social justice issues, including anti-Muslim prejudice.

"Last Memorial Day weekend, Fletcher and other poets part of Spit/WRITE, a youth poetry group, were reading poems about social justice on a MAX train," The Oregonian noted. "The purpose was to give them the space to call attention to social justice issues, one of his poetry mentors, Renee Mitchell, said."

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Minnesota Democratic representative Keith Ellison, praised the three men, and issued a statement saying: "When white supremacy and neo-Nazism are allowed to flourish, often with the tacit approval of a White House and Republican party more interested in targeting immigrants and people of color than domestic terrorists, this is the inevitable result."

Later he tweeted, “Our healthcare system is so cruel, one of the heroes of the Portland stabbing has to crowdfund his lifesaving medical care.”

Christian has since been booked in the Multnomah County jail, charged with two counts each of aggravated murder and intimidation in the second degree, a hate crime offense. He has also been charged with attempted murder and felon in possession of a restricted weapon, and is scheduled to be arraigned Monday.