A group of roughly 20 women wearing shirts reading “XX-XY” and carrying a “Save Women’s Sports” banner were forcibly removed from a Portland Thorns game at Providence Park after what they say was verbal and physical harassment from nearby fans, including being hit with flags and having beer poured on them.
One of the women, Brandi Kruse, described the incident in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News. Kruse said she asked security repeatedly why she was being told to leave and never received a clear answer.
“None. It’s been three days … you hear me in the video demand that security tell me, when they say ‘you need to leave,’ and I say, ‘we didn’t do anything wrong.’ And she says, ‘you know what you did?’ And I said, ‘I have no idea what I did.'”
Kruse said she chose not to leave voluntarily. “And that’s when I just made the decision, look, if they’re going to ask me to leave, I’m going to make them own that decision and they’re going to have to put their hands on me and drag me out of this stadium, because I’m not leaving of my own free will. But we have not gotten an explanation so far,” she said.
Who’s Responsible?
The Thorns said in a statement that the team is “committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment for everyone,” and that “security and enforcement decisions are managed locally.” The team said it is reviewing the incident to determine whether its policies were “applied appropriately and consistently.”
Kruse said the lines of responsibility are murky. “It’s a complicated matter to determine kind of fault because the stadium itself, Providence Park is owned by the city of Portland, but it’s operated by Peregrine Sports. And then, of course, you have the Thorns. And so we don’t know who ultimately made the call to say, ‘remove the people with the XX-XY shirts and leave all the individuals around them who were assaulting them, hitting them with flags, dumping beer on them.'”
Kruse also said the group wearing the shirts was not the only target. OutKick reporter Matt Calkins, who was covering the game, was confronted by the crowd, and Kruse said his press pass was torn from his chest by a security guard.
Ingraham asked about reports that security personnel acted as though they had police authority during the confrontation. Kruse said the guard involved confirmed she was not a police officer, but argued the broader problem was how fans reacted to the shirts in the first place.
“You know, all they had to do is not react to our t-shirts, be functioning adults in the United States of America. And understand that sometimes you’ll be confronted by ideas you don’t agree with. And the answer to that is not violence.”
The source material referenced a Department of Justice review connected to the incident, though no further detail on the scope or status of that review was provided.
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