"I saw them standing there like that and this fury arose in me, and I said, 'I want to be naked,'" she said.
An anonymous woman whose viral images facing off against federal agents in Portland while completely naked is revealing for the first time what prompted the viral moment seen around the world. "I saw them standing there like that and this fury arose in me, and I said, 'I want to be naked.' And my partner said 'I’ll hold your clothes,'" the woman, dubbed "Naked Athena," told the Portland podcast, "Unrefined Sophisticates."
In her first known interview since the incident, she told the podcast she was a sex worker in her thirties, but declined to divulge her full name.
"I ducked in a door way and took everything off except for my mask and my hat, and I walked out there," she said. For her, the experience was, "like being in the eye of a storm."
Athena spoke as another weekend of violence unfolded across the United States, including the disturbing trend of cars turning into lethal weapons. There have been 66 car attacks on Black Lives Matter protests since the death of George Floyd.
There was mayhem in Austin, Texas, as shots were fired from a car as it plowed through a crowd of protesters. Garrett Foster, 28, was carrying an AK-47 and was shot dead, just minutes after speaking with a reporter.
"They don’t let us march in the streets anymore, so I got to practice some of our rights," Foster said.
In Aurora, Colorado, hundreds scattered in panic as a Jeep barreled down the highway at high speed.
Rachel Glago said she was caught up in one incident in Indiana.
"Luckily, my friend instinctively jumped on the hood of the car, rather than letting the car completely run her over," Glago told Inside Edition. "The car went from 0 to 50 mph just like that. It was so fast. And it was terrifying."
Police say several of the car attacks have been plotted by far right activists, similar to a Charlottesville incident in 2017, when 32-year-old Heather Heyer was mowed down and killed.
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