Melissa Berntsen aka NicoOregon is yet another D-list agitator and livestreamer grifting off of transphobia. She allows her audience to live vicariously through her as she harasses queer and trans people, leftist protesters, as well as the general public in Portland and the broader PNW.
Legal Name: Melissa Janell Berntsen
DOB: 01/18/1973
Address: 650 S Lowell (Grays Landing Apartments)
Vehicle: White 2006 Lexus RX330, plate 672CDB
One of Tommy Allen‘s lampreys, Melissa spent last fall with him harassing protesters at the Portland ICE facility. Once Tommy got banned from being near the facility, he moved on to other things like Pride events, liberal protests, and college campuses. Melissa and his other tag-alongs followed him, and are basically functioning as hate preachers at this point, only they use bear spray liberally. As of now, they have already shown up at multiple Pride events this summer, and will continue to do so unless the pushback against them becomes untenable.
Our collective hadn’t been paying this gaggle of chuds much attention until recently, but now that they’ve started showing up at Pride events they are a major concern. We believe that the community must take a hard line and keep them out of these spaces using whatever tactics are necessary, or they will continue showing up.
Melissa only really got our attention when she and her crew attended Hillsboro Pride on 6/6/26, and she bear sprayed three different attendees with no provocation whatsoever. One of those macings occurred next to a playground, which the noxious cloud drifted across and right into a small child’s eyes. We wrote an entire Bluesky thread on her actions that day, so check the link for details but we’ll include video of the actual macings below. Yesterday three charges were filed against Melissa by the Washington County DA – unlawful use of mace, harassment, and bias crime.
While some of Melissa Berntsen’s loud and aggressive behavior may be to keep her followers engaged, it’s very clear that she is extremely volatile and has serious anger issues. This is evidenced by her sometimes nonsensical tirades and frequent apologies to her audience immediately following her tantrums. She gets particularly angry about trans people’s existence, calling them slurs like “tr*nny” and regularly telling them they have a mental illness.
Melissa talks about mental illness a lot – she calls queer and trans folks mentally ill, she calls leftist protesters mentally ill, and she has also mentioned that she works in mental health. That last one is especially concerning, because this lady should definitely not be working in that field. In one instance she claimed to work in suicide prevention, which led us to find documentation showing that she has been working at Lines For Life as their Events Coordinator.
Lines For Life is the nonprofit that operates 988, Oregon’s mental health crisis hotline. Melissa was pictured on their social media at last year’s OPAT conference, so we knew that she was working there as recently as late 2025.
We were recently able to confirm that Melissa was still working at Lines For Life after her boyfriend (and fellow bigot livestreamer) Shayne Holt posted a video of her vandalized car on 6/18/26. In the background of his video, the Landing Condominium complex is visible – which happens to be directly adjacent to the Lines For Life parking lot (this video is included later in the article).
We emailed Lines For Life to provide documentation of Melissa’s hateful conduct, and asked them to let us know if she no longer worked there so that we could omit their organization from this article as her employer if she had been fired. David Westbrook, the COO, replied that they cannot comment on an individual’s employment status but asked for us to send additional documentation if we had it. If you have any clips of Melissa’s conduct that are not included in this article, and which you’d like us to pass along to her employer, please email us with the link to the YouTube stream along with the relevant timestamp/s.
As we’ve been working on this article over the past couple weeks, we noticed that other folks have found Melissa’s employer and have been posting about it on Instagram. Lines For Life has been deleting the comments asking about Melissa from their Facebook and Instagram posts, and as of yet have refused to publicly acknowledge that they are either employing a bigot or have fired her for being one. The public deserves answers, and Lines For Life needs to make a statement regarding this issue immediately.
Portlanders are sick of Melissa’s bullshit behavior, and have been taking matters into their own hands in more ways than just posting online about her employer. A couple weeks ago, while she was yelling slurs at queer people outside of OMSI’s Pride event, someone spray-painted her and the gaggle of livestreamers she was with.
In the above video, she is seen going into a rage and accusing a person getting into their car of being the one who painted her before trying to block the vehicle from leaving. It clearly didn’t occur to her that the person had just rode by on a motorized scooter, and this is a common occurrence with Melissa – thinking everyone around her is “antifa”. Later at that same OMSI event, she can been seen screaming at people simply riding their motorized scooters down the Eastbank Esplanade.
Not long after, her car was vandalized while parked in the Lines For Life parking lot – she and her boyfriend claim that the inside was pepper sprayed and covered in shit. They immediately blamed antifascists for this, and that may very well be true but considering how many random people Melissa insults, assaults and antagonizes, it’s just as likely to be a random person who she happened to piss off or mace.
Melissa is attempting to get her car repaired and cleaned so she can use it again (gross), and she posted a photo of it waiting to be fixed with her license plate visible – 672CDB (2006 Lexus RX330). Thanks Melissa!
We think all of these actions folks have done are cool and good, and as we mentioned in our recent Bluesky thread, another way for Melissa to experience consequences is for the people she has assaulted to sue her. She (and the rest of the livestreamer gang) are not rich, and financial consequences will have a great impact on them and their ability to do their bullshit.
Melissa lost the use of her vehicle, at least temporarily, and will likely lose her job as well. Her boyfriend Shayne doesn’t have a car, and Tommy doesn’t currently own a car either as far as we can tell. She did raise over 4k on a crowdfunding platform after her car was vandalized, but even if she breaks even or comes out ahead in the short term this is still a win.
Folks need to keep up the pressure on her and the rest of Tommy’s gang – their audiences all overlap heavily and while someone may be able to throw $50 their way today, they might not be able to do it again next week or even next month. Additionally, Melissa filed an insurance claim for the vandalism so her rate will probably go up significantly after this, and insurance companies will drop clients altogether after repeated claims.
Melissa says that she is moving from her apartment at Grays Landing soon, and her boyfriend has also implied he is in the process of moving. We think it’s very likely that they are moving in together, and that they will remain in the Portland metro area. If anyone hears about where they are moving to, please email us with that info.
Contrary to what you may have heard growing up (or from the peace police at your local Pride event), bullies do not go away if you ignore them. Confronting them is not “giving them what they want,” it’s providing needed consequences for their actions and speaking to them in the language they understand.
If Tommy and Melissa had experienced harsh consequences last fall the way they do now, we wouldn’t be writing this article. Operating for months without meaningful consequences let them feel even more emboldened to harass and assault community members. And now that they have online followings, they are able to rake in donations which means the pressure on them needs to be ramped up – and sustained – until things become financially untenable for them.