View of the Protest from a Higher Point of View

View from a friend's apartment within the four block perimeter of the 

downtown Portland Federal Building

Portland, Land of Protests

What to say about Portland? It’s beautiful here; the weather has been perfect for the past week with blue skies, temperature in the 80’s during the day and 60’s at night. Low humidity and you can see the mountains. The town is full of creative types doing innovative interesting things. It's liberal. You can be gay here and no one looks twice. It will definitely vote for the Democrats and Trump is despised. However, it has a long racist past. There aren’t many black people; Portland is the whitest big city in America. One of the former African American neighborhoods was destroyed by the interstate highway running though downtown as well as the Moda Center basketball arena and the Convention Center. Blacks were forbidden from buying property in white areas of the city. 

Like many cities, black men are still being shot and killed here by our police without ramifications.  The police were under a federal court order to reform. They’ve brought in an African American woman to be the chief of police who's since moved on to Philadelphia. The culture of the police department is still one of command and control and you better not be around if you’re a person of color or you could still end up dead.  So we now have Black Lives Matter protests going on for over 50 days.  It's an odd conglomeration of groups that gather to protest. Of course, some are from BLM but there are others that join in to protest other things (fascists, environment, homeless, jobs, gender/transgender).  And, of course, there is a criminal element that started a small fire at the courthouse and have written graffiti downtown particularly on the Federal Building. From what I can figure, this 2 minute video maybe best describes what the protestors want which is for massive changes.

However, after about 50 days the protestors were down to around one or two hundred and the movement was on the wane. In truth, as long as you avoid the 4 blocks around the Federal Building during the protest at night, there has been no disruption to our town. The city police and the protestors had reached an agreement that as long as there wasn’t violence, the people could protest, maybe tag a few buildings, maybe throw some fireworks and the police wouldn’t shoot, arrest anyone or use tear gas. Most Portlanders not involved in the protest had a “whatever” kind of attitude about the whole thing and assumed that just like the 99% protests of several years ago, protests would eventually dwindle to a few people holding signs in the park.

Last week Trump sent Homeland Security paramilitary people to Portland. The Acting Secretary of Homeland Security came to town and gave a get-tough speech.  They certainly weren’t invited by the mayor or the governor.  Some reputable reporting was done by OPB, the public radio and television affiliate in Oregon, about some people being apprehended on the street and taken away in unmarked vehicles by Feds. We’ll see what the US Attorney and Oregon Attorney General find out. I’m sure there will be congressional investigations at some point.  I believe Trump is just using these amateur quasi-military types to stir up his base. He has nothing to lose in Oregon since this state and the whole west coast is going to go for Biden. But now, with the Federal agents invading our city, abducting citizens like you’d see in a dictatorship, shooting projectiles and injuring people, and deploying tear gas, the protests have swollen. 

Navy Vet being beaten and tear gassed by Feds

One of our local papers, The Oregonian, gave a description of Portland during the BLM protests. And, truly, as long as you stay out of the protest area , there isn’t any change to our city. The keystone cops have gotten physical as demonstrated with this video of them whaling on a Navy veteran and graduate of Annapolis who came down for the first time over the weekend to see what was going on.  I love this video of a naked woman in a mask who struts in front of the advancing Feds and stops them in their tracks; the Feds didn’t know what to do and withdrew.  The crowds are in the thousands now; we even have Moms (#MAFIA Moms Against Fascism in America) in yellow shirts linking arms, singing and taunting the Feds and police. Last night they had a chant going using Ice Cube’s refrain to Fuck the Police from the Straight Outa Compton album.  It’s quite a scene.  The protests are not going away and I would guess that eventually the Feds will go home. 

After they go home, I don’t know what will happen to the protests. We have an election in November and there won’t be any question about the results in Oregon for any of the federal offices. However, our mayor, Ted Wheeler, is up for reelection. He would have won easily because he’s done a nice job on the Covid19 response and was doing okay with BLM until the Feds showed up. There was progress on defunding portions of the Portland Police department’s responsibilities. But, the police department was allowing the Feds to participate in their planning meetings and the police were getting physical over the weekend when the protests gained momentum again. He’s making statements objecting to the Feds but I don’t see activity in addressing the protestors' requirements.  He appears to be dithering. Unless he takes leadership and really gets the Feds out, makes progress on reengineering the police department, addresses the needs of the black community, and deals with our huge homeless situation, he’s going to lose the November election.