Originally posted by Jack in a different thread, moved here

“Hate Groups March in Portland, Oregon and Police Attack Counter-Protesters”

Portland police stand by as Proud Boys and far-right militias flash guns and brawl with antifa counterprotesters

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/22/portland-police-far-right-protest/

PORTLAND, Ore. — On Saturday afternoon, a large crowd of more than 100 far-right activists, including Proud Boys and armed militia members, descended on Portland, Ore., staging a “Back the Blue” rally in front of the Justice Center that houses the downtown police precinct. Hundreds of antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters gathered to oppose the far-right crowd.

People in the far-right crowd came armed with paintball guns, metal rods, aluminum bats, fireworks, pepper spray, rifles and handguns. Some people in the opposing left-leaning crowd brought rocks, fireworks and bottles filled with chemical solutions. Both crowds sported shields and helmets.

The two groups sparred for more than two hours, as people exchanged blows, fired paintballs at each other and blasted chemicals indiscriminately into the crowd. People lobbed fireworks back and forth. At least one person was hit in the abdomen with a device that flashed and exploded, causing bleeding.

The rally followed a much smaller right-wing event last week that ended with gunfire. On Wednesday, Portland police arrested and seized a gun from 27-year-old Skylor Noel Jernigan, a far-right activist who has frequently rallied against antifascists in the city in recent years. Many of the same people came out again Saturday, including Alan Swinney, who brandished a gun and pointed it at the opposing crowd.

Violent clashes erupt between far-right groups and racial justice protesters in Portland and other cities

As the brawls unfolded, Portland police officers remained at a distance. They made several announcements over loudspeakers, encouraging the crowds to “self-monitor for criminal activity,” even as people beat others with sticks, and at least two right-wing activists brandished handguns.

“Each skirmish appeared to involve willing participants and the events were not enduring in time, so officers were not deployed to intervene,” the Portland Police Bureau said in a statement.

Police said they did not stop the violence, although the event met the criteria to be declared a riot, because too few officers were available to respond and they deemed it too dangerous to intervene. Officers were tired from responding to a much smaller and less volatile protest that was declared a riot the night before, the bureau said in a statement, and incident commanders also had concerns that officers would be targeted by the crowd.

“PPB members have been the focus of over 80 days of violent actions directed at the police, which is a major consideration for determining if police resources are necessary to interject between two groups with individuals who appear to be willingly engaging in physical confrontations for short durations,” the bureau said in a statement. “While the activity in the group met the definition of a riot, PPB did not declare one because there were not adequate police resources available to address such a declaration.”

The Portland Police Bureau has struggled to quell confrontations between far-right groups and antifascists in the city since at least 2017, when a string of violent riots broke out over the summer and fall.

Violent protest clashes turned Portland into a ‘right-wing boogeyman.’ Here’s how it happened.

The decision not to intervene was a striking contrast to police tactics at several left-leaning Black Lives Matter protests in recent weeks. Officers have consistently declared unlawful assemblies and riots at nighttime protests that have devolved into property damage and projectiles thrown at police. Although those events have involved significant property damage at times, they have not involved firearms or rampant brawling among demonstrators.

Several people were injured in the chaos at the warring protests. Dakota Means, 25, was hit in the eye with a paintball fired by a man in the far-right crowd wearing a tactical vest with a “Texas” patch across his chest.

“I counted six shots — three of them whizzed past me, two of them landed in front of me, but the last one hit me right in the corner my eye, right where the bridge of my nose is,” Means said. “I stumbled back and dropped to my knees and passed out for about a minute, and then when I woke up, there was medics all around me trying to figure out what was happening.”

Means, who described himself as mixed race and a Marine Corps veteran, said he was at the rally to support Black Lives Matter and to oppose a right-wing crowd that was threatening to shoot civilians.

“They’re not welcome in the city,” he said. “I’m gonna make sure they’re ran out.”

The right-wing crowd chanted “USA! USA!” and expletive-filled chants against antifa. The opposing leftists responded with shouts of: “Go home, Nazis.”

After more than two hours of violent clashes, the far-right crowd retreated to their cars. Antifa demonstrators followed them as they moved through downtown to a parking garage a few blocks away. The two groups lobbed rocks at each other and exchanged more pepper spray.

Amid the right-wing crowd was a widely known Proud Boy, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, who has frequently brawled in Portland since early 2017.

Last year, he pleaded guilty in a 2018 assault in exchange for a two-year probation that requires him to stay away from protests until his probationary period ends in 2021. Even before he showed up at Saturday’s rally, there was an active warrant for Toese’s arrest for violating other terms of his probation.

As the far-right crowd left downtown Portland, Toese walked past several Portland police officers who did not attempt to apprehend him.

After the far-right groups had cleared out of downtown, members of the left-leaning crowd reconvened in Terry Schrunk Plaza, which is federal property. Federal police declared the gathering an unlawful assembly and drove the protesters out of the plaza, though the crowd had become largely peaceful as the afternoon waned.

Experts say this backsliding is predictable — in the face of what feels like chronic risk, we are less motivated to take specific action against the threat.

Biden offers sharp attack on Trump as a dark force and promises to be ‘an ally of the light’ as president
His acceptance speech caps a week of unity among sometimes fractious Democrats

In Portland, some Black activists frustrated with white protesters

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-protests-portland-activis/in-portland-some-black-activists-frustrated-with-white-protesters-idUSKCN24W2QD

PORTLAND (Reuters) – A small group of Black teenage girls carrying megaphones stood in front of the federal courthouse in downtown Portland near midnight on Thursday facing a largely white band of protesters.

“I’m done with y’all focusing on all these white folk,” said 17-year-old Erandi, who asked to be identified only by her first name. “This is a Black Lives Matter movement.”

And as it happened, Portland had its first night in weeks without tear gas here after state police took over from federal agents guarding a courthouse that has been the focal point of violence between protesters and those agents.[nL2N2F20XI]

For over two months, the nightly Black Lives Matter protests have followed a familiar pattern.

A peaceful demonstration against racial injustice and police brutality begins at nightfall at the central police precinct.

They are more organic than organized. Protesters chant: “George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Black Lives Matter.” A microphone is passed around to whoever wants to speak. The scenes feel festive at times, with drumbeats and tambourines, and a grill that serves food at all hours. On one night, a man holding a microphone raps to the crowd: “On the Portland streets/We’re taking it back/Wearing a mask ‘cuz they shoot me with gas.”

President Donald Trump at a White House news conference on Thursday called the protesters “professional agitators, professional anarchists” and said the federal agents deployed there would “clean out this beehive of terrorists.” Portland has become a prime target of Trump’s “law and order” re-election campaign.

But the reality on the ground is as murky as the nightly clouds of tear gas had been. There are no clear leaders or structure to these demonstrations, and as midnight looms the focus moves to a small band of mainly white people trying to attack the courthouse throwing fireworks and objects at police and agents over a fence guarding the building.

The New York Times this week said an internal Department of Homeland Security memo indicated the federal agents didn’t understand the nature of the protests, particularly those attacking the courthouse.

“We lack insight into the motives for the most recent attacks,” the memo said.

“There are two different protests. This is beautiful,” said Ngee Gow, 22, pointing to the main body of demonstrators at the central police precinct. “This is destruction,” he said, nodding to those waiting to confront federal agents outside the courthouse.

Suburban mothers, veterans and healthcare workers joined anti-racism demonstrations in early July to oppose the federal intervention and to try to tone down the violence. The Black demonstrators initially welcomed the moms – and dads who came with leaf blowers to disperse the tear gas – but are now frustrated with the band of midnight provocateurs at the courthouse.

Portland is one of the whitest cities in the United States, with only three percent of residents identifying as African-American. Though residents there are overwhelmingly progressive, the city itself is still very segregated, a legacy of Oregon’s racist past as the only state to ban Black people when it was founded.

“We’re fighting with our hearts here,” Erandi, the Black teenager told Reuters. “We need these white people to acknowledge that this isn’t a bonfire. This isn’t just a party.”

Huddled with Erandi and a few other Black demonstrators, Gow looked on disappointedly at the boisterous crowd in front of the courthouse, chanting “Feds go home.”

“It’s about Black lives. Period,” Gow said. “If you really want to respect Black lives, and if you really want to respect Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, then you’d be listening to the movement instead of antagonizing police.”

Ted Cruz’s Hearing on Anarchist Protest Violence Was a Total Farce
Cruz kept mentioning Democrats’ failure to condemn a murder that was actually carried out by the far right — and refused to be corrected.

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/05/ted-cruz-hearing-antifa/?utm_campaign=theintercept&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR1eXNXPv-qv6a2zF40a3WgyeTSWsBnBeCP7T_ouIhExHZe_gw00H2udffU

ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON, with Congress still failing to agree on an urgent pandemic relief package, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, brought together a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee to propagandize. Instead of helping the pandemic-stricken, Cruz chaired an hourslong spectacle of a hearing designed to peddle misleading narratives about anarchists and anti-fascists.

If the propagandistic title of the hearing — “The Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble: Protecting Speech by Stopping Anarchist Violence” — wasn’t enough to show his aims, Cruz’s own comments made clear the proceedings’ purpose as political theater. In a telling moment, Cruz twice chastised his Democratic colleagues for praising peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters while failing to condemn “antifa” and the “terrorists” who killed a federal security officer, Dave Patrick Underwood, during a May protest in Oakland. Cruz’s implication was clear: The left killed Underwood.

Yet Underwood was killed by a member of the far right — one of 329 murders carried out by right-wing extremists since 1994.

In the same period, a grand total of zero murders have been attributed to antifa participants.

The political affiliations of the man charged in Underwood’s murder have been public knowledge for nearly two months. The alleged killer, Air Force Sgt. Steve Carillo, who also killed another federal officer during the premeditated ambush, is an open adherent of the boogaloo movement, which is aimed at hastening a second civil war.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pointed out Cruz’s error after the Texas Republican’s first mention of Underwood, noting that the killer was on the far right. This did not stop Cruz raising the killing again later in the hearing, once again within the context of a blustering speech about antifa.

The hearing was just the latest stage for baseless overtures on the threat of the far left. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, made numerous attempts to change the afternoon’s focus onto a more worthy target — deadly white supremacist violence — to little avail.

FOR THE GOVERNMENT to ignore white supremacist violence and focus instead on the far left is nothing new. The Intercept reported last month, based on leaked law enforcement documents, that while the Trump administration has sought to demonize and target antifa, reports amassed of deadly white supremacist violence and substantive threats — including to the police themselves.

Not that the police should be let off the hook for the right’s pernicious priorities. U.S. law enforcement has an unbroken history of deprioritizing, if not outright aiding, white supremacist movements. During Tuesday’s unnecessary hearing, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox said that she was overseeing a task force to investigate current anti-government threats, which was not focused on white supremacists.

One of the few voices of reason throughout the afternoon, Michael German, a former FBI agent specializing in domestic terrorism who is now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, noted the “sensationalized” focus on the far left has “distracted from focus on the deadly threats” posed by the far right. “As a matter of policy, far-right violence is deprioritized,” German said.

In line with German’s criticism, the hearing proceeded with paranoiac speeches about the tactics of anti-racist, anti-fascist protesters. Acting Deputy Secretary of of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli discussed protesters using laser pointers and small projectiles, like frozen water bottles, against brutal federal agents in Portland, Oregon. He spoke as if he was describing weapons of mass destruction when he said that demonstrators were taking up “the oldest weapon in history” — rocks.

Meanwhile, as German previously told The Intercept, on the far right “you have these heavily armed groups right there, who have a much more direct and lengthy history of violence than anything antifa or anarchist-involved does.”

The only member of the media called to testify was right-wing provocateur Andy Ngo. Ngo spoke of the long history of antifa organizing in Portland, but unsurprisingly omitted the most obvious reason for it: In recent years, Portland has become an epicenter of far-right violence, to which anti-fascist action is a rightful response.

Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy also testified as an alleged expert on the nature of antifa as an organization of international terrorism, drawing comparisons to Al Qaeda. As Hirono pointed out at the hearing, the Center for Security Policy is designated by the Southern Policy Law Center as an anti-Muslim hate group. Only one witness identified as an anti-fascist and a participant in the ongoing anti-racist protests for Black lives, Nkenge Harmon Johnson of the Portland Urban League; she was asked no questions by the committee after her brief statement in support of the movement. Cruz, meanwhile, gave Shideler extra speaking time to defend his hate group against criticism.

Cruz closed the proceedings with a frenzied tirade about the dangers of Black Lives Matter — purported criticisms that bear no repeating. Suffice it to say that Cruz, a racist police apologist, is no fan of Black liberation icons like Angela Davis and Assata Shakur.

In Today’s N.Y.Times there is an article about the black police captain in Portland who says the violence is not helping the BLM movement and that it’s so ironic that the protesters are mostly all white compared to the number of black policemen they are protesting against,

link https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opinion/portland-protests-police-chief.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Zooey wrote:

No violence or destruction since the Feds left Portland.

And…I think this entire argument is going to be eclipsed by what happens next anyway.

Between now and November, each week is going to be an Eternity. And the next thing to come – that is going to wipe out concerns about Portland – is evictions. Business failures. Covid outbreaks in the schools that think science doesn’t matter.

The next 6 months will be worse, and will dwarf what’s happened so far.

I hope your right. And you may well be. I see the main focus by the Trump campaign is now turning to somehow doing what’s necessary to reduce the number of voters especially minority voters. I don’t look forward to any of this.

from https://www.opb.org/news/article/police-violence-portland-protest-federal-officers/

Only after that last tactic gathered national headlines would the country take notice and ask: Was Portland really a “city under siege,” as acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf described it? Protesters and journalists who regularly showed up at the nightly demonstrations agreed a siege was happening — but over 14 days, federal law enforcement increasingly became the occupying force.

Here is how we got here:

June 5
As in cities across the county, Portlanders turned out to protest racism and violence in the criminal justice system after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. After a week of widespread use of tear gas and impact munitions to disperse mostly nonviolent protesters, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Portland Police Bureau, limiting their use of tear gas to instances “in which the lives or safety of the public or the police are at risk.”

In his order, U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez said that, given the evidence, there was a “strong likelihood” the bureau had violated protesters’ Fourth Amendment rights, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and covers excessive use of force.

June 26
The city and protesters agreed to expand the restraining order beyond tear gas, to include crowd control devices like pepper spray and rubber bullets. Portland police still continued to use tear gas and impact munitions, but the bar to justify their use was significantly higher. State lawmakers in the Oregon Legislature also passed a law requiring police to first warn protesters before using tear gas. Under the new law, officers must determine that a “riot” is occurring. Oregon law defines a riot as just five people acting in a violent manner.

That same day, Trump signed an executive order to protect statues and monuments across the country and to combat what he described as “criminal violence” arising from protests against police violence and systemic racism.

The order came as statues of Confederate generals and other slave-owning historic figures were either removed or pulled down by protesters, including one of George Washington in Northeast Portland on the eve of the Juneteenth holiday and another of Thomas Jefferson days before that. In response, the Department of Homeland Security sent officers to Portland, Seattle, Gettysburg National Park in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection memo dated July 1 noted that the executive order created a DHS task force to “surge” federal law enforcement resources to protect against potential civil unrest. (The Nation first reported on the documents.)

July 1
Federal officers started playing a more obvious and active role during nightly protests in Portland, pulling protesters’ attention away from the Multnomah County Justice Center and refocusing it across the street on the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse. That night, federal officers emerged from the boarded-up courthouse to fire pepper balls at demonstrators who came too close to the building. Their appearance changed the protests.

“People felt like they knew what they were getting into with Portland police,” said Portland-based independent journalist Tuck Woodstock, who has been covering the protests since late May. The protesters had specific demands for Portland police — they wanted officers held accountable for specific acts of violence and the bureau defunded.

Woodstock said that in the wake of the temporary restraining order, demonstrators felt like some accountability for the Portland Police Bureau was possible. Weeks before, protesters had successfully pressured city government to disband the bureau’s controversial Gun Violence Reduction Team, end the school resource officer program and reallocate nearly $16 million from the police budget into community programs.

“With the federal officers, it feels like everyone in the city of Portland is almost powerless to hold them to any kind of account,” Woodstock said.

July 4
Hundreds of protesters gathered around the Multnomah County Justice Center and Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse. Fireworks shows across the country, including Portland, had been canceled because of the pandemic, but protesters filled the gap.

After more than a month of police using tear gas, impact munitions and flash bang devices to disperse enormous crowds and largely nonviolent demonstrations, the protesters on Independence Day had a fireworks display of their own. They aimed at times at the two government buildings — and the government officers — who had come to represent everything the demonstrators were protesting: racism, police brutality and an unjust criminal justice system.

Just before 11 p.m, protesters fired a variety of fireworks, including some commercial-grade fireworks, at the federal courthouse. Some also aimed green laser pointers at the exterior. Demonstrators yelled at the officers hiding behind small hatches cut in the plywood facade of the boarded-up building; the holes were used as blinds to fire pepperball munitions on the crowd.

After about 15 minutes, federal officers grew impatient. Officers from the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group, Customs and Border Protection’s Border Patrol Tactical Unit or BORTAC, and the Federal Protective Service quickly filled the courthouse’s covered entryway with tear gas. Flash bangs detonated as protesters scattered, and officers poured out of the boarded-up front entrance.

From there, officers continued across the street into Lownsdale Square, a city park. They continued marching west, joined by the Portland Police Bureau, pushing the crowd farther and farther along city streets. By the time federal officers stopped marching, the line of law enforcement officers was blocks away from federal property at the courthouse.

July 8
After multiple failed strategies in response to the protests and a continued inability to end the nightly demonstrations, Portland Deputy Chief Chris Davis met with the media. He characterized the protesters as criminals who had co-opted a peaceful movement, a tried and true tactic used by government officials over the decades to delegitimize social movements. Protesters of nearly every stripe rejected the characterization.

In response to the July 4 events, Davis said Portland’s police had no control over federal officers and that their presence made local officers’ jobs more difficult.

“I don’t have authority over federal officers,” Davis said. “They’re governed by their own policies and procedures. They’re acting under federal law, federal authority. … It does complicate things for us.”

Still, Davis said, an officer from the federal agencies was stationed in the Portland Police Bureau’s nightly command post to coordinate as needed.

July 10
During a military briefing in Doral, Florida, Trump brought up the federal presence in the city of Portland unprompted. He said he had sent the officers to Oregon because “the locals couldn’t handle it.”

“It was out of control,” the president said.

July 11
Protesters once again gathered at night in the city park across the street from the federal courthouse. They taunted federal officers, telling them to get out of Portland.

One demonstrator, 26-year-old Donavan La Bella, stood at the edge of the park closest to the courthouse. He held a boombox over his head with both hands. When a tear gas canister landed at his feet, he bent over and pushed it a few feet away. He stood back up and lifted the boombox again, and a U.S. marshal shot him in the head with an impact round, fracturing his skull and leaving him in critical condition.

The shooting prompted outcry from Oregon elected officials. Gov. Brown said it was the result of Trump continuing to push for force and violence in response to protests.

Unlike several of his fellow city commissioners, the governor and Oregon’s two U.S. senators, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler took almost 18 hours to respond. His written statement bemoaned the violence, but didn’t go as far as other elected officials in condemning federal behavior.

“I’m concerned that the actions of federal officers last night escalated, rather than de-escalated, already heightened tensions in our city,” said Wheeler, who is also Portland’s police commissioner.

July 13
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said Trump had a dangerous fixation with strong-arming peaceful protesters.

“What America does not need is Donald Trump parachuting federal law enforcement into U.S. cities as if they’re enemy strongholds requiring an occupying army to suppress,” Wyden said.

The next day, Sens. Wyden and Jeff Merkley, and U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Suzanne Bonamici — all Democrats — sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice seeking answers about the federal officers’ deployment in Portland.

At the White House, Trump said nothing of the injuries to protester LaBella, and praised the federal law enforcement’s response.

“We’ve done a great job in Portland,” Trump said. “Portland was totally out of control. They went in and I guess they have many people right now in jail. We very much quelled it. If it starts again, we’ll quell it again, very easily. It’s not hard to do.”

July 15
In the early morning hours of July 15, video surfaced on Twitter showing two officers in camouflage getting out of an unmarked van. They walked toward a person in a black hoodie and a helmet.

Officers put the person’s hands behind their back and walked them back to an unmarked van before driving away.

Related: Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets

In a separate incident, around 2:30 a.m., Mark Pettibone was also grabbed by federal agents in camouflage.

“A van pulls up right in front of us,” Pettibone later told OPB. “I am basically tossed into the van. I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldn’t see, and they held my hands over my head.”

Pettibone said he was taken to the federal courthouse where federal officers searched and photographed him but gave no reason for his arrest.

“They patted me down, took my picture and rummaged through my belongings,” Pettibone said. “One of them said, ‘This is a whole lot of nothing.’ He seemed disappointed that I didn’t have any weapons or anything on me.”

Pettibone was placed in a cell by himself and read his Miranda rights, he said. Officers asked if he wanted to waive his rights, he said, but Pettibone declined and asked for a lawyer. He was released about 90 minutes later.

“It was clear to me that this was just a totally indiscriminate detainment,” Pettibone said.

Speaking in the Oval Office later that day with Attorney General Bill Barr, Trump again spoke about the protests in Portland and alluded to a larger role federal law enforcement could play in cities across the country, similar to Portland.

“We’re doing a great job in Portland,” Trump said. “Portland was very rough and they called us in, and we did a good job, to put it mildly. Many people in jail right now. But we have other cities that are out of control. They’re like war zones.”

July 16
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan told Fox News that Trump was planning an announcement about enhanced federal law enforcement actions involving the Department of Justice and Homeland Security “next week.”

“We’re going to do what needs to be done to protect the men and women of this country,” he said.

Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf also made an unannounced visit to Portland, where he toured graffiti on the federal courthouse and talked to federal officers and Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner.

Portland’s mayor refused to meet with Wolf, saying he disapproves of the federal presence and that there’s nothing he can do to stop federal action. Oregon’s governor told OPB she spoke with Wolf on the phone earlier in the week.

“I said, ‘Please take your officers home,’” Brown told OPB’s “Think Out Loud®.” “’They are only escalating things here in the city and you need to go home.'”

Before leaving, Wolf went live on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, where he said the Department of Homeland Security would continue to have a presence in Portland despite opposition from local, state and federal officials from Oregon.

“We need to make sure that we’re supporting our law enforcement officers here and making sure that they’re continuing to protect the federal courthouse here; that’s what DHS does,” Wolf said. “We’re going to do our job, we’re going to do it professionally.”

Shortly after Wolf toured the federal courthouse, OPB published Pettibone’s story, confirming federal law enforcement agents have been grabbing protesters off the streets in unmarked vehicles and without giving any explanation to the people being detained.

The U.S. Marshals Service issued a statement denying their officers participated in Pettibone’s arrest. Homeland Security officials did not respond to written questions about the arrest.

July 17
National scrutiny of the Department of Homeland Security increased, with a fresh round of condemnation from Oregon lawmakers, as well as national figures such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon Billy Williams stood on the steps of the federal courthouse in front of a large group of protesters and called for an investigation into the actions of DHS agents in Portland.

“Based on news accounts circulating that allege federal law enforcement detained two protesters without probable cause, I have requested the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General to open a separate investigation directed specifically at the actions of DHS personnel,” Williams said in a statement.

Later in the day, the ACLU of Oregon filed a lawsuit seeking to restrain how federal law enforcement interacts with journalists and legal observers at protests. The Oregon Department of Justice also sued federal agencies, and the Oregon attorney general said state prosecutors may pursue criminal charges against the officer who shot LaBella.

In a written statement, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed officers from Customs and Border Protection had been arresting protesters in Portland using unmarked vehicles. The agency defended the arrests as lawful and justified.

“In Portland, they have. I wouldn’t say this is used anywhere else,” Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, told NPR. “Upon questioning, they determined they were — they did not have the right person — and that person was released.”

Cuccinelli said he didn’t know if the case he was asked about was Pettibone’s and wouldn’t say how many times similar arrests involving unmarked vans have happened.

But he said the practice would continue.

“I fully expect that as long as people continue to be violent and to destroy property that we will attempt to identify those folks,” he said. “We will pick them up in front of the courthouse. If we spot them elsewhere, we will pick them up elsewhere. And if we have a question about somebody’s identity — like the first example I noted to you — after questioning determine it isn’t someone of interest, then they get released. And that’s standard law enforcement procedure, and it’s going to continue as long as the violence continues.”

July 18
The backlash against border patrol actions on Portland streets did little to deter federal law enforcement.

In the early hours of the morning, with no clear provocation, federal officers dressed in camouflage used tear gas, pepper balls and other impact munitions to push hundreds of protesters far from federal property. Portland police officers marched beside them at times. The scenes prompted Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty to demand that Mayor Ted Wheeler turn over day-to-day management of Portland police to her.

After more than two weeks in Portland, federal officers have come to be seen as a wild card.

“PPB is usually predictable in their response to something,” said freelance reporter Garrison Davis. “The federal officers are not. It’s harder to get a sense of what their goal is and what they’re going to do. It makes being there safely very difficult.”

The increasingly aggressive actions by federal officers have also energized the protest movement in Portland, a city known for its cultural defiance to authority. Crowds grew significantly July 17 and 18.

At one point Friday night, a naked woman sauntered to a police line and pointed her finger at federal officers, who were dressed in camo and carrying less-than-lethal weapons. She dared the officers to shoot, and they obliged — spraying the ground inches from her feet with pepper balls.

The woman didn’t move.

‘It’s About the Core Values of Black Lives Matter.’ Portland Activists Are Trying to Remind People Why They Started Protesting to Begin With

https://time.com/5872883/portland-activists-black-lives-matter/?fbclid=IwAR3OBB9pi_g7kOj-clll7sLgBOA7YLPdf4z0u9vR2U6PnJEYp1BTFK1KV5k

Since federal agents entered Portland over the July 4 weekend, national headlines have highlighted how federal officers and Portland police have harmed protesters, medics, legal observers and journalists. The actions have sparked lawsuits and drawn scrutiny from DOH and DOJ internal watchdogs as well as Congress.

Many protesters say federal officers from the Department of Homeland Security, the Marshals Service and Customs and Border Protection have “added fuel to the fire” of what had been largely peaceful protests. However, federal agencies have maintained that they were needed to protect federal properties and the city from violence despite video evidence showing them acting aggressively at demonstrations.

But police brutality was a “problem way before the (federal) troops came,” says Demetria Hester, a Black mother and grandmother who has frequently been showing up to protests since May and is an administrator with Moms United for Black Lives. “That’s what we were protesting about in the first place—that the police have a record of killing Black people here and (…) having the OK from everybody to get away with it.” She has no faith in the city and state’s politicians, saying they have “allowed this to go on for so long” despite saying they will help.

“These politicians, they don’t care that Black Lives Matter,” Hester says. “They care about getting their pockets rich, about getting their photo op, about saying we’re going to help you but (they) never do. They have so much money here that they’re giving to police to be brutal to the Black community.”

While Portland protesters welcomed news on Wednesday that federal officers would begin phasing out their presence in the city, which are intended to be replaced with Oregon state police, it’s unclear exactly how and when that will happen. Acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf said in a statement that the department would maintain its current presence until it received assurance federal property wouldn’t be attacked. President Donald Trump said Thursday morning in a tweet that federal officers would not leave “until there is safety.” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said Thursday that Portland police would be working with other city and county agencies to clear Lownsdale Park “at the request of (Oregon State Police) as part of the plan for federal officers to leave our community.)”

In the wake of the news about federal officers starting to leave, Wheeler, who is also the city’s police commissioner, reinforced the importance of police and criminal justice reform. While Wheeler repeatedly demanded federal officers leave the city and even got tear gassed while joining demonstrations one night, he remains extremely unpopular among protesters, many of whom are calling for Wheeler’s resignation. Several activists tell TIME that they view Wheeler’s recent rhetoric as disingenuous, with several pointing out that he is seeking reelection. They worry about systemic problems with Portland’s police that will continue to disproportionately harm Black communities, and say that current plans to direct money away from the police have not gone far enough. What’s more, protesters worry that all the attention on the presence of federal forces is derailing the reason they’re out there in the first place: to protest police brutality and support the Black Lives Matter movement.

Wheeler’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Wheeler has said that the focus on federal officers has shifted attention away from activists’ core demands. “The daily coverage of (federal officer’s) actions has distracted our community from the Black voices at the center of this movement, and the urgent work of reform.” he said Wednesday on Twitter.

“Obviously we do not want the federal government here, we don’t want them anywhere. But the whole movement started because of Black Lives Matter and that’s what’s getting lost in this,” says “Beans”, who was a volunteer at a community hub and group that has provided free food called Riot Ribs. She asked to use her nickname out of fear of retribution for her high-profile work in the city. “It’s not about fighting Trump or whatever. It’s about the core values of Black Lives Matter,” she adds.

Black adults in Multnomah County, where Portland is located, are overrepresented at the stages of arrest and imprisonment, compared to their white counterparts, according to a November 2019 report on the county’s racial and ethnic disparities from the W. Haywood Burns Institute. A one-day snapshot of the jail population on June 30, 2019 shows stark disparities across races; only 1.3 of every 1,000 white adults were incarcerated in jail, while more than six times as many (8.2 of every, 1,000 Black adults) were incarcerated in jail, according to the analysis. The trend appears to be stark for arrests, too. Because arrest data was not available, the report relied on a proxy — the “number of referrals received by the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.” This data revealed that 26 cases were received for every 1,000 white adults and almost five times as many cases were received for every 1,000 Black adults.

In addition, a November 2019 analysis of traffic and pedestrian stops from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission found that Portland police “searched African Americans at more than twice the rate of white motorists and pedestrians during a 12-month period ending in June” 2019, The Oregonian reported.

There were at least five police-involved shootings that resulted in deaths in 2019, according to Portland Copwatch, a grassroots group promoting police accountability. The police killings of Black people from years ago, include Aaron Campbell who was fatally shot in the back while in the parking lot of an apartment complex in 2010, and Kendra James, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop in 2003.

Portland has so far fallen short of activists’ demands to defund the police by at least $50 million and redistribute money towards investing in Black communities and anti-violence programs unrelated to law enforcement. (Care Not Cops and Don’t Shoot Portland, community groups that advocate for defunding the police, want an annual reduction of at least $50 million for “each year going forward,” according to an official list of their demands.) Wheeler has committed to diverting $7 million from the police bureau and $5 million from other parts of the city budget towards communities of color, as well as promising to remove police officers from schools and disbanding the city’s Gun Violence Reduction team, which activists said would “target Black and brown people, especially youth.” A budget passed by the Portland City Council last month would cut more than $15 million from the police bureau.

Wheeler is also facing criticism from Portland’s city council, which on Wednesday voted unanimously in favor of a police oversight board to review misconduct investigations. Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said in a July 18 statement that if Wheeler “can’t control the police,” that he should give her control over the agency. “We need you to stop denying the violence being perpetrated by our own police force and make it clear and unambiguous: Portland police are directed from the top to never collaborate with 45’s goon squad, to take off their riot gear, and to stop contributing to the violence that was occurring before the feds arrived and still continues night after night,” she said. Wheeler rejected Hardesty’s request, saying he would continue to oversee the department.

Effie Baum, spokesperson for Popular Mobilization (or PopMob), a Portland coalition of anti-fascist groups, points out the similarities between the violence perpetrated by federal officers and Portland police as well as why she’s skeptical about Wheeler’s motivations to join protesters. That’s one of the reasons “Wheeler coming out and pulling that PR stunt is so disingenuous because this has been happening here for so long and he didn’t care when it was his (police force) going after us but it’s like—Trump sends in his soldiers to attack us and suddenly Ted Wheeler cares.” It’s “absolutely a political ploy,” they say.

Tensions are emerging among protesters, too. The Wall of Moms, an organization that has gained national attention as it brought mothers dressed in yellow to the front lines of many protests, recently indicated that it would be shifting its leadership after acknowledging in a statement that “too many of our admins were White women”; it said it decided to hand leadership of the organization over to Don’t Shoot Portland — a local group that supports Black Lives Matter by providing mutual aid to communities and protesters and has sued the city and federal government for what they characterize as the indiscriminate use of force.

Further complicating the matter, on Wednesday, Don’t Shoot Portland accused Wall of Moms of “anti-blackness” for “leaving vulnerable Black women downtown after marching, failing to support those on the ground that put trust in them” and not informing Black leadership about officially registering as a nonprofit with the state. They said the organization “was not started for BLM, but to get the feds out of PDX” and that “combined with a lack of care for and disregard of Black women, we were used to further an agenda unrelated to BLM.” As a result, a separate group called Moms United for Black Lives has splintered off from the organization. Family members of Wall of Moms founder Bev Barnum said she would not comment on the allegation.

Teressa Raiford, executive director of Don’t Short Portland, says that despite Wheeler’s assurances that he won’t cooperate with federal officers, they did not “see the police rendering aid or supporting anyone that’s being assaulted by any federal officers.” Raiford also finds it ironic that the local and state government has spoken out against the federal response but not the police “use of violence and tear gas.”

Raiford says the demand to acknowledge that Black Lives Matter is not a new one, despite the recent increase in protests across the nation. “What we’re saying now in 2020 is no different than what people of the Black community have been saying forever, since we were brought here to America,” she says.

Jennie Vinson was one of the first Wall of Moms volunteers and joined after seeing a Facebook post calling to mobilize moms. “Portland is a very white city” and “there’s an obligation that I have as a white woman have to step up and say enough is enough,” Vinson says. More than three-quarters of Portland’s residents are white and Oregon has a long racist history; the state’s constitution banned Black residents until 1926.

“Black women have been out fighting for their kids and their families for years and now is the time that we need to really listen because this is life and death,” Vinson adds.

Amid the chaos, Riot Ribs because a popular resource for protesters—but has also been swept up in the city’s tension. “The goal is to feed people, whatever it takes to make that happen,” Beans said, days before the organization dissolved. This week, Riot Ribs disbanded as an organization, saying they have “been personally targeted and assaulted” and “have someone who is trying to profit off of our movement who continues to volunteer in the park.” They intend to distribute the remaining donations to other community groups and rebrand as Revolution Ribs—a more on-the-go version of the operation, which will continue to feed people in different states with the help of two recently purchased vans.

Beans said that their operation had been “tear gassed every night” with staff sometimes still trying to cook through the haze. She adds that Portland police as well as federal officers have targeted Riot Ribs, slashing open water bottles, intentionally spraying the grills with pepper spray and tear gas and raiding the spot and arresting people at 4 a.m.

She says the group was going through 10,000 plates a day as they served all sorts of meals—from hot dogs to hamburgers to ribs to steamed rice and curry and received more than $330,000 in donations.

Babatunde Azubuike, an activist who uses the pronouns, ze/hir or goddexx, and is Afro-indigenous, disabled and trans, says that while federal officers are “essentially limited to a very small area in downtown,” the police are everywhere and have “consistently been given a lot of access and power to brutalize people.” Babatunde, who is programs coordinator for Freedom to Thrive, is hopeful that police abolition will become a realistic option going forward, questioning how you can reform an institution “that is so brutal and violent” to begin with. Wheeler said on the night that he joined protesters that he would not commit to abolishing the police—remarks that were met by jeers by the activists surrounding him, The New York Times reported.

Aslan Newson, a 16-year-old who identifies as queer Afro-Indigenous woman from the Klamath Tribes, has been protesting every Friday through Fridays4Freedom, a collective of Black youth and their allies in Portland who are fighting for police abolition among a variety of causes. “This work is exhausting,” Newson says. But she adds that it’s something she will be fighting for, for the rest of her life. “This isn’t an adult problem. This isn’t a youth problem,” she says. “This involves everybody.”

zn wrote:

waterfield wrote:

And I believe that a “powerful” movement loses it’s power if it ceases to accomplish it’s goal.

W, you’re telling people protesting systemic racism to stop what they’re doing because you’re afraid of a situation that does not exist–that misrepresentations of them as violent will re-elect Trump.

And so you are saying something no different from the people who confuse the small militant faction and its (laughably unthreatening) graffiti violence with the ongoing peaceful protest all over the country. Doesn’t that just put you on their side? They go, hey no more riots in the name of racial justice. And you go, hey no more protests in the name of racial justice because I am afraid of the group that (wrongly) sees you as rioting. From the point of view of caring about racial justice, what’s the difference?

You open up this thread with a quotation from a BLM spokesperson in Portland. Do you know your source takes his words out of context?

“you’re afraid of a situation that does not exist–that misrepresentations of them as violent will re-elect Trump.”

We don’t know that do we? What if the “misrepresentation” does work against Biden and helps re-elect Trump? That is not out of the question as you seem to believe it is. In fact I think Trump and his campaign people do believe it. And that is my worry if it continues. What Trump wants is for these protests to continue as long as there is violence displayed. Regardless of whether the violence is a lot or its “a small militant faction with its (laughingly unthreatening) graffiti” his goal is to scare people. To get them to think that Willie Horton is coming to get them after he burns down a few cities.

I just received a lengthy survey from his campaign asking me to respond to issues that they think is crucial to the election. From these questions it is clear that their message will be about law and order and big government socialism. Add to that the 2d amendment, lower vs higher taxes and what you will have is a very formidable sitting President. I want this guy gone for the sake of my grandchildren and I want to close all the ways he can use to be elected. If that means no more protests-so be it.

zn wrote:

waterfield wrote:

The “RIGHT THING TO DO” for this country and future generations is to get rid of Trump !

Of course. We’re just disagreeing about the idea that we should sacrifice a powerful movement and its peaceful protests just cause Trump tried (and failed) to make an issue out of that small faction of graffiti warriors in Oregon.

And I believe that a “powerful” movement loses it’s power if it ceases to accomplish it’s goal. Rewarding Trump does nothing to further the “movement”. ( I realize you disagree on whether it rewards Trump) Finally, I don’t know how anyone who wasn’t there can say there was only a “small fraction of graffiti warriors”. To say that you either have to have been there or know a trusted person who said that. Other than the tv my only knowledge comes from a Presbyterian minister who I grew up with and who lives in Portland. He said it was “pretty dangerous” and wouldn’t want to have been there. He is a solid Biden supporter and said there were many, many outsiders there who were purely bent on destruction “in the name of protest”. My talk with him didn’t sound like it was a “small faction of graffiti warriors” . Then again while he was there he wasn’t where the destruction was occurring and like you, and I, he most likely got his info from TV. However, my impression was that he knows people who were there-in peaceful protest. No matter what really happened, at its core is the fact that Joe Public sees what is on tv and Trump ties into that.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by waterfield.

Zooey wrote:

waterfield wrote:

Before this is over Trump will have convinced the “deplorables” and those on the lower end of the brain stem that only his law and order will prevent those leftist thugs from breaking into your home, stealing your guns, raping your wife, and killing all your kids.

Why even give him that path.

Well…you give him that path because taking a stand against the police acting as unlawful executioners of black people is the RIGHT THING TO DO.

And even if the protesters all went home to deny Trump that angle, he would make up some other shit to stoke his base. It doesn’t matter. I mean…Caravan. Muslims. Socialists. Emails.

It doesn’t matter. They will make some shit up, and fire up the base.

So stick to doing what is right. Take a stand. Push back. I agree with zn anyway; I think he lost this round. He will be back, but he lost the battle in Portland to moms and vets and kids.

The “RIGHT THING TO DO” for this country and future generations is to get rid of Trump !

Who’s escalating this? It’s not us’: Portland protester says federal agents deliberately intensifying violence

https://news.yahoo.com/whos-escalating-not-us-portland-191936244.html

Protesters in Portland claim federal agents occupying the city are intentionally escalating violence in the city.

Donald Trump deployed federal agents to protect a federal courthouse in Portland, against the wishes of the city’s mayor, Ted Wheeler.

The federal agents were tasked with protecting the courthouse and subduing the protesters. They have been filmed arresting people without explanation and forcing them into unmarked vans, beaten protesters with batons, and used tear gas and pepper spray against demonstrators since arriving in the city.

A protester told MSNBC that the federal agents were escalating tensions at the protests.

“We came out here in t-shirts, they started gassing us. We came back with respirators, they started shooting us. We came back with vests, they started aiming for the head… And now they call us terrorists. Who’s escalating this? It’s not us,” the protester said.

On Wednesday, Governor Kate Brown of Oregon said that all Customs and Border Protection and ICE agents would leave Portland and be replaced by Oregon State Police.

Her statement may have come too soon, as US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf contradicted her, stating that federal agents would stay in the city “until we are assured that the Hatfield Federal Courthouse and other federal properties will no longer be attacked”.

Mr Trump weighed in on the matter as well in a tweet on Thursday.

“Kate Brown, Governor of Oregon, isn’t doing her job. She must clear out, and in some cases arrest, the Anarchists & Agitators in Portland. If she can’t do it, the Federal Government will do it for her. We will not be leaving until there is safety,” he wrote.

Mr Wolf said federal troops would leave once they had assurance that the federal facilities would be protected. Mr Trump appears to have moved the goalposts and threatened to leave the agents in Portland until political dissidents are “cleared out”.

Ms Wolf replied with her own tweet, calling Mr Trump’s invasion of Portland a “failure”.

“I think we’ve had enough political grandstanding from DC. The President’s plan to ‘dominate’ the streets of American cities has failed,” she wrote. “We will protect free speech and the right to protest peacefully.”

Republicans attack Fauci and defend Trump at coronavirus hearing

https://news.yahoo.com/republicans-attack-fauci-and-defend-trump-at-coronavirus-hearing-173957811.html

WASHINGTON — Republicans used a House hearing on the coronavirus pandemic to praise President Trump and sometimes criticize Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House coronavirus task force who has sometimes earned the ire of conservatives.

The hearing took place Friday before a coronavirus subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee. Democrats had provocatively titled it “The Urgent Need for a National Plan to Contain the Coronavirus.”

In his opening statement, subcommittee Chairman James Clyburn, D-S.C., a leader of the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives, referred to a Vanity Fair report published the day before that outlined how the Trump administration decided not to implement a national response early in the course of the pandemic because the viral outbreak appeared to be confined mostly to Democratic states.

“Instead, the president has downplayed the severity of the crisis, claiming the virus will disappear, sidelining government experts who disagree and seeking to legitimize discredited remedies,” Clyburn charged.

“The result of these decisions is that the virus has continued to rage out of control and our nation’s economic misery has continued,” Clyburn went on, arguing that the administration’s decision to cede responsibility for pandemic response to the states, while also urging those states to reopen, has only worsened the human, economic and societal costs of the pandemic.

Republicans argued that a coherent federal plan did exist, and launched counterattacks directed at Fauci, Democratic governors and China, where the virus originated in late 2019.

At one point, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., a leading Republican in the House and a Trump ally, brandished hundreds of sheets of paper to demonstrate how many plans already did exist. Scalise praised the stack as representing “President Trump’s effective plan to keep Americans safe” from a pandemic that has killed more than 152,000 people in this country.

The problem, critics have said, is that the administration has never committed itself fully to one of those plans. Instead, led by Trump himself, it has vacillated almost daily between calls for greater safety measures and celebrations of early-reopening states like Texas and Florida. Recent outbreaks in those states have led the administration to reconsider its rush to reopen, but not enough to order the kinds of lockdowns that shut down much of the economy in the spring.

The dramatic high point of the hearing came during a heated exchange between Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, one of the president’s most devoted supporters in Congress.

Jordan seemed to argue that the antiracism protests that shook the nation throughout much of June could have led to the spread of the coronavirus. Research suggests that the protests did not lead to any outbreaks, perhaps because the protesters were outside and were mostly wearing masks.

Jordan, however, was determined to make his point, peppering Fauci with questions about the need to limit all large gatherings.

“Crowding together, particularly when you’re not wearing a mask, contributes to the spread of the virus,” Fauci said.

“Should we limit the protesting?” the famously pugnacious Jordan demanded.

Fauci seemed confused by the question, since freedom of peaceful assembly is widely understood to be guaranteed by the First Amendment.

“I don’t think that’s relevant to —” Fauci began to say.

Trump himself was watching the hearing from the White House and, as he is sometimes wont to do, weighed in on the proceedings via Twitter.

“Somebody please tell Congressman Clyburn, who doesn’t have a clue, that the chart he put up indicating more CASES for the U.S. than Europe, is because we do MUCH MORE testing than any other country in the World. If we had no testing, or bad testing, we would show very few CASES,” one message said.

A follow-up message from the president attacked the “Lamestream Media and their partner, the Do Nothing Radical Left Democrats.”

After clips of Jordan’s exchange with Fauci began being spread across social media, Trump fired off another tweet addressing it specifically.

“Great job by Jim Jordan, and also some very good statements by Tony Fauci,” the president wrote. “Big progress being made!”

The highly politicized atmosphere left little room for a substantive discussion of how to combat the coronavirus, which has recently devastated states across the Sun Belt and now appears to be moving to the Midwest. Trump himself has vacillated between solemnity and dismissiveness in his own approach to the pandemic. That has left him with low approval ratings ahead of November’s presidential election.

But defending Trump at Friday’s hearing proved a difficult and potentially politically perilous task, as evidenced by Jordan’s attack on Fauci regarding the Black Lives Matter protests. Jordan’s ultimate point was that while the protests were widely allowed and encouraged by many in government, some states had limited religious gatherings. Churches have been the sites of coronavirus hot spots in some places.

“There’s been no violence that I can see at church,” Jordan said. “I haven’t seen people during a church service go out and harm police officers or burn buildings.” He contrasted peaceful worship with the sometimes violent protests in Portland, Ore., which Trump controversially used federal officers to contain.

“No limit to protests, but, boy, you can’t go to church on Sunday,” Jordan said sarcastically, a staple of his congressional comportment.

Fauci, however, would not take the bait. “I don’t know how many times I can answer that,” he replied, the smile on his face wearing thin. “I’m not going to opine on limiting anything.”

“You’ve opined on a lot of things, Dr. Fauci,” Jordan shot back.

Having served five presidents prior to Trump, Fauci did not appear rattled by the attack. “I’m telling you what it is, the danger. And you can make your own conclusion about that. You should stay away from crowds no matter where the crowds are.”

There were more substantive moments during the hearing, as when Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, admitted to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., that he had not been consulted on the Trump administration’s widely criticized decision to have hospitals send data directly to the federal Department of Health and Human Services, bypassing the CDC.

He also endorsed opening schools for in-person instruction in the fall, something that many of the largest districts around the country have been reluctant to do.

But the hearing often devolved into partisan theatrics. At one point, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., noted that “young men playing football in high school” was likely as dangerous as reopening schools. It is not clear how he came to that conclusion, as it is not known what reopening schools will do to the course of the pandemic.

Near the end of the hearing, Scalise once more held up the manifold plans that he said constituted the sum of Trump’s impressive response to the crisis.

“There’s thousands more pages online,” he said.