Nate Lerner@NathanLerner
For the first time in a week, there were zero clashes between law enforcement and protestors in Portland last night.

Why?

Trump’s federal agents left.

zn 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.

So your message to the few hundred militant protesters in Seattle and Portland is, stop he’s going to take advantage of you.

Another possibility is to support people who get out the message that that little faction is minor, is not a threat to anyone, and trying to take advantage of them is just delusional nonsense.

You have more faith than I do that at least half the voting public will believe that Trump’s law and order tactics are “nonsense”. Your arguing with me as if I don’t think his tactics are nonsense. What I’m arguing is that enough people in this country will buy into it and this coming election has many potholes for Biden and this is one. I don’t think Biden can convince anyone otherwise. The more that protests turn into violence -no matter that its a minority who are violent-the more difficult it will be for Biden. I don’t think those who attempt to burn down federal buildings and small businesses, that people have worked hard for, even have a clue about the impact on Biden. Or if they do-they simply don’t care because for them its burn the whole system down since its rotten.

wv wrote:

zn wrote:

Besides a lot of this is overlooking actual Portland history when it comes to racial issues.

I put this article in the Portland thread and I think it’s a must read if you’re interested in these issues.

ARTICLE: White as hell’: Portland protesters face off with Trump but are they eclipsing Black Lives Matter?
On another night of confrontation with federal agents, activists said their message was in danger of being forgotten

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/26/portland-federal-agents-teargas-protesters-black-lives-matter

THREAD: Portland, Oregon … protests & policing: http://theramshuddle.com/topic/the-nation-w-leaked-document-on-the-oregon-secret-policing/#post-118620

==============

Well, I’ve read all that, and I’ve read the polls and none of it is persuasive.

I think its very fluid right now. We dont really know for Sure, what all those white middle-class people in Swing States think of this stuff.

The ‘fluidity’ of it all makes me nervous. What if those Federal Storm-Troopers piss off some wacko-teen-‘leftist’ who then goes out and blows up a building. Ya know. The Law And Order thing is Trumps best chance. Now, it ‘looks like’ maybe he overplayed his hand. But…its fluid.

So, Waterfield and wv, will continue to bite our nails.

w
v

Trump’s campaign has 63,000 law and order adds in the month of July alone. These people are not stupid when it comes to reading the American voters. So yes I will continue to bite my nails.

wv wrote:

zn wrote:

Besides a lot of this is overlooking actual Portland history when it comes to racial issues.

I put this article in the Portland thread and I think it’s a must read if you’re interested in these issues.

ARTICLE: White as hell’: Portland protesters face off with Trump but are they eclipsing Black Lives Matter?
On another night of confrontation with federal agents, activists said their message was in danger of being forgotten

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/26/portland-federal-agents-teargas-protesters-black-lives-matter

THREAD: Portland, Oregon … protests & policing: http://theramshuddle.com/topic/the-nation-w-leaked-document-on-the-oregon-secret-policing/#post-118620

==============

Well, I’ve read all that, and I’ve read the polls and none of it is persuasive.

I think its very fluid right now. We dont really know for Sure, what all those white middle-class people in Swing States think of this stuff.

The ‘fluidity’ of it all makes me nervous. What if those Federal Storm-Troopers piss off some wacko-teen-‘leftist’ who then goes out and blows up a building. Ya know. The Law And Order thing is Trumps best chance. Now, it ‘looks like’ maybe he overplayed his hand. But…its fluid.

So, Waterfield and wv, will continue to bite our nails.

w
v

I don’t think the withdrawal of fed troops has anything to do at all with the public’s negative reaction to their presence and actions. In fact I think it plays right into Trump’s playbook: “see we stopped the leftist socialist thugs and now were moving on to protect the rule of law in Chicago”, etc.

Keep in mind there were 63,000 law and order adds put out by the Trump campaign in the month of July alone. These people are not stupid and they appear to know what Americans are afraid of. You are correct. Law and order is a huge trigger point for the American public.. Always has been and the Trump campaign is well aware of it. Right now, IMO, the continued protests do not help the BLM movement or Biden. Indeed, they are and will become a negative force. The ass-hole in the WH knows this.

‘White as hell’: Portland protesters face off with Trump but are they eclipsing Black Lives Matter?
On another night of confrontation with federal agents, activists said their message was in danger of being forgotten

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/26/portland-federal-agents-teargas-protesters-black-lives-matter

Teal Lindseth surveyed the sea of mothers she was about to lead into the firing line.

“I look at this crowd and I don’t see many black people,” lamented the 21-year-old African American activist. “Oregon is white as hell. Whitewashed.”

Lindseth has been a stalwart of the Black Lives Matter protests that have continued for nearly 60 days without interruption in a city that was derided as “Little Beirut” over the intensity of its demonstrations against a visit by George HW Bush four decades ago.

Portland has cemented that reputation in the Trump era, as the protests evolved into nightly showdowns with federal paramilitaries sent by the president to end what he described as anarchy.

But Portland has another reputation alongside its radical image. That of the whitest large city in America in a state with a constitution that once barred African Americans from living there. An 1850s law required black people to be “lashed” once a year to encourage them to leave Oregon, and members of the Ku Klux Klan largely controlled Portland city council between the world wars. Housing was effectively segregated in large parts of the city.

Many of today’s protesters say their support for racial justice in a city where the police department has a history of disproportionately killing African Americans is driven at least in part by an attempt to atone for Oregon’s racist past. But as Portland’s battles play out on the national stage, and Donald Trump stokes unrest for political advantage, some black leaders are asking whose interests the televised nightly confrontations really serve – and whether they are a continuation of white domination at the expense of black interests.

The president of the Portland branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), ED Mondainé, warned that the Black Lives Matter movement in the city is being coopted by “privileged white people” with other agendas. He said the confrontations with the federal officers sent by the president are little more than a “spectacle and a distraction that do nothing for the cause of black equality”.

Mondainé accused groups of young white people at the forefront of confronting federal officers of rising to Trump’s bait and using the campaign against racial injustice to provoke a fight in pursuit of other causes, such as anti-capitalism.

“The children of the privileged are dancing on the stages of those that gave their lives for this movement,” he told the Guardian.

Trump’s dispatch of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) taskforce reinvigorated the protests in Portland as federal agents in camouflage snatched protesters off the streets in unmarked vans and severely beat others.

Outrage in the city, and nationally, at what smacked of police state tactics only fuelled the demonstrations, which did not displease the president. Trump presented the pictures of protesters in helmets and gas masks confronting federal agents as evidence of a city overrun by anarchists and antifa, and the Democrats as either helpless or complicit in the chaos.

Trump raised the ante by vowing to send a “surge” of federal forces to other Democratic-run cities such as Chicago, ostensibly to quell gun killings. He said Operation Legend, named after a four year-old boy shot dead in Kansas City, would see thousands of agents from the FBI, US Marshals Service and other agencies deployed to end a “rampage of violence”.

The mayors of Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta and 11 other cities wrote to the administration on Tuesday, accusing the president of an abuse of power and alleging that “federal law enforcement is being deployed for political purposes” amid suspicions that Trump is more interested in creating conflict than ending it in the run-up to the election.

“Unilaterally deploying these paramilitary-type forces into our cities is wholly inconsistent with our system of democracy and our most basic values,” they wrote.

The mayors also said they were disturbed at the actions of federal agents in Portland, calling their failure to wear proper identification and the snatching of protesters off the streets “chilling”.

“These are tactics we expect from an authoritarian regime – not our democracy,” the letter said.

Mondainé, who led a rally on Thursday evening to “bring back the focus” on to Black Lives Matter, said “empty battles” were serving Trump’s agenda because the president creates political theatre for electoral advantage. He said Trump is baiting protesters in Portland to light the fuse on a racist backlash across the country before the presidential election.

“We have to change that narrative. We cannot let teargas and rubber bullets define the moment that we’re in now. We must seize the moment and assure the world that this time racism will no longer live,” he said.

A dark stain

Mondainé and other black leaders want to shift the focus of protests in Portland back to one of the enduring legacies of Oregon’s racist past – reform of a police department with a long history of violence against the supposedly liberal city’s relatively small black population, and which has seen a sharp rise in the killing of African American men since Trump came to power.

African Americans make up just 6% of Portland’s 650,000 residents but accounted for 30% of shootings by police over the past three years. Black people were also several times more times likely to be arrested or stopped. The police department has proved so trigger happy that the Obama administration placed it under federal court oversight, although it sidestepped the issue of race in doing so.

But African Americans in Portland remain sceptical that the city or the police department are committed to change, particularly when officers are accused of siding with far-right groups such as the Proud Boys who regularly use the city as a platform for protests knowing it will create a backlash.

Accusations that the force tolerates neo-fascist sympathies are not new. Critics regard the case of Mark Kruger as a particularly dark stain on the police department and city government.

In about 2000, the then Portland police sergeant built a shrine in a public park to five Nazi soldiers including a member of Hitler’s SS and a war criminal. Kruger nailed plaques with their names to what he called an “Ehrenbaum” or honour tree. They were positioned so he could see them from the road when driving to work as a police officer, and he kept them polished.

The shrine remained in the park for several years until Kruger removed it when he was the target of federal lawsuits for use of excessive force against anti-Iraq war protestors. Portland attorney’s office stored the plaques until they were discovered years later by an internal affairs investigator.

That led to an investigation which concluded Kruger brought “discredit and disgrace” upon Portland police and the city. But he kept his job after a brief unpaid suspension for illegally posting the plaques on public property, and was later promoted to captain and head of the vice squad.

Kruger admitted wearing Nazi uniforms but said it was because of his interest in history. He said the plaques were to honour the Germans’ military prowess not their crimes against humanity.

“Many military historians have erected similar remembrances all over the world,” he claimed at the time.

He remained a captain in the police department until his recent retirement.

People pressing for police reform saw Kruger’s continued employment and promotion as a reflection of the values of a police department with a reputation for brutality. The Obama justice department finally intervened over the level of police shootings in Portland, prompted by the case of Aaron Campbell in 2010.

The young black man’s brother had died earlier in the day. Campbell’s family feared he might be suicidal and called the police. The officers who went to check on him quickly established that he was not a threat to himself or anyone else, and even exchanged a lighthearted text message that put everyone at ease. But a second police unit arrived as Campbell emerged from a building. They shot him with a bean bag.

When he instinctively reached for where he had been hit, officers said he was going for a gun and shot him dead. Campbell was unarmed.

The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson called Campbell’s killing “an execution”. A Portland grand jury said the officer who shot him acted within the law but that did not mean he was innocent.

“This was very difficult for us as a grand jury, as our sympathies lie with the Campbell family and the mood of the community. As a group, we are outraged at what happened,” the grand jury said in a letter to the district attorney. The city paid Campbell’s family $1.2m.

The Obama administration demanded reforms and placed the police department under federal court oversight in 2014. But in a move some critics suspected was to save Portland’s Democratic leadership from embarrassment, the justice department said Campbell had been shot because the police had a pattern of using excessive force against people with mental health problems, not because he was black. Campbell’s family disagreed.

‘An often tense relationship’

A justice department report found “a pattern of dangerous uses of force against persons who posed little or no threat” but who had mental illness. These include the case of a 42-year-old local musician with schizophrenia, James Chasse, who was shot multiple times with a taser and beaten so badly by the police he had a punctured lung, 16 fractured ribs and 26 broken bones in all. He died in custody.

In another case, Portland police repeatedly tasered a naked and unarmed man who was acting oddly because he was suffering a diabetic emergency.

Although the justice department sidestepped a full investigation of racism by the Portland police, it did note “the often tense relationship” between the force and the African American community. It said there was a widespread perception among black people of racial profiling and that the police “protect the white folk and police the black folk”.

Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch, which monitors police killings, said eight years of justice department oversight has not fundamentally changed how the Portland police act because, while the agreement between the city and the federal government requires new policies and training, it does not measure whether they are successful.

“If the Portland police continue to use violence against the general public, they’re still in compliance with that agreement. Have some changes have been made? Yes. But does it did it get at the root problems and the issues that people were worried about the first place? Not at all,” he said.

Handelman said that if anything, the situation has worsened.

“We had not actually had a shooting death of an African American Portlander by the police between early 2010 and February of 2017, which is rather remarkable. A seven-year stretch with no black man being killed. Since then, there have been at least five shootings of African Americans, and four of them died,” he said.

“For me, part of that is the national situation that we’re in. That the election of President Trump kind of ripped the Band-Aid off of the racism that was bubbling under the surface of the country for a very long time.”

The police response to protests in Portland after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May reinforced the perception that the force was resistant to change and raised questions about accountability.

In recent days, Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, has made a show on national television of denouncing Trump’s deployment of federal forces, accusing the president of conducting “urban warfare” in his city. But when Wheeler turned out to speak at a protest on Wednesday, he faced hostility from demonstrators who accused him of hypocrisy.

The mayor is also the city’s police commissioner. In May, Wheeler declared a state of emergency amid escalating protests over Floyd’s death which saw storefronts smashed and some looted. Critics accused the police of overreacting by being too quick to fire teargas to break up demonstrations until a federal judge barred its use except where the police declare a riot.

When Wheeler arrived at Wednesday’s demonstration, a protester emptied a bag of spent teargas canisters at his feet as others peppered him with questions and accusations about his oversight of the police. Later, the mayor faced a barrage of derision after he denounced federal agents for an unprovoked firing of teargas that left him gasping for breath.

Teressa Raiford, the African American founder of Don’t Shoot Portland, accused the mayor of using the presence of the federal agents as cover for his own failure to address police reform.

“Our leaders now say: ‘Donald Trump’s attacking you and we care about you’. But the people on the front line realise we were being attacked by them before Donald Trump started attacking us,” he said. “They’re trying to claim that they stand as allies with the protesters. It is political. What you’re seeing with the mayor being sprayed with teargas, that is political propaganda.”

Raiford said Portland’s political leadership did not care to substantially change the system of policing because much of the city was comfortable with policies that, as the justice department noted, protect whites and police blacks.

‘All these liberal cities have extreme inequality’

The failure of so many American cities run by Democrats to address reform of racially biased policing hangs over Democratic political leaderships that claim to support the Black Lives Matters campaign.

Hyung Nam, who has been closely observing police reform as a member of a city committee that advises on how the police budget is spent, said the lack of political will reflects economic realities.

“All these liberal cities have extreme inequality, economic inequality, and there’s a major racial dimension to that. As long as we have that kind of economic inequality we’re going to see some form of policing like this,” he said.

Nam said there is a pattern of more prosperous whites gentrifying black Portland neighbourhoods and then demanding increased policing which often makes the remaining African American residents feel insecure.

“Just the other day when I was testifying at the city council, there were people from the Irvington neighbourhood complaining to the council about homeless people that were engaged in illicit activities and basically calling for the cops to do something, which means criminalise them and sweep them somewhere.

“This is what’s happening in all these Democratic liberal cities. Inequality has grown enormously and the way we’re dealing with that is through tougher policing.”

However, Nam thinks that the scale of popular protest over Floyd’s death may finally have pushed the administration to get serious about reform including “significant” cuts to the police budget for its paramilitary teams and enforcing proper civilian oversight.

For now though, attention in and on Portland remains focused on the nightly theatre outside the federal courthouse – and where Trump will target next.

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

I dunno zn. I dunno. I am not sure why you are so confident the Portland thing will tilt against Mr. Law And Order.

w
v

I’m saying it DID. It DID tilt against him.

But memory is short and so maybe that dissipates.

I think the NAACP might disagree with you. Here is a quote from the Guardian”

“The NAACP in Portland warned that the Black Lives Matter movement was being co-opted by “privileged white people” pursuing other agendas, such as anti-capitalism. It said they were playing into Trumps hands by provoking nightly confrontations with the federal forces”.

zn wrote:

(W, we have to include links when we post articles. I put one in this time via edit.)

On the article. First off this idea that there are “riots” at crisis level in the USA is completely counterfactual nonsense.

There have been BLM protests in more than 700 towns and cities, many of them multiple times, with basically a few thousand protests. Pollsters have said there were anywhere from 15 M to 26 M people who participated. The vast majority of those were peaceful. And I mean the really BIG “vast.”

Calling all protests “riots” is bs. And acting like there’s this big national problem on “the streets” is hyperbolic nonsense.

Secondly the situation in Portland was this–a couple of square blocks downtown saw clashes between a few hundred dedicated militants and police. The damage? Graffiti. All through the rest of Portland peaceful protests continued. When the Feds came in, it escalated the situation, which led to more people, including groups like the Portland Moms, going there to protest the presence of the Feds.

Polls show the Feds being in Portland worked against Trump so as of today he is withdrawing them.

The point is this is what the public is seeing. I fully understand that it isn’t what the reality is. Nevertheless it fits exactly what Trump wants the public to see and think. With the Feds leaving it also fits his scheme: “see this is how to gain control” of a bunch of leftist thugs”. No one can argue what is happening in Portland helps Biden.

Governor Kate Brown@OregonGovBrown
After my discussions with VP Pence and others, the federal government has agreed to withdraw federal officers from Portland. They have acted as an occupying force & brought violence. Starting tomorrow, all Customs and Border Protection & ICE officers will leave downtown Portland.

Our local Oregon State Police officers will be downtown to protect Oregonians’ right to free speech and keep the peace. Let’s center the Black Lives Matter movement’s demands for racial justice and police accountability. It’s time for bold action to reform police practices.

Federal Agents Push Into Portland Streets, Stretching Limits of Their Authority

link https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/us/portland-federal-legal-jurisdiction-courts.html

PORTLAND, Ore. — After flooding the streets around the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, with tear gas during Friday’s early morning hours, dozens of federal officers in camouflage and tactical gear stood in formation around the front of the building.

Then, as one protester blared a soundtrack of “The Imperial March,” the officers started advancing. Through the acrid haze, they continued to fire flash grenades and welt-inducing, marble-size balls filled with caustic chemicals. They moved down Main Street and continued up the hill, where one of the agents announced over a loudspeaker, “This is an unlawful assembly.”

By the time the security forces halted their advance, the federal courthouse they had been sent to protect was out of sight — two blocks behind them.

The aggressive incursion of federal officers into Portland has been stretching the legal limits of federal law enforcement as agents with batons and riot gear range deep into the streets of a city whose leadership has made it clear they are not welcome.

“I think it’s absolutely improper,” Oregon’s attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, said in an interview Friday. “It’s absolutely beyond their authority.”

The state lost its bid Friday for a restraining order against four federal agencies on the grounds that the state attorney general lacked standing, but several other challenges are still making their way through the courts.

Federal officers who arrived this month to help control protests over racial injustice and police violence have made dozens of arrests for federal crimes, including assaults on federal officers and failing to comply with law enforcement commands. More than 60 protesters have been arrested, and 46 now face federal criminal charges, said Craig Gabriel, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon, in a Saturday news conference.

One protester standing on a city street outside the federal courthouse was shot in the head with a crowd-control munition, leaving a bloody scene and a serious facial injury that required surgery. In another incident, an officer was seen repeatedly using a baton to whack a Navy veteran who said he had come to speak to the agents. Videos taken by members of the public captured camouflaged personnel pulling protesters into unmarked vans.

The inspectors general of the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security have opened investigations into the tactics.

During 57 consecutive nights of protests, demonstrators have squared off first with Portland police and then with federal agents in what at times have been pitched battles, with protesters throwing water bottles or fireworks and agents responding with frequent volleys of tear gas. The arrival of federal agents caused the protests to swell and focused the ire of protesters onto the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse, across from a park shaded by mature trees.

What began as a movement for racial justice became a broader campaign to dislodge the federal forces from the city.

The federal agents from four agencies arrived after President Donald Trump signed an executive order June 26 ordering the protection of federal monuments and buildings.

Their presence quickly became a political rallying point.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., compared the agents to an “occupying army.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called them “storm troopers.”

Trump criticized protests around the country in cities “all run by liberal Democrats” and defended the move to send in federal agents, warning that with the continuing turbulence in the streets, “they were going to lose Portland.”

Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, described protesters squaring off with federal agents outside the federal courthouse in Portland as “anarchists and criminals.”

“We will continue to take the appropriate action to protect our facilities and our law enforcement officers,” Wolf said at a news briefing this past week. “If we left tomorrow they would burn that building down.”

There is broad agreement among legal scholars that the federal government has the right to protect its buildings. But how far that authority extends into a city — and which tactics may be employed — is less clear.

Robert Tsai, a professor at the Washington College of Law at American University, said the nation’s founders explicitly left local policing within the jurisdiction of local authorities.

He questioned whether federal agents had the right to extend their operations blocks away from the buildings they are protecting.

“If the federal troops are starting to wander the streets, they appear to be crossing the line into general policing, which is outside their powers,” Tsai said.

Homeland Security officials said they are operating under a federal statute that permits federal agents to venture outside the boundaries of the courthouse to “conduct investigations” into crimes against federal property or officers.

But patrolling the streets and detaining or tear-gassing protesters go beyond that legal authority, said David Lapan, the former spokesman for the agency when it was led by John Kelly, Trump’s first secretary of homeland security.

“That’s not an investigation,” Lapan said. “That’s just a show of force.”

John Malcolm, vice president for the Institute for Constitutional Government at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a former deputy assistant attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, said federal agents have clear legal authority to pursue protesters who have damaged federal property.

“Once they have committed a crime, the federal authorities have probable cause to go arrest them,” Malcolm said. “I don’t care how many blocks away they are from that property.”

While federal authorities are not intended to be riot police, he said, the federal government has the authority to send in troops in extreme situations in which there is a breakdown of authority and local officials are unable to effectively enforce local laws.

“But we are not there yet, and I pray that we don’t get there,” he said.

Outraged by the federal presence, government leaders in Portland have been looking for ways to push back against the deployment. The Portland Police Bureau ousted federal representatives from the city’s command post. Mayor Ted Wheeler, who himself was hit with tear gas fired by federal agents Wednesday night, called the federal deployment an abuse of authority.

“My colleagues and I are looking at every possible legal option we have to get the feds out of here,” Wheeler said in an interview.

In the state’s legal challenge, Rosenblum argued that the operations of federal authorities, using unmarked vehicles to detain protesters, resembled abductions. The lawsuit called on the court to order the agents to stop arresting individuals without probable cause and to clearly identify themselves and their agency before detaining or arresting “any person off the streets in Oregon.”

But in his ruling Friday, Judge Michael Mosman of the U.S. District Court in Portland said the state attorney general’s office did not have standing to bring the case because it had not shown that the issue was “an interest that is specific to the state itself.”

In an interview, Rosenblum said that having federal agents battling protesters in Portland was un-American because the country does not have a tradition of a national police force.

“The police should be ideally as local as possible,” she said. “It’s about trust, relationships and community building.”

She warned that all Americans need to be concerned about what is happening in Portland.

“It could be happening in your city next,” she said.

The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, Joseph Cuffari, told lawmakers in a letter that he planned to examine the authority the agency used to deploy agents to Portland.

Some of the protesters who originally focused their anger on the case of George Floyd, whose death in police custody in Minneapolis in May sparked demonstrations around the country, now have turned much of their attention to the presence of federal officers on Portland’s streets.

On Friday night, a crowd gathered outside a fence erected around the federal courthouse; some in the crowd lit fires, lobbed fireworks over the fence and attempted to pull it down with power tools. Federal agents entered the street to disperse the crowd at 2:30 a.m.

Gabriel, the assistant U.S. attorney, said that the federal officers were forced into the streets to protect the fence. “The officers would love nothing more than to stay in the courthouse all night long,” he said. “If the protesters don’t seek to damage or destroy the fence, then the officers have no need to go outside the fence or leave federal property.”

Most of the demonstrations during the evening, though, were peaceful. A group of military veterans lined up along the fence, joining a “Wall of Moms,” hundreds of mothers who have linked arms to challenge the presence of the federal agents, who had been there on previous nights. There was also a “Wall of Dads” carrying leaf blowers to combat the tear gas.

Jennifer Kristiansen, a family law attorney, was one of many women who came out to the protests in recent days to join the “Wall of Moms.” In the early morning hours Tuesday, she said, as agents were clearing protesters from in front of the courthouse, one of them reported to another that Kristiansen had struck him.

Kristiansen said that she had done no such thing and that one of the officers ended up assaulting her, groping her chest and backside during the arrest.

“This is not creeping authoritarianism,” Kristiansen said. “The authoritarianism is here.”

Another huge crowd tonight in Portland, including a new "wall" on the front lines: a Wall of Vets.

Here's a look at the line of military veterans getting set up here in front of the federal courthouse. Behind them, the Wall of Moms and the Wall of Dads are arriving. pic.twitter.com/gGnXHjI3k2

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) July 25, 2020

Zooey wrote:

Here…

Print this out, soak it in vinegar, and bake it in the oven for an hour.

================

Maybe you should just move to Portland.

w
v

from Facebook

“Professor Maureen Healy is the chair of the history department at Lewis and Clark College. She teaches Modern European History, with a specialization in the history of Germany and Eastern Europe (and the rise of fascism). She was shot in the head by federal agents on Monday night and is recovering from the injury and the concussion, but shared a statement of her experience, and gave permission to share this.
—

Statement by Maureen Healy, July 22, 2020

Since June, I have been attending peaceful protests in Portland neighborhoods in support of Black Lives Matter. I have gone with family and friends.

I am a 52-year-old mother. I am a history professor.

I went downtown yesterday to express my opinion as a citizen of the United States, and as a resident of Portland. Of Oregon. This is my home. I was protesting peacefully. So why did federal troops shoot me in the head Monday night?

I was in a large crowd of ordinary folks. Adults, teens, students. Moms and dads. It looked to me like a cross-section of the City. Black Lives Matter voices led the crowd on a peaceful march from the Justice Center past the murals at the Apple store. The marchers were singing songs. We were chanting. We were saying names of Black people that have been killed by police. We observed a moment of silence in front of the George Floyd mural.

I wanted to, and will continue to, exercise my First Amendment right to speak. Federal troops have been sent to my city to extinguish these peaceful protests. I was not damaging federal property. I was in a crowd with at least a thousand other ordinary people. I was standing in a public space.

In addition to being a Portland resident, I am also a historian. My field is Modern European History, with specialization in the history of Germany and Eastern Europe. I teach my students about the rise of fascism in Europe.

By professional training and long years of teaching, I am knowledgeable about the historical slide by which seemingly vibrant democracies succumbed to authoritarian rule. Militarized federal troops are shooting indiscriminately into crowds of ordinary people in our country. We are on that slide.

It dawned on me when I was in the ER, and had a chance to catch my breath (post tear gas): my government did this to me. My own government. I was not shot by a random person in the street. A federal law enforcement officer pulled a trigger that sent an impact munition into my head.

After being hit I was assisted greatly by several volunteer medics. At least one of them was with Rosehip Medic Collective. To take shelter from the teargas I was hustled into a nearby van. Inside they bandaged my head and drove me several blocks away. From there my family took me to the ER. I am grateful for the assistance, skill, and incredibly kind care of these volunteer medics.

We must take this back to Black Lives Matter. Police brutality against Black people is the real subject of these peaceful protests that have been happening in my city and across the country. What happened to me is nothing. It is nothing compared to what happens to Black citizens at the hands of law enforcement, mostly local police, every day. And that is why we have been marching. That is why I will continue to march.”