Portland, Oregon … protests & policing

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.”

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.

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His acceptance speech caps a week of unity among sometimes fractious Democrats

Chad Wolf’s Desperate Attempt to Rewrite History
Recognizing that he’s in hot water, Chad Wolf, who was illegally appointed as head of DHS, wants us to forget about the administration’s lawlessness.

https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/chad-wolfs-desperate-attempt-to-rewrite-history/?initms_aff=nat&initms_chan=soc&utm_medium=soc&initms=200818_dhs_blog_fb&utm_source=fb&utm_campaign=dhs&utm_content=200818_freespeech_blog&ms_aff=nat&ms_chan=soc&ms=200818_dhs_blog_fb&fbclid=IwAR0KnP7nd-f5vIFB2B5TPxSp3MM4rqcvUCdA43YFy151crjKltqsixc0jH0

For weeks, federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security laid siege to the city of Portland to suppress the voices of those demanding justice for Black lives. The militarized agents used sharpshooters to maim people, swept protesters away in unmarked cars, and brutally attacked journalists, legal observers, and medics with sonic weapons and tear gas. They didn’t spare moms, dads, veterans, nurses, or even the city’s mayor.

The agency’s lawlessness was so profound that a federal court in Portland issued a restraining order against the agency after the ACLU filed suit. Congress held numerous hearings. The agency’s inspector general opened an investigation. Even former leaders of the Department of Homeland Security decried its abuses. Richard Clarke, who served on the National Security Council for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, called for dismantling DHS.

The administration’s effort to use its response to the protests in Portland as some twisted campaign prop miserably backfired, and the agents were forced to retreat. Now, recognizing that he’s in hot water, Chad Wolf, who was illegally appointed as head of DHS, is on a media tour in an attempt to rewrite history.

But the truth was caught on video for the world to see. No press interview, no op-ed, and no statement by any administration official can undo the fact that DHS agents beat a Navy veteran for simply asking them questions. They can’t hide the viral video of unmarked federal agents — later identified to be with DHS — hauling a protester off the streets of Portland into an unmarked vehicle. They can’t make us forget the sight of DHS agents firing tear gas at individuals simply exercising their right to protest, or beating and dragging off medics providing aid to an unconscious bystander. They also can’t erase the decades of abuse, civil rights violations, killings, and discriminatory surveillance of Black, Brown, and immigrant communities.

Wolf did get one fact right: “Courthouses uphold everyone’s rights.” The federal court in Portland did uphold the people’s rights when DHS brought its police state tactics there. It ordered the agency to stop arresting and attacking journalists and legal observers. But DHS didn’t comply with the court order — even after the court issued its restraining order, the agency continued to attack journalists and legal observers.

An agency claiming to defend the courthouse should, at a minimum, obey the orders coming out of it.

As we have for a century — much longer than DHS has been around — the ACLU will continue to unapologetically defend the Constitution from all those who undermine it. This includes the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is too powerful, too abusive, and too much of a threat to America’s democratic values. As ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero and former Bush administration official Richard Clarke put it, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.