Portland —- the City of Roses, the River City, the place where young people go to retire — has a long history of racism, and a more recent history of progressive liberalism. Portlanders, for some reason, love to protest and demonstrate and march in the streets. Right-wingers, white supremacists, and other creepy types also love Portland as a place where they can demonstrate and get into street brawls. We also have antifa, anti-fascists, who show up to do battle with alt-right and white supremacists. It’s a great mix.
And so Portland has been at the top of the news for a few months since the killing of George Floyd, as daily, and nightly, demonstrations have gone so long it seems that we are chasing some Guinness Book record. But I need to be clear here; the daily rallies for Black Lives Matter and the end of systemic racism have been well organized and peaceful. Portland police generally don’t even show up at the daily, peaceful gatherings, and offer any assistance needed by the organizers.
The nightly demonstrations are a different story. These are gatherings of up to a few hundred people, some of whom come dressed in body armor and helmets, carrying large plywood shields, and armed with a variety of weapons and things to throw at the cops, including frozen bottles of water, cans of soup, rocks and chunks of concrete, steel ball bearings shot by wrist-rocket slingshots, laser pointers (t shine into the eyes of cops) commercial grade fireworks, and even Molotov cocktails. (Police have also siezed knives, loaded guns, and other weapons.) They have attacked police buildings, including the police union building, trying to set them on fire, break windows and doors, and various other criminal activities. The cops ask them to be peaceful, then, upon being bombarded with projectiles, declare an unlawful assembly and order them to disperse, sometimes declare the situation a riot (a legal term), often respond with crowd control ordinance or physical force, and arrest people (sometimes dozens every night), until folks get tired and go home, typically at around 1 or 2 in the morning.
Many Portland liberals I know are down on the police, claiming that the cops are violent and the protestors are not. To be fair, I have only attended one daytime rally (pandemic caution for this elder) and have stayed away from the nighttime brawls. There have certainly been instances of police using excessive or inappropriate force. What I have not heard from my liberal friends is what the police should do in these situations, instead of what they are doing.
Donald Trump, however, the very stable genius, knows what to do. If we would only let him send in federal troops, he would end the violence quickly. Violence to fix violence? Well, some feds did come to Portland, under the guise of Department of Homeland Security, to protect the federal building that houses federal courtrooms and offices. These guys (we assume they were all guys) were violent and seemingly out of control, and they operated by their own rules. People were hurt, some very badly. People were grabbed and whisked away in unmarked rented vans to be interrogated. These goons (yes, a good term for them) made a bad situation worse. They finally pulled back after the Oregon Governor talked to the Vice-President and worked out a deal using Oregon State Police to protect the federal property.
If you don’t live in one of Trump’s “anarchist jurisdictions” you might have a false sense about Portland. We are mostly nice people in a beautiful city with great restaurants, live theater, sports teams, museums, great outdoors activities, and many interesting neighborhoods. We are not a very diverse city, which is an issue. We have a commission form of government, something that has its own set of issues. But Portland is a great place to live and visit, anarchy and all.
I come full circle to my opening statement: anarchy is better than no government at all. If Portland is anarchy, then Trump’s administration is no government at all. I’ll take anarchy.
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