We people of Oregon, especially Portland, know the Feds are intentionally aggravating the protestors. There are many, many Portland Press Corp members reporting daily from the protests, many of whom btw are targeted by the Fed unidentified and clearly untrained troops. It admittedly is hard to find real evidence because our national journalistic corps have been so diminished that CBS, NBC, ABC, AP, even PBS are running footage obtained from the Feds without sending their own reporters and getting the whole story.
The fact is, Portland has a history of peaceful protests, and strives to improve and be an exemplary democratically run city. Growth is not always easy, especially during the Trump admin with the every day attack on our environment, taking of public lands, reducing the parks, removing protections for our lands, water, and air. And, unbelievable poor handing of Covid19.
Oregonians are very proud of the progress we have made in making our lands and society better for our children than it was for our predecessors, and we have mostly been pleased with our states response to covid.
That being said, we have a dark past of Racism the has lurked in the shadows since before statehood. With the recent blatant deaths and attacks on Blacks at the hands of Police and the seizing and detention of illegal immigrants at our southern borders, plus mishandling of covid, tensions had boiled over here, just like many other parts of the country. We want to right that wrong.
We had made some real headway with collaboration of the Portland Police, city, state gov officials, and community members to improve an already wonderful city and state. Believe what garbage opinion hacks you will, but the truth we know here is that the protesting had remained predominantly peaceful after the initial blowup at Floyd's death until the Feds arrived 7/3 and began instigating extreme, violent and nearly deadly force against predominantly peaceful protestors. That show of force invited more anarchists, Poorboys, white nationalists, name your radical, to enter the fray. Mind you, this craziness is pretty much all happening within a 2-3 block area around the fed courthouse. In our city of over 650,000, metro area over 2.5 mil, it's a tiny tiny fraction of life here. A couple friends visited downtown recently and reported to me that you would not know any of this was happening unless you ventured into the courthouse area. Stores, restaurants, businesses are open.
Trump announcing we are overrun and losing the city is lie upon lies. Until the troops, we were just fine. BTW, many of the photos you are seeing are not from Portland. Some aren't even from the US.
http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007243995/portland-protests-federal-government.html
If loosing our constitutional rights, having our cities occupied by military, losing the right to vote is good with you, then continue on in your ignorance..... |
