Dire Straits – Sultans of Swing
“ Here’s the deal, it looks like a war zone because at 1:30 in the morning, 2,000 people are throwing cases, bottles, and Molotov cocktails, there’s no reason people need to be at a courthouse past midnight”. – Sara Fagin, Republican Campaign Consultant
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. – US Constitution, First Amendment
Portland
What’s happening in Portland, Oregon is confusing. Unmarked agents of the Federal Government are defending the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse from protestors night after night. What started as Black Lives Matter protests against police violence and the killing of George Floyd, has now evolved into – something else.
Thousands are coming to downtown Portland each night. They are there to demand that the anonymous Federal defenders be removed from their town. And hundreds seem to be there to engage in some form of combat with those defenders: firing bottle rockets, flashing lasers, and throwing frozen water bottles and other projectiles at them.
The Feds respond in kind, with tear gas and nightsticks, wading out beyond the confines to the Courthouse to chase rioters down. The park across the street from the Courthouse has become a focal point. Last night the Feds searched the makeshift encampments there, finding gas masks, sticks, chemical sprayers and, ominously, an empty gas can (USA Today).
Meanwhile, the Portland Police has turned a blind eye to the protest zone. They avoid getting caught between two forces they can’t control, the protestors/rioters, and the Federal forces.
Too Many Actors
Portland Police and Federal agents, protestors for Black Lives Matter, or against Federal intervention (they would say invasion), and rioters who are coming “for the fun”: it’s hard to defuse the situation. Black Lives Matter organizers are concerned that their goals are now lost in the melee, diluting the strong statement they have made across America. Local police enforcement is lost in a battle between protestors and the Feds. Even the Mayor of Portland was on the frontline; tear gassed by the Federal forces.
And it doesn’t help that the Federal forces are dressed in military style camouflage. It seems like a “small” thing, but wearing “Operational Camouflage” makes them look a lot more like a military force (some would say an occupation force), rather than a policing organization. And, other than vague “Police” labels, it is unclear who the helmeted and armed Federal forces really are. Are they Border Patrol, or Bureau of Prisons, or ICE, or FBI, or U.S. Marshals or even the TSA? Whose is responsible for the actions of these unidentified “soldiers”? It all lends to the conspiracy theories. Are they somehow mercenaries hired from Erik Prince to do the bidding of Donald Trump and Bill Barr?
The Mayor of Portland, the Attorney General, the Governor, the Congressmen and Senators from the state, have all asked the Federal Government to withdraw the forces from Portland. Whatever the original intent of the protestors or the protectors, it is now all about the Federal government forcing themselves into Oregon. It seems that both sides are out of control.
Politics
It also crosses political lines. Sure Republicans are lining up behind the Trump campaign slogan of “LAW AND ORDER”. But deep down they are concerned about a Federal expansion into the local law enforcement. It doesn’t help that the President is promising to surge 75,000 Federal agents into “DEMOCRAT CITIES” throughout the nation, especially since they are only 100,000 total Federal “policing” agents. Are they all going to Albuquerque and Chicago and Kansas City? Who is going to be left on the border, or busting drug dealers?
The ideal resolution is for the “Federal” forces to withdraw, replaced by Oregon’s forces. Include the Oregon National Guard if necessary. But that would be too “simple”.
President Trump has found a pressure point he can use to change the national subject from the COVID-19 epidemic. His “righteous indignation” about the “failure” of the DEMOCRAT MAYORS is fired every night by the battles outside of the Hatfield building. Don’t be surprised to see the clashes in Trump 2020 ads soon in a TV or computer near you!
And for those wishing to battle the failures of the Trumpian Federal Government, from the President, to Bill Barr to ICE to child separation: they have found a place to “fight”. Portland is the magnet. As former New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said, “…after the protests are made earlier in the evening, night after night, something happens”. The peaceful demonstrators are overawed by those looking “for the fight”, and the riots begin. But a magnet is attracted to something, and the something is the camouflaged Feds around the Hatfield building.
Thumb in the Dam
The Constitution puts no time limit on protests. The “time bell” doesn’t go off at midnight, when the “right to peaceably assemble” is somehow revoked. But there is a different kind of alarm that should be sounding. It is a clarion call of politics overwhelming common sense, of the ten-second video becoming more important than the hard work required to reduce the tensions.
The answer is not to allow the burning of the Mark Hatfield Courthouse. But the answer is also not to keep Federal forces in place to draw the violence. The appropriate response is for the Federal government and the State government to work to resolve the issue. That could bring some peace to the area around the Courthouse. And, that’s something that Mark Hatfield himself would appreciate. But he practiced politics in a different time. In our polarized nation today, it’s likely that all sides will remain intransigent.
But don’t think the protestors or the rioters will disappear. There a huge reservoir of dissatisfaction built up, and the dam is breached. Portland is the “crack” where that disapproval can be physically voiced and acted upon, night after night. It will stay that way until someone puts a thumb in the dam. Until that happens, there will be no “time bell” to ring.
