By David Futrelle
After many days of silence on the subject, national publications are finally covering the chilling events in Portland, where federal agents have descended on the city and started plucking protesters off the street seemingly at random.
Some links:
‘It was like being preyed upon’: Federal officers in unmarked vans detain Portland protesters (WaPo)
Feds Vowed to Quell Unrest in Portland. Local Leaders Are Telling Them to Leave. (NYT)
Trump Sent Cops to Portland and They’re ‘Kidnapping People Off The Streets’ (Vice)
Trump Unleashes His Secret Police in Portland (The Nation)
Federal agents arrest Portland protesters in unmarked cars (NPR)
Federal agents invade Portland, citing Trump’s executive order protecting statues (Mother Jones)
For more on what’s going on in Portland, with videos, see my post from yesterday.
Please feel free to add any more stories you come across in the comments.
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There’s a guy on Facebook who keeps claiming Portland is “being held hostage” and that business as usual is impossible there due to protests (rather than due to COVID-19). Says he can’t go to his doctor because of this. I’m guessing this is false, and if his doctor’s clinic is closed it’s due to the virus and not the protests, but how to prove this to him?
I’ve posted links to non-far-right news coverage but so far nothing gets through.
Not only are the unmarked vans & arrests scary, but also the firing of “less lethal” projectiles (yeah, less lethal than a bullet, but they could still kill people).
I don’t have a crystal ball, but I don’t think the U.S. is about to turn into an overt dictatorship. But I said “overt.” The idea of Trump targeting political opponents to swing the election his way seems all too likely.
On the opposite side, I’ve heard some things about cities taking steps to de-militarize the police (not sure if that’s the right term; I mean reducing their power to use lethal force). It’d be interesting to read some articles on that if anyone’s come across things like that recently (I wouldn’t necessarily know where to search).
Those “less lethal” bullets are supposed to be fired at the ground, not in people’s faces.
O/T: Graham Linehan is now trying to make money by having a subscription blog service costing £200 per year to comment. At this point I doubt even the most dedicated TERFs will pay up.
@Crip Dyke
Good on you, and good luck.
Remember – pick a safe fallback position/meet up point first, and always keep half a mind on where you are in relation to it, so you don’t need to stop and think if you need to leg it.
Speaking of Poland, earlier this week it re-elected its right-wing, homophobic president for another term (story in NYT). Disappointing also because it was a pretty close race.
@Crip Dyke – Yes, good luck! I’m not in the same place at all but I hope it goes well.
I earlier wrote:
It’s getting worse. He’s now spreading COVID-19 misinformation and linking to climate change denial kookshites. Seems unfazed when I post mediabiasfactcheck links proving his “sources” untrustworthy. How do I get through to this guy?
Hey, where the fuck’s the comment I just made?
OK, why am I suddenly being treated like I’m some rank n00b who hasn’t long since proven that he’s a human and not a spambot or a troll? 🙁
Because you didn’t give the proper sacrifices to the Computer Gods yet. They are very fickle gods who never accept the same sacrifice twice in a row, and never tell you what sacrifices will work, and when.
Either that, or the computers are asserting dominance over humans and/or getting their jollies again. Take your choice.
/joke
@Surplus
You cannot get through to people who are in willful denial. It’s not a matter of presenting the truth in just the right way. They don’t want the truth.
@Surplus to Requirements,
Try asking him how to get through to him.
Not being flippant. Ask him what sources he would trust, what evidence he would consider reliable, and what would make him consider changing his mind.
Chances are very good that you won’t get through to him and he will never change his mind. But by asking him questions like this, it moves the ball to his court; no longer can he parrot things he’s been told, now he has to look inward and consider his thoughts and opinions in a critical light (assuming, of course, he plays along).
This tactic is difficult in online arguments because with a time delay in responses, people tend to want to make each post a complete argument, intended to immediately change someone’s mind, rather than following a back-and-forth question-answer format.
But you’re not going to convince someone in a single post. You’re just looking to plant the seeds of a thought that, over time, leads to more critical investigation.
This guy was normal like a week ago. Then suddenly started posting links to right wing propaganda. One of them was a Candace Owens video. Other “black people against the riots” type stuff, and then general anti-Portland-protest stuff, and now COVID “the death rate isn’t that high waaah why do I have to wear a mask” type stuff.
I figured he was just recently falling for this stuff, perhaps after a chance encounter without the appropriate mental inoculations first, and thus a dupe, but it’s amazing how fast the situation has deteriorated.
Is it really possible for someone to just stumble down a right-wing rabbit hole one day and be permanently lost beyond hope of reason in only a week?
And if it is, how the hell does our species even survive?
@epitome of incomprehensibility
Because of the protests, Portland defunded part of the police, and is redirecting the money to other types of community building. There’s an overview at OPB.
https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-police-budget-15-million-defund-cannabis-council-vote/
@Surplus
He probably was down the rabbit hole before, he just wasn’t open about it. Now that all this shit is happening, he decided to be open about it. That seems more likely than him being radicalized in a week.
Anyway, he’s probably a lost cause. Probably there are better uses of time than arguing with him, so I’d recommend going and doing something else for a bit.
No, the chances are much better that the dude held these sorts of beliefs for quite a while and only decided to be vocal about it recently.
Which, I suppose, is a different kind of concerning, that it’s so easy for the conspiracy theorists to seem normal until it’s too late.
Okay, there’s a tiny post up at my place, but when I finally get some sleep I’ll write more. Was too wound up and too much in pain to sleep when I got back to my friend’s house at 2:20 in the morning, but I think I can finally maybe close my eyes.
@Naglfar:
He’s started spreading coronavirus misinformation. That could get somebody killed.
@Surplus : if there’s nothing you can do about it anyhow, it’s not your problem.
One of the hard and important thing to learn is that at some point, when you cannot prevent a trainwreck, the only thing to do is to go far away.
@Surplus
In that case, try to spread accurate information rather than trying to argue with him, you’ll save more lives that way.
@Eloo – Thanks for the link. Yeah, it’s heartening to know that some of the police defunding is going away from the weaponized sector and into community programs, even if it’s not that much on a large scale.
@Crip Dyke – Also thanks for the link – I like how the logistics/support people draw a parallel to the Ewoks. Hope you get some good rest, too!
There’s another short post up at Pervert Justice with a few more pictures.
Unfortunately for you, we showed up just a bit after the feds decided to retreat inside the federal courthouse. They had been out much later on other nights, but I’m told by multiple people that on other nights as well there had been times when they retreated after they thought the crowd had thinned.
Although they also return each night very, very late once the crowd is reduced to below 25 protestors (these are the tactics of bullies, of course, to return when they have overwhelming physical force and not before), I just couldn’t stay that late. My BFF and I left the protest at about 1:45 in the morning.
It’s also possible that the retreat inside the courthouse happened because there was a youth-led march in another part of the city. Portland police were over there fucking with the teenagers, so it may be that without their regular backup the feds were less willing to maintain a presence opposite the downtown protestors. We are, of course, not party to their decision making, so we can’t know exactly. All I know is that I was expecting to confront cops and be able to speak directly to them, but from when I arrived to when I left (not quite 4 hours later) there simply weren’t any cops around.
I’ll be returning, of course, and we’ll see what downtown is like on other nights.
Might have been for the best. Someone else tried the same thing. It didn’t end well:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/portland-protests-trump-veteran-christopher-david-federal-officers-oregon-a9627466.html
R**d Paul of all people has condemned the Fed’s actions in Portland
“No place for feds rounding up people at will”
@Surplus:
I am aware.
I am not deterred.