Black Lives Matter activists in Portland reflect on contrast between Capitol and local police response
Updated Jan 14, 2021;
Posted Jan 14, 2021
Over 100 people gathered at Portland s South Park Blocks around 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020, and marched throughout the downtown area. Mark Graves/Staff
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tepid response by Capitol police stood
in stark contrast to the force used on left-wing protesters
in Portland.
have deployed tear gas, shot rubber bullets and collectively
arrested more than 1,000 people who have protested around the city since the May 25 police killing of George Floyd. For much of July, federal forces tear gassed Portlanders gathered every night to protest police brutality outside a mostly empty downtown federal courthouse.
Portland Mayor Wheeler accosted again at Nob Hill cafe January 07 2021
In another video, someone calls out Mayor Ted Wheeler by his middle name: We re never going to forget you Tevis. Ever. I hope you enjoy your little wine.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was swatted in the shoulder Wednesday evening, Jan. 6, while out to dinner at a restaurant in the Nob Hill neighborhood, according to the mayor s office.
Wheeler was five minutes into a dinner at Cafe Nell with a friend when a small crowd began yelling obscenities at him and soon pushed their way into the outdoor tented area where he was seated, according to Jim Middaugh, the mayor s communications director, who was briefed by the mayor on the incident.
[In an effort to reflect on a very tumultuous year, the Mercury asked several Portlanders to look back on their 2020 and share how their lives have changed and what they ve taken away from their experiences. Mac Smiff is a political activist, and the editor of We Out Here Magazine
. Here is his 2020 story. eds]
To be fair, I don’t usually put much thought into rolling from one year to the next. A few standard resolutions and some celebratory inebriation is about all of the attention I care to give to the unavoidable annual reset of the Gregorian calendar. 2019 was a particularly precarious year though, complete with clear indications of societal decline. For once, against my better judgment, I stepped into 2020 thinking, “Things can’t get much worse!”
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The Leaders Who Emerged Never before was this city as open to new voices and direction as when the old systems had so publicly failed. Mac Smiff. (Wesley Lapointe) Updated December 28, 2020 The upheavals of this year also represented an opportunity. People who had rarely wielded significant power in Portland discovered longtime leaders and institutions had lost public trust. Never before was this city as open to new voices and direction as when the old systems had so publicly failed. In particular, the demand for Black leadership was rarely more acute, as a predominantly white city grappled with its racist past (and present). This quartet rose to the occasion.
Strange blend of antifa and government-denying sovereign movement come together in fast-changing saga.
In a year of the unusual for Portland, the saga of the Red House eviction blockade stands out.
The Kinney family s refusal to leave their former house on North Mississippi two years after it no longer belonged to them drew together belief systems from opposite ends of the political spectrum and sparked a standoff that made national news.
Perhaps the most unexpected part? The unusual melding of tactics and ideology appears to have won the day so far, at least.
On Sunday, city officials and representatives of the blockade reported a tentative agreement, allowing the reopening of streets and sidewalks around the house that had come to look more like a war zone.