Don’t Believe Network News About Portland

One of my daughters lived in Portland, OR for many years.

She keeps in touch with many of her friends in the area, a good number of whom have been out in the streets protesting. Some of them have been arrested. All of them tell the same story.

You can read much of this for yourself on Facebook. Just check out the hashtags #WallOfMoms, #WallOfVets, #WallOfDads.

The story goes like this:

Mixed groups of demonstrators have been in the streets regularly ever since George Floyd’s murder and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement across the country.

The demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful. When unknown agitators destroyed property, group leaders told them to stop and to go away. They were damaging the cause.

Then Federal troops appeared on the scene and began arresting people for no apparent reason, putting them into unmarked vehicles, and locking them up without charges. Some have been kept jailed in undisclosed locations for several days, while family and friends wondered where they were.

These unconstitutional actions by the Feds energized more citizens to march in the streets. Yes, a small group of agitators ramped up their property destruction. But both black and white organizers regularly tried to stop their activities, and were typically unsuccessful.

It is not surprising that this small minority of agitators garner most of the headlines and nearly all of the time on the TV networks, making it look as if Portland is in chaos. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Feds have escalated the confrontations unnecessarily, with their rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, unnecessary aggression and violence against protesters.

It is totally unnecessary.

This is when the Wall of Moms was created, intentionally putting themselves between the demonstrators and the Feds. At this point, a

portion of the protests became focused around the Federal courthouse, because that was were the Federal agents were concentrated.

Now the focus of the demonstrations became bifurcated.

The movement’s leaders worked to maintain their focus on Black Lives Matter and police brutality. You don’t have to watch many Facebook videos and pictures to see and hear large crowds chanting “Black Lives Matter.”

But, with the unsolicited intervention of Federal agents, another section of the movement gave their attention to demonstrating against the “police state” activities of Trump’s anti-demonstration forces. The increase in violence is due entirely to the brutal behavior of these Federal marshals and Border Patrol agents.

Yes, a minority of people get out of hand. After the Feds erected a fence in front of the courthouse, a few people focused their anger there and began to build fires under the fence. Again, the organizers consistently tried to stop this from happening.

But, get real! Have you seen the fires? They hardly pose a real threat to anyone, especially to the courthouse!

As the Feds continued to attack both the BLM demonstrators and the Wall of

Moms, two additional sectors of society began spontaneously to appear: military veterans and dads.

Many veterans, understandably upset at what they were seeing, began to show up in support of the protesters and the moms. A number of videos show how brutally they too have been treated by the Federal agents, beaten with clubs for simply trying to speak to the officers.

Then dads appeared with leaf blowers to fend off the clouds of tear gas being fired by the Feds at unarmed civilians.

Naturally, conservative outlets such as Fox hate all anti-establishment movements, especially when they call for racial justice and condemn police violence.

By definition, conservatives support the establishment.

That is what conservatism means. It’s who they are. Their reporting is pure propaganda, tailored to anger their like-minded viewers, and to condemn the protesters.

Also, remember the old journalistic motto: “if it bleeds it leads.” All the news networks succumb to this principle. They would rather show us the few violent clashes than the masses protesting peacefully. It’s the way news/journalism has always worked in this country.

So, if you want to get angry, then get angry at our government. Get angry at “law enforcement” run amuck, attacking fellow citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Get angry at our president for intentionally making a difficult situation worse, as he manipulates civil unrest for his own personal, political advantage.

Trump is using the predictable FASCIST strategy of generating violence so that he can run on a “law and order” platform in November. You can count on it. This is how he hopes to win reelection.

Don’t fall for it.

We are already well underway to authoritarianism.