I was just leaving the vet where I had to take Duff (below) for what I hope is a minor stomach probelm and I saw a police car with lights and siren speeding down the road. I thought it was headed towards a traffic accident but in retrospect I realize this wasn’t a police car from our jurisdiction. Then I looked as the local news websites as I do every morning and found out it was most likely going to Oregon City, five miles down the street.
Read article and watch video.
Last month the Proud Boys and Antifa protested in Oregon City but this did not end in violence:
Oregon was founded to be a whites only state. In the 1920s, Oregon had the largest Ku Klux Klan (KKK) membership per capita in the United States. (Wikipedia: Racism in Oregon)
Oregon was founded on the notion of creating a racist white utopia and on the removal, exploitation, or exclusion of all people of color. In 1844, 15 years before statehood, the Oregon Territory passed the region’s first Black exclusion law, criminalizing the very presence of Black people in the Pacific Northwest. (The legal punishment for defying the law and daring to settle here? Public whippings of up to 39 lashes every six months until they left.) More recently, it was only 35 years ago that a Portland police officer choked “Good Samaritan” Lloyd Stevenson to death after Stevenson, who was Black, thwarted a robbery. And there are countless other examples before and since. The rallying cry #BlackLivesMatter has been relevant for so long. And institutional racism demands to be met with real institutional change. from How Oregon’s Racist History Can Sharpen Our Sense of Justice Right Now.
More: How Portland's Racist History Informs Today's Protests.
Excerpt:
The arrival of federal agents in Portland three weeks ago to crack down on racial justice protests fueled tensions there, and helped push the city to the forefront of coverage of the nation's racial justice movement.
As one of the whitest big cities in the America, Portland's outsize role in the nationwide protests may strike some as surprising.
Oregon has a long history of entrenched racism, dating back to its statehood in 1859, when the state constitution barred Black people from entering or living there. Yet the recent protests in Portland are part of another long history of black and white Oregonians combating that lingering racism, says Lisa Bates, an associate professor of urban studies at Portland State University.
Oregon City had it’s own chapter in the history of racism in Oregon. For example they voted to expel all Chinese residents well after the Civil War ended (Expulsion of Chinese from Oregon City, 1886).
Obviously not everyone in Oregon City is a white supremacist, for example in 2016 “students staged a walkout at Oregon City High School on Thursday to protest at least three racist social media posts and what some students and parents say is a lackluster response from the school administration.” from Oregon City High School students protest racism behind closed doors. Also, this is from 2019: Oregon City leaders unite against racism in schools.
Meanwhile, on the same street (99E) in the other direction, the city of Portland was in the news again today, this time in The Washington Post.
Excerpt:
All of the approximately 50 members of a Portland, Ore., police crowd-control unit resigned from their assignment on Wednesday, citing a lack of support from city officials during a year that has seen frequent clashes between protesters and law enforcement.
The mass resignation came one day after a grand jury charged Officer Corey Budworth with one count of assault in the fourth degree, a misdemeanor offense that carries up to a one-year jail sentence, for his actions during an Aug. 18 protest in downtown Portland.
Budworth, who was placed on administrative leave by the department on Tuesday, was filmed repeatedly striking a woman in the head with a baton and knocking her to the ground. There have been few criminal cases filed against police officers for excessive use of force at protests, and the Multnomah County indictment marks the first time a member of the Portland Police Department will face prosecution for such actions.
When I moved here from the Boston area about 10 years ago I thought I was moving to another bastion of progressivism. Right off I was shocked to see numerous roadside encampments where homeless people lived in tents and to read about their severe homeless problem (see Portland announces “a more assertive approach” to dispersing homeless encampments). I was also taken aback at the number of shootings. As you can see from the graph below 2020 was the worst year for homicides since 2010.
The shootings are attributed to gang violence (article):
There have been 37 homicides in Oregon’s largest city so far this year, more than six times the number recorded in the same period last year. If nothing changes, Portland will surpass its all-time record for homicides of 70 set in 1987, when the city was in the midst of a gang siege.
This doesn’t count the many more shootings where nobody was killed. Here’s the most recent one.
All this was bad enough but then we had violent protests which started getting national coverage after George Floyd was murdered and Black Lives Matters supporters began to protest and attracted violent far right counter protesters.
Before all this happened Portland residents touted their self-designation as a weird city, one which merited a Wikipedia entry for Keep Portland Weird. Now weird has taken on a new negative meaning as Portland and its suburb Oregon City, and the state capital Salem (see article) attract both left and far right demonstrators.
