The Anarchic State of Portland

A tiny contingent of anti-ICE protesters is camped out in front of Portland City Hall. Less than a dozen, either the hardcore or flaky fringe of the local protest community (if these are distinguishable) are pulling this unglamorous duty.

Abolish ICE PDX calls the protest a continuation of the blockade of Portland's ICE office, recently disbanded. After Saturday's near-riot in reaction to a right-wing demonstration and the ensuing campaign accusing Portland cops of excessive force applied with bias against lefty counter demonstrators, the goals of this siege are expanded to: abolish ICE, condemn the police and fire Ted Wheeler, our progressive mayor.

Protesters have a couple of hammocks strung up and are sleeping on the sidewalk--mingled among them the few homeless who always sleep on the sidewalk outside of City Hall. As a siege it isn't much, but their anger exceeds their size. Here they are trying to block the doors (two arrests were made):



I don't know how much harassment they give people during the business day, but at night they sometimes clash with random passersby, as one protester has since been arrested for striking a man with a pole after he complained about the blocked sidewalk.

One night this week I watched as a fat, middle-aged man with a "film the cops" t-shirt harassed a pizza delivery driver with his camera. A woman shrieked at him from the street. A few protesters lurked nearby as if to storm the locked building if someone should come to the door. The hapless fellow dodged a giant puddle of puke in his escape--he was in the wrong place.

Last Saturday's action has prompted the most recent anti-police narrative here. A protester has claimed some sort of projectile shot by police lodged in his bicycle helmet, but he apparently hasn't come forward.

A friend writes:

Was at court all day today, spent the time listening to the cops gossip. The antifa helmet with the flash bang lodged in it is total bullshit. It’s just the shell that’s in there, not the projectile. The guy won’t come forward to allow the helmet to be examined. They all know who he is, his name is “Lee”. Cops were somewhat pleased with Chief Outlaw seeming to have their back after Saturday, they’re used to getting no support whatsoever from any chief, she ain’t great but ain’t the worst.

Chief Outlaw's press conference was something of a pleasant surprise. She's at least a good spokesman and ably defended her cops--of course, this being Portland, she promised an investigation--by pointing out the hostility of the counter-demonstrators.

Indeed, my friend above appended this to his email:

Something funny one of the cops said was, during one of the more tense moments on Saturday, he heard someone tell him “look behind you!”, and he did. Standing behind him was Chief Outlaw, wearing an angry face, looking ready to clobber the next antifa that came her way, and she made eye contact with this cop, and did the angry black lady triangle finger snap, before she said: “Oh! It’s on!”. All the cops in the hallway busted up laughing.

Maybe she's an outlaw, of a sort, after all.

Another friend, recently alienated from the left by the anti-white indoctrination he experienced in college, was on the ground when Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson made a foray into the counter-demonstration. He was, of course, assaulted by antifa once the cops pulled Gibson out of there.



This is Pozland.