On the 59th night of BLM protests on July 25th at the federal courthouse, I was one of the thousands of protestors who went there. It took me a while to struggle through my fears of getting infected with the virus and the limits to my mobility due to old age and hip arthritis. But like so many others, I could no longer stay home. I knew from my previous experiences at many protests over the years, against war, racism, ICE, inequality, and exploitation of workers, that the police were extremely violent, often attacking us with little or no provocations. What was new was that the police had been attacking the BLM protestors non-stop for 58 nights with tear gas, pepper spray, flash grenades, and non-lethal munitions. In contrast to their long history of using violence against non-violent protestors, the Portland police were seen protecting and fraternizing with white supremacist groups like the Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys at their rallies in this whitest of all US cities. When Mayor Ted Wheeler appeared at a protest last week, he was booed by many there, who called out Tear gas Ted. Later that night, Wheeler got a big dose of his own medicine.

The recent deployment of over 100 federal troops to Portland under Operation Diligent Valor by Trump added more fuel to the already fired-up protestors. Trump claims that he sent the feds there to protect federal facilities and officers against violent anarchists, but the reality is this: they have been deployed as an occupying army to crush the protests. Since their arrival in early July, unidentified federal thugs in camouflage have grabbed BLM protestors off the streets, putting them in unmarked vehicles, and detaining them for hours without charge. They have also escalated the violence at the nightly BLM protests at the (In)justice Center and the Federal Courthouse, working with the Portland police to attack non-violent protestors with tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, flash grenades, and non-lethal projectiles. The videos of their actions pepper-spraying people at point blank, firing an impact munition at 26 year-old Donovan La Bella , causing a skull fracture which required an emergency surgery, beating and pepper-spraying Chris David, a 53-year old Navy Vet who was just standing there, and attacking non-violent protestors night after night with copious amounts of tear gas and pepper spray have not only intimidated and terrorized people, but also enraged them.

So far, Homeland Security and the Trump administration have refused to withdraw the federal thugs despite lawsuits filed by Oregons attorney general, the ACLU, state legislators and activist groups. Many of us can no longer remain silent as these accounts of daily violence by the police and feds make clear that what is at stake is not only racial injustice and inequality, but also an attack on our 1st Amendment right to free speech and civil rights.

I was heartened to see so many recent newcomers like the Wall of Moms, the dads, veterans, teachers, union workers, nurses, doctors and healthcare workers at the protest, as well as the die-hards who had been at the frontlines for 58 nights. Their presence makes it much harder for Trump, his supporters and critics of the BLM protestors to separate us into good vs. bad protestors, or to demonize us all as violent anarchists. The government, police and law enforcement agencies have a long history of suppressing many political movements for social change in the past by using this strategy of criminalizing our right to dissent and by deploying police and law enforcement violence to crush the resistance.

Now is the time for us to meet this challenge to protect our rights and to resist being under the boot of a fascist police state. The stakes are high as what happens in Portland will soon be replicated in other cities as Trump threatens to send more federal troops to Chicago, Seattle, Albuquerque and other cities to squash the BLM movement and our demands for justice and equality for all.

As the crowds grew in numbers throughout the night, we sang and chanted words which have become mantras: No justice, no peace, Black Lives Matter, Hands up, dont shoot! Feds go home, Stay together, stay tight! Feds stay clear, the moms are here! Light projections of George Floyds last words flashed across the JC building. I cant breathe. Everything hurts. Please dont kill me. Mama, Im through. We read them in silence, while others were chanting Black Lives Matter over and over again. Other messages flashed by, The power of the people is greater than those in power, The Revolution is Live, Black Lives Matter.

There were thousands of us around midnight. We were there at this nightly ritual of resistance, waiting for the inevitable to happen. Several protestors were trying to pull down the metal fence, which had been reinforced recently. After much effort, some succeeded in breaching the fence at one location. We heard the disembodied voice announcing over the loudspeaker: This is the Portland Police declaring a riot and ordering us to disperse immediately or be subjected to chemical attacks and arrests. The protestors booed and yelled, Fuck the police! Feds out of Portland! in response. Then the attacks began. Loud explosions went off, and clouds of tear gas rapidly spread down the streets from SW 3rd and Salmon. People were screaming and running, ignoring shouts of Dont run!

Despite my old legs and hip arthritis, I managed to run through the waves of tear gas. For a few terrifying moments, my eyes were burning, and I was blinded and disoriented. Luckily, I was helped by the amazing medics, who treated my eyes with a saline solution. I saw them treat other protestors injured by pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets. The feds and cops came running towards us, and chased us further and further downtown. None of the protestors who were standing with me had done anything wrong, but the feds and cops kept firing tear gas at us. I saw a few people being arrested near the Apple store downtown. Dozens of police cars with sirens blasting, blue lights flashing, sped down the streets. It was scary how quickly Portland had been transformed from the City of Roses to Little Beirut. Then the police and feds marched off, got into their cars, and drove off. It was a surreal scenethe streets were suddenly empty and quiet again, as if nothing had happened. But we know better. Our resistance is growing, and we will be back!

All photos by Bette Lee.

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Tear Gas and Thugs at the BLM Protests in Portland - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

Why did Donald Trump pick Portland? It's a question worth asking. There are more than two dozen American cities bigger than Oregon's largest, and of the Rose City's 650,000 or so residents, fewer than 7% are Black. Nearly all the cities larger than Portlandhave more diverse populations, and most have hadsubstantial,ongoing Black Lives Matter protests since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in late May. Yet Trump settled onPortland not New York or L.A. or Atlanta,and notMinneapolis, where this all began as the staging ground for his plan to flood a city with federal police in hopes of escalating violence, all in hopes of generating scary images to frighten Fox News viewers with.

Portland wasn't targeted for public safety reasons, obviously. Trump doesn't care about people's safety, for one thing. For another, the presence of federal police officers is very pointedly to reduce public safety and escalate the violence Trump wants for his campaign ads. It's also a confusingchoice, considering that Portland is one of the whitest large cities in the nation a demographic reality visible on the ground among the protests making it an odd choice for a nakedly racist president who is making a big public stink of his loathing foranti-racism activists. Trump is clearly expanding his war on cities to other places, but Portland was clearly picked for the rollout of thisfascistic crackdown for a reason.

So, again: Why Portland?As with many other things Trump does, it appears he's following the lead of the various far-right, white supremacistand proto-fascist groups that have gainedpower in the years since his election. Groups like the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer and various others have descendedon the city regularly since Trump's election, generally for the purpose of starting street fights with leftists and creating a spectacle. By targeting Portland for an invasion of federal police geared up like members of an occupying army, Trump is modeling himself after the far-right fringe that has been harassing that city for years.

"Far-right and white nationalist groups often plan rallies and events in areas where a majority of residents are politically and socially liberal, and where communities have reliably produced counter-demonstrations at such events," Jared Holt, an investigative reporter for Right Wing Watch, told Salon. "In the mind of the extremist, they are engaged in a culture war and are choosing to bring the fight to enemy turf."

Far-right groups regularly descend on Portland during the summer months some years, the city has seen multiple rallies often under the banner of "free speech" or protesting againstantifa activists,but mostly in hopes ofattracting counter-protesters and launching street brawls.

As I reported back in 2017, when these groups first started heavily targeting Portland, members of these far-right groups willswap memes and encourage each other to beat the tar out of anyone they deem"antifa."Some of these memes can get violent and disturbing, with references to curb-stomping, stabbingand shooting opponents. Former Chilean dictator AugustoPinochet was held out as a hero, mainly for his reported habit of murderingleftist opponents by throwing them out of helicopters.

As Arun Gupta of the Intercept explained in an articlelast year, the far right saw Portland as the ideal city "to stage violent spectacles" they could then spread throughout social media"to glorify the violence as a recruiting tool and proof of their racial and masculine virility."

Often, these far-right activists would try to justify this behavior by citing "self-defense" against "antifa,"but as Holt explained, it's wise to have "a healthy sense of skepticism" about such claims, sincefar-right groups "plan their events in locations with the expectation there will be counter-demonstrators, and work to actively escalate tensions between opposing sides"

Trump is taking the model developed by the extreme right in recent years, and amplifying it dramatically by using taxpayer-funded resources, including the shadowyfederal police agencies either created or vastly expanded during the post-9/11 campaign against terrorism. But the basic idea is the same: Target Portland for a right-wing show of force, knowing that this will likely provokea strong response fromleftist activists, and use that response as an excuse for increasing the violent repression in a waythat can be packaged and repackaged as sadistic propaganda designed to lure back wavering Trump voters or hypothetical suburban moderates.

The most obvious reason why Portland is a target is, of course, its long history of leftist activism, which does indeed include a contingent whether self-defined as antifa or anarchist or something else that is entirely willing to engage in physical confrontationwith far-right groups whotrawl the streets looking for a fight.

Trump himself is following this same logic, knowing that while most leftists are responding to the federal police with peaceful resistance, some are willing to fight back. Granted, the street scene in Portland is probably nowhere near as violent as Trump would like at most,he's getting images of some people pulling down a fence, setting off fireworksand tagging some buildings but it's the same calculus that far-right groups are employing, which is that some protesters will getunruly and can be spun as "violent rioters" on Fox News.

There's an even deeper reason that Portland has been such a target for the far right and now for Trump, who as usual takes his political cues from the very worst people in America. Thisgoes right back to the aforementioned fact that Portland is one of the whitest cities in the country.

Portland may be known as a progressive city now, but like the entirestate of Oregon, ithas a long history of white supremacy. (Indeed, there are still a lot of openly white supremacist groups inrural easternOregon, who are sometimes visible amongthe far-right groups who regularly descend upon Portland.) In the 1920s, Oregon had the biggest Ku Klux Klan organization west of the Mississippi, which isn't surprising when you consider that the stateeffectively bannedBlack people from moving there until1926. Portland was virtually an all-white city until World War II, and remains more than 75% white today. (Indeed, the city's Black population appears to havedeclined since the 1990s, perhaps reflecting increased gentrification.) In any case, Portland's whiteness is an artifact of decades of discrimination.

Of course Portland's politics have shifted sharplyleftward in recent years. The far right's specific loathing for Portland, then, is to some extentrooted in a sense ofbetrayal at acity that has turned away from itslong history of reactionary and racist politics. The constant drumbeat of far-right rallies, which routinely turn into brawls, aren't just about taking the fight to enemy turf. It's about the far right symbolically trying to reclaim a city that they feel they've lost to the left.

This subtext is often not far from the surface. Far-right activistsroutinely describe Portland's progressives as if they were a stain or an occupying force, as if progressives are illegitimate members of the community who need to be expunged so the city can be restored to its true heritage.

"The West Coast has slowly been infected with communist ideologies throughout our entire culture," saidJoey Gibson of the far-right group Patriot Prayer while promoting a 2017rally, leaning hard into this"paradise lost" framing of the waycities like Portland have become progressive. (Gibson was arrested on a felony riot charge in 2019 after years of orchestrating events that descended into violence.)

Patriot Prayer evenbilled its rallies as opportunities to "cleanse the streets of Portland" in 2018. One of the members of their Facebook group complained about the city's"stench-covered and liberal-occupied streets."

Trump and his acting Homeland Security secretary, Chad Wolf, have embraced this rhetoric that paints progressives in Oregon as an illegitimate power that needs to be overthrown with whatever level of force is necessary.

Trump has repeatedly emphasized that the cities he's attacking, especially Portland, are "run by very liberal Democrats," as if it wereself-evident thattheir leadership is illegitimate and therefore Trump is entitled to send in federal police against their explicit wishes.

Wolf has defended the invasionin similar terms, claiming the administration was "forced" to invade because of "a lack of action from city officials."That's a morelegalistic framing of the same argument, that the elected leaders of Portland aren't legitimate and that the right is more entitled than "liberal" elected officialsto decide what the law enforcement response to protests should look like.

The fact thatTrump is taking his cues from the far-right fringes is, sadly, no surprise. After all, he has recently promoted a conspiracy theory about thecoronavirusapparently concocted by a far-right nut who believes reproductive health problems arecaused by women having sex with demons. The far right is where Trump'sheart is, which is why his impulse after the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, was to describe the white supremacists who rampaged there as "very fine people."

That's what happens when you elect aracist conspiracy theorist to the highest office in the land: Federal police are being deployed to imitate the tactics of proto-facist groups whoglamorize violence and long for the white supremacist past. Portland has endured years of abuse from these far-right groups whotreat the city as little more than a stage for their violent culture-war melodramas. Now the president of the United States is following suit.

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Why did Trump pick Portland? He's following the lead of far-right groups, and the city's history - Salon

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Daniel Walters photo

Ken Peters, founder of the Church at Planned Parenthood.

By Emily McCarty/ Crosscut.com/ July 29, 2020

The debate over whether a Spokane religious group can hold services in front of a Planned Parenthood facility is getting so loud and heated thatit is headed toward a courtroom, where noise ordinances, the right to health care and the First Amendment are all likely to be debated.

The religious group calls itselfThe Church at Planned Parenthood, or TCAPP, and those who attend hear sermons and sing worship songs, all broadcast over a PAsystem. Their services include anti-abortion guest speakers and pastors from around the country.

But Planned Parenthood has been measuring noise levels, which its officials say are disruptive, intimidating, detrimental to the health and safety of staff and clients, and go above the legal decibel limit of city and state noise ordinances. In June, theyd had enough, so they filed a lawsuit against Covenant Church, which started the mobile ministry.

Covenant Church pastor Ken Peters, who founded TCAPP, said he chose to host services outside the facility for a reason.

We want to get as close to Planned Parenthood as we can, because the closer we are, the bigger the statement that it makes, Peters said. It makes a statement that we disagree with what they're doing.

Paul Dillon, vice president of public affairs withPlanned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, said the sound is so loud thatits damaging to the health of clients. Patients and staff can hear the songs and sermons throughout the building and inside exam rooms, so much so that theyve had to shuffle patients to different rooms just to be able to provide care, Dillon said.

It's really, really frustrating and should not be allowed to happen, when the laws are very clear in Washington state and the city of Spokaneabout interference with health care facilities, Dillon said. Its extremely unnerving for the patients at Planned Parenthood.

Substantial research has been completed about the negative health effects of excessive noise on patients, which is precisely why Washington state has a statute limiting noise outside of medical facilities, said Kim Clark, senior attorney with Legal Voice, which is representing Planned Parenthood in the lawsuit. Clark said the noise is so loud sometimes that staff cant hear each other when speaking, they lose their train of thought, and headphones cant cancel it out.

Staff have reported that patients will be crying in the middle of their exams, Clark said.

Peters, the pastor,said the services arent intended to be disruptive at allthat, in fact, he would gladly switch to 7 p.m. services to stop thelawsuit. But Peters hasnt changed the time. He thinks that the time of services arent Planned Parenthoods real concern, that its more about the health facility disagreeing with TCAPPs mission.

Were not there to stop their business. Were there to worship God and pray for the end of abortion, Peters said.

About150 people showed up for TCAPPs first service in October 2018, but since then, the gatherings have grown to over 400 by Planned Parenthood's countand over 700 by TCAPP's.

Planned Parenthood's Dillon says its not about singing, or sermons, or worship. Its about politics. The group portrays itself as just a bunch of singing Christians, he said, but he thinks their goal is to shut down Planned Parenthood.

This is not a church. This is not a church at all, Dillon said. You know, they can call themselves whatever they want, [but] in no way, shape or form is this a church.

Journalists have measured the sound from the services at above legal decibel levels, as has Planned Parenthood. While police monitor most every TCAPP service, they have never cited the group for a noise violation.

Legal Voices Clark saidthe Spokane Police Department has given Planned Parenthood multiple reasons why the policehavent enforced the law. But, ultimately, theyve never taken action against TCAPP, no matter how loud and disruptive the services may get.

In fact, it is the impression of both the staff at Planned Parenthood and the church itself that the police are on the side of the church, Clark said.

Peters said they work hard to stay below legal noise ordinance levels, but that the city council, which passed the ordinance in March 2020, is all pro-Planned Parenthood.

We know theyre there with their little sound meters and yeah, its just a stupid game, Peters said. But were doing everything we possibly can to comply with the sound ordinance and still be able to do what we feel is our First Amendment right.

Dillon said the lawsuit was really a last resort for Planned Parenthood, because itspatients should not have to face hurdles to basic health care.

Nobody deserves shame or stigma or bullying or intimidation, which is the goal of this group. Those are the tactics that they use, he said.

Peters responded jokingly when asked about Planned Parenthood staffs feelings of being intimidated.

Some of our singers, they sing quite off-key. So that could scare a lot of people, I understand, Peters said. I guess church scares some people. But it doesnt seem like any sort of threat to me.

Dillon said Planned Parenthood also is concerned about the involvement at TCAPP servicesof Proud Boys, a group designatedas a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centerbecause some members voice white supremacist or anti-Semitic ideologies.

Peters didnt even know what a Proud Boy was until people accused him of being associated with them, he said, and lumping them in with extremist groups isnt accurate. But Peters said he cant control who comes to his services.

Its city property. I cannot control who comes and who doesnt, Peters said.

Alisha Merkt, 33, said she used the Spokane Planned Parenthood in her early 20s when she was uninsured. She went in for a pregnancy test, which was negative, but she left with a years worth of free birth control, thanks to Planned Parenthoods program for low-income patients.

She now has health insurance through her employer, but stays involved as a volunteer at Planned Parenthoods events. During one volunteer stint, she offered to help keep protesters from TCAPP off the facilitys property.

Merkt described the very tense atmosphere that day as disheartening.This was partially becauseTCAPP providedunfactual information about abortion, she said, andalso because of the service's incredibly loud,disruptive presence.

I felt powerless. I felt really I don't want to say discouraged but if they were staying off the property, I could only stand there and watch in horror, Merkt said. It was just a lot of negative energy and standing there knowing that, aside from making sure they stayed off the property, there was nothing else I could do, despite them disturbing patients inside and upsetting the staff and upsetting volunteers like myself.

Merkt said that Planned Parenthood saved her life back when she couldnt afford health care. She said she thinks a lot about the inconsistency she sees with TCAPP, whose mission is to end abortion, yet protests against a health care facility that provides family planning.

According to 2018 data, abortions madeup only a little over 3% of Planned Parenthood's total services, which include family planning, treatment for sexually transmitted infections, cancer screeningsand wellness exams.

Until they start thinking outside that very narrow viewpoint, they're going to keep pushing their agenda on everyone else because they feel it's their responsibility to save the people or to prevent these abortions, Merkt said. But they don't care outside thatwhat actually happens to the person. Its very selfish.

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Between high decibel levels and police inaction, tensions are building between Spokane Planned Parenthood and the pop-up church outside - Pacific...