Portland, Oregon, is competing with San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Seattle for the title of "Furthest Left City" on the Left Coast. Over the past several weeks, the "City of Roses" chalked up a couple more points toward winning this dubious honor. First of all, Portland was one of the earliest and most aggressive Blue Democrat cities out of the starting gate with an "Occupy ICE" campaign aimed at blockading the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices and terrorizing ICE employees. Starting in mid-June, hundreds of activists surrounded the Portland ICE office with a tent city, trashed the neighborhood, and harassed and threatened the local residents and businesses as well as the federal ICE office workers. Second, over the past weekend, hundreds of "Antifa" thugs (who describe themselves as anti-fascist, but use violent fascist-communist tactics) rioted and fought with Portland police as well as members of Patriot Prayer, a conservative group that was holding a rally in Portland's Waterfront Park.
The Oregonian reported that in e-mails obtained by its newsroom, "one African American officer reported to an administrator that protesters 'began yelling racial slurs' at him, including the N-word. The officer said he was also called a 'blood traitor' and an Uncle Tom." "These racial slurs have been directed at me throughout the entire length of the deployment," the officer wrote.
Another officer, who is described by The Oregonian as "a woman of Hispanic and Native American descent," said she was "called derogatory terms for Hispanic people and told she is 'a weak female' and a 'traitor.'" "I was berated for so long I can't even remember everything that was told to me," she wrote.
Naturally, Mayor Ted Wheeler and his fellow "progressives on the Portland Human Rights Commission have made no mention of this. CNN, the New York Times' and their fellow Fake News operatives have not found this to be newsworthy. Of course, if some unknown fringie attaches himself to a Trump rally and utters a statement that is (or can be twisted to appear to be) racist, the same progressives and their media allies can be counted on to obsess over it for days, weeks, months — indefinitely.
Ngo interviewed local neighborhood residents and business owners who were physically attacked and threatened, and their property was damaged. "Lisa Leonard, a 53-year-old disabled resident, said occupiers hit her on her head, disabled her electric wheelchair, and lifted her in the air when she complained about loud drumming. She called police, who took a statement but made no arrests.
This writer visited Zuccotti five times during the period of October 11-16. The packed space did indeed reek of raw sewage, unbathed bodies, and marijuana. And, contrary to the OWS propagandists and their media allies, the occupiers do not in any way resemble the 99 percent of Americans they claim to represent. Unlike the much larger Tea Party events all across the country over the past several years that drew millions of working-class and middle-class Americans fed up with run-away government spending, taxing, and regulation, the Occupy Wall Street gatherings can be aptly described (for the most part) as counter-culture freak shows: bongo-banging tie-dyed Sandalistas and Woodstock wannabes spouting Marxoid drivel and socialist cant. Banners and posters featuring images of, and quotes from, Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Che Guevara, are plentiful. Some protesters do indeed also invoke Jefferson and Madison, but usually in a manner intended to fuse the statements of America's Founding Fathers into an endorsement of anarchism, communism, or socialism.
Like Mayor Wheeler, New York City's mayor at the time, Michael Bloomberg, told the police to stand down, thus allowing the Occupy "demonstrators" to engage in illegal activities (blocking street and sidewalk traffic, tenting and camping in the park, using and selling drugs, violating curfews and noise levels, urinating and defecating on private and public property, disturbing the peace, accosting and threatening residents and passersby, etc.) without repercussion. This reporter interviewed residents, as well as owners of restaurants and shops in the area whose lives had been turned upside-down, and their businesses all but ruined by the invaders. Finally, after two months of this abuse, New Yorkers had had enough of the lawless freak show. Mayor Bloomberg was forced by public pressure (and the very real health threat posed by the filthy park conditions) to send in the police to evict the self-proclaimed "revolutionaries." The taxpayers were stuck, as always, with the cleanup bill.
In Portland, Mayor Wheeler and City Council officials, such as Chloe Eudaly, were likewise forced by the health codes and growing public anger to finally evict the occupiers from their squalid squatter camp. However, they continue their solidarity with the protesters. On July 23, Commissioner Eudaly issued a statement defending and supporting the Occupy ICE PDX camp while also announcing her agreement with the occupiers' decision to disband the encampment.
The camp was organized, peaceful, and successfully sparked a nationwide effort bringing attention to the despicable actions of the federal administration. The protesters were collaborative, respectful of the neighborhood, and I proudly stood with them and over 180 elected officials to call for the abolition of ICE. My office has since been in daily communication with the camp as we provided assistance where we could, including material support and liaising between the Department of Homeland Security and Portland protesters. I called for time on the City Council agenda to hear from protesters and the New Portlander Policy Commission. I also investigated legal recourse to revoke ICE's Conditional Use permit, which regrettably is simply not an option at this time.
Eudaly's claims notwithstanding, it should have been clear from the get-go that the Occupy ICE PDX would be anything but "peaceful," "collaborative," and "respectful." One of the first calls put out by Occupy ICE PDX organizers urging activists to join them in the Portland, as well as to initiate similar actions across the country, was made through the website ItsGoingDown.org, a principal conduit for the violent Antifa movement.
Beginning on Sunday, June 17th, community members from all walks of life, working together with the Direct Action Alliance, Portland Assembly, and the Portland Democratic Socialists of America, organized a protest in the area around an ICE facility in southwest Portland with legal support provided by the National Lawyers Guild….
Make no mistake, ICE is a white supremacist organization following the orders of a white supremacist administration, and the intent of these policies is to discourage all nonwhite immigration, legal and illegal, and to preserve the power of the rapidly shrinking white majority….
Portland has declared itself a sanctuary city, but this facility stands in the way of that…. Furthermore, the gates to our country must be opened, not closed. This means an immediate halt to the fascist policies accelerated by Trump…. We invite the rest of the country to join this movement, to gather and occupy your local ICE facility until it's shut down….
However, the clear leadership of Antifa, the DSA, and NLG in the Occupy ICE PDX campaign did not deter Mayor Wheeler, Commissioner Eudaly, and other officials from actively supporting the agitators' lawless and dangerous actions. This was a replay of similar actions by left-wing Democrat mayors around the country who have aided Antifa violence. They include Mayor Mike Signer of Charlottesville, Virginia; Mayor Sam Liccardo of San Jose; Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans; Mayor Jesse Arreguin of Berkeley — to name but a few.
The August 4 Patriot Prayer rally ended with Portland riot police separating the two opposing forces and using pepper spray, rubber bullets, bean-bag guns, and batons against the Antifa crowd, which had ratcheted up the violence to throwing missiles at the police. Police arrested four Antifa activists. As to be expected, the ACLU of Oregon called the Portland police response "completely unacceptable." However, according to the ACLU, apparently, it is completely acceptable for their anarchist-communist clients to create mayhem and violate the rights of their fellow citizens.