More "largely peaceful" Portland protests

[Dill]

(08-16-2020, 02:34 AM)Von Cichlid Wrote: The only thing I do know is that this is happening in Portland, Oregon of all possible places.  This is a place that you don't think of when it comes to an excessive police presence.  They don't have a substantial Black population either.  

I could understand this happening in NYC, Chicago, LA, Detroit, and Minneapolis.  But not Portland.

That leaves the question then:  Why has Portland (and Seattle to a lesser extent) become the epicenter of this?  

Here is my best guess, and I will say this is pure speculation on my part:

In the bigger cities I mentioned, I think the police departments are very large and well equipped due to the longtime presence of gangs.

I don't think of Portland as a city that is well equipped to deal with large waves of crime.  I always thought of it as a peace and love kind of liberal utopia.  I may be completely wrong here, that is just the image I always had.

The reason I lumped college campuses into the equation is that antifa has had a history of gathering and causing some turmoil at what are considered liberal universities.  This leads me to believe they felt comfortable in doing their thing at those places because of the fact that they perceived their views as supported in those locations.  As antifa is involved in Portland too, college classes and what is going on in Portland were linked in my mind, perhaps erroneously.    

This seems like a good analysis to me. 

I have a little familiarity with Seattle, having lived there in '79-'80. I was there when, advancing budget cuts, the Washington state expelled a number of patients from its mental health institutions. In a few weeks there were homeless people wandering downtown and sleeping on the streets--often in very unhygienic conditions. 

I haven't been there since '89, but now I understand that it has for years been home to "tent cities" and the like sheltering runaways and especially drug addicts. So as I understand it, on the street level in many places there are unsavory folks selling and doing drugs and behaving rudely towards citizens. City laws make it hard for police to arrest and hold people possessing and selling, so they tend to ignore the police. So police morale was pretty bad BEFORE the Floyd protests and CHOP. Now there was a riot yesterday from which 18 were arrested.  

I imagine this is going to re-arrange the city government in coming elections, though. 

I don't know much about Portland, but given its reputation as a peaceful city full of counter cultural types, it does not surprise me if it has not developed an anti-riot force, then found itself suddenly confronted with a higher density of people ready to take to the streets for social justice issues than, say, Omaha or Tulsa OK. And quickly leavened with Anti-fa opportunists.  Two big 10 universities in that state. 20 or so anarchists from each could tip a peaceful protest of thousands into a riot.