Tuesday, July 21, 2020

REVOLUTION IN PORTLAND - TRUMP WILL MOW DOWN THE PROTESTERS WITH THUG POLICE

Violence, Looting, Arson in Portland as Demonstrators Burn the City in Protest
Federal officers use crowd control munitions to disperse Black Lives Matter protesters outside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on Tuesday, July 21, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Noah Berger/AP Photo
HANNAH BLEAU
1,290
4:09

Portland experienced another night of violence, looting, and widespread arson as demonstrators took to the streets, attempting to break into the federal courthouse and lighting several fires throughout the city, prompting a response from federal law enforcement.
Protesters gathered downtown late Monday night and targeted the Federal Courthouse and Justice Center, vandalizing the buildings and attempting to break into them. According to a statement from the Portland Police Bureau (PPB), demonstrators “tampered with and climbed on the gate leading under the Justice Center and pounded on plywood on the exterior of the building” and “behaved similarly at the Federal Courthouse.”
Police said protesters, who were equipped with hammers, crowbars, hammers, shields, helmets, gas masks, “and other pry tools,” pounded on the courthouse and broke the plywood covering one side of the building. They successfully broke through the plywood after midnight and broke “at least one window”:
Demonstrators threw rocks and bottles at federal officers, who attempted to disperse the crowd around 12:38 a.m. Protesters continued engaging in acts of lawlessness well into the early hours of Tuesday morning, throwing several objects, including “glass and plastic bottles, wood, pieces of metal, rocks and other debris” at the courthouse and lighting fires nearby:
As the PPB detailed:
At about 2:24 a.m. people lit a fire near a door on the SW Salmon Street side of the courthouse. Federal law enforcement put it out. At 2:29 a.m. people poured an accelerant on the plywood over the door on the front of the courthouse and ignited it. Federal officers dispersed the crowd using various munitions.
At 2:45 a.m. several dozen people blocked off SW Salmon Street at SW 5th Avenue with fencing and an assortment of other material stolen from nearby properties. People continued to light fires downtown including a fire on the awning and side of a building, at SW 4th Avenue and SW Yamhill Street, which required Portland Fire & Rescue to respond. At about 3:00 a.m. another fire was burning in the middle of the sidewalk north side of the County Courthouse, which required Portland Fire & Rescue response. Before they arrived people continually added flammable material to it causing it to grow and burn against the building. Portland Police responded to provide security for firefighters.
According to the PPB, one individual hurled a glass bottle at the officers, who were near the courthouse providing security to firefighters.
Authorities also received a call after 3 a.m. of a jewelry store break-in.
“Portland Police responded and found the windows broken out and could see that valuables had been removed. Officers searched the area for the suspects. A vehicle fled the scene as officers investigated,” the PPB reported, adding that a caller “reported that windows at City Hall were broken out”:
The PPB affirmed that its officers made no arrests.
President Trump has defended the presence of federal law enforcement in the city and has teased sending more to other progressive cities experiencing waves of violence and unrest.
“We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it. Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE,” Trump said on Sunday.
“These were not merely protesters, these are the real deal!” he added:
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) has soured at the federal government’s intervention, claiming that the involvement is “making the situation much more dangerous.”
He recently signed a letter with the mayors of Atlanta, Chicago, D.C., Seattle, and Kansas City against federal intervention in their cities.
“The President is attacking progressive cities with a classic ‘divide and conquer’ tactic,” Wheeler said.
“We must not fall prey to this. Nationwide, we must stand together for peace and for reform against those who would oppose it,” he added.


President Trump sending federal police agents into major American cities


21 July 2020
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, President Trump praised the kidnapping of protesters by unidentified federal agents in Portland, Oregon as a “fantastic job” and vowed to send similar law enforcement groups into New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland.
Responding to questions regarding reports that the White House was sending 175 federal troops to multiple cities, Trump said, “Well, it depends on what your definition of ‘troops’ is. I mean, we’re sending law enforcement.”
He went on, “I’m going to do something—that, I can tell you. Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these—Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.”
Speaking about the federal agents in Portland, Trump said, “They’ve been there for three days. They really have done a fantastic job in a short period of time. No problem. They grab a lot of people and jail the leaders.”
Without presenting any evidence to back up his claims, Trump attempted to present the protesters in Portland as criminals: “People say protesters. These people are anarchists, people that hate our country and we’re not going to let that go forward. And I’ll tell you what--the governor, the mayor, the senators, they’re afraid of these people. That’s the reason they want us to help them. They’re afraid. I believe that they may even be physically afraid of these people, because what they are doing is incredible.
“We didn’t just go there. It wasn’t like it was started right away. We waited 51 days. We said, ‘we can’t let that happen anymore.’ But these are anarchists.”
The Chicago Tribune reported Monday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is sending 150 agents to Chicago this week. Quoting anonymous sources, the Tribune report said that agents of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were being sent to assist city law enforcement in crime-fighting efforts. The sources did not spell out precisely what the HSI agents would be doing in Chicago.
CNN also reported that an unnamed senior law enforcement official confirmed that there are plans to deploy federal agents to Chicago through the end of the summer. CNN said, “The agents will focus on illegal gun sales and gun violence and outstanding warrants, among other targets, according to one of the sources. Both sources said an announcement could be made in the coming days.”
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Colleen Connell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois, condemned the actions of the Trump administration. She said, “Make no mistake: Trump’s federal troops will not be a constructive force in Chicago. As our colleagues have seen in Portland, Trump’s secret forces will terrorize communities and create chaos. This is not law and order. This is an assault on the people of this country, and the specific protections of protest and press in the First Amendment.”
Making it clear that the federal agents were being sent by the President, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told Fox News: “Putting politics over public safety is not only going to have a detrimental effect here in the short term, but also in the long term. And the president has been very clear—again, in these major metropolitan cities... if you’re not going to do your job, at some point we will have to take action to make sure that those communities are safe.”
More evidence of the violence being meted out against peaceful protesters in Portland came to light on Monday. A 53-year-old Portland resident, Christopher David, was assaulted by federal agents with batons and a chemical irritant.

As explained here on the World Socialist Web Site yesterday, Trump has seized upon the ongoing protests in Portland, where both the city and state governments are controlled by the Democratic Party, to test out methods of police state repression and attack the Constitution. The use of federal forces in major American cities—in some cases at the request of police associations in contradiction to the policy of elected officials—is both a violation of the constitutional rights of protesters and a usurpation of the authority of local and state governments.David, a graduate of the US Naval Academy and former member of the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps, told the Washington Post that he went to downtown Portland on Saturday evening to ask the officers, “Why are you not honoring your oath?” and “Why are you not honoring your oath to the Constitution?” David ended up in the hospital with two broken bones in his hand.
With his reelection poll numbers plummeting amid the catastrophic economic, social and public health crisis facing millions of people from the coronavirus pandemic, Trump is moving to take extreme right-wing measures in an effort to energize his fascistic base of supporters, especially among the police and federal paramilitary forces like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The sending of federal police agents—operating out of unmarked vehicles that “grab a lot of people and jail leaders”—in major American cities is an unprecedented further step toward presidential dictatorship in the US. It is highly significant that an anonymous DHS source told the Chicago Tribune that the agents from HSI, a special unit within ICE devoted to combatting criminal organizations, will not be involved in immigration matters in Chicago.
Predictably, none of the responses from leading Democrats to Trump’s announcement addressed it as a threat to fundamental democratic rights.
Democratic Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot criticized Trump for saying “a lot of disparaging things about the city of Chicago." She added, "He likes to use us as a political punching bag.” Then, essentially accepting Trump’s fraudulent reason for sending HSI agents to Chicago, Lightfoot said, “But if the president was really committed to helping us deal with our violence, he would do some easy things.”
In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer characterized the sending of federal police to Detroit as a racial issue. “Quite frankly, the president doesn’t know the first thing about Detroit. If he did, he would know that for nearly two months now, Detroiters have gathered to peacefully protest the systemic racism and discrimination that black Americans face every day,” Whitmer said.
Democratic Party Representative Rashida Tlaib, whose congressional district is based on the west side of Detroit, said in a post on Twitter, “They’ll have to arrest me first if they think they’re going to illegally lay their hands on my residents.”
Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney of Philadelphia said that Trump’s plan was “wrong on many levels,” adding, “To send federal agents to police US cities that have not requested such aid can only impede the work of local governments and exacerbate already heightened tensions in these cities. And to target cities that are led by Democratic mayors is clearly a politicization of federal resources that should outrage all taxpayers.”
As was the case during Trump’s attempted military coup in June—which was derailed by the Pentagon brass only because they believed it was neither adequately prepared nor necessary as of yet—the Democrats fear the emergence of a mass revolutionary movement of the working class from below far more than they do the authoritarian aims of the Trump White House.
Only the working class, on the basis of its own independent political organization and armed with a revolutionary socialist program aimed at putting an end to capitalism on a world scale, can defend democratic rights and stop the descent of American society into dictatorship.


Behar: Trump’s Ununiformed Federal Officers Is ‘Fascism in America’ — He’s Trying to Start Race War

PAM KEY
81
2:23
Tuesday on ABC’s “The View,” co-host Joy Behar criticized President Donald Trump for threatening to send unidentified federal officers to several U.S. cities like he did to quell protests in Portland.
Behar said, “It’s interesting that he dares to mention the word Afghanistan when we know our soldiers were targeted and killed, probably killed in Afghanistan because of bounties on their heads by his pal Putin. Not one word about that, by the way, and calls it a hoax, as a matter of fact. It’s fascinating he calls himself the law and order president when all the people around him seem to be in prison or on their way. When you think about it, Roger Stone, witness tampering he just got out, Michael Cohen is back in prison, Paul Manafort, seven-year sentence under home confinement. They let him out because it was not safe to be in prison with coronavirus, yet they’ll send our children to school. I love that — Rick Gates in jail. George Papadopoulos was another one indicted and his earliest supporters in Congress, Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter. And he dares to call himself the law and order president.”
She continued, “He dares call himself the law and order president. I’m witnessing fascism in America. I was talking to one of my cousins the other day. She’s not a right-winger or a Republican. She is a Democrat. She didn’t know what was happening in Portland. People need to pay attention. This is the beginning of the end of democracy. If we re-elect this guy, I don’t want to think about what will happen to this country.”
She added, “Didn’t it say in the Mueller Report that Putin was trying to divide the country and to have race wars in this country, I believe that was part of the Mueller Report. Sunny, am I right?”
Co-host Sunny Hostin said, “Yes. You’re right.”
Behar said, “This part of the plan, you see. This is part of Putin’s plan that Trump is going along with. And really what’s galling is where is Lindsey Graham, where is Mitch McConnell? Bill Barr, we can’t rely on him. These two are despicable. They need to go also, by the way. People need to vote against Mitch McConnell, Graham, and a few of the others. Get them out.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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