untethered

On Wednesday Portland’s mayor and city council unanimously passed a 6 million dollar plan to address a record-setting pace in gun crimes and homicides, without allotting a cent for more police or prosecutions. The new ordinance is a counter-blow to Mayor Ted Wheeler’s proposed plan of last month to spend 2 million dollars effectively reconstituting the Portland Police Bureau’s gun/gang unit with more civilian oversight. The Gun Violence Reduction Team was disbanded last summer for “racial profiling”, without debate about its effectiveness, along with school and transit cops. A defanged version limited to investigating shootings after the fact isn’t having much of an effect.

In a remarkable demonstration of who’s in charge Wheeler’s plan was not just rejected it was met with a unanimous council passing, with Wheeler’s vote and surrender, a stimulus bill for the the local race grift industry. Two million to put more cops on the street became six million for private contractors to produce more violence prevention programs that purport to talk gangstas out of seeking retribution and strike at “root causes”. But more far-reaching than this looting of the treasury is the looting of power written into the law, seeking to further bring the police under the control of District Attorney Mike Schmidt and the office of the newly created Community Transition Safety Director, whose first day in office was April 1.

That position is expected to oversee the the city’s fire, police and emergency services–and their combined budgets–with the mandate to effect Portland’s transition to a “community based” model of safety, one with fewer police and prosecutions:

While protesters and public officials wrangle over the best path forward for policing Portland, the city is moving to hire a director of community safety to guide systemic change in all of Portland’s public safety bureaus.

Portland desperately needs some management consistency for its police, fire, emergency dispatch and emergency management bureaus amid rapidly changing elected leadership, said Tom Rinehart, a major proponent who serves as the city’s administrative officer…

“We really have a governance problem unlike any other city in the country,” said Rinehart, administrative officer in the Office of Management and Finance. “We are undertaking massive change and we have no team that is managing the projects.”

Despite getting no money, or respect, under the new initiative, the police department is directed to reassign seven cops to to investigate gun cases under the direction of radical progressive DA Mike Schmidt:

The Portland Police Bureau shall immediately realign internal resources to create
six (6) additional assault investigative detectives and one (1) sergeant to
coordinate on gun-related investigations originating from and approved by the
Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.

The biggest change in this last year of tumult occurred in the city council, where earnest white progressives have been replaced by a panoply of the diverse: female, black and gay. Wheeler’s ill-fated plan was immediately shot down by three of four city commissioners–all of them new to the council–in a memo that became the new law. Two of them pass for moderates in Portland; newbie Dan Ryan balked at second round of budget cuts to police last year, as did Mingus Mapps, elected last November as a moderate favored by real estate interests over the radical Chloe Eudaly, who also voted against the cuts as too little, in a grandstanding play putting her to the left of even Jo Ann Hardesty. The constitution of the council as the city’s most diverse (notably that means not very ethnically representative of the city) and probably least experienced came suddenly; it was just 2018 that Jo Ann Hardesty won her seat and became the first black city commissioner. As it stands right now Hardesty runs the city with her coalition of like-minded and and light-minded.

The third newcomer, Carmen Rubio, is a solidly radical progressive and the memo and new law came out of her office, authored by her DACA recipient policy director. That Hardesty was a recipient of the memo and not one of its signatories may mean little, or it may mean Rubio is ambitious and emerging as a threat to Hardesty’s leadership.

Wheeler’s plan included rehiring recently retired detectives; this was just too much for the council. Police leaving and retiring in droves comes as if part of the plan, and rehiring them would be giving back hard-earned progress. Instead the new law directs the city to increase patrols of unarmed park rangers (“ambassadors of goodwill” in the founding memo), to act as “eyes on the ground”. PPB is being gradually relegated to the basement like the hapless worker in Office Space.

As for the park rangers being asked to go as ambassadors where the police went as soldiers, their union head complained rangers are already absorbing more violence in our post-BLM world and demanded “[l]evel II-A body armor to protect them from projectiles and stab threats.”

Public input was pre-empted:

It’s 11th hour placement on the City Council agenda cut members of the public off from their normal means of signing up to testify ahead of the vote.

The mayor and commissioners, however, invited nearly a dozen racial justice advocates and leaders within communities of color to offer their enthusiastic support for the compromise during Wednesday’s hearing. One after another, they delivered a collective hour of thanks and praise.

Among the backers were members of the Interfaith Peace & Action Collaborative, which had originally asked Wheeler to push for $2 million in additional one-time policing funding. The group is made up of clergy, social workers, police and Black community members who have ties to the mayor and law enforcement.

IPAC, led by black clergy, is no favorite of the dominant hard left here with its ties to police and city government and its calls to re-establish the gun unit. Wheeler’s plan was outlined in a memo from IPAC, whose representatives joined him in announcing it. IPAC is nothing if not adaptable and stands in line for some of the new law’s gibs. Nothing comes as easily or dries as rapidly as a black preacher’s tears. But now there’s virtually no one left opposing the new order.

Brrrr goes the change machine.

Judging by numbers of bodies antifa puts on the street for their direct actions, now, several months out of the BLM hysteria of last summer when their numbers were enlarged by hangers-on, I judge their hardcore committed and organized element to number around two hundred. I could be wrong. But if it’s five hundred, if it’s a thousand, they’re still punching well above their weight in the long war with the cops and right now are likely savoring their fleeing enemy’s lamentations:

They trashed police management.

They mocked city leaders.

They bemoaned the lack of true community-based policing.

And they were all Portland officers and supervisors who chose to leave the state’s largest police force in the last year.

In 31 exit interview statements, the employees who turned in their badges or retired were brutally frank about their reasons for getting out.

“The community shows zero support. The city council are raging idiots, in addition to being stupid. Additionally, the mayor and council ignore actual facts on crime and policing in favor of radical leftist and anarchists fantasy. What’s worse is ppb command (lt. and above) is arrogantly incompetent and cowardly,” one retiring detective wrote.

Since July 1, 115 officers have left the Police Bureau, including 74 who retired and 41 who resigned. Two more will resign by the end of this month and one more is retiring. They make up one of the biggest waves of departures in recent memory.

Police abolitionists are abolishing the police. Mayor Wheeler, who knows the police cuts he acquiesced to without a whimper last summer are an ongoing disaster, offered a weird mix of bland and Orwellian platitudes:

Mayor Ted Wheeler, who serves as police commissioner, said the city must foster a culture in the Police Bureau that “retains and enhances — and does not move us away from — a diverse, professional, and successful work force.”

“We ask a lot of our police,” he said in an email. “The city of Portland, like many other cities, is on an ambitious and aggressive mission to transform community safety and policing. Change management is a specialty occupation for a reason. It’s hard work for everyone involved.

Give yourself more credit, Ted. You’ve transformed community safety immensely already.

And the greater tragedy might not be the cops we’re losing but the cops we can expect to gain, their replacements. Those both perverse enough to apply and diverse enough to qualify, helped over lowered qualifications, trained in implicit bias and white fragility and soon to be sent forth. God help us.

A win’s a win but isn’t as if antifa hasn’t had help. They only get as far as they are allowed. It’s laughable to think antifa–who struggle to field dozens for their direct actions and sometimes openly express concerns about waning enthusiasm–would still be at it if authorities had come down hard–say, if the powerful treated it as a white revolution or some other genuine threat. Antifa has been encouraged by the unconscionable indulgence the system–where the evil lies–has given them. They’ve been gaslit by the Man.

Still, in Portland anarchists are not just getting away with desecrating statues, they’re making progress toward their goal of ending law and order.

Meanwhile other law enforcement agencies are recruiting in Portland.

Justice, blind brown and female, centers the mural along the sidewalk fronting the new Multnomah County Courthouse, invoking not the administration of justice but serial “aspirations for justice”, from Equity, through Black Lives Matter, skipping along the now lesser deities of Peace and Hope, on to Feminism only after echoing BLM with “anti racist”–and I can’t help feeling a hierarchy is established–with the newcomer LGBT crowded in at last, and ending with Diversity.

Slogans in the white-lettering on black background BLM style greet you as you approach from the south; “Defund Hate” says the last, either a provocative invocation of the familiar call to “defund the police” or a compromise with it.

Queued up outside, reporting for jury duty, the girl behind me seems to be studiously observing six feet of “social” distance. The thick-necked middle aged cop manning the metal detector is too cheerful, offers some self-deprecating humor; I wonder if he’s trying harder in the New Order. He does seem very happy to be there and not, say, on the street.

The turnout responding to the grand jury summons is mostly whites, skewing toward early middle-age, 30 to 40 from whom seven jurors and four alternates would be selected. I wanted to make the cut because it would be enlightening to serve on a grand jury, especially right now, but couldn’t help feeling relieved when I wasn’t picked. I also couldn’t help noticing a very dark black woman standing out in this pale congregation, was chosen. I was not surprised. If she was hoping to escape, she never had a chance.

A middle-aged white woman wearing a limp, too-casual dress and faded tattoos gave us the citizenship spiel and then a judge present to select the jurors, another middle-aged woman, stumbled through it via video link. A canned bit came next featuring the county’s judges featuring the same preponderance of the menopausal, some interviews with actual jurors and brief fictional enactments of trial scenes.

But first came the historical context they still seem compelled to give; a mention of the founders and Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence shown on the screen briefly like a piece of historical flotsam, the white faces and colonial dress an intrusion politely ignored, for the moment. I almost expected someone to gasp at this painting that everyone understood would be an insufferable affront if hanging in the lobby. Likewise the mention of our Anglo legal heritage. And stated so frankly, almost enthusiastically! Seeing these things invoked in a positive light was jarring, it had been so long since I’ve heard the earnest celebration of American civic tradition and its founders. I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder at the others to get their reactions.

A short break was followed by a second video, after which we were to line up before an iPad and be asked three questions by the judge who would then anoint the worthy. The second video was a tutorial on “unconscious bias” introduced by a large, dark black woman with a simpleton’s manner obviously selected to challenge your perceptions of large, dark black women with a simpleton’s manner. As opposed to the elegant and well-spoken fictional Black Lady Judge instructing her jurors in one of the re-enactment style scenes from the earlier video–her image of cool competence being the result of countless episodes of Law and Order and a long-developed type for which, they hope, you have developed an implicit bias.

If I was the second black woman, the inelegant one, I might find dubious the honor of being put on display so the audience can later be, pardon the phrase, implicitly hectored for their initial (unconsciously biased) appraisal of her as “tough”, “intimidating” or “out of place”.

Curiously, the phrase “implicit bias” wasn’t used in this implicit bias training. Maybe it didn’t make it past the focus group. Perhaps it’s a damaged phrase–one for which the public has already developed implicit bias through experience and exposure, say, to it’s having been debunked.

The politically bowdlerized “unconscious bias” was used with due repetitiveness, with particular emphasis on the word “unconscious”, as advised by the Third Principle of Propaganda on repetition so as to create bias.

The unconscious mind and its use of experience to create categories and assess probability are wonderful “mental short-cuts” necessary for navigating the “day to day” world but–a judge intones severely–“may come at a price.”

“Remember, we’re looking for instantaneous and instinctive decision making that is influenced by deep seated stereotypes and attitudes in our brains.”

The questionable “blind curtain audition” study was unashamedly brought forward, as well as the Stroop Effect Test, demonstrating unconscious bias’ pernicious nature by showing how much easier it is to read through a word list of colors cast in their corresponding color than when cast in random colors contradicting the word meaning. I don’t think it registered with the tiring audience.

“Be aware to be fair” the participants say, one at a time, each with their particular intonation, before the large, dark black woman with a simpleton’s manner takes her turn and closes the video out, mercifully, with a rainbow motion of the hands. The room was silent and the relief palpable.

After everyone went before the judge, so to speak, the elect were called up and the rest of us sent home. I couldn’t help noticing the jurors were more diverse than the turnout. Damn that unconscious bias!

The Madness of Crowds

The new regime in Washington DC has sent Department of Justice lawyers to join the battle against the Portland Police Bureau:

Growing tension between Portland city officials and Department of Justice lawyers erupted during a public meeting Tuesday night, exposing a rift between the two agencies which could land the city back in federal court sooner than expected.

Department of Justice lawyers charged with overseeing the 2014 settlement agreement on how the Portland Police Bureau uses force and conducts officer oversight said the city has failed to explain how it plans to handle protests and use of force investigations in the future.

“We have asked for a plan of remediation and the city has not agreed to provide one,” assistant U.S. attorney Jared Hager said at a Tuesday evening meeting of the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing. “If we don’t get a plan, and the noncompliance persists, then the only thing we can do is issue a notice under the enforcement provisions of the settlement agreement and try to get an action plan that we feel is sufficient that way.”

Hager said it would be unfortunate to have to go that route.

DOJ lawyers are citing a 2014 settlement with the city requiring strict standards for police interactions with people demonstrating signs of “actual or perceived mental illness.” Rather comically they’re using that settlement now to sanction police for their engagement with anarchist and BLM rioters. Gee, you’re not suggesting police are dealing with crazies, are you?

The PPB was set to be relieved of federal oversight after seven years of annual review this year when, at the height of the campaign against police, the DOJ, citing the riots, declared the PPB out of compliance:

One year ago, city leaders and Portland Police Bureau (PPB) officials had cause for celebration: After six years of working to meet the law enforcement reforms mandated in a settlement agreement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the city had received notice from the feds that it had finally met all 190 of the agreement’s requirements.

The detailed 2014 agreement came after a DOJ investigation found that PPB officers were using excessive force against people with mental illness. The agreed-upon reforms included creating a streamlined police accountability system, training officers to use less physical force, and requiring detailed reports from officers after they use force.

After receiving the DOJ’s stamp of approval in January 2020, all the city had left to do before being released from the onerous settlement was to remain “in compliance”—or, continue to operate under the new policies and practices—for one year.

And then the rest of 2020 happened.

On Wednesday, city officials learned that the combination of massive protests, COVID-19 restrictions, and budget cuts effectively pushed the city out of compliance with the DOJ’s legal agreement. In a 73-page report explaining the decision, the DOJ writes that, despite 2020’s unforeseen pressures, Portland and its police are not excused from upholding its obligations in the 2014 agreement.

The 2014 settlement stems from a 2012 lawsuit filed by Eric Holder’s DOJ that was all but invited by Portland’s own city government, in league with the same activist community now leading police abolition efforts.

Adding to the acid trip irony of federal lawyers citing a settlement on police engagement with the mentally ill to sanction their response to protesters seeking insane goals is that one of the abolitionists’ themes from the start has been a gaslighting campaign launched on the mental health of individual cops. Explicit calls to this appeared in the rioters’ graffiti from the start amidst the standard and ubiquitous calls for their murder and humiliation.

One of abolitionists’ goals is to eliminate all police interaction with the mentally ill, eventually sending the activist groups’ own social workers. Their Portland Street Response team was launched early this year after much delay.

In January an ad hoc protest formed around police downtown who were trying to corral a mentally ill man who’d leapt from a second story window to wave a knife at people on the street before holding it to his throat and threatening to kill himself:

Police say that a protest formed around a man holding a knife in downtown Portland.

Friday afternoon police were called out on a welfare check outside an apartment building on Southwest 4th Avenue.

Authorities were told that a man had jumped from a second story window and allegedly pulled out a knife, waving it around a people and cars going by.

Police say the 30 year old man showed them the knife, held it to his neck and said he would kill himself if they came any closer.

Police say that a crisis team officer began speaking to the man in crisis, while other officers tried to clear the area.

The officers learned that the man “was schizophrenic and extremely paranoid.”

Police continue that “he not only threatened to kill himself, he said he would hurt others as well.”

According to Police, say the negotiation last about an hour and half before two different crowds of protestors began showing up.

Police say “ Some in the crowd began chanting, and one even started using a bullhorn.”

Police continue that the noise made it difficult for officers to speak to the man.

 The man’s mother arrived and begged the crowd to stop, however most in the crowd continued, police said.

The group had been nearby blockading a bookstore for selling, online, a copy of Andy Ngo’s expose of antifa, Unmasked, and rallied in quick response after the call went out on social media.

While Portland Police were trying to calm a suicidal man w/a knife yesterday in downtown, #antifa gathered using a bullhorn to try & stop them. It made the man more agitated. After hours, police tased him. He was uninjured but antifa nearly rioted. pic.twitter.com/UdMfsQTGIf

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 16, 2021

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The Easy Way or the Hardesty Way

City commissioner and police abolitionist leader Jo Ann Hardesty was forced to apologize last July after claiming police agents provocateur were starting the fires at anarchist riots

‘I want people to know that I do not believe there’s any protesters in Portland that are setting fires, that are creating crisis,’ Hardesty said on Wednesday during an online Emergency National Briefing hosted by the Western States Center.

‘I absolutely believe it’s police action, and they’re sending saboteurs and provocateurs into peaceful crowds so they justify their inhumane treatment of people who are standing up for their rights.

Hardesty doubled down on her stance in a new interview with Marie Claire. 

‘I believe Portland Police [Bureau] is lying about the damage—or starting the fires themselves—so that they have justification for attacking community members.’

Hardesty oversees the city’s fire department. She very nearly gained the police department portfolio when self-described antifa candidate Sarah Iannarone narrowly lost her bid to unseat Mayor Ted Wheeler last November. She suffered no repercussions for her charge and local media lost interest immediately. In early March Hardesty was accused of hit-and-run in a minor traffic accident, and her enemies gleefully released the story to media:

On Wednesday, Portland City Councilor Jo Ann Hardesty was reportedly involved in a hit-and-run accident. According to Incident Report #2021-57962, police responded to a complaint in which a teacher reported that Hardesty had rear-ended her vehicle earlier in the evening before driving away. The news was broken first by the Coalition to Save Portland. According to law enforcement sources, the suspect may have been looking at her phone at the time of the accident.

By the end of the day police announced she was not a suspect. Her media allies took up the story gleefully and the police union chief resigned. There are now four separate investigations into the matter:

On March 5, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler called for an investigation into the leak of an incident report that incorrectly implicated Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty in a hit-and-run fender bender.

Why stop at one investigation? The city now has four.

On March 19, the mayor’s office announced the hiring of an outside firm to review how Hardesty’s name moved from an incident report into right-wing media.

There’s plenty to investigate. On March 3, a Portland woman called 911 and claimed Hardesty had rear-ended her car on East Burnside and fled the scene. The next morning, a right-wing political action committee, the Coalition to Save Portland, published details from the report, and The Oregonian picked up the story. Police later learned by reviewing TriMet security footage that the suspect was in fact a Vancouver woman, whom the 911 caller apparently mistook for Hardesty. By then, attention had shifted to who leaked the false claim against Hardesty, a longtime police critic and the first Black woman on the Portland City Council.

A surprise announcement added another wrinkle: On March 16, the Portland Police Association announced the abrupt resignation of president Brian Hunzeker for a “serious, isolated mistake related to the Police Bureau’s investigation into the alleged hit-and-run by Commissioner Hardesty.” What exactly Hunzeker did remains unclear. A Police Bureau spokesman says Hunzeker has been reassigned to the patrol unit in the North Precinct.

Here is an overview of the investigations:

1. Portland Police Bureau, Internal Affairs: On March 5, Deputy Chief Chris Davis initiated an internal affairs investigation into the leak. The bureau declined to comment on the status of the investigation.

2. Bureau of Emergency Communications: BOEC, which fields 911 calls, initiated an investigation shortly after it learned of the incident, said spokesman Dan Douthit. He declined to share the date that the investigation began or provide any additional details. “It is ongoing,” Douthit said. “As soon as there is something to share, we want to make sure to get it out there.”

3. Outside Review of the Leak: On March 17, the city inked a $50,000 contract with California-based OIR Group to investigate the “unauthorized and inappropriate release of information.” In other words, OIR will scrutinize the leak itself. The firm has previously investigated officer-involved shootings in Portland.

4. Broader Cultural Review: On March 11, Hardesty called for an investigation into “the role of white supremacy and connections to far-right media and organizations within the Portland Police Bureau.” She and Wheeler are still ironing out details of this investigation. Their offices said in a joint statement March 19 that the scope of the investigation would include political and racial bias and “resistance to change” within the Police Bureau.

The mayor’s office says the first three investigations are seeking accountability for the leak itself. The fourth, broader investigation has loftier goals.

The pattern of leveraging any such advantage into a wholesale attack on a hated institutions is common practice, and works through media complicity in an environment where opposition to progressive power is all but impossible.

Not content with having hollowed out downtown Portland through rioting, the city’s unchallenged radicals have now turned their attention to dismantling their progressive predecessors’ other, complementary success, the area’s parks system.

Amanda Fritz was supposed to be retired. On Jan. 1, she completed her third and final term on the Portland City Council, her 12 years distinguished by her efforts to expand the city’s parks system into eastside neighborhoods with little greenspace.

But last Wednesday, she was back—alarmed that a new city policy could turn her beloved parks into outdoor homes.

“The city has invested millions in development, maintenance and restoration of parks and open spaces,” she warned. “Allowing people to live there and harm the resources will waste taxpayers’ money.”

Her concern: a line of regulatory language, buried in an overhaul of the city’s zoning code, that would allow people to erect “temporary shelter” in any open space in Portland—including parks, wetlands and trails. The shelter would have to be managed by a public or non-profit agency and gain prior city approval.

The sentence is a small part of the Shelter to Housing Continuum, an ambitious plan to ease the creation of homeless shelters across the city. Sanctioning people sleeping in parks, with supervision, is a detail of the larger plan, crafted by staff at the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. But the idea has drawn remarkable outcry, including from leaders who helped build the city’s park system.

Fritz has been joined in her opposition by two former directors of Portland Parks & Recreation, the founder of the private foundation that funds park improvements, and Mike Lindberg, a onetime city commissioner who, like Fritz, once oversaw the parks bureau.

The return of Fritz to testify before her former colleagues displayed how upset parks advocates are…

Portland: Neighbors Welcome, the housing nonprofit that has championed the zoning changes, tells WW it wants to use appropriate outdoor spaces to create permanent organized shelters while low-income housing is built.

“I don’t just want people to go camping on Mount Tabor. That’s not what we’re advocating for,” says Trisha Patterson, a board member of Portland: Neighbors Welcome. “We’re saying remove that blanket ban so that the city isn’t taking potential good sites off the table and limiting our ability to respond.”

A “blanket ban” on camping in city parks is to be replaced with an allowance for it when, as indicated in boldface above, it’s “managed by a public or non-profit agency” and approved by the city. Camping in parks, on sidewalks and in any available greenspace such as along freeways is already widespread. Chapman Square and Lownsdale Park–but not federally-administered Terry Schrunk Plaza –between the embattled downtown police precinct and City Hall now host clusters of tent encampments and even one of Portland’s now ubiquitous open-air stolen bicycle chop-shops.

As it stands now long-term encampments will take over, say, a section of sidewalk in the city and persist for months before they are cleared out–something that’s increasingly hard to do as antifa now routinely shows up to oppose homeless sweeps. Perhaps antifa’s most successful action of the last year was their forcing the retreat of police from an attempted sweep of a foreclosed home and adjacent lot and their subsequent creation of the Red House autonomous zone.

Among the Shelter to Housing Continuum goals is the elimination of zoning codes standing in the way of increased density and the placement of homeless shelters, halfway houses, home over-crowding and the like. Along these lines the new more radical progressives led by Jo Ann Hardesty are effecting the defunding and eventual elimination of Portland’s neighborhood associations.

Portland became a desirable place to live by creating a safe and pleasant downtown amidst a landscape of safe and pleasant parks. A progressive success story the undoing of which the city seems wholly unable to oppose. That undoing is being effected by the next generation of “progressive” leadership, buttressed by the new religion of “equity” and “racial justice” and by increasing numbers of homeless–drawn from throughout the Northwest to take advantage of the city’s indulgence, generosity and, now, near-lawlessness.

People continue to move in and drive up real estate values and rents despite it all, further exacerbating the homeless crisis.

The new code revisions will level a variety of restrictions, such as those on the new scourge of vagabonds living in RVs, and the placement of half-way houses, which will no no longer be identified as such to remove the “stigma”:

Post-Incarceration Facilities
An “alternative or post incarceration facility” is a Group Living use where the residents are on probation or parole, but not subject to on-site supervision by sworn officers. To remove unnecessary stigma, the conditional use requirement for these facilities is being eliminated. These facilities will be treated like any other residential use. A facility in a dwelling unit with eight or fewer bedrooms will be classified as a Household Living use and a facility in a congregate living facility or a dwelling unit with nine or more bedrooms will be classified as a Group Living use. Situations where people are under judicial detainment and the direct supervision of sworn officers still fall under the Detention Facilities use category and are not Group Living. Detention facilities are either prohibited or require a conditional use approval depending on the zone.

There is currently a moratorium on laws against sleeping in cars and RVs as long as they’re on private property; the new code would eliminate that. The city has been “de-emphasizing” enforcement generally and clusters, sometimes hybrids of tents alongside parked cars and RVs, can appear anywhere now, including downtown.

The passage of the code overhaul seems inevitable.

“But he’s so sweet after…”

Antifa has been targeting Portland’s Pearl District for the sin of gentrification, and recently redoubled their efforts after residents complained about being targeted and about subsequent police inaction. The Portland Police Bureau cited shootings–which of course are way up due to police defunding–elsewhere in the city as the reason one rampage went mostly uncontested. On March 12 antifa returned to assail an upscale apartment building, as if to send a warning to their opposition in the Pearl District Neighborhood Association.

Windows smashed at the Oro apartment building in Portland #Portland #PortlandRiots #PortlandProtests pic.twitter.com/ECXxbWLFsI

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) March 13, 2021

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The police responded this time by detaining about a hundred and arresting anyone who refused to have their picture taken. Two arrests were made and the usual cache of weapons was confiscated. Residents came out to film and argued with furious antifa. This was an escalation in tactics for the police. In response the ACLU, CAIR and others resumed their legal campaign against the practice of corralling rioters police used that night, or “kettling”. They were unsuccessful in January in getting a federal judge to outlaw it. They’ve been trying to have the practice banned since at least 2015. With the arrival of the new administration in DC they presumably face better prospects. Compliant federal judges have already banned police use of teargas and recently placed new restrictions on the use of compressed air FN303 riot control weapons.

On Saturday night one antifa faction changed tactics and showed up to pass out flyers and clean windows.

One person handed out political fliers along with bottles of Windex and rags to clean windows as others urged those among the crowd of about 100 demonstrators Saturday night not to do any damage while they marched through the Pearl District.

The early tenor of the rally was in marked contrast to recent weekends when people blocked streets, set fires, shattered windows, tagged buildings and clashed with police in the Northwest Portland neighborhood.

Whether anyone’s fooled by this remains to be seen. Media coverage is mostly credulous, of course. I’m reminded of the cliché of an abusive husband buying flowers for a freshly beaten wife. The anarchist community on social media is convulsed, with most opposing the good antifa/bad antifa schtick.

The march starts, protesters carry a banner that reads “ANTIFA LOVES YOU”. Protesters chant, pick up trash, blow bubbles and wash windows as they go #PortlandProtests pic.twitter.com/rEi2JRHq5W

— Grace Morgan (@gravemorgan) March 21, 2021

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Antifa uses the term “mutual aid” to describe its various support operations such as street medics, food distribution and bail relief. They occasionally make a show of something like feeding the homeless; last year they took advantage of a spate of wildfires to hand out water and the like somewhere, with much fanfare. These actions are what they would describe, negatively, as “highly performative” if done by their enemies; often they accompany or come on the heels of violent actions–going out to wash windows they were breaking the week before seems like a parody of the practice.

The term was coined by seminal anarchist and naturalist Prince Peter Kropotkin in a 1902 essay arguing against social Darwinism. Citing the behavior of animals to sacrifice for the survival of the herd, Kropotkin held that in the absence of such as state authority humans would naturally take upon themselves its legitimate roles absent coercion. “We take care of us” is a common antifa slogan. The makeshift ambulances that followed rioters into the action here last summer are part of this–the idea is to delegitimize authority first by drawing the police into a violent response, and then to rush in with their own “medics”, to make as if they’re the rational party dealing with inexplicable violence. It’s like Kropotkin’s vision of mutual aid replacing the state and law, sped up and on acid.

The phrase headlined a recent LA Times about a group assisting illegals in getting government benefits: “Where there is great need, mutual aid groups feed L.A.” Expect to see more of it as the terminology of anarchism becomes more mainstream.

In the Zone

Portland is considering changing its zoning laws to accommodate the increasing homeless population

The one thing most people seemed to agree on was that an extension of Portland’s housing emergency—declared in 2015 and currently set to expire April 4—is needed, with many stating how the COVID-19 pandemic has only worsened the housing crisis…

The current proposal would expand city zoning to make it easier for nonprofits, property owners and government agencies to open shelters in more areas throughout the city. It would also allow a single RV or tiny home to reside on a residential property.

It would also expand open space to allow temporary shelters—that is, tent camping—in places like city parks and golf courses. Additionally, it would permit the temporary use of community buildings without the need to declare an emergency.

Straights v Gays

A Pentecostal Church in Sandy Oregon held a “Celebrating The Natural Heterosexual Family” rally on Saturday and was met with a larger “Have a Gay Day” counter-demonstration. The Proud Boys showed up, giving the counter-demonstrators the opportunity to feel “unsafe”.

On the north side of the city’s main street: a Pentecostal church rally “to celebrate the natural heterosexual family,” ringed by the distinctive yellow collars of the Proud Boys. On the south sidewalk: the town’s LGBTQ community, gathered with rainbow flags and face masks for a parking-lot party dubbed “Have a Gay Day!”

The March 20 events were noteworthy because they marked the first Oregon appearance of the Proud Boys, a far-right men’s fraternity, since the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

But the rainy afternoon also showcased the cultural tensions in Sandy, the Clackamas County gateway to Mount Hood skiing that for much of the past year has defined itself in opposition to Portland values—from closing restaurants to prevent COVID spread to toppling statues in racial justice protests. Saturday’s events, while peaceful, suggested Sandy, like many places in Oregon, is still arguing over what its own values will be.

The progressive left in Oregon has been trying to make inroads in rural areas with such as the Rural Democracy Initiative and Keith Ellison’s Rural Engagement Strategy. There’s a program here that recruits from the growing rural Latino population in high schools.

 A junkie wore a Hawaiian shirt, without censure, to the funeral; an inept but honest attempt at formal attire. Everyone understood. At least it was faded.
He and a woman stood off to the side, with that tragic, impassive look the aging ones get. Their desiccated faces are rendered immobile; their mouths become narrow, constricted. Their stony faces can no longer convey emotion. But their eyes plead a little, still, as if there are captive mute children inside.
 And in a sense every junkie does have a child flash-frozen inside; of the dozen or so present that August day they were mostly children when they went in for the needle, usually in the mid-teens. The first and only time someone offered me the needle I was about sixteen. He meant no harm. 

“I wish I had veins like that,” another once remarked about the same time, admiring my scrawny arms; he seemed to think I was letting them go to waste. His own veins having collapsed long before in a spontaneous and futile attempt to save the body.

The hypodermic needle is like a baby’s bottle, and a junkie on the nod is like an untroubled newborn.
But he is not nourished into autonomy; he is relieved of it. He has inverted the process, passing backward through stages of dependence into non-existence. Death may be his final station, but it is incidental to his pursuit. The junkie is compulsively seeking out the pre-conscious state. He cannot return to the innocence of infancy so he substitutes oblivion. The junkie has “committed to the process”, like a true artist. He is devout in his way. The Junkie has eliminated the uncertainty and complications of living; he’s set in motion a plan; he knows how he will go out. There are no real surprises for him and his misery is without mystery.

Non-junkies cannot know the depth and nature of his love and devotion. He doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to deteriorate; he merely accepts these costs. He wants to shed his baggage like any pilgrim. He wants to eradicate himself to experience the consequent unburdening. A Junkie is napalming his own untenable position. Junkies will accept their shame and failure; they will lament the pain associated with the life they’ve chosen; but they will never disparage the high. It’s the most sublime state they’ve ever known, they’ll  tell you. 

I can be sure of none of this, viewing it from without, and it’s been a long time. Only the junkie understands the junkie; a brotherhood like no other. These are my impressions from my limited contact with them; they are necessarily insufficient. Someone once said a poem can only be conveyed by another poem; likewise the junkie’s love. His high can only be experienced, never understood. 
This was her funeral.

It was love that consumed her by way of the needle. Some may object to calling it love, but love it is. Blind and total as purest faith. Who among you has sacrificed as the junkie has sacrificed? Who among you has been as alone with their love, as solitary and content with it? Who among you has longed for love so much that you took it as poison?
Her only sin was weakness, if weakness may be called sin. Fatherless and adrift from the start. She never had a chance.
I was working the crowd with nervous energy, in between the service and the burial, as if to speed up the humiliation of a graceless, cut-rate funeral, and looking for what I do not know from these strangers.
I bore down on the two of them, eyeing me with trepidation. They must have recognized me, for how much I resemble my brother. They gave me the same uncomprehending look I’ve long known, like small children confronted with a parent’s twin for the first time. Here was Chris, without the weathering of the years and abuse; I appear to them like a phantasm, or a reproach, or a bad joke. I felt ashamed of my own vitality, in the way I did when my mother was being consumed by cancer. The couple eyed me warily as we spoke. 
Later it occurred to me: they might have been complicit in her death. Any of the old crowd there may have been. Any one of them may have given her her last fix. Maybe they felt complicity regardless.
I feel mine.

With Portland’s downtown businesses in freefall and homelessness on the rise there and in the close-in neighborhoods residential real estate nonetheless remains a seller’s market and this year March is coming in like a lion:

March typically launches the prime-time real estate market, which spans about eight months. What’s ahead? The average price for a Portland area home rose to $542,000, according to the latest housing report, which benefits sellers and keeps pressure on buyers to act fast, make concessions and select from a small amount of homes for sale.

“The biggest story continues to be the lack of inventory, which has been historically low for nine months,” says Suzanne Page, a broker with John L. Scott Southwest Portland…

The limited amount of residential properties available “continues to backlog our buyers, creating this crazy, pent-up demand,” says Page. “And I don’t see it slowing down. Overall, the influx to the Portland metro real estate market is greater than the exodus out.”

Prices are escalating, according to the latest Regional Multiple Listing Service (RMLS) report.

I’ve read that among antifa’s goals is the destruction of property values. Antifa’s detractors can’t be blamed for sharing a desire for the local market here to crater, reflecting the degradation of life here and, maybe somehow, prompting local government and a placid public to opposition. But, despite businesses fleeing downtown and commercial real estate there moribund, buyers continue to pour into Portland’s suburban neighborhoods. Coronavirus lockdowns and the increase in working from home are sparing politicians and their implicit allies in real estate that reckoning by spurring a shift to the suburbs.

The pandemic has redefined how many Americans work, forced more of us to find refuge in our homes, and called into question the necessity of those dreaded commutes to a downtown office.

We are seeing these issues play out in real estate markets. Single-family home prices are on the rise — increasing 7 percent during the past calendar year. Meanwhile, commercial real estate demand has remained relatively flat — perhaps a surprise given the massive shift to working from home. 

But underneath these aggregate trends lie a substantial reallocation of demand away from city centers toward city suburbs for the largest metro areas in the U.S. 

This creates what we call the “donut effect”: rising prices in the suburbs and slumping prices in major city centers being hollowed out by a fear of crowds and the growth of working from home.

Portland’s downtown is being hollowed out already in the wake of rioting. The effect of our new anarchy is combining with Covid restrictions, of questionable utility, to spur a new flight to the suburbs–years of progressive Portland’s success in creating a livable downtown is quickly being spent, at the same time any political reckoning for that is deferred by the influx of homebuyers and better than expected tax revenues in the wake of all the rioting.

While black bloc anarchists under the antifa banner continue to attack the federal courthouse and other symbols of authority in Portland their allies in authority and establishment activism assist through lawfare, filing lawsuits and amicus briefs that seek to limit the tactics law enforcement can use for riot control.

Mayor and police commissioner Ted Wheeler has been desperately trying to finally put a stop to the anarchists’ campaign by allowing a more aggressive police response to riots. Recently antifa set upon a favorite target, the Pearl District, to break stuff and assail an apartment building, likely in response to a neighborhood group organizing to oppose them. The police responded by “kettling” –corralling–them and demanding protesters allow themselves to be photographed or be arrested. In January federal judges found the practice legal in denying two ACLU civil suits to ban the practice.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has allied with the ACLU and others in leading the legal arm of the anarchist campaign. One founder of Oregon CAIR is a prominent and vociferous police abolition advocate. On March 13 they combined with the Oregon Justice Resource Center to demand Portland Police refrain from kettling, invoking the sainted Breonna Taylor, who they claim was murdered in her sleep:

PORTLAND, Ore.—Today leaders from the Oregon Justice Resource Center, CAIR-Oregon, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon released a statement on the Portland Police Bureau following the mass detention and arrest of protesters last night.

“Today, we wake up one year ago from the day when Breonna Taylor was killed by police officers while she was sleeping peacefully in her own bed in her own home. Officers still have not been held accountable for killing her. Breonna Taylor should be alive today.

“And today Portland wakes up again to an unaccountable Portland Police Bureau (PPB) who last night detained an entire city block of people for protesting on their own streets in their own city — and then, without lawful basis, required individuals to take off their COVID-19 protective face masks, be photographed, and to show identification before being permitted to leave. 

“Police killings, police assaults, and police states must end, and we must continue to declare that Black lives matter until our government actions reflect that truth.

“Under the authority of Mayor and Police Commissioner Ted Wheeler and Police Chief Chuck Lovell, what PPB did last night — kettling — is an aggressive and indiscriminate police tactic of surrounding and boxing in a group of people and blocking off all exit points. Both the Oregon Justice Resource Center and ACLU of Oregon are currently representing clients in federal lawsuits against PPB’s use of the kettling tactic against anti-Trump protesters in 2017. In neither case has the court approved of or found constitutional this abusive tactic. While the courts determined qualified immunity shielded officers from accountability for their actions in 2017, the court did not greenlight the tactic for use. 

I believe they’re referring to the kettling I was caught up in at Portland’s Inauguration Day rioting, when they arrested about a hundred, keeping us overnight in the drunk tank. The coalition reminds the city they have an ally in Multnomah District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who rivals his buddy San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin in progressive zeal, before invoking without naming Andy Ngo, who routinely publishes publicly available mugshots, which antifa breathlessly describes as “providing Atomwaffen with kill lists.”

“That PPB officers also continue to violate Oregon law and invade the constitutional right to privacy — by collecting photographs and identification of those protesting the police — underscores that PPB aims to intimidate and chill the rights of our community members and local and independent press. It is clearly understood by PPB that the elected district attorney will not prosecute individuals arrested and charged for an alleged offense that is not supported by the evidence, nor will the district attorney prosecute where PPB attempted to curtail First Amendment rights. It is also clearly understood by PPB that the personal identifiable information collected by them is often quickly made public and then is used by far-right groups and personalities to doxx, harass, and intimidate protestors. Historically, this tactic by PPB has been used exclusively against progressive and left-leaning protestors, consistent with their bias as reflected in their lax enforcement towards violent and hateful far-right groups and militias. 

“[V]iolent and hateful far-right groups and militias” have never engaged in the sort of rioting antifa perpetuates, of course. Their violence has consisted entirely of provoking antifa to violence by their mere presence on the street, with the intention of exposing them.

But in our environment of leftist narrative control the melees that arose from these encounters has only served to lend plausibility (in the eyes of the credulous) to the left’s claim the city is routinely under attack by fascists. It’s safe to say the naïve patriot groups’ strategy to provoke and expose antifa violence (very much like antifa’s strategy to provoke and document police violence) has failed utterly; like everything else it’s been fed into the media narrate-o-matic and come out as palatable gruel for the credulous. It’s nice to hold the Megaphone.

The progress of the cycle, rightwing provocation producing leftwing violence, which has been ongoing since Trump’s presidential campaign, only served to ultimately draw the rightwingers into the one lurid and sensational act of their own violence, the storming of the Capitol on January 6. That incident–and I’ve seen no one suggest this though it seems obvious–was only possible because of the months-long insurrection antifa initiated with the Summer of Soros. The naïve patriot groups were emulating the escalated tactics of the left, and competing with them. At the end of the day they were hoisted by their own petard, provoked into doing something stupid which was then documented by their enemies and is now being used to shut them, and us, down.

The letter invokes black body privilege, of course:

“Law enforcement agencies — from police departments to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — continue to brutalize Black and Brown bodies with impunity and no accountability. So, people of all backgrounds and races continue to assemble together to demand justice. In these calls for action, it is not lost on our communities that police continue to use militarized weapons that are harming the environment and causing the physical destruction of property in Portland, oftentimes in BIPOC or lower-income communities.

“Brown” is now capitalized, apparently. The letter itself is the documentary part of the left’s provoke violence/document violence strategy against police and authority, and with an ally in the US Department of Justice now, is chilling:

“What is PPB’s response when our community demands safety and justice? They repeatedly engage in violent and unconstitutional tactics that morally compel the community to respond — through protest, mutual aid, legal action, and legislation. It is clear that our public funds and resources must be reallocated away from failed law enforcement practices and spent on the community and programs that actually keep the public safe. 

“PPB officers commit violence and break the law again and again at lawful protests because they know the mayor, the police chief, and the City of Portland will not hold them accountable, by PPB disciplinary processes or by shifting resources, even though the lack of accountability keeps the public unsafe. If Mayor Ted Wheeler, even with his direct oversight over the PPB as police commissioner, will not act, then other federal, state, local and community leaders must do so. 

“First, we request that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland investigate the ongoing civil rights abuses that local and federal law enforcement are committing in Portland. Second, we call on all Oregon state legislators and Multnomah County elected and public officials to fully and unequivocally support the legislative reforms on policing forwarded by the BIPOC Caucus of the Oregon Legislature, which aim to provide greater oversight, transparency, and accountability of law enforcement agencies in Oregon.

“Law enforcement traumatization of our community must be stopped.” 

We’ll see now if the nation’s highest law enforcement official joins in with anarchism. Interesting times.

“Joker, we have a new directive from MSNBC on black and brown…also, it’s black ‘bodies’ not people…”

update: an antifa adjacent acquaintance reported last night a “special meeting” was called by antifa to address the open dissension reported below.

Portland anarchists’ ongoing insurgency against law, order and decency was reinvigorated last Thursday when authorities attempted removing the last barriers protecting the Mark O Hatfield Courthouse downtown. Within hours of the steel fence being removed black bloc anarchists, marching now for the putative cause of opposing an oil pipeline through Indian land in Minnesota, were chased off by police after assailing the building and breaking one of the massive store-front style windows.

That night protesters were back trying to set fire to the plywood boarding up front. When I visited early the morning after the air was still noxious with tear gas–mostly in the park across the street, as if infusing and emanating from the grass and trees there. Now the building is back to its most fortified state–the fence sections previously taken down were on their way to DC and had to be recalled:

The U.S. Department of Justice decided the fence was removed prematurely after people continued to break windows and spray paint graffiti on the courthouse building the last several nights.

Officials overseeing the return of the fence said it had been 15 miles out of Portland, on a truck headed to Washington, D.C., when the truck was directed to return to Portland.

Saturday night hundreds were in attendance to resume the fight, now in the name of Breonna Taylor. Surveying anarchist Twitter Sunday reveals dissension in their ranks between what sounds like black grifters and earnest white anarchists. A group in the former category calling itself The Portland Protest Bureau (formerly Black Unity PDX), is accused of having “swooped” in to claim leadership of an action Saturday night they had no hand in organizing.

Laura Jedeed is one of the better and braver propagandists on their side who’s been less afraid to call out black grift* than her fellows. She reported on Saturday’s antifa goat-fuck:

“Princess” was a fixture at the protests in summer and was one of the hangers-on present for antifa security’s savage beating of Adam Haner**, who was put in a coma for trying to talk them out of beating a transsexual they had robbed and roughed up. Also present for that was Michael Reinhoehl, antifa security member, who weeks later murdered Proud Boy Aaron Danielson on the street. Princess is an overweight young black guy who, I assume, identifies as a female despite making no efforts to present as one.

The black swooper/grifters apparently showed up with a videographer in tow, Mason Lake, who’s been identified, rightly or wrongly, as a federal snitch by the movement. Rumors are they’re making or trying to sell a documentary to Netflix or some other establishment outlet.

Another earnest stalwart of the anarchist movement:

The “violent teens” were a very young group of black and brown kid-thugs who terrorized the blocks around the occupation at the height of summer’s madness. They cleared the streets of homeless and other vulnerable types and were rumored to be controlled, somewhat, by antifa security. I filmed them beating down a very young black bloc anarchist (who said he was protecting a homeless man they’d set upon) shortly before the Haner beat-down.***

The jockeying to be “famous” is definitely a factor for many if not most people seeking to take leadership roles or establish themselves as press, especially blacks. There was a giddy air early on when many anarchist-allied livestreamers and local press were garnering national attention, being interviewed on friendly national media like MSNBC and being published in the New York Times. The press and livestreamers were eventually brought under control through intimidation by the genuine anarchists behind the movement who now maintain, mostly, narrative control. Black activists or livestreamers are more difficult for anarchist leadership to bring in line, enjoying as they do their sacralized position and a much lower sense of shame, or self-awareness.

*Laura’s mini-documentary on the black grifters who co-opted white antifa’s successful “Riot Ribs” mutual aid operation, replacing it with “BLM Ribs”; after that miserable enterprise persisted for a time mostly ignored (people were curiously uninterested in food prepared by drugged-out thugs); eventually they sacked and chased out a wretched tent encampment nearby because it was drawing donations to which they felt entitled:

“BLM Ribs” was the last pathetic presence of the summer’s occupation of Lownsdale Park across from the federal courthouse. One night not long after this a carload of armed thugs came along and cleared them out, and the tale came to a close.

**

The man was kicked and knocked unconscious in the street. #antifa medics arrive to help. pic.twitter.com/JuBmSShAyC

— Kalen From Scriberr (@FromKalen) August 17, 2020

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