untethered

A homeless man ran past the storefront window and frantically entered the little lobby where I stood.

“Only two people in the store at a time sir.” The old woman behind the counter said, routinely.

“You don’t understand!” He shouted, pleading, pulling at his jacket. “You don’t understand!” He was a few feet in front of me, wild eyed, his flaring negroid nostrils filled with snot. “You don’t understand!” He all but ran past a pair of Middle Eastern girls hustling out, embarrassed, and right around the counter, heading for the nether reaches of the little pizzeria.

The old woman blocked his way but he would not stop. He did not raise a hand or grab her, but just kept coming, squeezing past the narrow passage a little on one side and then the other, as she grabbed hopelessly at his jacket and blocked him with her body. She was losing the struggle and the other employees, some sort of transgender person and a petite young woman, stood and stared.

And I had just wanted something to eat.

I came across, realizing I had no idea what I was doing. I think I barred him with my forearm across the chest–fortunately he was no bigger than me–as I grabbed rather timidly at his coat here and there, thinking his clothes might hold God knows what filth. Still he wouldn’t raise a hand, but did not stop. He thrashed with manic strength, weaving, slipping, making slow progress against our pathetic attempts to stop him.

Finally he ended up on the ground, I think in trying to execute a pass-rusher style spin-move on the old woman, who may have collapsed on the ground behind him. Desperate now I grabbed a foot–Converse style sneakers, wet and kind of slick in my bare hands, I noted with mild disgust, and started pulling. He could have kicked me square in the face with his other foot but thankfully did not. He grabbed wildly for something to stop our progress–I was surprised to find it working, that I was actually dragging the screaming man toward the door–but the tile wall on one side offered no purchase and the little metal rack on the other side just came along with us in his hand before catching up in something else.

He kept up his desperate pleas; I think he said something about the cold, or food, but always, like a refrain, “you don’t understand!”

I was screaming myself now, enraged by his pleas, worked up by the sound of my own voice, growling like a lunatic; “motherfucker get the fuck out!” “You motherfucker! You motherfucker!”; “I’ll drag you across the pavement you bastard!” I threatened as we reached the door, held open by the old woman, then proceeded to do just that; I felt a little sick at the sound of his wailing, genuine, unrestrained, and the thought of what the pavement must have felt like. The door slammed behind us; I let go and the man bounded off, heading into the boarded-up gas station convenience store next door.

“Oh shit.” I said.

I came back in and asked to use the sink to wash my hands. “I was handling a homeless guy’s feet.” I said impatiently to the kid’s quizzical expression. The gender-non-specific one came over and complimented me on the “blocking”–must be a term in their community.

“Thanks. Draggin’ a guy across the floor’s harder than it looks” I said jokingly, looking over at the petite one, a Mexican cutie, who won’t look up; I suspect she’s terrified of me, after all the screaming.

The old woman and I hung around the boarded up gas station convenience store, unable to see what was happening inside, waiting for the police. They came along in about ten minutes; one unmarked SUV pulled up briefly, then a lone female cop in a black-and-white. Her questions evinced two particular concerns: was the man having a drug related episode and was anyone injured.

The man was not arrested or detained I learned when I checked back in later; the policewoman had explained to the old woman an arrest could not be made in this circumstance, and the desperate man wandered off into the night.

Countless crimes and assaults have gone unrecognized in the chaos of the summer of Black Lives Matter riots. We can expect those that such as Portland’s progressive District Attorney is forced to acknowledge will be quietly settled with light sentences as the establishment covers its tracks further.

Adam Haner was savagely beaten on August 16 by a group acting as BLM security in downtown Portland. The same group claimed as a member Michael Reinoehl–he can be seen hanging about the scene of the Haner beating as part of the crew.

Here’s the full video from Drew Hernandez’ Lives Matter of BLM security’s strong-arm spree that culminated in the attack; it began with BLM security performing what activists mean by “de-escalation”–forcibly removing a man from protests because he looked suspicious, marching him to the perimeter before sending him on his way with a beating in the middle of the street.

Reinoehl assassinated Proud Boy Aaron Danielson on the street not two weeks after on August 29, insisting later in his Vice interview he was there as a member of BLM security–such as it is –to protect downtown from the Proud Boys.

Reinoehl’s status as security was backed up in a curious report by the New York Times in between the murder and Reinoehl’s death–that is virtually impossible to find now–wherein he was identified as such and praised by other BLM security members for his talent at “de-escalation”.

Reinoehl went down in a hail of federally deputized task-force bullets under suspicious circumstances soon after, and tells no further tales. Video suggested Reineohl targeted and stalked Danielson with the help of at least one other person who authorities sought for questioning.

The coup de grace in the Haner beating was delivered by a deranged mulatto named Marquis Love who appeared to be a leader of BLM security–he went about in a vest marked “security”–kicking the fallen victim in the head with such force one had to wonder if it was a killing blow. 

He was sentenced to 20 months in jail for third degree assault and felony riot November 9: 

Love received a 20-month prison sentence “after months of pretrial negotiations and a judicial settlement conference,” according to the DA’s office.

What Love could possibly have to negotiate with is anyone’s guess. A quick search of the phrase “judicial settlement conference” finds its expected use in civil cases where a judge mediates to avoid trial.

Michael Reinoehl wasn’t just antifa security, he was seasoned, sporting a gunshot wound going into his last hurrah, obtained again acting as security:

On July 26, Reinoehl was shot near his elbow after he got involved in a scuffle between an armed white man and a group of young people of color. The man who was carrying that gun, Aaron Scott Collins, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he and a friend had just left a bar when they saw the group harassing an older Black man. His friend began filming them with a phone, and the group confronted them, calling them Nazis, he said.

In the ensuing scuffle, Collins said, he was struck in the head with a skateboard and fell down. He felt people trying to grab his gun from its holster, and he decided to pull it out to get control of it. Reinoehl, whom he did not know, then began grabbing at the slide, Collins said.

Reinoehl later that day spoke to an AP videographer. His arm was wrapped in a bloody bandage; he said he was on his way to meet protest medics so they could change it.

He said he didn’t know what had started the altercation between Collins and the group, but that several people had decided to intervene when they saw Collins fighting with minors.

“As soon as the adults jumped in, he pulled out a gun,” Reinoehl said. “I jumped in there and pulled the gun away from people’s heads, avoided being shot in the stomach and I got shot in the arm.”

He added: “It’s escalating to a point where they’re trying to disrupt us in every way that’s illegal. They’re shooting at us, they’re sending people in who are starting fights. It’s terrible. … It’s warfare.”

Reinoehl’s assertions of rightwing infiltrators is of course delusional. The group Reihoehl got shot defending is almost certainly the infamous child gang that scourged the lawless streets–BLM security’s streets–in late summer. Here I encountered them jumping a white antifa pup–who it appears was trying to stop them from harassing yet another old homeless man on the street at the intersection of the Cursed 7/11; the Haner beating would begin here about an hour and a half after this footage was taken. The kids were a terror for about a month, harassing and often mobbing any weak person they saw on the street. Rumors were they were related in some way to…good old BLM security:

I believe children are the future.

Jo Ann Hardesty is the first-term Portland city commissioner leading the effort to defund police. In the heady days of early summer the city coughed up 15 million in cuts immediately, with radicals demanding 50 million, to be transferred over to anti-cop activist groups. The elections were a refutation of defunding efforts and the riots, with a radical commissioner losing to an establishment candidate and the hapless Ted Wheeler winning reelection over the creepy passive aggressive antifa androgyne Sarah Iannaronne, who had promised to hand over to Hardesty the mayor’s job as police commissioner.

Hardesty’s proposed 18 million in police cuts were then voted down by virtue of Wheeler’s and swing-vote newbie Dan Ryan’s no votes. Hardesty, who’d been all but running the city when BLM bestrode it like a colossus this summer, lost last week’s election without being on the ballot. Hardesty may have crashed back to earth, for the moment at least, but when police budgeting comes up again we can be assured it will be with declining tax revenues due to Covid and, of course, the riots on behalf of defunding the police. Demagogy and budgetary reality will make some “defunding” inevitable. Cratering tax revenues can achieve much of the abolitionists’ goals; “starve the beast” for Bolsheviks.

Understandably, Jo Ann went out the other night to blow off some steam. I was unexpectedly struck by sympathy–sympathy of the loner let’s call it–for her when I thought of her spending her time like this, drinking alone at an Indian casino over the state line, just another lonely wretch.

She called a Lyft. Her driver, apparently observing Covid protocols, had the windows “cracked” partly open. It’s been cold out recently. Jo Ann asked him to roll up the window and he refused. She demanded, he cancelled the ride and ordered her out of the car; she refused, demanding he get her another car. A familiar and pathetic scene, the stuff of rideshare drivers’ gag reels on YouTube, ensued.

Forget the obvious irony: Hardesty et al seem genuinely unable to imagine what police abolition will mean–despite all the talk of “reimagining” policing. They genuinely think they, when the time comes, will still be able to make that call. Even for the petty things.

What strikes me is that Hardesty retains very much a sense of entitlement–she is, pardon the phrase, a carbon copy of the “Karen”, with none that slandered character’s sense of fair play and all of her zeal–white Karen cites the rules, black Karen disdains them.

What antifa does now that Trump is likely defeated and they’ve served that purpose, in the eyes of their elite enablers, will demonstrate how much autonomy and independence they have. The movement faces a crisis of success and opportunity.

They’ve brought amateur and professional journalists under control along with their own livestreamers; raw footage of their activities on the ground, some of it astounding, was everywhere all summer; it started drying up about a month ago as antifa took media control. Notably people still turn up at events, even now, marked as “press” and claiming attendant privileges as they film for evidence of police brutality, presumably ceding editorial control to movement leaders. Also notable is that many of these same amateur and professional journalists have helped police out conservative or objective journalists on the ground, who are removed with violence or intimidation.

Having produced (in the eyes of the elite, I imagine) results in deposing Trump and having brought their media to heel (and demonstrated their level of discipline and control thereby), antifa casts about for new slogans and agitprop to keep the movement rolling in the absence of Trump mania–and their transition perhaps from useful weapon to dangerous threat in the eyes of their powerful friends, who are about to find out if they can put this feral cat back in the bag.

“No Good Presidents” is offered as a theme for transitioning from the defiant Trump to the supplicant Biden, in this poster for a recent action:

“In Solidarity with BLM” is notable as well. Look for “in solidarity with” to replace actual BLM protests–probably an attempt to get out from under the demands of blacks to lead and speak at any BLM event, where the speeches are depressingly uniform, equal parts racial invective and cash app solicitation.

One story untold–as a result of antifa narrative control–of this summer’s Black Lives Matter siege in Portland has been the collapse of that aspect of the movement as a result of black incoherence, grift and predation upon their more earnest white co-conspirators. Black Lives Matter failed here because it has too many black people. The tale of the ill-fated “Riot Ribs” franchise, started when a lone white guy turned up with a grill giving away ribs, growing into a donation-drawing enterprise and thus ending ignominiously when taken over by black thugs, who also took it upon themselves to clear out a nearby tent encampment for the recently arrested and released–they were angered at not getting a cut of donations.

The “Wall of Moms” faced a similar fate. They surrendered their franchise after it started attracting donations to a local black advocacy group under the guise of handing control over to black women; it promptly disappeared, like Riot Ribs, where a lone tent and grill advertises “BLM Ribs”, always with a few spectral negroes hanging about.

Social media suggests some disarray now in planning and strategy.  Antifa is trying to find itself, God help us.

Antifa, too, must adapt to the new post-election reality. Demonstrations and energy have waned with the election’s passing and it remains to be seen if passions will revive. Antifa continues small-scale “direct actions” such as besieging the home of a new city councilman to pressure a vote for defunding police and breaking the windows of a Democratic Party office, but with smaller groups numbering in the dozens.

Antifa “paid a late night visit” to the besieged councilman says the euphemistic headline over this report by antifa-allied reporter Sergio Olmos, who reveals here in a veiled plea and buried lede antifa is going completely dark and driving out even allied press:

Ryan told the protesters he was in contact with police and asked them not to intervene in the impromptu discussion. He also cooperated with protesters in trying to limit press coverage of the event. The commissioner said he did not want photos or video taken.

“Dude, no pictures,” one demonstrator said at one point to a photographer from the Oregonian/OregonLive.

“This is not your entertainment,” another person said.

“We don’t want your images here,” the first demonstrator said. “Delete that.”

While there is no legal or reasonable expectation of privacy at an event taking place on a public street, at times journalists have been approached by protesters and harassed for attempting to cover news events. Similar warnings were issued to members of the press earlier this month when some demonstrators tore down statues in downtown Portland.

Tuesday night marked the first time a sitting government official has condoned First Amendment suppression with the help of protesters. Ryan’s office did not immediately respond to questions on the issue.

All summer long Sergio has helped the cause with selective reporting and bias–and he’s gained quite a bit professionally, appearing on national television and being published in the New York Times. He’s worked hard. I’ve seen him out there, strapping on his gear. He can probably distinguish between various types of tear gas.

It must rile to be told to, as Donald Trump might say, stand down. But antifa enters a new, uncertain period having risen in numbers, refined their tactics, hardened themselves in battle, having demonstrated the impotence of government and society to stop them, literally getting away with murder as a movement, having reached a manic pitch that doesn’t seem likely to be sated by Joe Biden’s grinning carcass calling for unity; they aren’t willing to go back but are probably casting about for targets with their new strength and the veneer of legitimacy provided by such as Sergio there.

I passed through bland, peaceful fields of unknown crops on my way into Salem; they grew smaller before blending into the outer business district of trucking outfits, processing plants, train tracks; then the tacky outposts of the budding immigrant colony begin to appear like road signs: carnicerias, immigration lawyers, some advocacy organization with a depressing and sinister name announcing itself from a bland, windowless industrial park building. Then it’s through doughty neighborhoods where fading and unkempt homes mingled with well-kept houses like retrieved artifacts from old America. In its surface mediocrity and disjointed lack of character or coherence Salem is both what the elites hate about America and the America they want to bring about, somehow.

One can’t help but think of the Third World after passing through this mild blight to the state capitol building, built by the Public Works Administration in the 1930s when “stripped classicism” was the norm in public buildings for fascist and socialist states alike. It stands there like another artifact, this of a past wherein the two sides shared the confidence in progress and science that would soon be fed into the grinder of World War II.

The architecture will prove adaptable to the New American Order, but the gold statue of a proud pioneer atop the upturned trashcan rotunda will likely not survive.

I was there to see the “stop the steal” rally. A few small skirmishes with counterdemonstrators had occurred before I arrived. I passed a group of antifa massing at the corner of the park adjacent to the capitol building and then a group of three armed patriot types coming down the sidewalk from the opposite direction. They eyed me with non-hostile curiosity. One self-consciously pulled his facemask up. I gave them a tight-grin head-nod, as if we were just out for a normal stroll.

When I came upon the scene insults were being traded with a lone counterdemonstrator on the edge of the group, numbering no more than a hundred by the time I arrived. Scattered cars passing through honked in solidarity, a few gave the finger. Here and there clots of people gathered around a furious debate with one or two interlopers.

The Trump supporters dispersed by nightfall and a larger black bloc group stepped in to fill the space, tormenting the police in the absence of the Trump supporters. I headed back to Portland. There the mood was celebratory if shrill and. “Biden Harris” flags flew abreast of BLM banners and you had the feeling the understanding was this would be a temporary privilege. By last night Portland antifa was attacking Democratic campaign headquarters.

Party on.

On Tuesday Portland voters refuted Portland rioters, taking back at the ballot box much of what antifa/BLM gained on the street through a long summer of organization and hard work. The election was bound to be a referendum on the Summer of Georges (Floyd and Soros), and came as the only relief and recourse available to voters appalled by the riots and police defunding, voters who had no advocates in politics and media willing to challenge BLM. The election came like the lifting of a hand stretching a rubber band–the narrative hand of phony popular consent–the results the snapping return to a normal state.

Needless to say, antifa already has something to say about that.

Tuesday’s local elections were as much of a refutation of the riots as a place like Portland can muster, with Mayor Ted Wheeler winning reelection over the self-styled antifa candidate Sarah Iannarone. Ted didn’t represent a law-and-order faction (un-representable by virtue of one-party rule), just an exhausted how-about-less-chaos? faction, in opposition to Iannarone and councilmember Chloe Eudaly, another antifa ally, who went down in flames like Old Glory in the park blocks on Tuesday.

Her vanquisher, representing real estate interests opposed to Eudaly’s anti-landlord policies, had already been campaigning before everything changed over the summer. She did them a favor by enthusiastically supporting police defunding and the riots–in a political stunt she used her position as parks commissioner to bill the federal government daily for the concrete and fence barrier put around the Mark O Hatfield Federal Courthouse after antifa started attacking it–whatever the merits of her renter’s rights policies, they were the last thing on the minds of voters.

Wheeler’s reelection and subsequent no vote killed anti-cop councilmember Jo Ann Hardesty’s bill to gouge another 18 million out of the police budget, and her lamentations were profound.

Going into the election Hardesty had her own and Eudaly’s vote for defunding, with outgoing commissioner Amanda Fritz and the mayor no votes. Newcomer and neophyte Dan Ryan replaced a retiring councilmember just in time to be thrown into the present chaos as the swing vote on defunding the police. He voted with Wheeler to delay a vote on defunding until after the election; Wheeler’s loss would ensure passage of Hardesty’s measure. Wheeler’s win left poor Dan in the position of swing vote for a second go-round, having already enraged antifa and Hardesty’s faction by voting for the delay. Antifa turned up at his suburban home at night to begin a campaign of intimidation first to try and pressure his vote and now, I guess, just for spite.

Having seen off, they believe, the ogre Trump, the establishment left and its monied interests intend to go back to an orderly and managed pre-Trump dismantling of the historic American nation and pilfering of its wealth (as “white privilege”), only faster and harder, its tenets and vanities codified and consecrated, as it were, over the last four years of narrative hustle culminating in the Summer of Georges.

But there are two factions that may have something to say about it before it’s over–the streetfighters of antifa and their counterparts on the right.

Last night National Guard troops joined local law enforcement to put down a riot in downtown Portland, after governor Kate Brown used the pretext of right wing violence to quietly activate them the day before the election under a “unified command” with Portland police and others:

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Monday put the National Guard on standby for a 48-hour period around Election Day and used her executive authority to activate a unified command of state troopers, sheriff’s deputies and Portland police to handle any protests…

“We’ve seen firsthand what happens when free expression is fueled by hate,” the Democratic governor said. “We know that there are some people who might want to use peaceful election night protests to promote violence and property destruction,”

“I want to be very, very clear that voter intimidation and political violence will not be tolerated. Not from the left, not from the right and not from the center. Not this week, not any week in Oregon,” Brown said.

The unified command will begin at 5 p.m. Monday and end at 5 p.m. Wednesday. It can be extended if necessary, Brown said. State police and the Multnomah County sheriff’s office will oversee the unified force. That allows its members to use tear gas if needed. Portland police are prohibited from using tear gas after an order by Mayor Ted Wheeler, who is also police commissioner.

Ted Wheeler has since won reelection and antifa councilmember Chloe Eudaly lost, stranding councilmember Jo Ann Hardesty in her quest to dismantle the police for the time being. The local insurrection can be expected to continue, outraged by these results.

A large protest at the riverfront spawned a group of 100 to 200 black bloc that advanced on downtown, as they typically do. A riot was declared on Harvey Milk Street very early–someone told me around 7:30 the police LRAD sound truck was making the announcement. Dedicated black bloc in full gear straggled in here and there at the same time, converging on the Justice Center and federal courthouse. Where one might have expected to find a celebratory mood it was very dark. After I took this video I was briefly tailed by two guys in a white van I took to be antifa; the passenger, sporting what I think was an ironic moustache, peered, bemused, at my half-ass dash camera setup (a notched piece of Styrofoam holding my phone):

Don’t mention the riots. Businesses are abandoning downtown Portland:

Businesses want out of downtown Portland, as soon as possible.

The amount of space available for sublease in downtown jumped by 36% in the spring as tenants sought to vacate offices and storefronts in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, according to data provided by real estate firm CBRE. Other firms have also reported an increase in the number of downtown businesses looking to leave.

“From all the uncertainty that COVID-19 has created, the downtown market has suffered the most,” said Craig Sweitzer, a landlord and the founder of commercial real estate firm, Urban Works Real Estate.

It is difficult to measure the economic effect of the rioting, with Covid measures providing convenient cover for an already duplicitous press. It isn’t that your downtown is boarded-up, covered in obscene, hectoring graffiti and grotesque street art and beginning to feel a little feral, you see, it’s the damned virus.

Of course area merchants have their own thoughts constituting the buried lede:

Kassab Jewelers was looted after a riot broke out on May 30 following a peaceful protest in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. Kassab Jewelers’ downtown location has yet to reopen and its owners are now suing the City of Portland for failing to protect downtown merchants.

Bob Speltz, a spokesman for Portland-based insurance company The Standard, said in August that the company had relocated downtown employees to the suburbs after its office building sustained repeated damage and several employees and security contractors were assaulted near the downtown office. He said The Standard was deeply supportive of a renewed focus on racial justice, but concerned about continued “criminal activity from opportunists not associated with the legitimate protests.”

Rioters and their press supporters scoff at the notion they’re causing economic damage. I hope they’re right. Hell, maybe we’ll turn a profit off this BLM thing!

Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt’s office introduced an online dashboard for tracking riot cases referred to his office.

Over two-thirds of cases referred by police rejected, standing at 666. It’s as if the Devil is mocking us.