untethered

July 4, 2020

I was rolling slow down Broadway when I caught the attention of a homeless headcase. He smiled and stepped off the curb, tossing a slice of cheese onto the windshield.
“What the hell?”
“Black lives matter” he replied with a sheepish grin and shuffled off.

A young asian woman, her light dress flowing nicely in the breeze, holding a sign, posed for a photo in front of the George Floyd memorial where Apple’s open display floor once stood behind clear glass, a deliberate aesthetic of transparency and light, now boarded over with black-painted plywood covered in graffitti and street art, as opaque and foreboding as a hip hop kaaba.
 
Fittingly the building sits raised on broad steps like a temple.

The mood was ominous around seven in the afternoon, where the crowd was just beginning to form in front of the Justice Center and, now fair game to rioters apparently, US District Court building. An effective sound system was playing hip hop. Stands were set up here and there in the park blocks giving out food and water. Stacks of pizza were available at a main tent where someone was setting up for a video shoot. Somewhere someone was barbecuing. Off somewhere I could hear a furious black man asserting himself in urban-pidgen. Something about not giving a fuck. Whether it had to do with racial injustice or the usual petty personal honor I couldn’t tell. I’m sure they can’t.

Later an overwhelmingly white crowd would riot, putting a good thousand or more on the streets to shoot fireworks at the edifices of the law for the usual purpose, to draw the police out, forcing them to violently clear the streets and provide any plausible examples of brutality that can be fed back into the narrate-o-matic as proof the police are irredeemable.

They were very vocal about protecting their tiny contingent of non-whites from the police–who, presumably were just itching to have at them, still. For a while they were all led by an effeminate black man with orange hair.

From the Portland Police Bureau’s account:

At 10:48 p.m., demonstrators continued launching fireworks and projectiles at the Federal Courthouse. Because of this, several windows were broken and fireworks and projectiles entered the Federal Courthouse building.
To protect the life and safety of personnel both inside and outside of the Federal Court House, just after 11 p.m., a riot was declared. Officers began dispersing the crowd moving demonstrators from the closed area of Southwest Broadway to Southwest 1st Avenue, Southwest Columbia to Southwest Yamhill Street.

As officers dispersed the crowd, demonstrators threw bricks, mortars, M-80s, and other flammables towards them. To defend themselves from serious injury, officers used crowd control munitions and tear gas at this time. Lasers were directed at Officer’s eyes, which is unlawful. Despite having moved from the closed area, demonstrators began to trickle back to Southwest 3rd Avenue, starting a large bonfire in the middle of Southwest 3rd Avenue and Southwest Main Street 1 a.m.

Antifa has taken to impersonating the police sound truck that plays over a loudspeaker the standard admonitions to clear the street, etc.

A vehicle associated with the demonstration had a speaker system and false announcements were broadcast that appeared to impersonate the Portland Police Bureau’s sound truck. 

There’s probably a law somewhere against false emergency broadcasts.

Police used tear gas liberally when clearing the Justice Center siege, and I’m sure I heard rubber bullets raining down later while watching the livefeed (see below).

Fireworks were deployed by antifa.

As officers dispersed the crowd, demonstrators threw bricks, mortars, M-80s, and other flammables towards them. To defend themselves from serious injury, officers used crowd control munitions and tear gas at this time. Lasers were directed at Officer’s eyes, which is unlawful. Despite having moved from the closed area, demonstrators began to trickle back to Southwest 3rd Avenue, starting a large bonfire in the middle of Southwest 3rd Avenue and Southwest Main Street 1 a.m.

One thing we haven’t had in Portland are people carrying weapons openly, such as in Seattle and elsewhere. Last night a mystery gunman freaked some people out.

…a man carrying a rifle was seen in the area of Southwest 4th Avenue and Salmon Street. Several demonstrators surrounded him, but left him alone and eventually he left.

Cops listed thirteen arrests this morning.  At least one handgun was found on an arrestee.

It appears most are still being released right away, and the few with more serious charges are immediately bailed out.

I watched the Fourth of July demonstrations from the safety and comfort of my home–the phrase has taken on a whole new meaning this year:

“It can’t be that everyone’s gone crazy.”
The middle-aged woman was speaking to an elderly woman I took to be her mother. They were walking the graffiti gauntlet along the Justice Center’s north side. Her tone was disbelieving and explanatory a the same time. They had the guileless simplicity of midwestern tourists out of old America.

Last night demonstrators were ferocious, assaulting the building with industrial-grade fireworks, pulling down the plywood boarding and trying to set them on fire. At some point US Marshalls emerged from the US District Court building next door to make an arrest.

On the lawfare front an ACLU lawsuit filed last Sunday yielded another limit on police tactics when a judge yesterday issued a temporary restraining order that

bars police from arresting or using physical force against anyone they “know or reasonably should know” is a journalist or legal observer – unless officers have probable cause that the person has committed a crime. The order also states that police can’t remove cameras, recording equipment, or press passes of journalists and legal observers nor can they ask them to disperse. 

Many antifa allies record and livestream their actions, and I’ve seen one or two wearing something that said “press” on it but who were clearly there as enthusiastic participants. Their intention is to capture some example of police brutality and they make no pretense of objectivity because they don’t know what the word means. They’ve produced some enviable livestreams (often with cringe-inducing live narration) but I’ve watched as one (in Seattle) claimed press status when police pressed, disdained objectivity later as he booted people off his live chat, and then drew attention someone else filming–a stranger he didn’t recognize that could have been a right-winger or, even, an objective journalist–for interrogation. When the police pressed forward again, he claimed press status.

Attorneys allege officers have been targeting and injuring journalists and legal observers covering the protests. This week, the attorneys asked the city to issue a temporary restraining order against the city to prevent police from interfering with journalists and legal observers as they document protests against police violence.

Attorneys with the ACLU had been hoping the judge would intervene before the start of the long weekend. On Thursday afternoon, Judge Simon issued protections that will last for the next 14 days. 

Good fast, reliable service!

The suit claims that police in Portland have tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, beaten and arrested journalists, observers and other neutral bystanders who are documenting the police’s response to protests. 

“The police should not be shutting down the public’s access to the messages and realities of protest in Portland’s streets where people are calling for an end to police killing of Black people,” said Kelly Simon, interim legal director of the ACLU of Oregon in a statement. 

“Police in Portland are making a mockery of the First Amendment by targeting journalists, using excessive force, and by using indiscriminate crowd-control weapons. Police actions have had a chilling effect on the media and protesters.” The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Portland and lays out multiple reports of violence against journalists at the hands of police.

Filed in the same US District Court boarded up, enveloped in the obscene and violent graffiti of BLM and assaulted nightly for over a month.

It would be perfect if instead of a gavel the judge used a clown horn.

A young man has taken up a vigil on the base were the David P Thompson Elk statue once stood; he sits there eyes closed like an eastern holy man.

A crowd of not quite a hundred gathered at the waterfront to hear black-clad black people recite the social justice mass under a beautiful sky. Boats, inner-tubers and a jet-ski fillied about in the water indifferent.
Back in front of the Justice Center I heard a commotion that appeared to be coming from one of the upper floors. About four or five up one of the stories is open-air, and looks like a wide open bay hemmed in by chain-link fencing.

Tortured screams could be heard.

Antifa took the fight to the City Hall building a couple of days ago. This shreds my theory that Mayor Ted Wheeler has some assurances from them they’d only harass the Justice Center. Three days after the city removed barriers from around the building, protesters assailed it and disabled its security cameras.

A couple of days ago in a “miscalculation” (Mayor Ted Wheeler’s description) antifa attacked Portland Police Bureau’s NE precinct–drawing the ire of the black community there. In yet another outrage among all the outrage, black leaders lined up to denounce the violence in their neighborhood and parrot the BLM line at the same time.

But antifa are proving adaptable and still taking the fight to new fronts, last night assaulting the cops’ union hall in North Portland

From their Police Report:

Around 9 p.m., demonstrators began blocking the road on North Lombard Street at North Campbell Avenue. While in the street, demonstrators began throwing projectiles at officers who were standing outside of the Portland Police Association office. These projectiles included rocks and water bottles. The demonstrators also shined green lasers in the officer’s eyes.

At approximately 9:08 p.m., the sound truck made an admonishment stating an unlawful assembly had been declared and that the demonstrators needed to disperse to the east. The demonstrators were told if they did not obey the lawful order and begin to disperse, they could be subject to arrest or use of force to include crowd control munitions. Despite the admonishment, demonstrators continued to block traffic on North Lombard Street and throw projectiles at officers who were in front of the Portland Police Association office.

At approximately 9:19 p.m., officers began dispersing the crowd in an effort to move them from the immediate area. While performing this lawful action, demonstrators continued to throw water bottles, baseball sized rocks, and full cans. While officers cleared the area, some crowd control munitions were used. Once demonstrators were to North Fenwick Avenue and North Lombard Street, they began to move dumpsters and plastic trash bins to the street. The demonstrators attempted to set fire to the dumpsters and trash bins. During this time, demonstrators deployed orange smoke towards officers.

At 10 p.m., the sound truck continued to warn demonstrators to disperse to the east, however, they continued to throw full cans, baseball sized rocks, and water bottles at officers. The large baseball sized rocks hit several officers which required medical attention. At 10:12 p.m., demonstrators began lighting commercial grade fireworks and throwing them towards officers. At this time, a riot was declared and the demonstrators were admonished by the sound truck to leave the area immediately. Because demonstrators were throwing commercial grade fireworks towards officers, to protect the life and safety of police personnel, CS gas was used to disperse the crowd.

Several arrests were made and, as always, the legal arm of the insurrection tries to gain advantage by framing anything they can as police brutality. Activist group Don’t Shoot Portland seized on the cops’ use of tear gas to deter the precinct assailants and their flaming-dumpster siege engines:

Merrithew on behalf of the nonprofit Don’t Shoot Portland urged the court to sanction the city for violating the terms of an initial temporary restraining order restricting tear gas except when lives are at risk, and an amended one signed Friday that limits use of less-lethal weapons. U.S District Judge Marco A. Hernandez signed the tear gas order on June 9, and the amended order on other less-lethal munitions on Friday.

The court orders came amid nightly demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died after a Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes while Floyd was face down on the ground, handcuffed and not resisting.

The plaintiffs contend the city violated the court orders by using tear gas late Thursday night outside North Precinct, arguing there was “no risk to the lives and safety of the police or community,‘’ and then on Saturday night and Sunday, by using FN303 and 40MM less-lethal launchers, rubber ball distraction devices and OC spray against people “both attempting to follow orders or engaged in only passive resistance.‘’

Outside North Precinct late Thursday, police supervisors said they used tear gas to clear a crowd away and allow firefighters to extinguish a fire inside a dumpster that was pushed up against a Black-owned beauty supply store that shares a building with the Police Bureau’s North Precinct at the corner of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Killingsworth Street.

The city had been thriving before 2020’s serial depredations, and the City Hall building was recently touched up, along with the just-completed massive renovation of the postmodern (but pleasant) Portland Building next door, home to the “Portlandia” statue, for a cool 150 million plus. The building was saved from demolition and the real estate developer/progressive axis in 2014. No doubt if BLM was running things in 2014 neither the money nor the priority (buildings over lives!) would be there.

Portland’s Fourth of July fireworks display at the riverfront is cancelled this year, but I suspect we might see some downtown anyway.

Protesters were down to the dozens last night as they harassed a platoon of cops in front of Portland’s Justice Center and US District Courthouse.
Earlier a demonstration of a hundred or more gathered at the site of a shooting two years ago by Portland State University police. Disarming PSU cops has been a campaign for as long as they’ve been armed and is energized like every other progressive campaign in the wake of the city’s surrender to BLM.

The graffiti remains up at the courthouse and the Justice Center looks like a plywood fort; everywhere else in the city the siege has lifted, reflecting the reality of a city government abandoning its police–and courts.

The various murals and memorials, especially the central shrine they’ve made of the Apple store (4th and Yamhill downtown, home to (nominally, still) high-end shops like Tiffany, Louis Vuitton and Apple, is now intersectionality avenue, where everything remains up. In the early days (we’re in day 34 or 35 now) city workers came out daily to clean up the graffiti, but no more.

No doubt dismantling the artworks will be troublesome (I fully expect much of it to end up permanent or sent to museums and schools). It’s not clear if Apple will want or be able to reclaim its place.

A lurid pall of delusional menace hangs over a city afraid to speak.

As elsewhere the police are being restricted in their rules of engagement at the same time they battle an adapting insurgent force, like the boys in Vietnam. No, Rambo, you don’t get to win this time either:

Portland police face additional restrictions on their use of less-lethal munitions to control crowds, based on a new temporary agreement filed in federal court Friday night.  

The new agreement is part of a temporary restraining order that the nonprofit Don’t Shoot Portland obtained against the city, barring police use of tear gas except when lives are at risk. The 14-day temporary order was extended until July 24.  

Under an amended order approved Friday and reached jointly by both sides, officers are now restricted in from firing less-lethal launchers into a crowd if people engaged in passive resistance are likely to be struck.  

The bureau’s use of rubber ball distraction devices can only be used if the lives or safety of the public or police are at risk, and shall not be used to disperse crowds when there’s little or no risk of injury to the public or police, the agreement says.  

Handheld pepper spray canisters also “shall not” be used against people engaged in passive resistance, and police should minimize pepper spray exposure to peaceful demonstrators.

Pressure from below comes from the earnest rabble put on the streets and from above by complicit governments feigning surrender; this pattern is playing out almost everywhere that counts.

Meanwhile Coke would like to buy the world a gag. As Facebook and others are pressured from within by their own woketroops to censor, big corporations pressure them from without, and the ADL seeks to mop up what’s left of dissident media with its “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign, boycotting social media until they get in line with the new cruelty:

They allowed incitement to violence against protesters fighting for racial justice in America in the wake of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks and so many others.

They named Breitbart News a “trusted news source” and made The Daily Caller a “fact checker” despite both publications having records of working with known white nationalists.

They turned a blind eye to blatant voter suppression on their platform.

Could they protect and support Black users? Could they call out Holocaust denial as hate? Could they help get out the vote?

They absolutely could. But they are actively choosing not to do so.

99% of Facebook’s $70 billion is made through advertising.

Who will advertisers stand with?

Let’s send Facebook a powerful message: Your profits will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence.

Just as the high-low combination of mob violence and entrenched power is remaking your city right now, the same dynamic is remaking your media, finally and incontrovertibly, with employee social justice auxiliaries pressuring social media companies from within, and corporations pressuring them from without with such as the ADL campaign.

Meanwhile Governor Kate Brown extended Oregon’s state of ermegency regarding Covid-19, noting the first two weeks of June saw an increase in cases but making no mention of the siege chaos–the neglected and more immediate state of emergency, at least here–that is likely behind it.

Still, our numbers are small and the action is based on “the potential for exponential growth by mid-July”; as nothing can be trusted any more, you have to wonder. Kate Brown might in fact be hoping to dampen the protests a bit with this.

As workers used power-washers to rid the outer walls at Portland’s North Precinct of vulgar and derogatory graffiti tags against police, members of Portland’s Black community stood with the city’s police chief outside the building Friday to decry the vandalism, barricading of precinct doors and setting of a nearby fire the night before.  

Chief Chuck Lovell called the actions “not only reprehensible, but they’re evil, ‘’ emphasizing that people were inside the precinct when vandals blocked side doors by nailing wooden beams across them, and then pushed a dumpster, from which flames were shooting out, along the west side of the building. “It needs to stop, and it needs to stop today,‘’  

Lovell said. Other Black leaders in the community called the criminal activity the work of “terrorists,‘’ “delinquents,‘’ and the “act of a coward.‘’ They blasted those responsible for undermining the Black Lives Movement and causing damage to Black-owned businesses in an area where the Black community has struggled to maintain its historical hold.  

Mayor Ted Wheeler called the destruction “a horrible, horrendous miscalculation.‘’

The mayor’s use of the word “miscaluation”, sounding more like someone in a strategy session with, than a mayor addressing the public about the actions of antifa I think is revealing.

Nightly the Justice Center is under similar assault and no one at City Hall offers even a tepid defense of the police. Instead they congratulate the rioters on their wokeness and apologize for not having looted the police budget sooner to fund some of the same people organizing the Mostly Peaceful Protests–from bent knee.

We’re a month into the siege and it’s the leading progressive on the City Council who’s put the brakes on the giddy rush to defund the police to the tune of 50 million–probably not out of civic good sense but because progressives find themselves so far ahead of previously realistic expectations and are suddenly in the position of potentially inheriting the police department. With no opposition in sight on the horizon, why hurry now to slash a budget you could inherit?

They’ve achieved the remarkable goals of being rid of the city’s gang/gun unit, transit patrols and school cops–all deemed racist because of their tendency to oppress gang bangers, fare jumpers and school bullies. The state has convened a session to address the crisis and things like qualified immunity for cops are being hauled out like unfortunate motorists who’ve wandered into a Mostly Peaceful Protest.

Now that the capitulation seems to have reached the point of diminishing returns, the siege has eased broadly, leaving the city alone during the day and convening every night at the Justice Center. Yesterday City Hall removed its concrete block and chain link fortifications at the same time the Justice Center was redoubling theirs.

So Wheeler’s use of the word “miscalculation” would be giving away the game if anyone was paying attention. 
He speaks as if he’s got some sort of agreement with the rioters (something for all the capitulation with no sign of slowing), that they would confine their activities to harassing the jail

Wheeler may also feel emboldened now in his struggle with antifa, suddenly vulnerable for having stepped on black toes. Some earnest young antifa leader right now is banging his head trying to keep up with the rules.

“You attacked our community,‘’ said Nike Greene, director of the city’s Office of Youth Violence Prevention. “We will never stand for that.‘’ Late Thursday night, dumpsters from businesses along Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard were moved to the intersection with Killingsworth Street, blocking traffic. A fire was set inside one and the dumpster was pushed up to the west side of the police precinct. Graffiti was left on businesses along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, north of the precinct, and windows of the Top To Bottom clothing store were broken and merchandise stolen.

Police Deputy Chief Chris Davis said officers used tear gas after they had trouble clearing people from the area once flames were shooting out of the dumpster. They were working to allow firefighters to get in to put out the blaze, he said. Police are under a court order restricting tear gas use to only life-threatening situations….There were officers inside the precinct, as well as four people who were in custody at the time, Davis said.

I watched this on a livestream last night and the crowd was overwhelmingly white antifa. Whi-tifa.

Portland native and ex-gang member Lionel Irving Jr., who started a nonprofit called Men Building Men, said he came out to Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Killingsworth Street late Thursday into early Friday to try to talk to those intent on causing damage.

He estimated that 30 to 40 people, who were largely white, were involved in the vandalism out of a crowd of about 200 people. “I challenge the brothers in this community to come out to these protests. You’ve got to come up here and be on the front line. Don’t allow them to speak for us,‘’ Irving urged. “Don’t let them represent you. Don’t let them tear our neighborhood down.‘’

“You can’t oppress the oppressor. That will never work,‘’ he said

Oh I don’t know about that. The designated oppressor is looking pretty oppressed.

In all the chaos and excitement of the past month black women forgot why they march–to be considered more attractive. So just when we thought we had a moment to breathe (cue breaking down in tears, “he just wanted to breathe, man…”; sorry) here come the formidably intersectional faction of black female sex workers to the Estates Venereal to demand–but of course, it was inevitable!–that your erection check its white privilege:

 “No justice, no booty!” was one of the rallying cries during a PDX Stripper Strike protest on Wednesday afternoon. About 100 people gathered for the event…Cat Hollis, lead coordinator with the Haymarket Pole Collective, which works to implement anti-discrimination policies in the adult industry, delivered letters of demands to both clubs. The protesters want all Portland clubs to provide cultural sensitivity training for employees and offer more equitable scheduling for dancers of color.

Strip clubs are to stop discriminating on the basis of sexual attractiveness.

Brianna Cistrunk, a former dancer, founded the Jezebel Project two months ago to “give a platform to Black strippers and entertainers that find themselves either discriminated against or without a voice.”  

…“If we do get hired, we’re usually kept on day shifts or shifts during the week which historically are not the more lucrative shifts.”

The legendarily jarring afternoon shift, yes. Can’t unsee it, as they say.
But there’s hope:

“Public accommodations include places that do business with the public,” wrote Jenny Smith, spokesperson with Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries. “In your example, if a club was refusing to audition or book dancers of color because of their race or national origin, that would be illegal discrimination.”

To paraphrase the man, imagine a black stripper twerking in a white face forever.

In a sign of easing tensions between our local color revolution occupiers and City Hall, the building was un-barricaded today.

At the same time the Justice Center was busy reinforcing its wooden barricades, building and erecting plywood and two-by-four doors and frames. It remains the center of a nightly siege, while things have eased up generally. The crowds now are more dedicated antifa, but smaller–someone estimated they topped out at 150 last night, harassing the cops and tearing holes in the cyclone fencing. 

In a triumph of hope over self-respect the city pulled down the outer fence that had encompassed the street in front of the building last Monday.

“We are removing the fence to show our willingness to have dialog and peaceful communication toward starting to heal our community. We are open and listening to discussions of how the community envisions its police serve them in the future.
“Our hope is that the nightly violence and destruction around the justice center will stop and the focus can be directed toward peaceful conversation. The inner fence will remain in place while the county side is repaired.”

With protesters pulling back during the day now–today there were no groups assembled in the park blocks between City Hall and the Justice Center, just people coming and going to look, normal folk and antifa sympathetic alike. The siege-feeling is lifting downtown–during the day–while the Justice Center is still set upon nightly, with demonstrators breaching the fence last night and police, still, showing restraint.
With the police in the Justice Center isolated like Fort Apache, no relief but the looting of their budget in sight, and city government throwing them under the bus daily in front of all manner of groups–intersectionality!–determined to get in on the opening of the social justice frontier that is the George Floyd hoax, the barricades going down at City Hall at the same time they’re going up across the way at the Justice Center, the betrayal and abandonment of the cops by the city couldn’t be more stark.

Mayor Wheeler now conducts remote city council meetings now in the guise of someone undergoing a self-criticism session:

Antifa are using fireworks to harass police in various cities. It’s a clever innovation. With the cover of a friendly media they’re deploying their own crude riot weapons and maintaining their “mostly peaceful” status at the same time because, well they’re just fireworks.

Municipalities might want to move now to ban the sale of fireworks this year, if they can, and aren’t safely remote from the madness somewhere in Red State America. A cursory look suggests cancelling consumer fireworks isn’t being suggested anywhere, and the normal–or above normal–supply of consumer fireworks are about to be made available. Fourth of July should be lit yo.

Of course the fireworks we’re seeing already are bigger grade than the consumer variety. Their lineage should be traced.

As the nation’s police are now dividing their time between riot control and sheltering in place in their stations and patrol cars, lawlessness increases.

In Brooklyn they’re lighting off fireworks all night apparently, and for the gentrifiers there it must come like the sound if Indian war drums to the settlers. Some have dared complain, not yet aware that the Rules Have Changed.
At Buzzfeed this is fed back into the narrate-o-matic as Karen calling in the cops to oppress black bodies:

Just over two weeks after the NYPD violently suppressed peaceful protests around New York City, police early Monday morning responded to reports of illegal fireworks in a Brooklyn neighborhood with dozens of officers in riot gear — who blocked off a street, threatened anyone who was outside with arrest, and stormed inside an apartment building. Fireworks aren’t unusual in the summer in Flatbush, though even lifelong residents say there have been a lot more this year. What was alarming, those residents told BuzzFeed News, were the police helicopters circling overhead as officers — wearing helmets, shields, batons, body armor, and holding Tasers — pointed flashlights into apartment windows. As residents watched nervously from their porches, some livestreamed the event from their phones. Police took at least one person into custody, as captured by a cellphone video.

Monday’s response came as three dynamics in Brooklyn, some brewing for years, seemed to converge: the genuine increase in the amount of fireworks, possibly out of solidarity with Black Lives Matter demonstrations; police frequently rolling through the streets in riot gear after this month’s protests; and people on Facebook, primarily white gentrifiers, complaining about the level of noise and demanding that the city responds.

“The deployment of riot gear is a sign of a police department in total crisis that has no idea what they’re doing, and has completely lost any connection to the community,” Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College who wrote The End of Policing, told BuzzFeed News. “And this is going to just make tensions between the police and the public worse.”

Presented with a community dispute, Buzzfeed goes directly to the sociology professor, whose answer is defund the police, touches base with the activist community, and apparently didn’t even seek out a quote from the other side.

Of course, there is no other side. The Karen purge has been going on for some time. I know it’s Buzzfeed, but it’s still jarring to see what is ostensibly journalism throwing in with this:

For some Flatbush residents, the show of police force on Sunday night and Monday morning wasn’t a surprise and was emblematic of growing tension in the community. For years, they say, white gentrifiers have discussed their issues in the community, like noise complaints, in private Facebook Groups. 

Palmer said gentrifiers have gathered on social media instead of engaging with their new community. Two years ago, she said, she and several other activists of color raised concerns about posts in a Prospect Lefferts Garden Facebook Group, where people were complaining about local residents “playing music, or people ‘loitering’ or smoking weed,” adding they wanted to call the police. After these concerns were raised, she said, they were kicked out of the group.

Gentrifying areas as points of contact between whites and blacks are the physical front lines of a broader conflict that is–for blacks if not those who manipulate their anger–about who gets to decide social standards of behavior.

Western standards oppress black behavior. Not because they are oppressive. Quite the contrary. Our liberalism, equanimity and individuality, born of our unique historic and genetic profile, are in fact oppressive to someone born of another.

Equality before the law is oppression, to the mediocre. But to be fair, for anyone, living in a culture not created by his own ethnic group the normal is oppression. Kind of like how it feels now to be white–you have no home in the culture. US culture, ironically, can’t feel natural to any group, not just whites. With the George Floyd hoax, black America is making its play to own not just the politics but the culture of the fading United States.

“Equality will feel like oppression” to white people, one black mediocrity enjoying his new status as moral inquisitor said in reference to the re-education of Jimmy Fallon, who’s been obliged by his network to undergo a public re-education for doing a “blackface” routine back when there was no hysteria surrounding it. 

Indeed. It’s really this: equality feels like oppression to blacks.

Ours are standards black people, when left to their own devices, would never choose; they keep telling us as much. So far they have borne the cost of that disparity, as they see it–in incarceration numbers, for starters. That’s why they toss aside all logic and common sense in simply trying to hammer that disparity flat, public peace be damned.

So no amount of objective argument is going to change things. We’re stuck arguing-without-arguing that giving black people the society they want is bad for blacks, as measured in crime and murder, for starters. But black people are saying loud and clear–to the extent they’re capable of clarity–they don’t care. One thug dead at the hands of white cop offends them more than a hundred dead thugs and innocents outrages them, because this is personal, this is “family” as they sometimes say.

And why are the casualties of black America’s alternative society dismissed by blacks, misinterpreted as the product of white racism? Because they come at the hands of other blacks, of course, and are not therefore a racial affront.

But black people are–absent the demagogy of the elite–indifferent to the slaughter on their streets.

Thus we arrive at the real problem with “black lives matter”: life, generally, matters far less to American blacks than to whites. Thus their appalling violence, which ultimately leads to the violent encounters with police and the handful of cases such as George Floyd who, ironically, is made a martyr in part to ensure the slaughter in the inner cities goes on unimpeded by white cops.

Cheerio.

Bryan Burrough’s book on the radical underground of the sixties and seventies, Days of Rage:

What the underground movement was truly about–what it was always about–was the plight of black Americans. Every single underground group of the 1970s, with the notable exception of the Puerto Rican FALN, was concerned first and foremost with the struggle of blacks against police brutality, racism, and government repression. While late in the decade several groups expanded their worldview to protest events in South Africa and Central America, the black cause remained the core motivation of almost every significant radical who engaged in violent activities during the 1970s.

“Helping out the blacks, fighting alongside them, that was the whole kit and caboodle” says [Weatherman Howard] Machtlinger. “That was all we were about.”

“Race comes first, always first,” says Elizabeth Fink, a radical attorney in Brooklyn who represented scores of underground figures. “Everything started out with the Black Panthers. The whole thrill of being with them. When you heard Huey Newton, you were blown away. The civil right movement had turned bad, and these people were ready to fight. And yeah, the war. The country was turning into Nazi Germany, that’s how we saw it…And oh the glamour of it. The glamour of dealing with the underground. They were my heroes…We were so, so deluded.”

plus ça change

Portland appears to have sated the social justice fury for the time being by raiding a mere 15 million from the cops and closing out the programs most offensive to blacks: school cops, the gun violence reduction team–formerly the gang unit–and transit cops (transit will still have police, from other jurisdictions for the time being), all programs black advocates have been after for a long time.

This is from a 246 million dollar budget, so there’s a lot more ruin to experience still.

Listening to progressive local radio here yesterday suggests a change of strategy already–the argument brewing now is not to defund the police but to take them over. This is the language coming from Jo Ann Hardesty, de facto mayor while Ted Wheeler takes an extended knee, as well, in trying to appease the rabble demanding 50 million cut from cops for starters.

And why wouldn’t they, finding themselves suddenly unopposed, not realize how much more fun it would be to become the cops (even if it wasn’t, as it certainly is, the point the whole time)? The model of transferring police funds to black activist groups and social workers is of far less utility to the progressive movement than taking over the police and their functions.

A police department fully under the control of such as Portland’s “community” would instantly yield them a surveillance capability and database they’ve probably been dreaming of for years. Also, guns.

“Defund the police” is yet another dishonest slogan. No one at the higher levels wants this. It would be merely stupid. These people are evil as well.