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Of course, all reasonable people understand that black people have faced oppression in North America since their ancestors were brutally imported as slaves. Suddenly, the absurd claim that “All Cops Are Bastards” became a mainstream belief, and “Abolish the Police” went from being a threat to a policy proposal. Suggested reading What Antifa and the alt-Right have in commonīut that all changed last summer when, during the Black Lives Matter protests, the city’s anarchists discovered that, so long as they shouted certain slogans, citizens who once grudgingly tolerated them would now cheer them on with gusto. This, of course, caused them to be regarded by most Portland citizens as an irritant.

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The problem in Portland, as in so many the cities along the West Coast, is that the progressives have fully defeated conservatives, and without any opposing political force, their liberalism has become unhinged.Īnarchism has deep roots in the Pacific Northwest, but until 2020 it largely persisted on the fringe - they would blockade the federal ICE facility, or take over an occasional intersection, harass drivers and direct traffic. The anarchists have gained a strange kind of control over the city in their fight against Nazis and white supremacists they appear to have conjured in a quest to give their anger meaning.Īmerica may be being torn apart by the tension between Democrats and Republicans, but that is not what afflicts Portland. The Mayor’s response? To announce that he was moving out of the building to keep his neighbours safe, a move any competent parent would recognise invites more terror. Last September, rioters even targeted the Mayor’s own apartment building, breaking in and setting a fire in the lobby. And yet the city’s officers, under the command of our cartoonishly liberal mayor (who is also our police-commissioner), have stood by and - night after night - allowed the city to descend into chaos. Rioting has occurred like clockwork, and often anarchist “direct actions” are announced in advance, so the police are never taken by surprise. No neighbourhood is secure from the current wave of terror the breaking of shop fronts, arson and harassment of sleeping citizens in their homes are all commonplace.

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The streets of downtown Portland, once a bustling home to independent boutiques, are now lined with boarded-over windows and closed businesses. These residents know they cannot depend on the police to either prevent crimes or arrest those who commit them, and who can’t manage to come together and face down a small but violent mob of misanthropes.

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Indeed, Portland is full of signs in windows and on lawns pleading with anarchists to move on and hurt someone else. Suggested reading The Antifa thugs shame Americaīut its attempt to reason with the anarchists - by highlighting how it is a struggling small business, locally owned and run entirely by women - speaks volumes about day-to-day life in my home city, where negotiating with vandals has become an essential skill. It has, for example, resisted the urge to simply and loudly proclaim that BLACK LIVES MATTER, presumably because its owners know that Portland is entirely composed of people who already agree with this obvious decree - including the police. And then suddenly last summer, with the confluence of the George Floyd protests and the Presidential election, Portland came unmoored.įor what it’s worth, Petunia’s “don’t-hurt-me wall” is more explicit than your average Portland business. With the city’s proximity to nature and world-class food culture, it seemed to provide the perfect balance. We considered moving to more than a dozen cities across the US, Canada and Europe - but in the end Portland won. When Heather and I moved to the city three years ago, after being spectacularly driven from our jobs at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, there was little to suggest that municipal embrace of anarchy was on the horizon.

Please don’t cause us any damage.” Welcome to Portland the progressive dream that has turned into a nightmare. “We are struggling like so many of us in this hard time, and love our community.

“We are a small, women and locally owned business,” Petunia’s sign pleads.