Crackdown in Portland making things worse
The deployment of federal agents in Portland, Ore., over the objection of state and local officials, to shoot and gas protesters and to snatch people from the street to stuff them into unmarked vans is an unconscionable assault on democracy and a dangerous and needless ratcheting up of tension.
President Donald Trump’s action in defiance of Oregon’s governor and Portland’s mayor has predictably given new life to nonstop protests that began after the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody but at last had begun to peter out. The president has thus fostered division and discord at precisely the time the nation needs a leader to calm overheated passions and fears.
It is a fact that some individuals have used the protests in Portland as an opportunity to destroy property and inject chaos into the demonstrations. It fell to Portland leaders to strike the proper balance. They could respond with force, and thus play into protesters’ hands by presenting police engaged in precisely the kind of actions that were being protested; or they could monitor the situation, give protesters the room to make their case, tolerate some property losses and allow the demonstrations to die down on their own.
They made their choices, and they may well have made some bad ones. Portland has been on edge for weeks. But Mayor Ted Wheeler is the person answerable to the city’s people. He did not need, and did not seek, federal backup.
Trump’s insistence on federalizing the situation on his own undermines Portlanders’ control of their own city, and exacerbates the violence far more than the protesters’ actions did.
In October, before Trump’s impeachment, before the COVID-19 pandemic, before the death of Floyd and before the nationwide protests, the president signed an order creating a Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. In launching Trump’s commission, Atty. Gen. William Barr included as a central question something that apparently baffles him as well as the president: Why is there a “continued lack of trust and respect for law enforcement” in many communities?
The answer is right under their noses. The president won’t look. He sees what he sees, with eyes that won’t open.