Feds fuel new momentum in Portland protests.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Mardy Widman has watched protests against racial injustice unfold in her hometown of Portland, Ore., for more than seven weeks but stayed away because, at 79, she feared contracting the coronavirus.
But that calculus changed for Widman when President Donald Trump sent federal law enforcement agents to the liberal city to quell violent demonstrations — a tactic he’s said he’ll use for other cities. On Monday, a masked Widman was in the street with more than 1,000 other Portlanders — a far larger crowd than the city had seen in recent days, as it entered its eighth week of nightly protests.
“It’s like a dictatorship,” Widman, a grandmother of five, said, holding up a sign that read: “Grammy says: Please feds, leave Portland.”
“I mean, that he can pick on our city mostly because of the way we vote and make an example of it for his base is very frightening,” she said.
As crowds have swelled again, most prominent among them now are the Wall of Moms and PDX Dad Pod, self-described parents who have shown up each night since the weekend by the hundreds, wearing yellow T-shirts and bicycle helmets and ski goggles for protection and carrying sunflowers.
“It’s appalling to me, and it’s a unifying thing. Nobody wants them here,” said Eryn Hoerster, a mother of two children, ages 4 and 8, who was attending her first nighttime protest.
Federal agents again used force to scatter protesters early Tuesday and deployed tear gas and rubber bullets as some in the crowd banged on the doors of the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse and attempted to pull plywood off the shuttered entryway. The courthouse, which has been a focus of protests, is now covered with graffiti and boarded up.
The Portland Police Bureau said in a statement that some protesters lit fires in the street and tried several times to light fires at the courthouse doors.
“It is time for the Trump troops to go home and focus their attention on other activities,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, said on MSNBC.
State and local authorities, who didn’t ask for federal help, are awaiting decisions in lawsuits that seek to restrain the federal agents’ actions. State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in court papers that masked federal agents have arrested people on the street, far from the courthouse, with no probable cause and whisked them away in unmarked cars.
In a news conference in Washington, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said agents have been assaulted with lasers, bats, fireworks, bottles and other weapons.
Wolf said the agency has authority to protect government property and detain people suspected of threatening personnel or damaging that property. He disputed that unidentified agents have arrested people, noting they have the word “police” on their uniforms.
“These police officers are not storm troopers, they are not Gestapo. That description is offensive,” Wolf said.
Homeland Security plans to deploy about 150 of its agents to Chicago to help local law enforcement deal with a spike in crime, according to an official with direct knowledge of the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Trump administration also sent more than 100 federal law enforcement officers to Kansas City, Mo., to help quell a rise in violence after the shooting death of a young boy there.