Yeah, we've had a war going on every night for the past two months. Just as things seemed to be sloooooowly working their way to some sort of conclusion -- out of exhaustion if not conscience -- the feds roll in with new energy and complete lack of restriction from things the PPD had already been bullied into agreeing not to do. The black-bagging is just the latest in the list.

Were y'all getting a lot of late night fireworks in your area after the initial George Floyd spark lit things off?

Literal? No, I live across the river and stuff that's going on gets muted. It's easy to not even realize what's happening.

Figuratively? Yes, it never stopped. Someone in my local FB group has been sharing streaming video every night to remind people it never stopped, and I'm thankful for that because it feels so distant in the news reports rather than a few miles away. In the last two months we've had Proud Boys and others taking advantage of it to spread vandalism and violence, PPD caught on camera collaborating with Proud Boys to get them safe before the crowd was gonna be cleared, walls being built, walls being torn down, medical supplies desroyed and doctors arrested, people shot with "nonleathal" weapons used in dangerously improper ways, reporters bullied, reporters arrested, reporters beaten, PPD agreed not to use tear gas and then stood by while the Feds used it instead...

Fuck. Just fuck.

Literal. In a lot of black neighborhoods after the initial protests, for like a month or so, they were getting fireworks going off at all hours of the night. Lots of people wondering if the police were doing it as psyop type retaliation given that our military has used similar techniques in foreign countries.

Yeah, y'all got a real Proud Boy problem up there. I believe I posted the cops warning them to get off the streets a month back.

Ah, I didn't notice anything but I'm not that sort of demographic neighborhood. We had some idiot setting things off at two-fucking-AM on July 4th, but that's basic idiot college student not psyops.

I've been keeping an eye on this. Certainly looks like a trial run, and I suspect Oregon was chosen because it's a blue state that has a lot of racist white people in it.

One thing I don't understand is why there hasn't been more pushback yet from the mayor and the governor. There have been statements from the new chief of police, governor, mayor, and both senators, but statements are not enough.

Maybe they're busy huddling with their lawyers; this is a pretty unprecedented situation.

this is a pretty unprecedented situation.

Is it tho? Fascism is basically capitalism in collapse, the mechanisms of imperialism turned inwards. 9 times out of 10 liberalism is going to defer to fascism before it'll ever challenge the status quo. People were out in the streets protesting the ongoing murders of their family and friends while liberals are going around, "Gee I sure hope these people vote in november." as if we didn't just see a primary where not only was a popular candidate completely edged out by the establishment but hundreds of thousands of of people had found their ability to vote suppressed.

It's unprecedented in the sense that American states and Oregon in particular haven't had a lot of experience having to sue the federal government for invading them with secret police. When these conflicts have come up in the past, they've generally been in the form of the federal government using lawsuits and paramilitary forces to protect human rights from the states (as with desegregation). The states having to fight the feds to protect human rights is a role reversal.

It's not like the governor or mayor can send the police to stop the terrorists, the terrorists are reinforcements for the police. This is the start of the Second Civil War, except that this time the Confederates have taken over Washington DC first and Portland is Fort Sumter..

Maybe Oregon in particular, but I respectfully disagree, the federal government has been the enemy of the people numerous times throughout our history. The FBI practically started as a terrorist organization. Nearly every major labor or civil rights movement started off as an enemy of the federal government, and they pretty much still are as soon as they try to flex their rights. If anything it's more unusual that the states would be on the side of the people, and even then I would question how much empty gestures are really supportive. Writing "Black Lives Matter" on your road doesn't make a whole lot of difference if they're not willing to end qualified immunity or allow any sort of material changes to the lives of people of color.

Did you ever read Nixonland?

eit: lol wait, what am I even saying? Occupy wasn't even that long ago.

You're still missing my point: what's unusual is that the state is in the position of fighting back against the feds for good reasons for once. The FBI has done plenty of evil shit, but the states agreed with them at those times. I'm not saying the feds haven't been bad, but this might be the first time the states have been less bad. And they're struggling to find ways to resist.

And I'm saying you should be less trustworthy of these claims because history has demonstrated these things work out much different than you're imagining.

Evidence shows Portland police working with federal officers at protests, contradicting city officials - oregonlive.com

How many BLM protests turned violent from cops pulling out the gas masks and pepperguns after a nice photoshoot where the state gov or mayor is out there talking about how they're different? Pretty much all of them. Same with the sanctuary cities that have been assisting ICE on the down low. There's support and then there's empty gestures, and even most of the actual support is often an empty gesture in the face of what they've allowed under presidents that weren't Trump.

There's a show my friend got me into on Netflix called Colony, I think it was on USA network or something before getting cancelled. It's this crazy dystopian drama where aliens take over the earth with help of politicians and in order to exert their will they've got terrifying drones and incredibly violent human police forces that disappear people and violently snap at a moment's notice. But as dark as it all is, besides the aliens, none of it was really all that fictional. It's like I couldn't decide if it was supposed to be some scathing take on America's imperialism where we as the viewer were supposed to be rethink the things we were letting our society do overseas and at home in our minority communities... or if the writers were just so far up their own privileged asses that they thought they were the next Orwell giving us a unique and insightful warning about the future that anyone who had cracked open a history book would know had arrived long ago.. I settled on the latter after the third season focused on a silicon valley type hero building his own paradise by pulling a fast one on the alien assisting government body. The whole story kinda went off the rails after that. I could see why it hadn't been picked back up.

Dude, I don’t know who the fuck you think you’re arguing with, but it’s not me because I already agree with you about the police.

What you’re talking about is the whole reason why this situation is such a problem, and I don’t need a lecture about it because I already fucking know.

If you’re the governor of Oregon and you actually are not cool with stormtroopers invading your state, how do you respond? You can issue angry statements to the press or on Twitter, but that isn’t going to do anything. You can’t send in the police or the National Guard. Lawsuits take a while and they depend on getting a judge who's not a Federalist Society fascist, and they only work if Wolf and Cuccinelli and Barr don't say "go ahead, make me".

She may not know what to do. She can’t exactly call up the governor of WA or CA and ask them how they got rid of stormtroopers in their state. If you're arguing that she's just pretending to be outraged, how would you know if she was sincere? There's not much she can do.

If you're arguing that she's just pretending to be outraged, how would you know if she was sincere?

Voluntary, meaningful action? For example, ending Qualified Immunity is one of the big protest demands, but while Oregon finally did pass a bunch of bills late last month*, much of it wasn't anything that you could point at and say, "This is going to change the infrastructure of policing and the abuse it allows against the people."

This may not be an open and shut case of a member of leopards eating faces party surprised that their face is getting eaten off, but it's not as if the Governor of a state in which people are protesting the police is wholly innocent being that she's a pretty big cog within the police state mechanism. Lot of people floating the idea of civil war and what not, but if that does happen it's much more likely that we're going to see it materialize (if we're really not already) as a fight between the ideology of "Law and Order" representing the system and it's backers vs the people. And given the Dems have been adopting an ideology of Inclusive Law and Order, well that goes back to my first reply about liberalism deferring to fascism.

*I've just given another look and haven't seen anything meaningful since then. If I've missed something? awesome, but...

I think the state legislature would have to end Qualified Immunity, since governors don't write legislation, but she could (and should) certainly push for it. That wouldn't have any effect on the secret police though, they're federal and not affected by Oregon state law. It might even make things worse in the short run, as Trump would probably use it to argue that Portland needs MORE federal goons.

And unfortunately while Oregon is blue in most respects, eastern Oregon is red and racist as shit. The legislature is 60% (Senate) to 63% (House) Democratic, but some of those blue seats are probably fairly conservative. That legislation is a small step in the right direction, and they say they know they need to go further, but it's a baby step. Portland needs to defund their police force (Berkeley is doing it, Oakland is considering it), but I haven't heard anything about them doing so. A lot of Democrats still think police are the good guys.

This is what worries me: Trump wants to send his stormtroopers to Oakland and Chicago and so on, and local Dems have said "stay away" - but it's not clear what they can do if Trump sends in the brownshirts anyway. He fucking wants a civil war, because chaos is the only way he can stay in office.

I imagine much like they do in DC, she would have to have an ally introduce the legislation on her behalf, but I didn't hear of anything like that happening. To me, the special legislative session was just bluster forced by the protests. Agree to disagree, I guess.

If they can wield the cops against lawful protesters, they can wield them against feds. But I doubt they can get the cops to go along with it, nor would I think the politicians would be willing to put their asses on the line. #defer #leopards #rawr

Whether it was just bluster depends on whether there are any further steps or not. Politicians have to be pushed, some more than others, but it's pretty rare for that not to be the case. They're being pushed by everyone else, so unless they hear from you they're not going to act like your concerns are that important. I mean, that is the whole process of protests: lots of people demand action, it's hard to pretend you don't know they're there, and so politicians take action. The idea of politicians who don't need to be pushed is really appealing but only so long as you imagine those politicians agree with you. Trump doesn't need to be pushed at all.

The problem with sending the PoPoPo after the feds is that the Portland police are the problem, and the feds are there to reinforce them. Protesters in Chicago and elsewhere are going to show up and tell these fuckers to go home, but at some point there has to be some institutional support for the protestors. Finding allies, making allies, and replacing people who are not really allies is all part of the process, but you can't do that if you assume everyone in office is the enemy.

And assuming the best of people who haven't proven themselves undermines any forward progress. It's not like we haven't spent a considerable amount of time watching members of the Democratic party fuck us over. Whatevs. Again, agree to disagree.

Fuck. I literally said the same thing to my partner, who is from the pacnowest. I've been to portland numerous times, and I thought the same godamn thing. Test run. Infiltrate blue and start a fucking fire.

As I understand it, Pence is the guy with the Erik Prince/DeVos connections, among many others put into power. If that is Xe I would say it's a trial run for a "what are you going to do about it?" scenario when Trump loses. Although I doubt it'd really be Trump calling the shots then, if he even is now.