Even though you “began” by thanking someone for posting a second account, you continued by discounting other reports and disparaging those who relayed them.
I guess it was assumed that you had a point to your inquiry, and that it was not just an academic desire to keep an accurate count of press reports of a specific method of protester intimidation.
Now, I will admit that my assumption as to the nature of your inquiry, along with your responses, was to downplay the seriousness of what is going on, with the claim that it has only been two people that have been harassed in this way. If you have a different motive, then by all means share it, but it is not in evidence.
I discounted posts that were factually incorrect and disparaged posts that insisted otherwise.
We have reports of minimally-identifiable feds pulling people who aren’t even (currently) protesting off the streets. I.e. the so-called “black-baggings”. It hasn’t been clear what exactly they were doing, and the OP wanted to know if it’s legal or not. We started out with one report from someone it happened to. We got a second after a ~thousand posts. And we have some reports of people witnessing it happening.
Right or wrong, horrible or not, crowd-dispersing, uniformed officers detaining people who do not disperse are neither here nor there when it comes to figuring out wtf is going on with these van-nappings. Neither are the use of aerosol irritants, kettling, “non-lethal” bullets, etc. on protestors. Those are all fine conversation topics. But Brittainy was not “black-bagged”. And we don’t know the circumstances of the dazed and sprayed guy’s detainment.
Portland is getting violent again. So what’s the end-game of the protests? I.e. what would happen that would make them stop? Back when the Feds were deployed unmarked LEOs I thought I knew the end-game but not now.
I’m all for peaceful protests but they (the protesters) don’t appear capable of keeping them as such. Besides the violence I’m worried that they are putting a bow on the gift basket they are handing to Trump.
The end game will be what it was in every other city that had protests escalate into violence. The police trying to crack down on it just escalates the situation night after night, until eventually the police give up and either have zero police presence at protests or a limited presence rather than trying to actively clear the streets. At this point the protests run out of energy within a few days, and then you get maybe a week of peacefully marching during the day before they peter out completely.
The only reason this is still a story is that the protestors go out and block traffic, and there’s actually a perceived enemy who not only lines up across for them for them to fight but acts violent and brutal which justifies any course of action in their mind. Most protests and even riots in the past, people go crazy trying to send a message but the thing they’re trying to fight doesn’t make an appearance so there isn’t much reason to do the same thing again a day or a week later. The cops from the start made the mistake of brutally cracking down on these protests which just energizes them more. If they hadn’t committed a complete own goal, most of the country would already have forgotten about police reform by now.
“Portland” isn’t getting violent. I don’t think it’s fair to say even that the protests are getting violent, as it is a tiny minority of people who are focused on something other than purely BLM. I am really torn about it. I don’t think this tiny minority should have veto power over peaceful protests at certain locations, so I reject the call for peaceful protesters to not show up at those locations. But I also strongly reject setting fires and breaking into buildings as any kind of legitimate protest tactic. I would very much like for those people to be arrested. But that is pretty hard to do in the midst of a big crowd. I’m not sure what needs to happen. I definitely don’t think police can just “not show up” when there are people barricading doors and trying to set buildings on fire.
That’s literally what they did in Boston (and many other cities) and it worked.
When protests were first starting to spread nationwide, a group in Boston organized a protest late in the day, basically to be finished when the sun had fully set, and told everyone to wear black. After the official protest ended there were a lot of angry people in the dark, and a riot broke out. Among other things, a cop car was set on fire.
The Boston police instead of being more aggressive and deciding to clear the streets night after night, publicly declared they would not show up to the next protest. And the angry, disruptive night protests stopped after a few days. People spent maybe a week or two organizing marches during the day, and even tired of that because they weren’t able to unite against a common enemy.
I realize that Boston has much less of a protest culture than some cities on the west coast, but this story has happened in to many places to dismiss. Of course the police need to follow up when someone commits arson, and I hope they caught whoever burned the car, but it’s not moral or pragmatic to do these brutal crackdowns that just encourage more violence.
I live in Boston and that’s not how I remember it. I went to a small protest shortly after the one night of violence/looting and there were plenty of cops. The protests were never that violent to begin and maybe police restraint had something to do with it but they certainly didn’t disappear.
I’m in favor of police reform but breaking into buildings and lighting them on fire is not how to do it.
I’m not talking about a car set on fire. I’m talking about multiple instances of trying to set fires in occupied buildings, at least two after barricading the doors from outside. The police can’t not show up when that is happening.
I looked up some articles from then and I think you’re right and I misremebered the articles. The police did have a presence; however they weren’t trying to disperse protests or use violence against the protestors.
WRT to how Portland should respond to the arsonists, first of all it would have been better if they didn’t let it escalate to this point (and I realize with the feds also some of this was out of their hands), but while they should try to respond if possible, if the only response is to disperse the protest we’ve seen over and over again that just makes the violence worse and continue into the next night and the next. The police haven’t shown themselves capable of the third way where you disperse the protests without escalating violence.
I do wonder what would happen if all the “legitimate” protesters staged a sit in/lay down.
Bring a blanket and a pillow, find a spot and camp.
Hard to be called violent when you are in a prone position, and anyone participating in vandalism or other shenanigans no longer have the cover of the crowd.
Then, in order to disperse the crowd, the police now need to start teargassing and shooting people who are laying down. Pretty hard to justify those optics.
Non-violent resistance means that they can use the dead fish defense, and force LEO to physically carry them away, or be seen assaulting people who are obviously posing no threat.
If the police could easily identify the ones participating in vandalism and looting, do you honestly believe that they would then tear gas the prone protestors?
There isn’t enough dubious or rolls eyes for this particular view.
This is what a lot of the protests are like. I was at one a couple of weeks ago, and we all sat down and listened to speakers.
Then around 10:30 pm, most of us left, and at midnight a few of the remaining people started some shit.
With the exception of the time when the feds were around and would respond in force to very little provocation, the protests in general aren’t a bunch of peaceful people mixed in with some rabble-rousers. Instead, they are very peaceful for the bulk of the time, then most everyone leaves and a few people remaining cause problems. Guess which part of the protest you are hearing about from the media?
Of course, I suppose that laying down is a bit of a threat too, but it does seem as though getting a cop to shoot someone in the head with a “less lethal” munition while they are laying prone is going to be a pretty big ask.