[Photo: Nathan Howard, Getty Images - a terrified blonde woman with a mask on and goggles pushed up onto her head, wearing a grey hoodie and a backpack, is dragged away from the viewer by a supposed federal officer with no identification, wearing a gas mask and fatigues. He appears to be a white man, from what little of his face can be seen. Taken July 23, 2020 in Portland, Oregon.]
āI am not sure what the answers are,ā my mother who lives in another state said. āThe specific incident is disturbing.ā
Seven days ago I sent a plea out to my family. I donāt usually talk about politics with those of the family that I still talk to, because Iām a radical leftist and most of my family is, shall we say, very much not. āPlease,ā I said. āCall your congresspeople. Call your representatives at every level of government. You donāt want this where you live.ā
(It wonāt happen where my parents live ā or, I guess, they think so, because they live in the woods. Not in a city. Not in Portland. Not in Philadelphia. There wonāt be men without name tapes, without identification, snatching terrified people off the street and dragging them away where my mom and dad live.)
The response from my mother was: I donāt know what the answer is. You can avoid that part of town until itās safe again.
(One of my partners and myself are both medically barred from protests. It fucking sucks. Weāre physical liabilities to other protesters, so we support from the sidelines. Send money to Riot Ribs. Watch streams. Pass on information.)
I asked my family to pay attention. I asked my family to do something, because in my city, Proud Boys could buy an outfit that looks like this on Amazon, rent a car from Enterprise, and start kidnapping people. Heck, not even Proud Boys, just some random jackass who wants to hurt people. Some random dude who wants to hurt women. Some transphobe who wants to drag trans women off and kill them.Ā
Our city is not under siege by protesters. The protesters live here. We are under siege by federal forces sent in by a man who desperately wants to look like heās in control, over the objections of our governor and our mayor. The protesters are not the ones causing fear. Theyāre not the ones making the woman in this picture look back in abject fucking terror.
I get up in the morning in Portland. I run my business in Portland. I make dinner for my family in Portland. Businesses are ā as everywhere ā dealing with COVID, and there are closures based on the global pandemic, but we are not closed down due to protesters. Protesters have no desire to close down the city.
They fucking LIVE HERE. If the city stops working, they canāt get from place to place on TriMet or buy food for themselves. Itās not like when Proud Boys roll into town and cause shit and fuck off again. The protesters are not protesting to destroy the city; theyāre protesting because they want the place they live to be better.
Instead, we have unidentified (supposed, because we canāt tell for sure since theyāre not properly identified in any way) federal officers wearing the same gear that civilians LARPing as federal officers could buy, grabbing terrified people off the streets and throwing them into unmarked vans. One of the repeated stories that comes from protesters is that they are not Mirandized, and they are not, most of them, charged with anything. Theyāre just grabbed, shoved in enclosed spaces with other protesters, where they cannot keep any kind of distance from each other, and driven somewhere ā they donāt know, and theyāre not told ā where theyāre often asked to sign forms that arenāt explained, and then eventually released without charges or explanations.
This is not any sort of legitimate peacekeeping or law enforcement tactic. This is a terror tactic. This is not meant to deescalate or calm. This is meant to horrify, to terrify, to traumatize the citizens of Portland, Oregon, and the rest of the United States watching from home.
You just have to look at her face to know that.
