Portland protest riot
A man is attended to after being fatally shot during a protest in Portland, Ore.  (AP Photo/Paula Bronstein)
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[S]ome Portlanders came to see the demonstrations as a threat to the city’s appeal to tourists and investors. “Lenders and purchasers have for all intents and purposes blacklisted Portland,” said John Russell, a longtime Portland real estate developer. Dramatic clashes between protesters and law enforcement provided the opportunity for right-wing politicians and media to depict the city as besieged by violent anarchists and, as Donald Trump claimed, “ablaze all the time.”

Commenters linked Portland’s protest movement to homelessness and rising gun violence, marshaling it all as evidence of a city in precipitous decline.

Now, with civic leaders focused on economic recovery, advocates are concerned that efforts to rehabilitate Portland’s brand may eclipse the tentative steps taken toward reform. The pandemic, the protests, and a series of climate-related crises exposed major fault lines in Portland, from public safety and racial inequity to gentrification and homelessness.

[Mayor Ted] Wheeler, who is regularly accosted when he goes out in public, is facing a recall campaign. Business leaders have pressed city officials to be more aggressive in their treatment of protesters and in clearing homeless encampments.

Gun violence has fueled calls for reinvestment in Portland’s police force and the reinstatement of some of the disbanded units. During the weekend of the downtown reopening, FBI agents and members of a new police unit coordinated to provide a “high-visibility presence”—a potent illustration of how the winds have shifted.

— Zoë Carpenter in The Past 2 Years Have Left Portland Reeling. What Kind of Recovery Comes Next?

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81 COMMENTS

      • RE: “Dramatic clashes between protesters and law enforcement provided the opportunity for right-wing politicians and media to depict the city as besieged by violent anarchists and, as Donald Trump claimed, “ablaze all the time.””

        What’s this “opportunity for Right-Wing politicians and media” BS?
        Are readers to think POTUS DJT is a skinhead and sean hannity is someone like the desert fox? Sneak in “right-wing” just to backdoor n-word people who are nothing more than Americans in support of The US Constitution and who had have zip, nada, nothing to do with portland burning.

        Portland makes the White House “Riot” look like napping kindergartners. And where are the portland prosecutions, imprisonments, etc? Nowhere.

        • You have to remember the Fires and the Destruction of Property, were mostly peaceful. I was told that the fuel used to start the fires was organic and meat free, so its all good you see.

          Don’t worry about the FBI and the Police, they are there to protect the protesters from those Evil Right Wing Nazis that believe in Freedom and the Rule of Law.

          Nothing will change and if you want a vision of Portland’s future, take a look at Detroit, which used to be one of the richest cities in America, which was destroyed by a corrupt One-Party state that drained all the wealth for themselves and simply moved away when the patient died.

        • “………take a look at Detroit, which used to be one of the richest cities in America, which was destroyed by a corrupt One-Party state that drained all the wealth for themselves and simply moved away when the patient died.”

          Sometimes they don’t even move away.
          Look at Grosse Point. Just closed down the roads from Detroilet, then hired a STASI force to keep the “undesirables” out.

          That area was just too nice to leave after the patient died.

          Belle Isle too.

        • Is little d going to say those complaining about the riots are right-wing extremist bourgeois capitalists who will receive social justice when the people’s revolution starts?

  3. had alot of fun out there in the ’80’s following an old jazz pianist friend (mark simon, deceased) around to various weirdo venues.
    i would only ever return with a bug a salt for those giant garden slugs. crikey those thing are large. pour some beer in a frisbee.

  4. My God the idiot that wrote that is slimy. Well, probably not slimy, probably just brainwashed and part of the cult. Either way, that article man… Thanks for sharing Mr. Zimmerman!

    • Oh it’s worse than the quotes Dan has included.
      Guess who the author blames the trouble on?
      You guessed it, the “far right” who have made Portland’s downtown dangerous.
      Delusional.

      • I had to spend a few weeks there this past summer for reasons I won’t go into. I couldn’t believe the decline. There were no “safe neighborhoods,” only “not trashed blocks.” If you didn’t have GPS or already knew where you were going you’d be lost because every street sign was stolen or tagged and unreadable. The homeless camps stretched unbroken for miles down the I-5 corridor and the stores had to keep almost everything locked behind plexiglass. If you wanted shampoo you had to ask an associate to get it for you. Any store selling designer brands had private, armed security. I’ve been to third world countries bordering war zones with better business climates.

      • @JWTaylor-But of course. Everything wrong with this world is because of “right-wing” conservatives 🙄🙄… even when we were no where near the actual event and we were constantly telling them to get their crap together and they never did. Heck, according to dacien, we are all Nazi’s or inbred southern hillbillies… even though he has no idea what any of our education levels are. But then, he is a poster child for the left… and maybe criminally insane. I mean, you’ve seen his rants.

  5. There is no recovery for Portland until the dims are removed from office. Then there will have to be Nuremburg style trials for the scum antifa/SS criminals.

    None of that is likely to happen. So Portland is fucked.

  6. Did the FBI show up to repel the idea of antifa or were they on the lookout for those pesky white supremacists and school children parents?

  7. “Portland’s Image Has Been Trashed by 2 Years of Riots and Violence and the Far Left Doesn’t Like the Result”

    I’ve never heard of Portland having an image to begin with.

    • Oh, they had an image. Go to YouTube and search for “Portlandia”. That’s a show that satirized the city’s ‘quirky’, ‘weird’ image.

      The stupid public thought that was something to aspire to.

      Well, they got what they asked for… 🙂

      • Well, Geoff, I certainly agree that Portland became a socialist s***hole, and that it was ALWAYS a little weird (the City of Austin, but on a statewide level), but it WAS a beautiful city. And not unsafe. Hell, I remember when there was a grassroots campaign among Oregonians to resist that idiocy coming over the border from the People’s Republic of KKKalifornia, which prominently displayed bumper stickers reading “Don’t Californicate Oregon!”.

        A rational observer can only conclude that the ‘blue states’ are intent on driving that clown car off the cliff – they actively desire and seek the dystopian idiocy that the rest of us have been warning them about for decades. Being “weird” is fine – I’m not a giant fan of conformity for conformity’s sake – but when did “weird” become “dystopian, authoritarian, Leftist/socialist s***hole”???

        • I know it was probably rhetorical, but the answer to “when did “weird” become “dystopian, authoritarian, Leftist/socialist s***hole”???” is when you discard any objective, historic standards.

          “Every man did what was right in his own eyes” is one way the Bible describes it. Post-modern dystopia, indeed.

        • Brings new meaning to people coming from California when you hear when Oregon was trying to resist them. It’s still happening from Commiefornia, but now also Oregon and Washington… it’s as if liberalism spreads like a disease… 🧐🤔

  8. “Dramatic clashes between protesters and law enforcement provided the opportunity for right-wing politicians and media to depict the city as besieged by violent anarchists…”

    Bwahahaha. Republicans, always pouncing and seizing on things. Maybe the left should, you know STOP ENCOURAGING VIOLENT ANARCHISTS TO BESIEGE CITIES. Then those evil rethuglicans wouldn’t have anything to pounce on, right?

    • Who needs revolutionaries when the revolution is complete? Look at what happened to revolutionaries in the Soviet Union and eastern europe after the victory? Or Mao’s red guards when the cultural revolution got out of control.

  10. Portland of the 1950s and 60s was a nice calm city. Had uncles and aunts there to visit.

    All the problems arrived with the californicate weirdos who moved north to get away from the insanity they created by voting for democrats (communist party USA).

    Not likely to recover in the foreseeable future.

    Coming to a city near you.

    Be Prepared !!!

  11. Everyone saw the decline coming and still re-elected Wheeler in 2020. They deserve the reputation as a shithole where no one wants to live or start a business.

    • Cattle often don’t know anything other than what they’ve always done. I mean, look at us here in CA. We got Davis two decades ago, who was so terrible he became CA’s first recalled Governor. Then we got Schwarzneggar, who was worse. Then the masses voted in Brown, who was 10x worse. And even after all that and the clearly obvious decline in our once-great State, the cattle voted for Newsom, who told everybody up front he’d do more of the things that have put us into decline. And here we are today…full throttle toward the proverbial cliff.

      • Listen to and respect the words of the incomparable IHAQ. Even though he ignored our President’s urgent call, he’s still a legend (among losers).

        All Hail.

        • Thank God we have a hero like you around. What did you accomplish, hero?

          I’m still President and you are a worthless piece of shit.

          Better luck next time…..

        • Look who’s back, my little demented troll, back for more well-deserved abuse.

          Did your mom kick you out of the basement so the cleaners could try and get the stench out? 😉

      • The California model was very successful for Democrats, thanks in no small part to the former governor, Reagan. That is why the dems are laser focused on flooding the country with third world immigrants during a pandemic, employment, and inflation crisis. The plan is to apply the California model to the rest of the country and lock up power for one party, just like Cali. They don’t give a rat’s a$$ about helping America. They’re in it for themselves. After they’ve invited millions of “undocumented” children, the media will blow up the sob stories about how we just can’t send them back and make them come in legally because legal is wrong.

      • @I haz- Don’t forget that Governor Moonbeam was Governor back in 79-83. He did just as piss-poor now as then. But democrats would vote in Hitler if he were a democrat.

  12. Policing is under control of the City, if policing is systemically racists, the leftists who run the City are to blame.

    If housing is systemically racists, again who has run the City for generations?

    When they use the phrase systemically racists, do they understand what it means? Can they point to the laws that exclude nonwhites? Why haven’t they repealed those systemically racist laws?

    • It’s much more convenient to pretend like the Civil Rights Era never happened, and prominent Democrats, like Al Gore, Sr., weren’t for equality. They aren’t worried about the truth because they know most of their constituents run on emotion. Plus, authoritarian takeovers never happen because the majority of the country is for it. It happens because the authoritarians have the will to do it by any means necessary.

    • Libertarians, Liberals and the Left are incapable of supporting the police.
      Now disarm the police. And allow the law abiding to start shooting criminals dead on sight.

      There will be fewer criminals in the jails for the three L”s to complain about over crowding .

      Or just continue to not enforcing the law. This also will keep the jails from bring over crowded.

    • @formerparatrooper- Same reason the Governor of NC (a demonCrat, btw) vetoed a bill that would have gotten rid of the law of needing a license to purchase a firearm… a law that has deep roots in Jim Crow laws. Keep in mind, liberals play at being equal… but it’s all a show to stay in power.

  13. My son lives near Portland, hes going to be glad in the future I didnt sale off the pasture here in Ks. even though he said hed never move back.
    Theres a world of hurt coming down for the west coast, 110° in Portland this summer, that’s a first, and it isnt going to get better no matter how much green you go.

      • The environment in Ks has adapted to its climate over the centuries, as has it people’s.
        110 in the shade here is normal.
        Not so in Oregon.

        • Yeah, but it’s a dry heat, and living in Satan’s Hell of humid Florida has convinced me a dry heat beats a sweatbox like Florida any day…

        • 110 in Portland is likely a once a century occurrence but the records don’t go back far enough to show this. We’ve (they’ve) all got our (their) panties in a twist because sea level rose 7 inches in the 20th century, when 11,700 years ago it rose 390 feet. KS, btw was arctic tundra then. The critters will be fine (even possums).

    • a few hot days in Prtland last summer was the least of the problems there. There are now parts of that hole where Isimply will not go, even in the daytime. Night time, I now take different routes than I used to when out on the bike. The homeless camps are frightening at night, and I carry whilst riding. This is a sigificant change in the past four years.
      Then the wokies do things like”cancel” and close down by public shaming a taco stand started by a woman who had smept years in Mexico, learned to love their food, and tried to bring it to Porltand… which somehow decided since she was not “mexican” she could not cook “real mexican food and offer it to the public. She knew what she was doing, her food was wonderful. When such politicalpressure can be brought to bear on an honest and hard working entrepreneur, the city will never prosper.

      • I remember that story, it was so sad.

        And it so perfectly demonstrates why Leftist Scum (like my little demented troll) must be stopped at all costs…

  14. The right, ‘Go ahead, shoot off your pinky toe, you’re not going to like it.’

    The left, ‘F@#k you, BANG! Owwwww!’

    • Gov. William (btw, can we just call you one-eyed willie? 😁), I need to correct that for you:

      The right, ‘Go ahead, shoot off your pinky toe, you’re not going to like it.’

      The left, ‘F@#k you, BANG! Owwwww!’

      The right, ‘come on now, don’t do it again.’

      The left, ‘F@#k you, BANG! Owwwww! Ok, this time, that’s your fault right winger!’

      The right, ‘Come on now, you can’t be that dumb to do it a third time.’

      Bang! ‘Owwwww! I need a safe space. The right winger keeps making me blow off my own toes.😢’

      Now that sounds like a liberal.

    • I think it was someone like Hamilton, way back when, who famously said “an armed society is a polite society”. I remember when it was a crime to be in possession of a weapon on any of the Max busses or trains. Muggings got so bac people quit riding the Max. Too dangerous. They were losing money cause ridership was way down. Someone got smart and changed that law, anyone lawfully able to carry a firearm in the city can now also carry on the Max. All it took was a couple of armed self defence incidents which stopped muggings in progress, and things returned to normal. Muggings smoehow “magically” stopped.

        • “… an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization. That’s a personal evaluation only. But gunfighting has a strong biological use. We do not have enough things to kill off the weak and the stupid these days. But to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both.”

        • “It was Robert Heinlein who said that.”

          Well crap; people keep changing history. I thought it was Lazarus Long who said that.

  16. Let it go, let it burn. It’s time for the opposite of secession – kick them out. Kick these cities out of the states (call them “unaffiliated” or something), and/or kick the states out of the nation. Wall them off. Stop paying for their mistakes and accepting their laws and socialist ways.
    Look at the counties in Virginia that want to secede and become part of West Virginia – it’s going to end up being the vast majority of the land mass. Rename it “Greater Virginia”, and what’s left – northern Va., can be “Lesser Va.”
    Balkanization just might be our best option.

    • Great idea! Let’s follow it to its logical conclusion and have (nonvoting) DC annex its colonies in Northern Virginia.

    • Only thing I will say, in many of these extremely liberal states, there are trapped conservatives. I know as I was one of them in California until I finally escaped (btw, my first breath that I took after getting my license for my new (conservative) home state actually felt like a breath of freedom). Unfortunately, there are still many trapped behind enemy lines. So we at least need to free them from their oppressors if we kick out the states.

  17. Protests? They’re riots. Gun violence? Aside from that attempted or committed by Antifa members I can’t recall any unusual increase. Then again the Left has been arming up and consider simply disagreeing with them sufficient to justify use of deadly force. Climate crisis? The unusually warm period was caused by a) the fact that the sensors were all relocated into urban heat islands, b) under sea volcanic vents becoming extremely active and warming sea water as the Earth shrinks slightly due to the same forces that cause the grand solar minimum and c) the movement of the magnetic north pole causing a disruption in the jet streams. No, you won’t find human caused global warming due to CO2 emissions in there because CO2 isn’t that big a factor. And no, nothing will be done about violence in Portland so it will continue to be blacklisted for the foreseeable future.

    • Michael,

      We must also consider the fact that no one has any way of knowing the amount/intensity of solar radiation prior to, what, 1950 or thereabouts? For all we know, the sun radiated 10% less heat historically and increased to its current level in 1900.

      There could be other factors at play as well for which we have no reliable/accurate historical data such as atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane gas levels (due to volcanoes and animals), atmospheric particulates which reflect solar radiation (e.g. fine volcanic dust), and even ocean salinity which affects global oceanic currents and hence climate.

      The only thing we know for certain is that most of the Earth was warm enough to sustain human agriculture for the last 5,000 years or so. Whether or not annual global average temperatures were cooler or warmer historically and what, if anything, caused variations is anyone’s guess, NOT fact.

  19. All you complainers, pack it in. Protesters had to destroy parts of Portland in order to save it.

  21. @Geoff “A day without a demented troll is like a day of warm sunshine” PR

    “Yeah, but it’s a dry heat…”

    So is the inside of an oven.

  22. It’s mostly white people. Many waving rainbow flags who are burning cities to the ground. These wealthy white people are the ones who are destorying black own businesses.

  23. How could businesses, investors and tourists not want to pour into Marxist CHUD equity utopia? They’ve worked so hard to make everyone feel welcome by carjacking, assaulting, stabbing, shooting, looting and immolating everyone equally.

  24. Portland is one thing, but don’t mess with Texas!

    “Arlington Police, TX
    @ArlingtonPD
    We are on scene at a shooting at Timberview High School. We are doing a methodical search and working closely with @ATFHQ @mansfieldisd Police, @MansfieldPDTX @GrandPrairiePD and other agencies. We will be announcing a parent staging location soon once the location is identified“

    • Thanks for pointing out the difference between Portland and Texas, sea lion.

      The police respond to trouble in Texas, not look the other way.

  25. Yes, Oregone is NOW a shithole, it didn’t used to be that way.
    After I realized that ever since this state started mail in ballots, (over 30+ years ago, ) this state has not had a Republican governor.
    Go figure. Sound familiar?
    & yes the thugs do run the city of Portland.
    Take a look at the city council, a real clown show there. The Multnomah County D A is a Burn Loot & Murder supporter, the mayor is a puss, the governor is probably the worst ever, even though we had a governor that was impeached before her (also a Democrat), & now we have a state Attorney General goin after gun owners. If you are a thug of any color, or any sort of miss fit, this is the place for you.

  26. Then a couple of days ago some crazy was trying to bust down a business owners front door. The police were called and instead of forcefully stopping him, they backed off, “to give him some space to de-escalate” (according to the report) while the people inside hid in a back room! The perp succeeded in breaking through the door before the police took him into custody! That’s the way the mayor and city council want the police to handle violence! It’s no wonder it’s become a dangerous city!

  27. These people are delusional. Anyone who doesn’t believe that this happened needs to go look at Andy Ngo’s Twitter for the last two years.

  28. [S]ome Portlanders came to see the demonstrations as a threat to the city’s appeal to tourists and investors. “Lenders and purchasers have for all intents and purposes blacklisted Portland,” said John Russell, a longtime Portland real estate developer.

    Democrat response: nothing to see here, move along.

    Alternate Democrat response: we will ignore it and it will have never happened.

    • “we will ignore it and it will have never happened.”

      Can you blame them? It’s easy when the media works for you. Just like the propaganda and illegal acts behind the “Russia Collusion” stories that dominated our country for three years. The real story is that it was completely fabricated, yet the mainstream media refuses to cover it, in part because it implicates them, but also because their job is to run cover for Democrats.

      • Dude,

        On top of having the legacy/lamestream media covering for them, Democrats also have Internet platforms (e.g. search engines, video sharing sites, social media sites, etc.) actively suppressing such information.

  29. Dramatic clashes between protesters and law enforcement provided the opportunity for right-wing politicians and media to depict the city as besieged by violent anarchists and, as Donald Trump claimed, “ablaze all the time.”

    There was no “depiction”. It is a simple fact that violent anarchists besieged the city for something like 100 days or more.

  31. President Trump was correct. He sent the Federal cops to arrest people attacking the federal court house in Portland. And the Libertarians Liberals and the Left were against the use of Federal cops. His “secret police” as THEY called them.

    Trump says he is ‘the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy.’’

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/us/elections/trump-says-he-is-the-only-thing-standing-between-the-american-dream-and-total-anarchy.html

  32. So they allowed and even encouraged the sh*t for all this time, and now they’re disappointed!? That’s hilarious!!

  33. The bottom line in America is it all depends on whose OX is getting gored at the moment. In this case the almighty American dollar is the main concern and quite frankly when you allow half wits to run amuck in your city for months destroying everything in sight and making people afraid to come into your city, what exactly did they expect to happen??? In many of these Blue cities the inmates are clearly running the asylum and they eventually will be eating themselves alive because of their incompetence.

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