In recent decades, Portland, Oregon, has acquired a reputation as one of America’s most tolerant and liberal cities. In practice, this means there are taxpayer-funded sex changes for municipal employees and lots of bike lanes, but comparatively little tolerant liberalism. The city government has made it quite clear that if you have views it finds offensive, it does not want you expressing them publicly. On June 4, a political rally that was described by turns as pro-Trump, alt-right, and pro-free-speech was held on federal property in downtown Portland. It almost didn’t happen for two unsettling reasons.
First, the city begged the federal government to pull the organizer’s permit. On May 26, two men were stabbed to death and another was injured on the city’s light rail train after they came to the aid of two women, one of whom was Muslim and wearing a hijab, being verbally assaulted. The killer, Jeremy Joseph Christian, had attended an April rally put on by the same organizer. Christian is a known white supremacist; according to his social media accounts, he’s also an ardent fan of Bernie Sanders and Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein. He was reportedly asked to leave that April “March for Free Speech” after he arrived with a baseball bat and shouted obscenities.
Portland mayor Ted Wheeler argued that the June event, labeled the “Trump Free Speech Rally Portland,” was a public safety threat. “Our city is in mourning, our community’s anger is real, and the timing and subject of these events can only exacerbate an already difficult situation,” he said, adding that “hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
In response, Oregon’s ACLU chapter issued a sterling statement of disagreement: “Once we allow the government to decide what we can say, see, or hear, or who we can gather with, history shows us that the most marginalized will be disproportionately censored and punished for unpopular speech.”
The second reason the rally almost didn’t occur was that the threat of violence was indeed real. It took quite an effort by law enforcement to maintain the peace; but this, too, is the city’s fault. The danger came not from alt-right Donald Trump fans but the roving packs of left-wing, so-called “black bloc” and “antifa”—short for “anti-fascist”—counter-protesters who have been a fixture in downtown Portland at least since the riots at the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle cemented their reputation.
The Portland police Twitter account sent out a series of pictures cataloging the sheer number of weapons confiscated, including wrenches, knives, batons, chains, and bricks. The left-wing counter-protesters eventually started throwing bricks and glass bottles at the cops; some of their compatriots were found on the roof of an adjacent building, along with a bag of bricks. It’s not an exaggeration to say that raining bricks down from above is nearly as dangerous as firing a gun into a crowd. Fourteen counter-protesters were arrested.
Despite this, Portland still regards left-wing violence as little more than local color and has done little to curb it. The protests in Portland following Trump’s election last November destroyed cars and shop windows, resulting in 26 arrests. A March report by the Department of Homeland Security specifically cited those riots as an example of “domestic terrorist violence.” And in April, the city canceled a parade associated with the Portland Rose Festival, one of the city’s oldest traditions. The Multnomah County Republican party was one of dozens of civic groups set to march in the parade. Two antifa protest groups issued a threat of violence against them, and the city quickly caved.
One of the men killed defending the women on the train was Ricky John Best, an Army veteran and city employee who once ran for county commissioner in adjacent Clackamas County as, yes, a Republican. Best died serving and defending a city led by cowards unwilling to make far more basic sacrifices to protect men like him. Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, the man who died alongside Best, was his cultural opposite—a Reed College hippie. We should take comfort in the fact that America is still a place where heroism and opposition to bigotry are not limited by one’s personal politics.
The Portland murders and other recent episodes of racist violence are disturbing, as are the racist sentiments emanating from the dark corners of the alt-right. But it is better to defend the right to air these ugly sentiments in public and increase awareness than force them underground, where the petty oppression will be cited as justification for plotting ugly acts in private. In fighting one form of illiberalism by tolerating another, Portland has proven that its reputation as one of America’s most enlightened cities is undeserved.
