The multi-week riots in Portland drove Democratic Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden to blame the Trump administration for the violence. But the civil unrest takes place amid years of destructive protests against the city and its residents.
Both Merkley and Wyden proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act bill, now being considered in the House and Senate, to limit the use of federal law enforcement against violent protesters in cities like Portland.
The amendment would mandate federal agents, while making arrests or assisting with crowd control, have to show “identifying information in a clearly visible fashion.” That would include the agency’s name and the agent’s last name at all times. The use of unmarked vehicles would also be prohibited during these arrests.
Additionally, the legislation would restrict the scope of federal agents’ jurisdiction to federal property and “the sidewalk and the public street immediately adjacent to any Federal building or property.”
“Donald Trump’s occupying army continues to trample on the constitutional rights of Oregonians and escalate violence against peaceful protesters,” Wyden said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “If Congress doesn’t step in, these authoritarian tactics won’t stop in my hometown. If it can happen in Portland, it can happen anywhere.”
But the opprobrium and concern about the role of federal agents neglects Portland’s long history of violent protests. And Wyden did not want to talk about the violence that has erupted from these demonstrations in recent years, when asked by the Washington Examiner.
Violence in Portland erupted from anarchist protests going back to Nov. 11, 2016, just days after Trump was elected. The Portland Police Department declared a riot after mobs of masked men smashed car windshields and bus stops.
On a May Day protest in 2017, police arrested 25 people in Portland when rioters shattered business windows, lit fires in the streets, and vandalized a police car.
By June 2018, protesters in Portland launched the Occupy ICE demonstrations. During this period, protesters, according to the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, routinely harassed and threatened federal ICE employees. Additionally, Mayor Ted Wheeler ordered local police to not respond to any 911 calls from any ICE employees calling for help, the union said.
At that time, a local food vendor was shut down by protesters in Portland after regular harassment and threats from protesters.
Mayor Wheeler ultimately shut down the Occupy ICE encampment after 38 days (20 days less than 2011’s Occupy Portland encampment), but he told demonstrators at the press conference he still advocated for the group’s cause and wanted to see it go forward onto the next phase of the movement.
By October, Portland antifa protesters were captured on video threatening a motorist who was a wheelchair-bound elderly woman. This happened while protesters were disrupting traffic and threatening others during a demonstration related to a police-involved shooting.
In January 2019, a Portland driver’s car was accosted by protesters as he tried to maneuver the vehicle through the street blocked by demonstrators.
“When you have an angry mob yelling at you and beating on your car you just want to get out of there,” he said in an interview with the Oregonian.
