E.D. Mondaine, the president of the Portland chapter of the NAACP, said protests in the Oregon city have been co-opted by white people.
“As the demonstrations continue every night in Portland, many people with their own agendas are co-opting, and distracting attention from, what should be our central concern: the Black Lives Matter movement,” he said in a Washington Post op-ed published on Thursday.
He said this “white spectacle” has been the root of the violence that has taken place.
“Unfortunately, ‘spectacle’ is now the best way to describe Portland’s protests. Vandalizing government buildings and hurling projectiles at law enforcement draw attention — but how do these actions stop police from killing black people? What are antifa and other leftist agitators achieving for the cause of black equality?” he said.
Federal law enforcement officers have been deployed to Portland to protect federal property, but their tactics have been subject to intense scrutiny and backlash. Clashes between protesters and the officers have intensified in recent days.
Mondaine said some white allies who have been demonstrating in Portland have unintentionally attracted attention to themselves and, thus, taken the spotlight away from the intended message: fighting police brutality and systemic inequality. In particular, he referenced “Naked Athena,” a white sex worker who stripped down to her birthday suit as she faced off with law enforcement officers, as well as the “Wall of Moms,” which sought to defend other protesters from law enforcement officers.
He argued that President Trump and his allies want the “spectacle” to “distract the country by engaging our movement in empty battles where they have the advantage.”
In conclusion, Mondaine called for the movement to move from the streets and continue “in boardrooms, in schools, in city councils, [and] in the halls of justice” so that people can “finally dismantle the gears of the brutal, racist machine that has been terrorizing black Americans and hollowing out the moral character of this nation since its inception.”
