The ongoing crackdown in Portland, Oregon – enforced by unidentified federal agents in camouflage and tactical gear – has produced scenes more reminiscent of democratic resistance in a banana republic rather than a protest in an American city. Local mayor Ted Wheeler, who has joined the protesters, said the use of these force has been “an egregious overreaction” pointedly adding that after nearly two months of continuous protest: “This is not a de-escalation strategy. This is flat-out urban warfare.”
The crisis ostensibly stems from the shooting, in late May, of a Federal Protective Service officer in Oakland. This drew a heightened response from the Department of Homeland Security. Shortly afterwards, the agency’s “Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary” – a title redolent of the bureaucratic improvisations of the Trump era – said further threats or damage to federal property would be treated as “domestic terrorism.” This reframing – despite the fact that the Oakland killing was allegedly carried out by a gunman associated with the “Boogaloo” movement, a fringe anti-government group – enabled an aggressive response to largely peaceful protests which have taken place in Portland for nearly two months.
Depending on where you get your news, the Portland standoff is either an overdue corrective to ‘violent extremists’ who threaten the rule of law, or the work of an authoritarian leader frightening his base. The fact that Trump has used an executive order to ensure that statues and monuments (symbolic targets of many recent protests) are treated as important federal property, which “rapid deployment teams” – fashioned out of a mix of customs and border agencies, transport security and the coast guard – can protect from graffiti and other acts of vandalism, strongly suggests the latter reading. Nevertheless, round-the-clock scaremongering by pro-Trump news outlets like Fox and the One America News Network has meant that millions of Americans live a media bubble in which the former feels true.
Portland’s crisis offers a glimpse of what could happen elsewhere in the US closer to the election. Ken Cuccinelli, the DHS official who spoke of “domestic terrorism” recently said that his agents “don’t need invitations by the state, state mayors or state governors to do our job … we’re going to do that whether they like us there or not.” Trump has also suggested that the crackdown could become a template for suppressing protest in other cities. If that happens, the current militarization of law enforcement – which has led Oregon’s state attorney general to sue the federal government and the city council to ban its police from co-operating with the federal forces – presages a dark and troubling election season.
The speed at which president Trump has overridden local institutions is alarming. As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie writes: “A secretive, nationwide police force — created without congressional input or authorization, formed from highly politicized agencies, tasked with rooting out vague threats and answerable only to the president — is a nightmare out of the fever dreams of the founding generation, federalists and antifederalists alike.” And yet it is happening, in plain view, while the rest of the country struggles through a pandemic and Trump scrambles to find a political gesture that can distract voters from his disastrous record. Mired in the “carnage” he promised to end, and with his reelection hopes fading rapidly, Trump’s law-and-order gambit in Portland ought to be seen, and condemned, for the meretricious and utterly cynical political ploy that it is.
