That reputation, lampooned in the television series Portlandia, is not completely unwarranted.
The city is often mocked for its infatuation with leftist ideas and performative politics. Some four years earlier, Trump supporters had identified Portland, correctly, as an ideal place to provoke the left. What had seemed from the outside to be spontaneous protests centered on the murder of George Floyd were in fact the culmination of a long-standing ideological battle. Five days later, federal agents killed the suspect-in self-defense, the government claimed-during a confrontation in Washington State. Within hours, a 39-year-old man would be dead-shot in the chest by a self-described anti-fascist. Then, on the last Saturday of August, a 600-vehicle caravan of Trump supporters rode into Portland waving American flags and Trump flags with slogans like TAKE AMERICA BACK and MAKE LIBERALS CRY AGAIN. The authorities used chemical agents on crowds so frequently that even Mayor Wheeler found himself caught in clouds of tear gas. A federal officer shot a man in the forehead with a nonlethal munition, fracturing his skull. Agents threw protesters into unmarked vans.
In early July, when then-President Donald Trump deployed federal law-enforcement agents in tactical gear to Portland-against the wishes of the mayor and the governor-conditions deteriorated further. These radicals acted without restraint or, in many cases, humanity. View MoreĮxtremists on the left and on the right, each side inhabiting its own reality, had come to own a portion of downtown Portland. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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