So, the Portland protests aren’t mine to lead, but I am a ConLaw nerd and so they do feel personal in their own way and have since the first day I heard cops had used their powers to murder George Floyd.
That has lead me to fantasize about what I would do if I were to run these protests and I came up with …
So, I’m sure the people reading along have been wondering about my take on Ted Wheeler. This is part of it.
As we all know, the protests in Portland are important. They’re about Black lives. They’re organized with absolutely the best of intentions. So there couldn’t be any racism right there at the protests, right? Right????
Aw, fuck. You know the answer.
You’ve likely already read the thread I posted about the personal experience of being exposed to tear gas, how your body responds, how your mind panics. But of course that doesn’t tell people much about what actually happened – the narrative that one might get in a newspaper. This post is more about that: the story of late July 21st and the earliest bit of July 22nd and the rally that happened in front of the Federal Services Building [Correction:] Justice Center and the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse in downtown Portland.
The nightly protests themselves are a sort of jamboree. There are people who take it upon themselves to be leaders. They speak and initiate chanting. But they’re mostly limited to use of bullhorns, which simply aren’t loud enough to reach the whole crowd. So if you don’t work your way to the front, it takes you several rounds of a chant before you can pick it up – except the obvious and most frequent chant, “Black Lives Matter”. That one gets started a lot.
Marriott is reportedly housing the violent, lawless federal agents who are acting to diminish democratic rights in the USA even as I type this.
Enterprise is supplying the minivans used to disappear protestors, activists, and possibly even bystanders.
We should not let them profit off such crimes without scrutiny. (Indeed, I would like to make sure that they don’t profit off such crimes at all, but rather pay the normal capitalist penalties for abhorrent behavior: loss of customers and loss of money.
One model letter, written by me and sent to Care@Enterprise.com:
I have received what i consider to be credible reports that your rental vehicles are being used in the process of transporting people detained by federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Oregon.
Although LEOs do indeed have broad powers, these powers are constrained by both the constitution and federal statute. As it happens, respected experts in this area of law, including the Attorney General for the State of Oregon believe that these detentions are unlawful and unconstitutional.Should their analysis be correct, then federal criminal statutes 18 USC § 242 would apply and this behavior would be a felony known as deprivation of right under color of law. Not only is this a very serious crime in its own right, but as the behavior gives every appearance of being planned, and again assuming that the Oregon AG understands and is accurately stating the law involved, further felonies of conspiracy would also have been committed.Acts of this grievous nature not only injure the rights of individuals, but also degrade the ability of the public to participate in the democratic process. This is why the penalty for such crimes is so harsh: up to 10 years in a federal prison.My questions to Enterprise.com, then, are these:1. to what extent were you aware that your vehicles would be used in the commission of a string of multiple felonies?2. When did you first gain that awareness?3. What action is your corporation now taking to limit your involvement with this felonious criminal conspiracy and the erosion of democratic rights?Thank you for your prompt attention.
PZ has a new post up about a group Atheists for Liberty which proudly announces its embrace of Enlightenment values. Turns out it is a creature of Peter Boghossian, someone whose work I’ve criticized harshly in the past right here on this blog and whose ethics, clearly, are lacking.
Let’s be clear. “Enlightenment values” suck. Sure, Enlightenment philosophers actually move epistemology forward quite a bit. They also provided hugely important arguments for more widespread literacy and education on diverse topics. They developed a contractarianism sufficiently complete to found a country from Hobbes’ proto-contractarianism where “consent of the governed” had more Machiavellian meanings almost entirely limiting it to the practical advice to rulers not to encourage the masses to take up torches and pitchforks because those torches and pitchforks, in addition to being official notice of revocation of consent, were also a bit dangerous to the ruling class.
Over on Pharyngula, PZ has a post up unequivocally supporting trans* persons equality with any other human where rights are concerned. As PZ and many, many others have put it: Trans rights are human rights.
In the thread, helpfully titled, “Arguments are closed, I’m not going to argue with anyone about trans rights”, someone showed up who wanted to argue about trans rights. You’ve really got to hand it to some folks, y’know? And on the one hand, this person (so far) doesn’t seem remotely as bad as some others who have commented on Pharyngula opposing trans* persons human rights. On the other, did they even read the post title?
I mean, seriously.
Careful reader of this blog may remember that I consider the greatest legal genius in history to be Charles Hamilton Houston. If you don’t know who he is, well, read a book because a blog post alone won’t do it. Okay, fine. I’ll give you a bit to get started.
This is the one person more responsible than any for Brown v Board of Education (Topeka, Kansas) and the success of legal efforts to end segregation everywhere in the US. This is the one person who had not merely the legal success to argue and win that case before SCOTUS (he didn’t, as he had recently died: that was his little-known protege, Thurgood Marshall), but rather the nearly incomprehensible foresight necessary to plan literally decades ahead.
A spontaneous protest at a Portland, Oregon ICE facility has become an encampment over the last 24 hours. Although nothing stops ICE employees from coming or going, the protest does now stop cars from entering or leaving, which is causing some employees who don’t wish to take public transit to remain inside.
Arun Gupta (@arunindy) tweets out the tragic and hilarious response:
About 75 people blockading ICE prison in Portland, OR. DHS keep coming out to ask protesters to let 9 ICE employees to leave.
“So they can get home to their families.”
If only someone had some compassion.
Portland has an awkward history of Pride overlapping with Juneteenth, and this year it happened again. If you had a choice of going to a Pride celebration or a Juneteenth celebration but couldn’t be a part of both, which would you attend? Why?
For me it’s a bit academic, living in Canada where Juneteenth isn’t celebrated (for obvious reasons) and Pride is on a different weekend anyway. But it’s still a chance to look at important issues of how we prioritize our lives and the causes that we value. I think right now I’d prioritize Juneteenth if for no other reason than the Canadian kids have been to lots of Prides and zero Juneteenths, but it would get harder to answer if we’d been to both the same number of times.
So, a couple days ago cops in Portland, Oregon did the right thing in a rare situation. It was immortalized on the PPD twitter feed:
Portland – Police to 2100 block of NW Kearney St – report of suspicious circumstances – male walking down the street pulling a suitcase with a female zipped up inside of it
— Portland OR Alerts (@pdxalerts) June 10, 2018
NW Kearney Update – Officers made contact with the subjects – officers reporting the female is riding around in the suitcase willingly – all units clearing
— Portland OR Alerts (@pdxalerts) June 10, 2018
Now, I’m all for consensual fun, and if you wanna ride around in a suitcase, you do you, right? But I also get why this was reported. If you do a google search for “portland police alert woman suitcase” you get some seriously not okay stuff all over the first page. Worse, it’s not just multiple reports of the same case, you get links to reports of separate, unrelated incidents. (People with multiple treatment resistant faith in humanity can have it cured right there on that google page.)