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Additional insight for this, from my perspective as support ops for protesters in Portland. Bad actors from eastern Oregon, a heavily red and still pretty raci
by octokatt 4y ago
Additional insight for this, from my perspective as support ops for protesters in Portland.
Bad actors from eastern Oregon, a heavily red and still pretty racist part of the state, would come into otherwise peaceful protests and cause property damage so police would be able to use greater force. It's a very effective way to get a protest re-labeled as a riot.
Remember, Oregon banned black people as a way of dealing with the Civil War. [1]. Portland is a liberal island in a sea of of red, hence why it's become such a friction point.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_black_exclusion_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_black_exclusion_laws
- roarcher 4y agoI see this claim every time the riots of 2020 are brought up, but have seen little evidence for it. Are we to assume that anyone who misbehaves at these events is a saboteur? That seems awfully convenient.
- brutal_chaos_ 4y agoit's also awfully convenient to assume that only the protesting party is at fault.
- roarcher 4y agoI didn't say "only". I'm responding to GP's assertion that these were "otherwise peaceful protests" if not for "bad actors from eastern Oregon". They're the one claiming it was only the other side. To be clear, I am not taking a centrist "both sides" position. I definitely think the vast majority of the violence and destruction was carried out by BLM and Antifa, in Portland and everywhere else that these riots occurred. But I won't go so far as to say that there were absolutely no saboteurs. I believe there were a handful of documented cases of them.
- prepend 4y agoIt is weird how much of a talking point it is. No evidence whatsoever, yet it’s mentioned so frequently. “I just know that all the bad actors were not the good people.” I’m sure soon the police will claim that the bad police officers are just non-police dressed up.
- fuckingbonkers 4y agoUmbrella guy was clearly intending to incite violence and is believed, as far as I’ve read, to have been a “saboteur“. Of course it’s not everyone. Mobs are idiots. But it’s not no one and the approach works, so it shouldn’t be ignored.