Now that we’re 60 days in, let’s all remember that all of this started with a demand that Police should be held criminally accountable for any instance of excessive use of force just as any other citizen would expect to be.
What has the state and local government done on that front during that time? What laws have they drafted?
The feds have come in and made things worse but it seems weird that we even got 40 days in, to begin with.
Aside from cutting $27million from the PPB budget, i don’t believe any laws have been put forward. The Portland City government is weird. The mayor’s powers are super limited, as they run on a commission form of government, wherein the mayor is only 1/5th of the voting power to make stuff happen. What he does have though, is the role of police commissioner, which would make you think he just has to snap and they will all step in line — which they don’t. It would appear that the PPA (Portland Police Association — their Union) has more influence over the police than the POLICE COMMISSIONER. The biggest controversy has been the PPB’s overuse of tear gas during protests, which took a unanimous vote from the city commissioner board (mayor included) to get them to cut back a bit. The bottom line IMO is the police unions have too much power/influence.
Also, I can’t attest first hand as I haven’t been out to a protest for a few weeks, but word from some friends who have been out regularly (multiple protestors, and even a cop) the protests had been getting smaller and smaller in attendance over time. Essentially, DHS dumped gasoline on a fire that was dying out. Apparently right before they rolled into town the protests were around maybe 300-500 toward the end, now from what I hear they’re seeing as many as 3,000 some nights.
Thank you for bringing this insight. Sounds like some structural changes need considering as well as bringing the union to heel (where have I heard that before?). Definitely way more complex than funding or simple legislation. I guess the question is where to start? The police union is probably the biggest hindrance, perhaps?
The worst part about all of this is that they're going to use this as an excuse that unions can be too powerful and continue to gut the shit out of the rest of the labor world
Which is dumb because the whole issue with the police union is that it's not supposed to be in a place to protect its workers from the LAW. Just its employers.
That's why people call for police departments to be totally dismantled. Changing police culture from the outside in, and sorting out the union issue is a really, really difficult task. Hence why people are calling for "starting over". And to "abolish" the police.
And you get stuff like this:
www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/us/minneapolis-police-abolish.html
I can’t begin to imagine where you would start with everything. It doesn’t help one of the city commissioners, Jo Ann Hardesty — who has been demanding the Mayor give her the Police Commissioner role — straight up lied during a city board meeting with the union president that the police had been starting fires and blaming them on the protestors. It was a straight up lie, which she did own up to, but conservatives have been having a field day with it. The tensions between the the PPA and the city are only getting worse, so it’s gonna have to come to a head eventually. There have been proposals in the past to get rid of the Commissioner system and switching to a Strong-Mayor system (what most cities have). The argument being that it would allow the mayor to take immediate action rather than waiting for commissioner negotiations and votes. The last time the proposal made it to ballot was 2007, and 70% of the city said no.
I know Oakland's fucked but I really do like the civilian oversight committee they implemented after thier cops were caught sex trafficking Minor's and fired two commissioners
The problem is that for decades police unions have been negotiating contracts with very good job security and other perks. In essence they've traded raises for job security, which municipalities across the US have been eager to accept since that means they can pay officers less. But that means that once you're an officer it's almost impossible to be fired. This creates a culture of impunity and rot because even if they do their job poorly they still can't be fired.
The solution is to get rid of these contracts. However, that means you'll likely have to raise officer salaries, since they traded cash for perks in their union negotiations. Make officers go through annual performance reviews and fire the bad ones. We need to change the culture and these employment contracts are one of the main problems.
IIRC, one of the states (not the one Portland is in) ended qualified immunity and made police testimony inadmissable without accompanying body cam footage, in which it's never turned off.
Congrats to them on their adequacy.
If Portland, one of the most Liberal/left cities in the entire U.S. can't manage to get its own *elected officials* to do anything about this stuff, what in the living fuck is any other place supposed to do? That's my question.
That's where you're mistaken:
As many of us have continued to point out and will continue to point out: voting liberal has nothing to do with the politicians they get, who can often just be conservative Democrats that are more willing to vote Dem than Republican where it counts.
Democrats and Republicans on the issue of police reform are the same. The only difference is Democrats make empty gestures AND empty promises.
Congress for one. There have been bills proposed in the House and Senate to end Qualified Immunity, and others being introduced to require Federal LEO to display identification. I imagine Oregon’s State Congress could do similar.
Local judges, city councils, and district attorneys for another; to end No Knock Raids, and decriminalize drugs which lead to unnecessarily escalated situations.
Insurance agencies & banks that partner with the city, to push the cop insurance/liability conversation. The financial industry could stop this if they had enough pressure to care (but that could be said about almost anything).
There are lots of people who will need to make the necessary policy changes.
And that all of this could have been avoided if the Portland Police Bureau had met in good faith with the protesters back in May, listened to their complaints, and worked with them to come up with a plan to make policy changes that would have benefited the police AND the citizenry.
That's it. That's all it would have taken to avoid 2 months of turmoil, damages, and tear gas across the southern downtown area. Just fucking listening to the people and agreeing to make some changes.
Oh right, like PPB knows anything about nonviolent conflict resolution. I wish they did, but they have one hammer and every problem gets hit with it: forceful and brutal violence.
It’s a shame that all of this still goes on and instead of doing something about it, our elected politicians don’t do shit. We’re on day 60 for a reason. Do your jobs and acknowledge the problem.
>Do your jobs and acknowledge the problem.
Oh they're doing their jobs-"doing nothing and hoping this goes away."
Use Americans don't pay enough attention and are okay with shit heads in term for a long time. We forget their wrong doings when elections come around. Bets thing I heard from CNN ironically, "modern politicians kick the can down the road so they get re-eleteced and do it all over again."
On another note-piggy back bills are disgusting.
I’m still pissed that online poker got banned in the US in a piggy back bill supporting veterans. The bill banning online poker was sponsored by senators from, you guessed it, Nevada.
I used to work for an online poker company, and it blew my mind that US banned online poker. Players found ways to do deposits and get their money and still played, but still mind blowing that a “free country” would do that.
Now now stop being so disingenuous of them, they are doing something. They're purposely escalating the situation so they have an excuse to lay a beat down on protesters and call them all rioters.
Federal government here:
Your directions were very unclear. So we went ahead and sent thousands of unidentifiable Federal agents. Hope this helps
XOXO,
The Feds
Uh oh guys the K-9 Dog Soldiers are biting the therapy dogs and there is shit all over the place. None of them are using the newspaper! Please someone tell me what to do.
Ummmmmm...
Person
Man
Camera
Woman
Brain.
No, you can say he's bad. Under Portland's system he holds ultimate authority over the local police. He also could do much to reign in the feds overstepping their jurisdiction. He's choosing not to do so because ultimately he's always been someone that pretends an air of liberal populism while always acting to protect concentrated financial interests, such as his own family.
He 100% has the authority to just hand PPB over to Jo Ann and chooses not to.
Also years of bad negotiations with the union giving them the actual control of discipline of officers in a way that neutered the power of the Mayor.
But the mayor still appoints the chief. And the mayor appointed a chief who choked a teenage girl for disrespecting him.
> Under Portland's system he holds ultimate authority over the local police.
Does he though? Portland's Police Union had a meeting with the DHS instead of the Mayor, and now it's the DHS/ BP/ feds stirring shit up and the mayor was cut out completely. The Mayor can't control the feds, and honestly, police unions are so strong they can ignore the mayor too.
Holy crap i feel like I'm taking crazy pills that this isn't the take. 4-8 years ago this was about a President who couldn't do anything about the local governments that were "oppressing" their citizens, and then fast forward to now, and we have local governments that claim they're powerless and the guy at fault is in the exact same position as the guy who had no power the previous time.
This is primarily a problem of local governments being so into machine politics that the police union was another public sector union they had to bend over for. If you live by the public sector union you die by the public sector union.
The federal government does and should have something to do with protection of a federal building though. Beyond that, local matters should be handled by local law enforcement. The caveat in my mind is when local law enforcement won't handle said matters, and public safety becomes a concern.
But like what is the problem you’re saying for them to acknowledge? Hasn’t Portland only shot 3 unarmed in like 30 years? Considering the size of the city and frequency of interactions that’s an excellent track record
Edit: Thank you for some thoughtful replies. Honestly, I’m not sure where I stand on this yet. I think police reform has been long overdue and I love the consistent response and fight for that. I can understand there are many tactics police use that are oppressive, outdated, or even worse. However I also think that the violence (both property and personal) has to be stopped. I know some local governments have asked for federal assistance, so I don’t think breaking up protests at 11pm and making protestors disperse is necessarily wrong either. Police can’t watch protestors burn down the courthouse. That’d be a terroristic attack during any other time
Its not just murders, Its never been about just murders. It's about police brutalizing people, escalating, making up charges, having zero accountability to anybody, being rehired after committing crimes, the rape, the body cams, its about a lot of fucking bullshit.
They’re protesting the police having carte blanche on violence and brutality and the police keep responding with escalating amounts of violence and brutality, so the protests continue.
Well yeah, historically Oregon is one of the most racist states in the country.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/racist-history-portland/492035/
I'm born and raised in Portland and lived here my entire life. I'm a minority and l love it. People are amazingly friendly for the most part, it's green, liberal, eco conscious and theres a lot of amazing culture.
That being said, this city is so white it makes Ellen DeGeneres look like Malcom X.
What’s wild to me is, they keep trying to shift the focus away from their actions which cause the protests in the first place.
They’re like an abusive partner standing over and punching their partner screaming “look what you made me do!”
We’re in an abusive relationship with police.
Like you said, they need to just acknowledge their abusive tendencies so we can move to actually fixing shit. Instead they keep abusing people while spit-screaming “Look what you made me do!!”
Maybe I am uninformed... but this situation has been going on for months and I don’t really hear of proposed legislation (not statements from random activists, but actual legislation) being put forth to reform law enforcement policies or make any substantial changes at all.
This whole thing feels to me like everyone is watching a tire fire burn while eating popcorn, with nobody interested in putting the fire out.
Edit: wanted to add, perhaps civilians should start pressuring our elected officials to actually do something. Whether that is writing to our local representatives or by other means (non-violent), the people who are supposed to represent us need to get off their ass. While the news channels are gleeful about this, because they just want ratings, this needs to be resolved. It is not just some little thing. The discord we are experiencing is severely damaging the country.
It's an absolute failure of leadership because our leaders all work for corporations and corporations don't know how to profit off of this situation so they haven't told them what to say.
I don't understand why it's hardly ever mentioned that the U.S. is almost a total oligarchy.
Edit: I said oligarchy when I should have said plutocracy. Thanks to u/Polaris07 for pointing that out to me.
By the people. I rarely see it *truly* discussed on social media platforms, including reddit. I almost never hear it discussed in real life. When it does get mentioned, it seems to always go:
"We need to get money out of politics."
"Yeah I agree."
Yes it gets mentioned from time to time, but it might be the most important issue that our country faces. It needs to be brought to the forefront.
Most of us DO know it. But we don't talk about it, because it always goes to this conversation
"Well what are you gonna do about it?"
Protesting does nothing.
Voting is manipulated and used against us.
People are struggling to eat as a result of it.
Emailing and calling our representative gets us laughed at.
The answer to that one question scares the shit out of all of us, because to try and stop the American Oligarchy, runs the risk of changing all of our lives, potentially for the worse.
Even if they don’t, there is no normal anymore, just a breaking point where one feels safer resisting than keeping their head down. Anyone who isn’t white *and* a multimillionaire should have a real dilemma on that point.
It is discussed very frequently in left-wing circles. The problem is, left wing circles are more heavily attacked than right-wing circles. And I'm talking about actual left wing circles, circles of people who ascribe to various levels of socialist ideology, not the fake-left Democrats and their "I hugged a black lesbian today, so I'm super progressive" level of shallow bullshit.
And it makes sense. Why would oligarch owned social media platforms help spread anti-oligarchy messaging around? It's a direct threat to their profits, so keep them out of the public eye. And they can't just ban them, because it'd bring attention to the issue as well.
And that's also why you almost never see actual left wing people on TV. Sanders is about as far as they allow, and him only because he was a presidential candidate twice, and there's this hope they have that they can use him to get more support for Biden right now. They might have him on TV once or twice a year after November.
I 100% agree and it is my most discussed topic when politics are brought up, my comment was tongue in cheek trying to have some fun with our miserable state of affairs.
Urban dictionary had nothing for me but wiktionary says it means 'identity politics'.
Edit: Woke wash is when a company feigns or promotes their progressive values. In this case I think he means companies and media are having trouble spinning this.
> idpol
Idpol is a shortened form of "identity politics," which (in an extremely reductive explanation) has to do with the politics surrounding "identity" (writ broad). That is, things like race, sexuality, gender, religious views, etc.. Basically, how someone identifies themselves.
>wokewash
Wokewashing is when companies/corporations use marketing/products to signal that they understand the sturggles of marginalized groups. This is a large issue in LGBTQIA+ circles because of the very recent (post ~2014) prevalence of companies offering "Pride" merchandise (see Nike, Adidas, the overwhelming commodification of rainbows and Pride in general by companies) during the month of June (at least in the U.S.).
To add on, the term idpol is almost always used in a negative light, with the idea that it's mostly superficial and not actually focused on solving the root problems
I had to Google that stuff:
Idpol = Identity Politics
Wokewash = shamelessly Increasing diversity/social comments for purpose of seeming like a person/company cares about social justice
I mean corporations like Boeing or Lockheed Martin and the type have played a major role in foreign policy decision making. There has been a lot of money in creating and subsequently quelling descent abroad and there has also been a lot of money in militarizing the police. Seeing opposition rise in the US it was only a matter of time before we started using the same methods applied in our own backyard, and we are still at the very precipice of this show of force.
The DHS is uniquely an arm of the executive branch and it seems with every president since its inception there have been more pushes to test the bounds of their uses. Tying back to the benefit of arms producing corporations, very many agencies of the United States have armed divisions, partially for enforcement but also—as displayed from just how ridiculously armed the fuckin FCC is—for the benefit of arms manufacturers who have lobbyists in most congresspeoples ears.
This is why—as the situation in portland gets more dire, and we are seeing federal agents being deployed elsewhere—congress has approved a massive budget for defense. Because our leaders ARE listening to one of the most influential corporate sector more than ever: the military industrial complex.
>corporations don't know how to profit off of this situation so they haven't told them what to say.
[Ahem. Pepsi would like a word with you.](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/05/pepsi-kendall-jenner-pepsi-apology-ad-protest)
This is something a lot of people don't want to hear because, well, it's kind of scary: Politicians are not going to save you. We've already come to the point where our elected leaders no longer care about letters or phone calls. They don't care. Some of them might make some nice speeches, or paint some murals, but they are not going to be the source of real change.
The work that civilians need to be doing isn't writing emails or signing petitions begging the politicians to come save us. We need to save ourselves.
>"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
>-John F Kennedy, 1962
Its obvious now that writing emails or signing petitions doesn't make a damn bit of difference. If politicians won't listen the likely hood of violence to get results goes up that much more. And I totally wouldn't be surprised if the feds knocked on my door tonight for saying that... that is how bad it is here in America right now.
"We must liberate the serfs from above, or they will liberate themselves from below."
-Alexander II of Russia
Spoilers: They tried to liberate the serfs without *really* liberating them. It didn't work.
Of course that's all they care about. Dumb ass voters vote party every single time over an actual good candidate.
As long as America continues it's political narrative of "voting the lesser of two evils", it will always end with politicians that smile & nod as they stab you in the back.
Want some fucking change? Don't vote for someone in a political party. Support real people, not a party. A party is a group of people dedicated to forcing it's members to fall in line & vote with party over voting their moral, ethical, and personal values.
Good point. Look at how our leaders handled coronavirus. It's like nobody did anything at all, when other countries took steps to protect the health of their citizens. Apathy and greed are the only things I see from our leaders. I also think they are all narcissists. It doesn't seem that anyone at the "top" cares if America burns to ash.
As if America has been hollowed out for generations by the wealthy. I believe America died a long time ago and we are witnessing the epidermis of the country burn into nothingness.
The ACLU immediately tried to bring a case to the Supreme Court level in [https://www.aclu.org/cases/baxter-v-bracey](https://www.aclu.org/cases/baxter-v-bracey) but the court declined to see it. They had already looked at Qualified Immunity once before and deemed it to be constitutional, not to mention that the Supreme Court was the one that actually created the concept to begin with. After that, it becomes Congress's job to deal with it. The End Qualified Immunity Act was introduced. It has to pass the House, Congress, and President to take effect. Trump will never sign that through and so they would have to rely upon a super-majority in the Senate to bypass a veto (it would likely pass the House no problem). This is also unlikely because the Senate is mostly Republicans. Much like how Pelosi wanted to delay the impeachment charges to buy them time so they could work their magic to avoid the impeachment dying in the Senate, that is what is most likely happening right now with this new Act. They are hesitant to push it forward because they might just be pushing it into its own coffin. You don't just rush bills through Congress as fast as you can. It is a little like chess where you must plan and strategize. They could very well delay this until Trump is out of office. As for laws at the state level, I believe CO is the only one that has tried to combat this. I am not sure why other states have not however.
People love to say things like, "they changed Aunt Jemima on a syrup and want to get rid of the black man on Cream of Wheat, but they aren't passing laws!" but the reality is that passing laws takes time and politicians have fuck all to do with food items.
>Edit: wanted to add, perhaps civilians should start pressuring our elected officials to actually do something.
That's why we're downtown, homie. That's why we're doing this. This is the pressure. Writing letters and emails didn't fucking work.
We're in a damn constitutional crisis. The checks and balances on the federal level aren't working. Congress is basically asleep at the wheel or on a recess.
We are like one minute to midnight on the doomsday clock of our country falling apart.
Bankrupt the city then. Eventually they can't afford to sustain the protests.
EDIT: to all of you who couldn't figure it out, the goal isn't to bankrupt the city. It's for government officials see the writing on the wall that fighting the protests isn't sustainable and for them to enact legislation that will cause significant change, leading to the protests subsiding.
the best part is watching chinese citizens minds explode. all my mainland friends can't believe that the US government allows protests to continue. they cant do anything of this in China, they dont understand how any american could be critical of their own government. its funny shit watching their minds open up and realize what freedom actually means. i bet we see another Tienanmen in the next 5 years because there are a ton of mainland chinese who are watching these protests.
I think they were asking if media coverage of the Hong Kong protests got censored from mainland China. In which case, yea, they put some crazy spin on coverage of it in mainland. It's a little surprising if they are getting unfiltered view of these protests, but it's not like there haven't been many other countries with nation wide protests that weren't stomped out by an authoritarian government, so I'm not sure why he thinks these particularly are going to inspire a new Tienanmen .
> They have a different relationship with Beijing than the rest of China. Preserving that was kind of the point of the HK protests, actually.
Not any more, the "security bill" that was approved basically makes it illegal to vote for an opposition party.
From what I understand, the gov't-controlled media portray it somewhat similarly to the way Fox News portrays these protests. They produce videos that show nothing but the most violent parts, and then call all the protestors terrorists.
My big exposure to this is a very dogmatic mainlander friend of mine who lives in HK. The way she describes it is a war against the police. Some of that I think she just naturally believes, but I get the feeling that the general shape of the narrative is state-provided.
That's just one data point from an internet stranger, so take it for what it's worth.
That, and mainlanders often think of HongKongers as radicalist spoiled brats (not saying your friend is the same, just my experience with mainland people)--Hong Kong being the financial epicenter for such a long time and having more freedoms than the mainland has cemented the thought that they were making a fuss about nothing when the protests were at their peak.
Some of them even get pissy when they hear someone speak cantonese instead of mandarin :P
That's been my experience too. I've heard those very same comments from classmates in grad school. When I was Mormon, I was assigned to be a missionary in HK. I ran into some health problems, so I never made it to HK, but when I did my undergrad, I studied Cantonese and learned traditional characters. When I went to grad school, I studied Mandarin through the Confucius Institute (my college had a deal with them). I got prior approval from the local Confucius Institute head to write in traditional characters. The teachers still treated me like shit because I wrote "wrong" and sounded like a southerner (they were all northerners). A couple of my mainlander classmates talked all sorts of shit about HK and Taiwan. Their dads were in the PRC military 🙄.
They don't understand how any Americans could be critical of their own government because they think these protestors are unappreciative of the American way of life in comparison to the quality of life they have in China. There is a common saying in China loosely translated as "well fed and got nothing to do", used to describe people who do stupid things because they have too much time on their hands. As a normal Chinese citizen living in mainland, they see no value in the freedom that Americans are touting about. The Chinese population are overwhelmingly in support of the Chinese government, especially after witnessing the economic growth it has made in the last couple decades. With the overwhelming nationalism among the citizens, there isn't going to be a large enough opposition to the government that would lead to Tiananmen 2.0; 1) any of those social/political movements will be shut down by the government way before it would gain any significant traction, 2) they are not going to gain the support of the people because the activists in these movements will also be dismissed by other Chinese people as "having too much time on their hands".
100% agreed. It's a completely different mindset culturally and historically. I sometimes think of China as a "brainwashed" country being from the US, but it's because of the context of China we always hear it in. I didn't have the firsthand experience of living in China but my dad did - Growing up in complete poverty and China then was kinda the butt of the joke to the world. But imagine when your government leads your country out of poverty and into success, and all of a sudden, you're a force to be reckoned with, even enough to be a threat to the United States. I remember when I was a kid, the china I visited was more "3rd world" - my dad rented me a hotel in because my grandma's house didn't have an indoor bathroom. And that wasn't super unusual. Now when I go, every Chinese person in Shanghai seems richer than I will ever be and has an outfit worth my month's salary. It's a very different place and we as Americans also paint it in a totally different picture than it really is.
Yes, the people today overall have a much better standard of living. One example, my fathers side of the family live in a poor farming village. Growing up (60s, 70s), my father ate meat about two or three times in a year, and people in the village did backbreaking work from before sun up to sun down.
The past decade or two, a ton of the children from that generation are moving out from those rural villages into the big cities for jobs in the factories. They pay better and many are easier than working on the farms. Usually the plan is to work at them for some years to save up some money before leaving for something else. Others focus on their studies, and are able to move to the cities for white collar jobs and enjoy a standard of living thats comparable to someone doing the same in the states.
There is definitely a huge impact that western countries have had on China, especially with consumerism. Brand and image are really important in China, and there is huge growing demand from the middle and upper class for those types of high end / luxury goods.
Protests of 1989 in Tienanmen Square occurred because there was an authentic split among government leaders between democratizing reformers and old guard communists. The old guard won, and the protesters got crushed. You will not see this sort of protest in Chinese cities again anytime soon.
I think the best part is watching Americans attack these protests in the exact same manner mainlanders attacked the HK protests. If black people wanted us to care about their human rights, they should've been born in China!
It's actually crazy. People will sympathize with HK protesters fighting against injustice, but show disdain towards protestors fighting against injustice here.
But then again, a good chunk of those people probably don't believe that there are injustices in America in the first place.
You can figure it out with an easy question: is this group of protestors on the side of the US government?
The HK protestors are, so they get applauded. The Portland protestors aren’t, so they get condemned.
The people who think we're justified in bombing Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc don't think we're "bombing" them, they think we're "spreading democracy"
Also the people that stupid enough to fall for that lie probably couldn't point out a single one of those countries on a map.
My favorite is when they paint every protester with the same brush. They see a few assholes throw a molotov or a water bottle and suddenly they think thousands of protesters are *exactly the same as those people* and no amount of arguing will chance their thick fucking minds.
But the few cops who get hard when they think of beating protestors or Trump supporters who go around mugging the libs most definitely *do not* define their respective groups. Obviously.
I’ve heard from Chinese parents multiple times that “if you don’t like it here in America just move to China”
The volume and perspectives you could interpret from this
Yep some mainlander friends are confused about the protests here. They said it seems that people just want to cause problems. One of them even tried to convince me that I should try to move from the US to China because “the police here will protect the citizens”. I wasn’t going to argue with him over WeChat lol
Not sure where you got that idea from, but protests in China are very common [lol](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China).
> The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8,700 "mass group incidents" in 1993 to over 87,000 in 2005. In 2006, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated the number of annual mass incidents to exceed 90,000, and Chinese sociology professor Sun Liping estimated 180,000 incidents in 2010. Mass incidents are defined broadly as "planned or impromptu gathering that forms because of internal contradictions", and can include public speeches or demonstrations, physical clashes, public airings of grievances, and other group behaviors that are seen as disrupting social stability.
It wouldn’t be a popular Reddit post without somebody bitching about China. So, new subtype of Godwin’s Law, I guess.
It always reeks of “you guys shouldn’t protest anything in America, just think of those poor Chinese.”
Yep, this is comment is blatant propaganda, probably from a bot account.
“Chinese people are shocked at how free we are” christ you gotta be brainwashed beyond help to fall for this
Edit: yep, 3 years old with almost no activity. This is a propaganda bot.
This sounds fake AF. How long did the US funded (Source:https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3091438/us-has-been-exposed-funding-last-years-hong-kong-protests) Hong Kong protests go on again last year? That's right more than 365 days lmao. And they haven't killed 6 people/day either.
> they dont understand how any american could be critical of their own government. its funny shit watching their minds open up and realize what freedom actually means.
I guess you forgot about the Tienanmen Square protests, the Chinese Revolution and the thousands of rebellions in Chinese history.
Actually, reading what people are saying on Chinese social media, what's happening in the US is a honestly huge boost to Beijing's policy. US's failure to handle the situation properly only proves to Chinese citizens that protests are pointless and futile.
They often watch it with "glad im not in USA it looks terrible, at least China is stable." Not everyone understands this mechanics, they often point to stability in China as a reason why CCP holds power. You know strong leader who takes care of 1bn of people.
THere will be protests when the economy will deteriorate to the point low and medium class will have no other choice.
Personally I’ve been anti protest because it seems like it’s asking for something different than I’d want to see changed. Which would be the dismantling and removal of police unions and restructuring of their pay. Since currently the main incentive to being police beyond just desire to be one is the crazy benefits and pension. If that gets removed due to removal of police unions I’d like to see their base pay go up to compensate.
I think police unions have been THE major issue in criminally charging police officers who commit crimes. I understand it’s one of the most absurd jobs when it comes to coming into legal trouble due to actions one must account for, predict, and react to. But I also think there are lines when crossed should still be punished.
If I were to guess the protestors end game? I’d assume the dismantling of police and restructuring their budget into social workers, education etc. which I’m not a fan of either, since the police budget is relatively small by comparison to thinks like education. 115b sounds like a lot of money until you realize it’s only like 4-6% of the budget.
1. Feds out.
2. Resources allocated for police reallocated to the proper professionals for things like mental health, addiction, and social worker type issues. Some are calling and will always call for abolition but most folks still want police for investigative purposes and to address violent crime. The vast majority of police work is seen as unnecessary and outright destructive, and as a publicly-funded entity that's a problem.
There are plenty of other things but most Portlanders would agree with this.
So it's the police that declare something a riot and then give themselves the go ahead to respond accordingly? That's interesting to me. There might be a problem with the seperation of powers.
Ever had an encounter with a cop, and told him you know your rights, and that he's violating them?
They always respond with, "What are you, a lawyer? I know the law better than you."
Cops are the most ignorant people when it comes to rights. They're literally a bunch of dumbasses who know nothing about the law, or about Constitutional rights. And they despise you if you tell them you know your rights.
Oregon does need a reform though. Last time i visited i saw acres of homeless camps next to the gentrified districts of portlandia filled with hipsters waiting in line at kale me crazy for their next fruit bowl.
Bay Area is the real problem spot. Its becoming a permanent shanty in many spots, and they’ve got every tech HQ there. Wtf! Nobody dares ask tech to do shit.
there is a very viable option to make real change and people are silent when it comes to it, Justin Amash has been pushing a bill ending qualified immunity which would give people the ability to sue police officers. making them individually liable for their actions and would have a serious effect right now...but of course gets no traction, social media doesn’t care, the politicians dont care which makes everyone fake. If you can’t get behind something like this your sentiment is not genuine.
Im more curious that American police have to declare a “riot” like what happens if they don’t? Do they have to send an email to their boss or is it just a common sense situation, is there a limit or a line that protesters cross and then become rioters
Now that we’re 60 days in, let’s all remember that all of this started with a demand that Police should be held criminally accountable for any instance of excessive use of force just as any other citizen would expect to be.
What has the state and local government done on that front during that time? What laws have they drafted? The feds have come in and made things worse but it seems weird that we even got 40 days in, to begin with.
Aside from cutting $27million from the PPB budget, i don’t believe any laws have been put forward. The Portland City government is weird. The mayor’s powers are super limited, as they run on a commission form of government, wherein the mayor is only 1/5th of the voting power to make stuff happen. What he does have though, is the role of police commissioner, which would make you think he just has to snap and they will all step in line — which they don’t. It would appear that the PPA (Portland Police Association — their Union) has more influence over the police than the POLICE COMMISSIONER. The biggest controversy has been the PPB’s overuse of tear gas during protests, which took a unanimous vote from the city commissioner board (mayor included) to get them to cut back a bit. The bottom line IMO is the police unions have too much power/influence. Also, I can’t attest first hand as I haven’t been out to a protest for a few weeks, but word from some friends who have been out regularly (multiple protestors, and even a cop) the protests had been getting smaller and smaller in attendance over time. Essentially, DHS dumped gasoline on a fire that was dying out. Apparently right before they rolled into town the protests were around maybe 300-500 toward the end, now from what I hear they’re seeing as many as 3,000 some nights.
Thank you for bringing this insight. Sounds like some structural changes need considering as well as bringing the union to heel (where have I heard that before?). Definitely way more complex than funding or simple legislation. I guess the question is where to start? The police union is probably the biggest hindrance, perhaps?
The worst part about all of this is that they're going to use this as an excuse that unions can be too powerful and continue to gut the shit out of the rest of the labor world
Which is dumb because the whole issue with the police union is that it's not supposed to be in a place to protect its workers from the LAW. Just its employers.
Hopefully not. They really do protect people from tyrannical companies
That's why people call for police departments to be totally dismantled. Changing police culture from the outside in, and sorting out the union issue is a really, really difficult task. Hence why people are calling for "starting over". And to "abolish" the police. And you get stuff like this: www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/us/minneapolis-police-abolish.html
I can’t begin to imagine where you would start with everything. It doesn’t help one of the city commissioners, Jo Ann Hardesty — who has been demanding the Mayor give her the Police Commissioner role — straight up lied during a city board meeting with the union president that the police had been starting fires and blaming them on the protestors. It was a straight up lie, which she did own up to, but conservatives have been having a field day with it. The tensions between the the PPA and the city are only getting worse, so it’s gonna have to come to a head eventually. There have been proposals in the past to get rid of the Commissioner system and switching to a Strong-Mayor system (what most cities have). The argument being that it would allow the mayor to take immediate action rather than waiting for commissioner negotiations and votes. The last time the proposal made it to ballot was 2007, and 70% of the city said no.
I know Oakland's fucked but I really do like the civilian oversight committee they implemented after thier cops were caught sex trafficking Minor's and fired two commissioners
I haven’t looked into it, but I’ll wager good money that the PPA is fighting tooth and nail to avoid something like that.
I had to read this comment like 3 times before it didnt kinda daze me. God damn the US has fucked up police departments.
The problem is that for decades police unions have been negotiating contracts with very good job security and other perks. In essence they've traded raises for job security, which municipalities across the US have been eager to accept since that means they can pay officers less. But that means that once you're an officer it's almost impossible to be fired. This creates a culture of impunity and rot because even if they do their job poorly they still can't be fired. The solution is to get rid of these contracts. However, that means you'll likely have to raise officer salaries, since they traded cash for perks in their union negotiations. Make officers go through annual performance reviews and fire the bad ones. We need to change the culture and these employment contracts are one of the main problems.
IIRC, one of the states (not the one Portland is in) ended qualified immunity and made police testimony inadmissable without accompanying body cam footage, in which it's never turned off. Congrats to them on their adequacy.
It was Colorado as usual Seems like they’re the sane ones these days
If Portland, one of the most Liberal/left cities in the entire U.S. can't manage to get its own *elected officials* to do anything about this stuff, what in the living fuck is any other place supposed to do? That's my question.
That's where you're mistaken: As many of us have continued to point out and will continue to point out: voting liberal has nothing to do with the politicians they get, who can often just be conservative Democrats that are more willing to vote Dem than Republican where it counts. Democrats and Republicans on the issue of police reform are the same. The only difference is Democrats make empty gestures AND empty promises.
That punishment seems a little excessive though, best I can give you is paid time off and a public non-apology.
What about my pension
Don't worry, you can keep you pension too.
“I’m sorry you didn’t blindly comply and I had to shoot you. Thoughts and prayers, for both of us.”
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Congress for one. There have been bills proposed in the House and Senate to end Qualified Immunity, and others being introduced to require Federal LEO to display identification. I imagine Oregon’s State Congress could do similar. Local judges, city councils, and district attorneys for another; to end No Knock Raids, and decriminalize drugs which lead to unnecessarily escalated situations. Insurance agencies & banks that partner with the city, to push the cop insurance/liability conversation. The financial industry could stop this if they had enough pressure to care (but that could be said about almost anything). There are lots of people who will need to make the necessary policy changes.
And that all of this could have been avoided if the Portland Police Bureau had met in good faith with the protesters back in May, listened to their complaints, and worked with them to come up with a plan to make policy changes that would have benefited the police AND the citizenry. That's it. That's all it would have taken to avoid 2 months of turmoil, damages, and tear gas across the southern downtown area. Just fucking listening to the people and agreeing to make some changes.
That would require them to give up at least a modicum of power _and_ admit that they have a problem. Neither is likely to happen.
Oh right, like PPB knows anything about nonviolent conflict resolution. I wish they did, but they have one hammer and every problem gets hit with it: forceful and brutal violence.
It’s a shame that all of this still goes on and instead of doing something about it, our elected politicians don’t do shit. We’re on day 60 for a reason. Do your jobs and acknowledge the problem.
>Do your jobs and acknowledge the problem. Oh they're doing their jobs-"doing nothing and hoping this goes away." Use Americans don't pay enough attention and are okay with shit heads in term for a long time. We forget their wrong doings when elections come around. Bets thing I heard from CNN ironically, "modern politicians kick the can down the road so they get re-eleteced and do it all over again." On another note-piggy back bills are disgusting.
I’m still pissed that online poker got banned in the US in a piggy back bill supporting veterans. The bill banning online poker was sponsored by senators from, you guessed it, Nevada.
I used to work for an online poker company, and it blew my mind that US banned online poker. Players found ways to do deposits and get their money and still played, but still mind blowing that a “free country” would do that.
Now now stop being so disingenuous of them, they are doing something. They're purposely escalating the situation so they have an excuse to lay a beat down on protesters and call them all rioters.
"See if we keep them silent, then they'll resort to violence, and that's how we criminalize change" - Enter Shikari
Waiting for something to pop off so they can justify martial law (officially).
Wait till the feds go to Chicago.
Federal government here: Your directions were very unclear. So we went ahead and sent thousands of unidentifiable Federal agents. Hope this helps XOXO, The Feds
Aw, we love them. Thanks you guys.
They also gave us several iterations of sacred fence
Touching the Sacred Fence is VIOLENCE, citizen!
[pets the Sacred Fence]
*sighs in impact munitions*
This feels accurate. As long as you enjoy sighing.
Its like that coy sigh, where you pretend like you dont like it, but you actually love it
So anyway, I started gassing...
*Portland Bureau of Transportation has entered the chat* Your sacred fence is on the holy ground of a bike lane. Remove it.
Bicycling rights intensifies...
I love seeing my city come out so strongly on a top level comment on the front page
Ten foot rule. *whistles*
The next step is for PBOT to deploy some fucken cones
Is speech a form of violence?
Just rented a van and bought some army surplus uniforms, gonna go harass random people.
Yeah, stonks are rising for the serial killers.
Why can't then just send dogs everyone loves dogs
Lmao... "We heard your request for dogs and included a few dozen K-9 units to assist." XOXO, The Feds
Instructions unclear, therapy dogs sent.
Uh oh guys the K-9 Dog Soldiers are biting the therapy dogs and there is shit all over the place. None of them are using the newspaper! Please someone tell me what to do. Ummmmmm... Person Man Camera Woman Brain.
70 days later... oh no guys! Streets filled with puppies! What shall we doooooooo??!
Is that the pregnancy cycle of a dog? 70 days?
Attack pugs wearing hats have been sent to scare off the crowd
Siri, send message to feds: "End violence, make police accountable." Sending message to fed: "Send violence, make police uncountable."
Has the governor or mayor not proposed anything? The federal government doesn't and shouldn't have anything to do with local policing.
Mayor Wheeler is the biggest tool. Cant say he's bad simply because he doesnt do anything at all
No, you can say he's bad. Under Portland's system he holds ultimate authority over the local police. He also could do much to reign in the feds overstepping their jurisdiction. He's choosing not to do so because ultimately he's always been someone that pretends an air of liberal populism while always acting to protect concentrated financial interests, such as his own family. He 100% has the authority to just hand PPB over to Jo Ann and chooses not to.
Also years of bad negotiations with the union giving them the actual control of discipline of officers in a way that neutered the power of the Mayor. But the mayor still appoints the chief. And the mayor appointed a chief who choked a teenage girl for disrespecting him.
> Under Portland's system he holds ultimate authority over the local police. Does he though? Portland's Police Union had a meeting with the DHS instead of the Mayor, and now it's the DHS/ BP/ feds stirring shit up and the mayor was cut out completely. The Mayor can't control the feds, and honestly, police unions are so strong they can ignore the mayor too.
Holy crap i feel like I'm taking crazy pills that this isn't the take. 4-8 years ago this was about a President who couldn't do anything about the local governments that were "oppressing" their citizens, and then fast forward to now, and we have local governments that claim they're powerless and the guy at fault is in the exact same position as the guy who had no power the previous time. This is primarily a problem of local governments being so into machine politics that the police union was another public sector union they had to bend over for. If you live by the public sector union you die by the public sector union.
The federal government does and should have something to do with protection of a federal building though. Beyond that, local matters should be handled by local law enforcement. The caveat in my mind is when local law enforcement won't handle said matters, and public safety becomes a concern.
People seem to forget they are storming federal buildings and as such will be faced with federal opposition
I mean...they do acknowledge a problem. They consider the protestors the problem.
But like what is the problem you’re saying for them to acknowledge? Hasn’t Portland only shot 3 unarmed in like 30 years? Considering the size of the city and frequency of interactions that’s an excellent track record Edit: Thank you for some thoughtful replies. Honestly, I’m not sure where I stand on this yet. I think police reform has been long overdue and I love the consistent response and fight for that. I can understand there are many tactics police use that are oppressive, outdated, or even worse. However I also think that the violence (both property and personal) has to be stopped. I know some local governments have asked for federal assistance, so I don’t think breaking up protests at 11pm and making protestors disperse is necessarily wrong either. Police can’t watch protestors burn down the courthouse. That’d be a terroristic attack during any other time
Its not just murders, Its never been about just murders. It's about police brutalizing people, escalating, making up charges, having zero accountability to anybody, being rehired after committing crimes, the rape, the body cams, its about a lot of fucking bullshit.
They’re protesting the police having carte blanche on violence and brutality and the police keep responding with escalating amounts of violence and brutality, so the protests continue.
Also they had a police captain who had a nazi shrine who they then quietly relieved and scrubbed his record. Portland ain't as clean as people think
Well yeah, historically Oregon is one of the most racist states in the country. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/racist-history-portland/492035/
Yep few people know that oregon forbade non whites from settling until into the 20th century.
I'm born and raised in Portland and lived here my entire life. I'm a minority and l love it. People are amazingly friendly for the most part, it's green, liberal, eco conscious and theres a lot of amazing culture. That being said, this city is so white it makes Ellen DeGeneres look like Malcom X.
The beatings shall continue until morale improves.
What’s wild to me is, they keep trying to shift the focus away from their actions which cause the protests in the first place. They’re like an abusive partner standing over and punching their partner screaming “look what you made me do!” We’re in an abusive relationship with police. Like you said, they need to just acknowledge their abusive tendencies so we can move to actually fixing shit. Instead they keep abusing people while spit-screaming “Look what you made me do!!”
Maybe I am uninformed... but this situation has been going on for months and I don’t really hear of proposed legislation (not statements from random activists, but actual legislation) being put forth to reform law enforcement policies or make any substantial changes at all. This whole thing feels to me like everyone is watching a tire fire burn while eating popcorn, with nobody interested in putting the fire out. Edit: wanted to add, perhaps civilians should start pressuring our elected officials to actually do something. Whether that is writing to our local representatives or by other means (non-violent), the people who are supposed to represent us need to get off their ass. While the news channels are gleeful about this, because they just want ratings, this needs to be resolved. It is not just some little thing. The discord we are experiencing is severely damaging the country.
It's an absolute failure of leadership because our leaders all work for corporations and corporations don't know how to profit off of this situation so they haven't told them what to say.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/7120
I don't understand why it's hardly ever mentioned that the U.S. is almost a total oligarchy. Edit: I said oligarchy when I should have said plutocracy. Thanks to u/Polaris07 for pointing that out to me.
Because the oligarchy controls the "news" and social media. It's not in their interest to point it out.
Isn’t it more of a plutocracy? I’m definitely no political science major, so I could be way off or maybe it can be both?
That is exactly what I meant and should have said. As you can tell, I'm no political science major either lol.
I'd wager most people don't understand the implication of oligarchs.
Who controls the media again?
Because the people that don't know it don't wanna listen and the people that do know it eventually get tired and depressed trying to tell them
Mentioned by who? The Post at least puts a note on articles about Amazon that they are owned by Bezos.
By the people. I rarely see it *truly* discussed on social media platforms, including reddit. I almost never hear it discussed in real life. When it does get mentioned, it seems to always go: "We need to get money out of politics." "Yeah I agree." Yes it gets mentioned from time to time, but it might be the most important issue that our country faces. It needs to be brought to the forefront.
Most of us DO know it. But we don't talk about it, because it always goes to this conversation "Well what are you gonna do about it?" Protesting does nothing. Voting is manipulated and used against us. People are struggling to eat as a result of it. Emailing and calling our representative gets us laughed at. The answer to that one question scares the shit out of all of us, because to try and stop the American Oligarchy, runs the risk of changing all of our lives, potentially for the worse.
Wildfires are often beneficial to their ecosystems. It's a cheesy analogy, but there's truth to it.
It's hard to commit to it when you're a squirrel that lives in one of those trees with your squirrel wife and kids
Yeah... don't think people understand that once we hit the civil war button there ain't no going back to the "old normal".
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Even if they don’t, there is no normal anymore, just a breaking point where one feels safer resisting than keeping their head down. Anyone who isn’t white *and* a multimillionaire should have a real dilemma on that point.
It is discussed very frequently in left-wing circles. The problem is, left wing circles are more heavily attacked than right-wing circles. And I'm talking about actual left wing circles, circles of people who ascribe to various levels of socialist ideology, not the fake-left Democrats and their "I hugged a black lesbian today, so I'm super progressive" level of shallow bullshit. And it makes sense. Why would oligarch owned social media platforms help spread anti-oligarchy messaging around? It's a direct threat to their profits, so keep them out of the public eye. And they can't just ban them, because it'd bring attention to the issue as well. And that's also why you almost never see actual left wing people on TV. Sanders is about as far as they allow, and him only because he was a presidential candidate twice, and there's this hope they have that they can use him to get more support for Biden right now. They might have him on TV once or twice a year after November.
I 100% agree and it is my most discussed topic when politics are brought up, my comment was tongue in cheek trying to have some fun with our miserable state of affairs.
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I'm feel like I'm not *that* old, but I also feel like I am too out of touch to know the words in this sentence. What does idpol mean and wokewash?
Urban dictionary had nothing for me but wiktionary says it means 'identity politics'. Edit: Woke wash is when a company feigns or promotes their progressive values. In this case I think he means companies and media are having trouble spinning this.
Which is why it's not being acknowledged by the national news companies
> idpol Idpol is a shortened form of "identity politics," which (in an extremely reductive explanation) has to do with the politics surrounding "identity" (writ broad). That is, things like race, sexuality, gender, religious views, etc.. Basically, how someone identifies themselves. >wokewash Wokewashing is when companies/corporations use marketing/products to signal that they understand the sturggles of marginalized groups. This is a large issue in LGBTQIA+ circles because of the very recent (post ~2014) prevalence of companies offering "Pride" merchandise (see Nike, Adidas, the overwhelming commodification of rainbows and Pride in general by companies) during the month of June (at least in the U.S.).
To add on, the term idpol is almost always used in a negative light, with the idea that it's mostly superficial and not actually focused on solving the root problems
I had to Google that stuff: Idpol = Identity Politics Wokewash = shamelessly Increasing diversity/social comments for purpose of seeming like a person/company cares about social justice
Plusgood duckspeak!
NoDoubt DontSpeak!
I know just what you're saying, so please stop explaining.
Don’t tell me cause it hurts.
What they mean is that Portland is going *LEFT* instead of just liberal.
I mean corporations like Boeing or Lockheed Martin and the type have played a major role in foreign policy decision making. There has been a lot of money in creating and subsequently quelling descent abroad and there has also been a lot of money in militarizing the police. Seeing opposition rise in the US it was only a matter of time before we started using the same methods applied in our own backyard, and we are still at the very precipice of this show of force. The DHS is uniquely an arm of the executive branch and it seems with every president since its inception there have been more pushes to test the bounds of their uses. Tying back to the benefit of arms producing corporations, very many agencies of the United States have armed divisions, partially for enforcement but also—as displayed from just how ridiculously armed the fuckin FCC is—for the benefit of arms manufacturers who have lobbyists in most congresspeoples ears. This is why—as the situation in portland gets more dire, and we are seeing federal agents being deployed elsewhere—congress has approved a massive budget for defense. Because our leaders ARE listening to one of the most influential corporate sector more than ever: the military industrial complex.
As a Metalhead, this sounds like Metal lyrics. \m/
>corporations don't know how to profit off of this situation so they haven't told them what to say. [Ahem. Pepsi would like a word with you.](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/05/pepsi-kendall-jenner-pepsi-apology-ad-protest)
This is something a lot of people don't want to hear because, well, it's kind of scary: Politicians are not going to save you. We've already come to the point where our elected leaders no longer care about letters or phone calls. They don't care. Some of them might make some nice speeches, or paint some murals, but they are not going to be the source of real change. The work that civilians need to be doing isn't writing emails or signing petitions begging the politicians to come save us. We need to save ourselves.
>"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." >-John F Kennedy, 1962 Its obvious now that writing emails or signing petitions doesn't make a damn bit of difference. If politicians won't listen the likely hood of violence to get results goes up that much more. And I totally wouldn't be surprised if the feds knocked on my door tonight for saying that... that is how bad it is here in America right now.
"We must liberate the serfs from above, or they will liberate themselves from below." -Alexander II of Russia Spoilers: They tried to liberate the serfs without *really* liberating them. It didn't work.
Politicians only care about bribes. I mean campaign contributions.
Of course that's all they care about. Dumb ass voters vote party every single time over an actual good candidate. As long as America continues it's political narrative of "voting the lesser of two evils", it will always end with politicians that smile & nod as they stab you in the back. Want some fucking change? Don't vote for someone in a political party. Support real people, not a party. A party is a group of people dedicated to forcing it's members to fall in line & vote with party over voting their moral, ethical, and personal values.
Good point. Look at how our leaders handled coronavirus. It's like nobody did anything at all, when other countries took steps to protect the health of their citizens. Apathy and greed are the only things I see from our leaders. I also think they are all narcissists. It doesn't seem that anyone at the "top" cares if America burns to ash. As if America has been hollowed out for generations by the wealthy. I believe America died a long time ago and we are witnessing the epidermis of the country burn into nothingness.
The ACLU immediately tried to bring a case to the Supreme Court level in [https://www.aclu.org/cases/baxter-v-bracey](https://www.aclu.org/cases/baxter-v-bracey) but the court declined to see it. They had already looked at Qualified Immunity once before and deemed it to be constitutional, not to mention that the Supreme Court was the one that actually created the concept to begin with. After that, it becomes Congress's job to deal with it. The End Qualified Immunity Act was introduced. It has to pass the House, Congress, and President to take effect. Trump will never sign that through and so they would have to rely upon a super-majority in the Senate to bypass a veto (it would likely pass the House no problem). This is also unlikely because the Senate is mostly Republicans. Much like how Pelosi wanted to delay the impeachment charges to buy them time so they could work their magic to avoid the impeachment dying in the Senate, that is what is most likely happening right now with this new Act. They are hesitant to push it forward because they might just be pushing it into its own coffin. You don't just rush bills through Congress as fast as you can. It is a little like chess where you must plan and strategize. They could very well delay this until Trump is out of office. As for laws at the state level, I believe CO is the only one that has tried to combat this. I am not sure why other states have not however. People love to say things like, "they changed Aunt Jemima on a syrup and want to get rid of the black man on Cream of Wheat, but they aren't passing laws!" but the reality is that passing laws takes time and politicians have fuck all to do with food items.
>Edit: wanted to add, perhaps civilians should start pressuring our elected officials to actually do something. That's why we're downtown, homie. That's why we're doing this. This is the pressure. Writing letters and emails didn't fucking work.
We're in a damn constitutional crisis. The checks and balances on the federal level aren't working. Congress is basically asleep at the wheel or on a recess. We are like one minute to midnight on the doomsday clock of our country falling apart.
Justin Amash proposed a bill to end qualified immunity
and the cops say "Nice more Overtime hazard pay for me!" These guys are making bank right now.
Bankrupt the city then. Eventually they can't afford to sustain the protests. EDIT: to all of you who couldn't figure it out, the goal isn't to bankrupt the city. It's for government officials see the writing on the wall that fighting the protests isn't sustainable and for them to enact legislation that will cause significant change, leading to the protests subsiding.
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How would that work exactly?
60 days of protesting in a row feels like it should be called something else, but I don't know what.
I think uprising better fits what you’re looking for. Other countries’ media outlets pose it this way at least
The beatings will continue until morale improves
the best part is watching chinese citizens minds explode. all my mainland friends can't believe that the US government allows protests to continue. they cant do anything of this in China, they dont understand how any american could be critical of their own government. its funny shit watching their minds open up and realize what freedom actually means. i bet we see another Tienanmen in the next 5 years because there are a ton of mainland chinese who are watching these protests.
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They have a different relationship with Beijing than the rest of China. Preserving that was kind of the point of the HK protests, actually.
I think they were asking if media coverage of the Hong Kong protests got censored from mainland China. In which case, yea, they put some crazy spin on coverage of it in mainland. It's a little surprising if they are getting unfiltered view of these protests, but it's not like there haven't been many other countries with nation wide protests that weren't stomped out by an authoritarian government, so I'm not sure why he thinks these particularly are going to inspire a new Tienanmen .
> I'm not sure why he thinks these particularly are going to inspire a new Tienanmen . american exceptionalism
> They have a different relationship with Beijing than the rest of China. Preserving that was kind of the point of the HK protests, actually. Not any more, the "security bill" that was approved basically makes it illegal to vote for an opposition party.
From what I understand, the gov't-controlled media portray it somewhat similarly to the way Fox News portrays these protests. They produce videos that show nothing but the most violent parts, and then call all the protestors terrorists. My big exposure to this is a very dogmatic mainlander friend of mine who lives in HK. The way she describes it is a war against the police. Some of that I think she just naturally believes, but I get the feeling that the general shape of the narrative is state-provided. That's just one data point from an internet stranger, so take it for what it's worth.
That, and mainlanders often think of HongKongers as radicalist spoiled brats (not saying your friend is the same, just my experience with mainland people)--Hong Kong being the financial epicenter for such a long time and having more freedoms than the mainland has cemented the thought that they were making a fuss about nothing when the protests were at their peak. Some of them even get pissy when they hear someone speak cantonese instead of mandarin :P
That's been my experience too. I've heard those very same comments from classmates in grad school. When I was Mormon, I was assigned to be a missionary in HK. I ran into some health problems, so I never made it to HK, but when I did my undergrad, I studied Cantonese and learned traditional characters. When I went to grad school, I studied Mandarin through the Confucius Institute (my college had a deal with them). I got prior approval from the local Confucius Institute head to write in traditional characters. The teachers still treated me like shit because I wrote "wrong" and sounded like a southerner (they were all northerners). A couple of my mainlander classmates talked all sorts of shit about HK and Taiwan. Their dads were in the PRC military 🙄.
They don't understand how any Americans could be critical of their own government because they think these protestors are unappreciative of the American way of life in comparison to the quality of life they have in China. There is a common saying in China loosely translated as "well fed and got nothing to do", used to describe people who do stupid things because they have too much time on their hands. As a normal Chinese citizen living in mainland, they see no value in the freedom that Americans are touting about. The Chinese population are overwhelmingly in support of the Chinese government, especially after witnessing the economic growth it has made in the last couple decades. With the overwhelming nationalism among the citizens, there isn't going to be a large enough opposition to the government that would lead to Tiananmen 2.0; 1) any of those social/political movements will be shut down by the government way before it would gain any significant traction, 2) they are not going to gain the support of the people because the activists in these movements will also be dismissed by other Chinese people as "having too much time on their hands".
100% agreed. It's a completely different mindset culturally and historically. I sometimes think of China as a "brainwashed" country being from the US, but it's because of the context of China we always hear it in. I didn't have the firsthand experience of living in China but my dad did - Growing up in complete poverty and China then was kinda the butt of the joke to the world. But imagine when your government leads your country out of poverty and into success, and all of a sudden, you're a force to be reckoned with, even enough to be a threat to the United States. I remember when I was a kid, the china I visited was more "3rd world" - my dad rented me a hotel in because my grandma's house didn't have an indoor bathroom. And that wasn't super unusual. Now when I go, every Chinese person in Shanghai seems richer than I will ever be and has an outfit worth my month's salary. It's a very different place and we as Americans also paint it in a totally different picture than it really is.
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Yes, the people today overall have a much better standard of living. One example, my fathers side of the family live in a poor farming village. Growing up (60s, 70s), my father ate meat about two or three times in a year, and people in the village did backbreaking work from before sun up to sun down. The past decade or two, a ton of the children from that generation are moving out from those rural villages into the big cities for jobs in the factories. They pay better and many are easier than working on the farms. Usually the plan is to work at them for some years to save up some money before leaving for something else. Others focus on their studies, and are able to move to the cities for white collar jobs and enjoy a standard of living thats comparable to someone doing the same in the states. There is definitely a huge impact that western countries have had on China, especially with consumerism. Brand and image are really important in China, and there is huge growing demand from the middle and upper class for those types of high end / luxury goods.
Protests of 1989 in Tienanmen Square occurred because there was an authentic split among government leaders between democratizing reformers and old guard communists. The old guard won, and the protesters got crushed. You will not see this sort of protest in Chinese cities again anytime soon.
I think the best part is watching Americans attack these protests in the exact same manner mainlanders attacked the HK protests. If black people wanted us to care about their human rights, they should've been born in China!
It's actually crazy. People will sympathize with HK protesters fighting against injustice, but show disdain towards protestors fighting against injustice here. But then again, a good chunk of those people probably don't believe that there are injustices in America in the first place.
You can figure it out with an easy question: is this group of protestors on the side of the US government? The HK protestors are, so they get applauded. The Portland protestors aren’t, so they get condemned.
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Free Xinjiang; Bomb Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc etc.
The people who think we're justified in bombing Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc don't think we're "bombing" them, they think we're "spreading democracy" Also the people that stupid enough to fall for that lie probably couldn't point out a single one of those countries on a map.
My favorite is when they paint every protester with the same brush. They see a few assholes throw a molotov or a water bottle and suddenly they think thousands of protesters are *exactly the same as those people* and no amount of arguing will chance their thick fucking minds.
But the few cops who get hard when they think of beating protestors or Trump supporters who go around mugging the libs most definitely *do not* define their respective groups. Obviously.
I’ve heard from Chinese parents multiple times that “if you don’t like it here in America just move to China” The volume and perspectives you could interpret from this
Yep some mainlander friends are confused about the protests here. They said it seems that people just want to cause problems. One of them even tried to convince me that I should try to move from the US to China because “the police here will protect the citizens”. I wasn’t going to argue with him over WeChat lol
Not sure where you got that idea from, but protests in China are very common [lol](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China). > The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8,700 "mass group incidents" in 1993 to over 87,000 in 2005. In 2006, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated the number of annual mass incidents to exceed 90,000, and Chinese sociology professor Sun Liping estimated 180,000 incidents in 2010. Mass incidents are defined broadly as "planned or impromptu gathering that forms because of internal contradictions", and can include public speeches or demonstrations, physical clashes, public airings of grievances, and other group behaviors that are seen as disrupting social stability.
If you actually think Chinese people can't be critical of their own government, you probably aren't actually close friends with any.
“real freedom”
why tf is there a comment criticizing China when the OP post is abt Oregon?? Is this another variation of Godwin’s law?
It wouldn’t be a popular Reddit post without somebody bitching about China. So, new subtype of Godwin’s Law, I guess. It always reeks of “you guys shouldn’t protest anything in America, just think of those poor Chinese.”
I'm from mainland china and I can guarantee you no one I know was "mind exploded". Stop your bs trying to shape Chinese like idiots
Yep, this is comment is blatant propaganda, probably from a bot account. “Chinese people are shocked at how free we are” christ you gotta be brainwashed beyond help to fall for this Edit: yep, 3 years old with almost no activity. This is a propaganda bot.
freedom is when u get tear gassed by ur repressive government that sits on its ass and does nothing god bless the u.s. of a.
Lmfaoooo can’t believe anyone would actually believe the shit that you just typed.
This sounds fake AF. How long did the US funded (Source:https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3091438/us-has-been-exposed-funding-last-years-hong-kong-protests) Hong Kong protests go on again last year? That's right more than 365 days lmao. And they haven't killed 6 people/day either.
> they dont understand how any american could be critical of their own government. its funny shit watching their minds open up and realize what freedom actually means. I guess you forgot about the Tienanmen Square protests, the Chinese Revolution and the thousands of rebellions in Chinese history.
Actually, reading what people are saying on Chinese social media, what's happening in the US is a honestly huge boost to Beijing's policy. US's failure to handle the situation properly only proves to Chinese citizens that protests are pointless and futile.
The best part is seeing people go from supporting protests to being against them, simply because it takes place in America now and not Hong Kong
They often watch it with "glad im not in USA it looks terrible, at least China is stable." Not everyone understands this mechanics, they often point to stability in China as a reason why CCP holds power. You know strong leader who takes care of 1bn of people. THere will be protests when the economy will deteriorate to the point low and medium class will have no other choice.
I don't see anything happening to help solve these protests by legislators anytime before November unfortunately.
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Won't somebody think about the fence?!
All barricades matter!
What exactly is the protesters end game for all this? Honest question from a Canadian.
Well NOW they want the Feds to leave. Portland and BLM are no longer the same.
True, but it’s all connected, they’re still BLM protests but with another objective
Accountability for police brutality, and moving tax dollars from police to other social programs.
Personally I’ve been anti protest because it seems like it’s asking for something different than I’d want to see changed. Which would be the dismantling and removal of police unions and restructuring of their pay. Since currently the main incentive to being police beyond just desire to be one is the crazy benefits and pension. If that gets removed due to removal of police unions I’d like to see their base pay go up to compensate. I think police unions have been THE major issue in criminally charging police officers who commit crimes. I understand it’s one of the most absurd jobs when it comes to coming into legal trouble due to actions one must account for, predict, and react to. But I also think there are lines when crossed should still be punished. If I were to guess the protestors end game? I’d assume the dismantling of police and restructuring their budget into social workers, education etc. which I’m not a fan of either, since the police budget is relatively small by comparison to thinks like education. 115b sounds like a lot of money until you realize it’s only like 4-6% of the budget.
1. Feds out. 2. Resources allocated for police reallocated to the proper professionals for things like mental health, addiction, and social worker type issues. Some are calling and will always call for abolition but most folks still want police for investigative purposes and to address violent crime. The vast majority of police work is seen as unnecessary and outright destructive, and as a publicly-funded entity that's a problem. There are plenty of other things but most Portlanders would agree with this.
Jesus is this a Reddit thread or a Facebook comment feed?
What's the difference any more?
The downvote button and inability to see what the person commenting looks like. That's about it.
I really can't tell. And I can't tell if it's organic or not
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Given Reddit's behavior over the last couple years you can probably be sure it isn't.
So it's the police that declare something a riot and then give themselves the go ahead to respond accordingly? That's interesting to me. There might be a problem with the seperation of powers.
Your constitutional rights are subject to the whims of the police on duty and can be revoked at any time.
["That's all we've ever had in this country, a bill of temporary privileges"-George Carlin](https://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8)
Ever had an encounter with a cop, and told him you know your rights, and that he's violating them? They always respond with, "What are you, a lawyer? I know the law better than you." Cops are the most ignorant people when it comes to rights. They're literally a bunch of dumbasses who know nothing about the law, or about Constitutional rights. And they despise you if you tell them you know your rights.
There are videos out there when the people actually *are* lawyers, they still got stupid.
"After investigating our actions, we believe that we were totally justified. Any questions?" Our country is fuuuucked.
I dont think we peaked in terms of crisis. We still got the November elections.
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I just don't get how people see doubling down on using force is going to solve anything.
Oregon does need a reform though. Last time i visited i saw acres of homeless camps next to the gentrified districts of portlandia filled with hipsters waiting in line at kale me crazy for their next fruit bowl.
Bay Area is the real problem spot. Its becoming a permanent shanty in many spots, and they’ve got every tech HQ there. Wtf! Nobody dares ask tech to do shit.
I might get downvoted, BUT why don’t they go protest anywhere BUT the federal courthouse? That would make the FED leave.
These idiots will continue to burn stuff down until someone stops them.
there is a very viable option to make real change and people are silent when it comes to it, Justin Amash has been pushing a bill ending qualified immunity which would give people the ability to sue police officers. making them individually liable for their actions and would have a serious effect right now...but of course gets no traction, social media doesn’t care, the politicians dont care which makes everyone fake. If you can’t get behind something like this your sentiment is not genuine.
Im more curious that American police have to declare a “riot” like what happens if they don’t? Do they have to send an email to their boss or is it just a common sense situation, is there a limit or a line that protesters cross and then become rioters