After a solid year of “protests” – they might be more accurately called “a ‘ultra-progressive’ coup on the streets” – Portland’s coalition of Big Left constituents is starting to fracture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
[The “anarchists”] have shown themselves at times to be violent \u2014 one was charged with attempted murder after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the police \u2014 destructive of property and highly adaptable, using social media tools and other strategies to divert the police from the targets they select.<\/p>
Direct actions are promoted on social media with the phrase \u201cNo gods, no masters,\u201d a 19th-century anarchist term that indicates a rejection of all forms of authority. More traditional protesters from Black Lives Matter and other movements who try to curtail violence are now ridiculed as \u201cpeace police\u201d by the anarchists, who mostly consist of young, white men.<\/p>
Demetria Hester, a member of Moms United for Black Lives, continues to push for defunding the police but disagrees with the current call for dismantling the entire political system. \u201cBreaking windows is performative,\u201d she said. \u201cThat satisfies them at night, but they don\u2019t have a plan.\u201d<\/p>
Some prominent Black leaders have been formally distancing themselves, with some calling the anarchists\u2019 rejection of gradual progress just another symbol of privilege that Black people do not have.<\/p>
\u201cBeing able to protest every night is a white privilege, being able to yell at a police\u2019s face is a white privilege,\u201d said Gregory McKelvey, a prominent Black organizer who ran the mayoral campaign last year for Mr. Wheeler\u2019s opponent, Sarah Iannarone. \u201cMost Black people across the country do everything they can to avoid cops.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Of course, the McKelvey’s statement shows his own class bias; wanting to “burn it all down” and “revolution”, like all such revolutions, are the affectation, not of those who have nothing to lose, but of those who believe they have nothing to fear about everyone else <\/em>losing everything. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After a solid year of “protests” – they might be more accurately called “a ‘ultra-progressive’ coup on the streets” – Portland’s coalition of Big Left constituents is starting to fracture. [The “anarchists”] have shown themselves at times to be violent \u2014 one was charged with attempted murder after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[349],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-urban-liberal-privilege-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78288,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78283\/revisions\/78288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}