Portland, Oregon: One of the Best Cities in America!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

If there is a friendlier, more welcoming, and safer major American city than Portland, Oregon, I have yet to encounter it.  The city is easy to access, easy to traverse, and easy to enjoy.  There are trams (light rail) and buses waiting at the International Airport ready to whisk visitors to hotel accomodations, shopping sites, Pioneer Square, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (with many hands-on activities for children), a world class zoo, theatre venues featuring national entertainers, sports aplenty, and my personal favorite - Powell's Books, an emporium of new and used books and related matter which is multi-storied and covers an entire city block.

I visit family in Salem, Oregon once or twice a year, and I always try to plan at least one day and night in Portland.

Donald Trump began openly disparaging Portland during his first term in office when he turned the national spotlight on the city during public protests over a far-right rally in th city in 2019, and a prolonged series of street demonstrations following killing of George Floyd by a member of the Minneapolis Police Department the following year.  Trump sent federal agents from the Deparment of Homeland Security into Portland without the consent or approval of the governor of Oregon or Portland's mayor, and those agents used crowd control munitions on the protestors, things like rubber bullets, tear gazs, and impact projectiles, all of which aggravated an already bad situation and prolonged the protests.  There were also incidents of federal agents in unmarked vans detaining and arresting people.  Sound familiar?

Fast forward to the present when Trump is again trying to incite violence in Democratic-led American cities as an excuse to bring in federal agents and troops, and it is no surprise that Portland, which hosted major civil unrest during Trump's first term, much of it goaded on by the Trump administration itself, is back in Trump's crosshairs for another incursion.

This month there have been some non-violent and relatively quiet protest gatherings outside of at least one ICE detention center in Portland, something which the hyperbolic Trump spins as "left-sing violence," and Trump is  using that along with five-year-old video footage from the Portland riots of 2020 which right-wing media is mislabeling and running as "current" news coverage, to again target the City of Roses.  

Trump says he is ordering federal troops into "war ravaged" Portland and that they will be authorized to use "full force" if necessary to bring the city under control.  Some see the maneuvers by the administration as an effort to "incite" rather than bring order to the populace - to bring about a citizen revolt so that the government can institute an authoritarian crackdown on the dissent.

The goal is to goad the good people of Portland into an overreaction so the the national government can roll in and quash it - and set an example for the rest of us to learn from.

This was the statement of Portland Mayor. Kevin Wilson regarding the Trump administration's planned incursion into Portland:

"President Trump has directed 'all necessary Troops' to Portland, Oregon.  The number of necessary troops is zero, in Portland and in any other American city.   Our nation has a long memory for acts of oppression, and the President will not find lawlessness or violence here unless he plans to perpetrate it.  Imagine if the federal government sent hundreds of engineers, or teachers, or outreach workers to Portland, instead of a short, expensive, and fruitless show of force."

United States Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon posted this on social media in response to the current threat against his state's largest city by the Trump administration:

"My message to Donald Trump is this:  We don't need you here.  Stay the hell out of our city."

There is no on-going mass violence in Portland, Oregon, and the federal government is operating far outside of its constitutional authority by going in and trying to destabilize Portland or any other American city.

If it's some good, old-fashioned excitement you crave, Mr. Trump, release the Epstein files!