Garbage Fire -- A Metaphor

Last night in Portland, the scene was different than before, but strangely the same. A huge crowd assembled at the Multnomah County Justice Center on the next block over from the federal courthouse. They were, as they are every night, primarily focused on the Black Lives Matter movement and supporting the de-racialization of police, justice and society. It's festive, angry and determined. There were upwards of two thousand people in attendance; I'd say closer to four or five thousand, but it was impossible for me to see the edges of the crowd from the live-streamers' pov.

At a certain point, many of the demonstrators moved over to the federal courthouse on the adjacent block. It had been surrounded by a high metal mesh fence, much like the one deployed in DC to keep the rabble away from the White House and out of Lafayette Park. Point of interest: it may actually be the same one, transported by DHS over the past few weeks. Maybe they'll take it all around the country as to "quell" protests.

The fence appeared to surround the whole building, but that wasn't entirely clear. There are sally ports on the sides and rear of the building, and you'd think the feds would want to keep access to them open, but who knows? The fencing had obviously been erected sometime after the previous night's festivities, and it appeared that while the fencing was being put up, all the trash and debris collected under the portico in front of the building had been removed. The cleanup made things look a little less gross, but the graffiti decorating the building remained to remind us of what was going on.

As the crowd assembled in front of the courthouse, there was no sign of federal officers (or whatever they are) protecting the building. Someone pointed out however that the front entrance sally port was open, so no doubt at some point, the feds would get to work and "quell" the protests.

There were gates in the fence, and apparently it was easy enough to open them and wander around inside the barricade. Some chose to do so while others collected trash (from the park across the street?) and placed it in bags along the perimeter of the fence. At some point, the trash was thrown over the fence and lit on fire. Multiple garbage fires burned inside the fence, not threatening the building, but certainly serving as an emblem of the disaster the federal "law enforcement" presence was in Portland.

As the fires burned, protesters wandered in and out of the barricaded area, and the feds finally bestirred themselves to do something about it. While some chased the protesters out of the barricaded area, others tackled protesters (one woman was caught and screamed lustily as she was dragged inside by the feds), others shot teargas and impact munitions at the crowd outside (every tear gas canister I saw was thrown back) and one used a fire extinguisher to put out some of the fires. Others kept burning.

Tear gas was shot outside the fence and was immediately thrown back. Clouds of teargas were dispersed with leaf blowers, fireworks were shot at the building, some exploding very loudly, others flashing brightly.

A riot was declared, and protesters ordered to disperse. They did not. Mutual fire went back and forth between the feds and the protesters for some time. Teargas, fireworks, bottles, impact munitions, and so on, and the crowd outside the barricade did not seem to diminish. It looked to be close to a thousand. Many were hit, yet because of the fence, not as many were hurt as in previous confrontations.

Eventually, things calmed down as they tend to do. The crowd went home, the fires were out, and the feds retreated into their fortress.

What was different was that the feds did not go beyond their fenced perimeter -- at least I didn't see them do so. The Federal Protective Service made several announcements that damaging the fence would lead to tear gas and impact munitions, but damaging that fence was pretty much impossible, and there was abundant tear gas and impact munitions fired no matter. The declaration of riot and dispersal orders came from the Portland Police -- and they were ignored. So far as I could tell, the PPB did not enforce their orders, but maybe they did. Hard to say.

Did I mention the mayor was there? Oh yes, he got lustily insulted by the crowd and was told to resign. He also got teargassed by the feds. Lucky him. It was sort of like seeing Minneapolis's boy-mayor get humiliated by the BLM crowd back in the day.

Now if the feds have secured a defensible perimeter around the courthouse -- just that, nothing else -- and they stay inside it, I would be willing to guess that the protests will continue but not as intensely. After all, it was the feds going wilding on the streets of Portland that led to the huge protests we've seen since Sunday. If they stay inside their fortress, I think nobody will much care anymore. I imagine garbage fires will be set now and then -- metaphorically stating the case that the federal government is a garbage fire that will keep burning and flaring up until substantial change is made.

It's being called a revolution, and the protests in Portland certainly evoke the uprisings in many other countries, but a revolution, no. Not yet, perhaps not possible. Demands are being made, and some are being met. That's about as far as it will go.

De-policing, de-racializing policing, dignity, community, justice in all forms, these are among the demands. Will they be achieved? Some, yes. But not easily, and not soon.

Trump's days on the throne are numbered. His reality show is being canceled. Aw too bad. His surge of law enforcement in Portland has been a disaster. The notion that he can bypass local authorities and dictate what and how law enforcement will be done (and by whom) is ludicrous. It appears that in the Chicago and Albuquerque "surges" his agents are working directly with police unions, cutting out local electeds altogether. This won't end well. But we've been saying that about the Trump regime for years.

And it's not ending well.

Not well at all...

Much of what I saw of last night's actions in Portland came from Sergio Olmos's and Cory Elia's coverage.

Murder Holes and Sally Ports

I've been watching some of the independent media coverage of the "Portland Insurrection." The coverage is very good and very extensive and gives one a much better understanding of what's going on than anything you'll see in the major mass media. Most of it is not politically shaded. They just want people to see for themselves and come to their own conclusions.

The uprising is somewhat evocative of Occupy but not really. There's a park across the street from the Federal Courthouse which is used as a staging and rest area by the protesters. There's food, water, medical supplies, and many helpers to look after the needs of the protesters and anyone who is injured by the forces arrayed against them. People don't camp out in the park, however. It's not being used to house people, though I suppose it could be. Nevertheless, the various stations in the park look to be semi-permanent, even though they are partially destroyed by the "secret police" whoever they are every night.

The protests go on day and night, but it is at night when things become chaotic and often violent. The courthouse itself has been heavily fortified and heavily vandalized. Layers and layers of graffiti cover the walls and pillars and plywood protective coverings of the building. Many fires have been set in the front portico of the building, none of which have done any particular damage. They can't. The building is concrete and stone and glass and is in essence a fortified castle. Inside are some dozens of defenders, said to be from ICE, CBP, Marshal's Service and other federal law enforcement agencies, none of which can be sorted out by the public. Officers wear camo and try to look badass like military -- much to the objection of the military -- while some wear black uniforms that look identical to the Portland Police (and have been mistaken for them). Nobody knows though, because there is no identification of who is actually defending the building from the protesters at any given time or instance.

They're afraid you see. Oh yes. They're terrified of the "mob" -- of moms and dads and black folks.

The crowds of protesters have been growing every night since the deployment of feds to "proactively" arrest and drag away in unmarked vans people they choose on the streets. From a few hundred a week ago, the crowds have grown to maybe five thousand last night, the biggest so far, and signs are they will keep growing at least until the feds are neutered or removed. It's a diverse lot of people, that's for sure, and it's becoming more diverse every night.

What there aren't many of is older people. That's wise. The protests are intense, they're loud and long, and often, protesters are crowded very close together. Though most everyone wears face coverings -- often gas masks -- the close quarters and much shouting puts oldsters at risk of the virus. Not to mention all the tear gas, pepper balls and spray, and other munitions shot and thrown at the protesters.

One thing to note: the building defenders are heavily armed and armored. They carry and use "less lethal" as well as lethal weapons, and they are not particularly hesitant to use them -- though I'm not aware of anyone who's been killed. Hundreds in the crowds have been injured, some severely. Perhaps some of the feds have been injured too. It's hard to tell. What they say cannot be relied on because they lie. All the time.

They lie in wait inside the building while the crowds outside chant and sing and whatnot, the usual protest business. The crowds are not armed -- at least so far as we know -- and not armored, though some have made make-shift shields and many wear gas masks when things get rough. Their weapons, such as they are, consist mostly of plastic water bottles which get tossed at the building with some regularity. Also trash. Which gets tossed but then is often cleaned up. Water bottles are also thrown at the feds when they come out of their sally ports, but they rarely connect with individuals. Sometimes they do, it's true, and the whiny little bitches moan and groan about it as if they'd been shot with bullets.

The feds use lots of tear gas, flash bangs, pepper rounds, rubber bullets and other "less lethal" munitions on the crowds when they emerge from their hidey holes -- which they do periodically without announcement. They have sally ports on the front, the sides and the rear of the building and they have what are called "murder holes" from which they can watch the crowds and fire munitions at them without taking water bottle fire in return.

It all seems quite patterned, and those who have been protesting for any length of time know the drill.

But something changed last night, and it was quite astonishing to watch. The feds were attempting to expand their perimeter beyond the building, clear the park in front, and push the crowd farther and farther away from the blocks near the court house. Well, they got a surprise.

According to Sergio Olmos, one of the independent media observing and reporting on all this, activist used colored smoke grenades (red in this case) to obscure what the crowd (assembled about a block away from the feds) was doing. When the smoke was thick, someone shot fireworks into the midst of the feds. The fireworks exploded spectacularly -- but probably (?) harmlessly -- and the crowd started moving back toward the park. It wasn't immediately clear, but the fireworks caused the feds to retreat immediately -- they must have run back to their fortress because they were gone completely by the time the crowd reached the park. It was then a clear path back to the courthouse for the protesters.

Amazing.

I've seen fireworks used in other demonstrations. In Spain, for example, protesters used fireworks rockets shot directly at police, which caused panic and apparently injuries among them. They were quite deliberate in their aim, too. In Kiev, on the other hand, protesters set police on fire with gasoline and molotov cocktails, and ran them over with bulldozers. Dozens of police were killed, hundreds injured. Fire bombs of various kinds were used against police in Athens, and there have been many other examples of protesters using lethal force against police throughout the protest seasons world wide, but that's not been the case in the United States. Last night, the protest came close, I'd say, to becoming lethal for police or at least it looked like it.

They say that the DHS employees are becoming alarmed and demoralized by all this. I would imagine so. It will go on until it is stopped. And the wonder is that nobody has yet attempted an intervention to stop it.

But I'm pretty sure there will have to be one. Or... well, let's stay positive.

A good overview of the protests is provided by Veteran for Peace on YouTube. His camera is held on high so you can see a much wider view of what's going on. He's been shot numerous times with rubber bullets and pepper balls, clearly targeted. But he keeps coming back.

There is lots of other independent media coverage, #pdxprotest will start you on your journey if you're interested, but warning, there is so much, it quickly becomes protest porn.

This is something different for the US. Whether it will last and be transformative, I don't know. But it is certainly worth paying attention to.

119

July 5, 2020 was my father's 119th birthday. I sometimes ponder how far back in time my parents and grandparents go. My father was born in 1901, my mother in 1911. My (half) sister was born in 1933. My (half) brother in 1935.

My mother's father was born in 1878. Her mother was born in 1889. My father's father was born in 1869 and his mother was born in 1875. Their parents were born in the 1830s, their grandparents right around 1800.

My ancestry is Irish, German, French (they say), and English with the addition of a supposed Indian Princess back in the 1700s. Well, some of her descendants dispute that she was Native American at all, as the stories of her being who it was said she was (the daughter of King Nummi of the Lenappe of New Jersey) only emerged in the 1850s, long after she died, and the competing story was that she was actually a mulatto slave of the man she eventually married, a British soldier who changed sides and fought for the Americans in the Revolution. Of course, that might not be true, either. Americans, made up stories of their ancestors and tended to glamorize them when truth might be better left unsaid.

That was certainly what my father told me about his ancestors. There was a standard story that apparently was passed down through the generations that "we" were descended from a prominent Irish Catholic colonial family from Maryland. The story was surprisingly detailed -- and utterly false. Made up. In researching the Irish side of my ancestry, I found that they weren't related to the Maryland family at all -- at least not after the late 1600s, if they were related to them even then. My ancestors were not descendants of the Maryland family at any rate, since they emigrated from Ireland in 1849, the height of the Famine, and the Maryland family was settled by 1710 or so, and had cut off ties with Ireland. The story of how my ancestors got to Iowa was mostly false. The only true thing was that they sojourned in Ohio until about 1855 when they moved permanently to Iowa. The rest of it, traveling by rail and wagon from Maryland, through Virginia to Ohio was false. In fact, it seems the Irish ancestors arrived in New Orleans in 1849, went up the Mississippi to the Ohio, then traveled by riverboat to around Springfield where they tried to settle in 1850. Didn't work. As Irish and Catholics they were harried and harassed and ultimately driven out. None of that was ever mentioned in the stories I heard.

Some of my father's German ancestors were already in Iowa when his Irish ancestors arrived. His German grandfather, though, didn't arrive until 1863. But he had left Germany -- the principality of Baden -- in 1854, when he was (apparently) 14. He arrived in New York the next year, and he stayed in Brooklyn as a bookbinder's apprentice until the Civil War broke out when he hightailed it to Iowa and hooked up with the German Catholic community there. He became a carpenter on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, a job he held until he died two weeks after my father was born.

My father told me almost nothing about the German side of his family. He didn't tell me, for example, that his mother was deaf or that her mother didn't speak English. I learned these things from a cousin I didn't know I had (the daughter of one of my father's sisters).

I've tried, but I haven't been able to nail down when my father's Irish grandfather arrived in the US. Most of his family -- parents and several siblings -- arrived together in 1849, but he doesn't show up in any records until 1856 in Iowa. He doesn't seem to have any records in Ireland after his birth in 1835. My father knew him (he died in 1913) but seemed to know little or nothing about him, or rather what he did know, he kept to himself.

My cousin, for example, didn't know that her Irish great grandfather was married to an Irish woman who died shortly after our grandfather's birth in 1869. He married another Irish woman in 1873, and it was she who my cousin had been told about and who she thought was our grandfather's mother. But no, she was the mother of the youngest brother only.

My father knew these things, but apparently those stories weren't shared with his sisters.

And I begin to think all this was so very long ago. Does any of it matter now?