With the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death behind us, will the nice white ladies return this summer with their protest signs honoring a man none of them would have wanted for a neighbor?
“We can’t stop protesting,” the Wall of Moms tweeted over the weekend. “Like John Lewis said, ‘Find a way to get in the way of injustice.’ Police departments across the states need to know that we’re not going away until tangible changes that affect Black & marginalized people are enacted.”
It’s unlikely the ladies will be speaking out against the antifa lynch mob who recently chased a young Asian man into a downtown Portland hotel. The mob thought the young man was journalist Andy Ngo, who has reported on Portland’s riots with so much brutal honesty there is now a bill before the Oregon state legislature designed to undercut him.
House Bill 3273 would ban release of booking photos, which Portland papers like The Oregonian and Willamette Week are already loathe to publish. (When I was working in newspapers last century, even then black activists were guilting the press into not running booking photos or including race in descriptions of criminal suspects because so many offenders were black.)
On his Twitter account, Ngo posts names and booking photos of people arrested at Portland’s riots and accused of such crimes as vandalism, disorderly conduct and interfering with a peace officer. One of the persons whose booking photo turned up last September was Kristina Narayan, legislative director for Oregon Speaker of the House Tina Kotek.
Narayan was arrested for interfering with a peace officer, a low-level misdemeanor, while attending a protest that was declared a riot at a police precinct in Southeast Portland.
Kotek is sponsoring House Bill 3164, which basically abolishes the crime of interfering with a peace officer. Refusing to obey an officer would no longer be a crime, in and of itself, unless there is another violation.
Then there’s House Bill 3059, which restricts when and how law enforcement officers can declare unlawful assemblies and order crowds to disperse. In this naïve universe, if cops simply stopped declaring an order to disperse – poof! – riots would disappear.
These are the kinds of tangible changes in police work that would probably meet with the Wall of Moms’ approval. It would also please them to see how many of these proposed laws are sponsored or supported by female legislators.
If Nero strummed his lyre while Rome burned, the Moms must be patting themselves on the back while Portland degenerates into a Little Beirut that is no longer a joke.
Portland has long taken pride in President George H. W. Bush’s comparison of it to Beirut. Back during Bush 41’s administration, the protest crowd took to the streets to demonstrate against Bush’s Gulf War and his failure to address the AIDS epidemic.
Portland’s passion for protests last summer took on symptoms of a frenzied and feverish disease. The thousand-plus protesters who lived it up for more than 100 summer nights provided cover for a hard-core antifa rioters. The Wall of Moms helped build the myth the protesters were peaceful, idealistic young people. The moms helped create public sympathy for antifa. Rioters could have their way.
If the ladies visited downtown Portland lately, were they pleased with the results? Or do they tell themselves the boards on windows have nothing to do with anything they did last summer when they swooned over George Floyd?
Portland media and politicians who laugh over the nickname and the national attention of being called “Little Beirut” must not know the story of Beirut.
The capital of Lebanon, Beirut was once considered the “Paris of the Middle East” for its cosmopolitan ambience, its culture of food and fashion and art, its political and intellectual life. Beirut was a popular tourist destination until the mid-70’s when civil war between the Muslims and Christians changed everything.
Nobody will ever compare Portland to Paris. But Portland did have a distinctive charm at one time: Powell’s, a block-sized independent book store; a respect for honest food and drink; trails winding through the urban forest; intriguing neighborhoods; more strip shows than any other American city; a national leader in legalizing all kinds of drugs; an association with Nike, Intel and Columbia Sportswear’s One Tough Mother.
That great independent book store, now run by a woman named Emily Powell, is afraid to carry “Unmasked” Ngo’s book about antifa. (It says something about Ngo that he doesn’t blame her for not carrying his book because of how antifa treats anyone who doesn’t agree with them.)
The sad state of downtown finally has Portland media concerned. KOIN ran a week-long series on the downtown’s decline. The Oregonian published a survey conducted by DHM Research of 600 residents in the Portland metro area, which indicated a majority favored continued funding of police. These residents don’t turn out to protest.
Among the store owners quoted in The Oregonian as barely hanging on was a boutique called Adorn, whose owner admitted that if she could get out of her five-year lease, she would. At the time of The O’s story, her business had been damaged or burglarized three times (“A person experiencing a mental health crisis threw a sign through the window” of the store is how The O delicately put one incident.)
On the anniversary of George Floyd’s death, rioters attacked the store again making it the fourth incident in the last 12 months.
The rioting vandals also hit Pinkham Millinery. It has been in business for more than 20 years and may finally have to close.
Civilized cities don’t just happen. The citizens create and nurture them.
What’s next? Given Portland’s jump in black-on-black homicide, will the Wall of Moms embrace the concept of peaceful gunfire?
Here’s a better idea. Maybe it’s time the Wall of Moms protected Andy Ngo.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
These busybodies cause more harm than good. They got egos as big as a man. I’d guess few if any live in north Portland or the outer east. Their kids aren’t getting shot by the usual thugs.
You heard I’m sure about the guy arrested for tossing a Molotov cocktail at police. The Portland Freedom Fund spent $212,500 to spring him out of jail. I wonder how much the bored moms contributed.
The Oregonian had a story on Malik Ford Muhammad. He was released after the Portland Freedom Fund posted 10 percent of his $2.1 million bail — or $212,500 — on a Multnomah County case involving violent acts during protests.
Then a few days later, he was arrested again and accused of the same crimes — this time by the feds, who don’t mess around. He’s back in jail:
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2021/06/indiana-man-who-bailed-out-on-state-charges-with-help-from-portland-freedom-fund-to-face-federal-explosives-charges.html
The Portland Freedom Fund has interconnected relationships with lots of other groups, including Black Lives Matter (the founders are now multi-millionaires) and lesser organizations like the Northwest Alliance for Alternative Media and Education. Lots of money floating around. The George Floyd Virus has been a moneymaker for some folks.
As I wrote in Willamette Week, calling out their slanted reporting:
Once again, Tess stakes out her claim as the rioters’greatest apologist in the “media.”
Here is a very high end rioter, maybe even a terrorist, and the real news is that the feds (now under President Biden) rightfully have so little confidence that Schmidt and the state of Oregon will do anything to restrain this guy, so they file their own, more serious charges.
Bail means nothing if woke millionaires provide money that create absolutely no incentive for men and people like him to (as Chris Rock would say) “OBEY THE LAW.”
One promising sign in that Willamette Week story was most of the comments were opposed to Muhammad. Another story about the police adopting a better strategy at investigating black bloc also generated mostly supportive comments. Even Willamette Week readers are getting fed up.
My wife and I keep asking what’s wrong with people in Portland. Is everyone on something? A woman at the same place I work is going to recall Ted Wheeler. I told her I’m not signign up for that. Who do they replace him with? The crazy lady who wants to get rid of the cops.
I hate Wheeler for what he’s let happened. I got family down there where you used to live. It’s the same situation. They signed the papers to recall Newsome. Who are they going to vote to take his place? If Bruce Jenner hadn’t turned himself into an ugly woman he could’ve been another Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I haven’t closely kept up with the Newsome recall. I do know there were accusations that the only reason the recall was initiated was because Newsome was slow to open the state. If that’s the case, the recall worked.
I don’t know even know who’s running for governor besides “Caitlyn Jenner.” Your comment made me laugh: What would happen if there was a write-in campaign and “Bruce Jenner” won? Would there be another gender switch?
Perhaps related, perhaps not:
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2021/06/07/your-moral-and-intellectual-superiors-279/
https://www.takimag.com/article/institutional-collapse/
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2021/06/07/a-banquet-of-seed-corn/
I stopped subscribing to National Geographic last century, but I check in each month and read my free quota of stories. Read one last week about war and misery in Ethiopia. There are worse places for a black person to live than the whitest city in America.
Suspect the Wall of Moms to have its origins in The Mother’s of the Disappeared in Argentina.
Whereas those women lost their men (and women) to the junta, I’m pretty sure these mom’s would have a safe and legal abortion before engaging in the patriarchal horrors of motherhood.
The wall of moms gambit has been run quite a few times over the years although it experienced a period of pop usurpation in the guise of the far more flattering and fun costumes of Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale.
The word “mom” has a special cachet, yet they are hardly an endangered species (dads could be another matter). With the world population approaching 8 billion, there are a lot of moms (dads, too, but again that’s another matter).
In my lifetime, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers probably was the first memorable group to flex its political muscle using the reference to motherhood. Mothers readily trot out their kids for various purposes. This afternoon, I watched the special Oregon House Legislative Committee on December 21, 2021 — convened to consider whether Rep. Mike Nearman should be expelled.
There was a public hearing portion, and one woman who testified held her toddler-age child in her arms. He seemed too big to be held, and at one point looked like he was trying to get down. He had nothing to do with her testimony. Was he like a prop?
Oh, it is a rubbishy world right now with different and disproportionate remedies or punishments for different perps.
Nearman would have his own bronze had he been of the left. Meanwhile, no one or hardly anyone has taken much punishment for the hysterical and the methodical attacks on federal and state and private properties around here.
It has not recieved coverage but the pursuit and vengeance visited on those D.C. “insurrectionists” has been cruel and extravagant.
Got to hand it to the left: if they don’t get you through partisan judicial misery they’ll come to your home and workplace with pitchfork and flame. But, they will get you.
A woman vandalized the bust of York and its attendant text that some SJW imposed on Harvey Scott’s Mt. Tabor plinth. The indignant park goers filmed and photographed, and reported her actions. She has received a citation
Harvey’s supposed crime? Opposing women’s suffrage
I am certain none of his statue’s attackers understand the word suffrage. Frankly, I wouldn’t want York up their anyway. Especially not memorialized in that ghastly death mask looking skull. Outright downbeat.
Moreover, I know the pompous Victorian did more good for the town and his silly Borglum presence was far more welcoming than that of the cold the metal outcome of the York decapitation. The slave may have died in anonymity but quick, name 5 members of the Corps of Discovery.
Most can’t get beyond the leaders, Sackajawea, and York. So, he has the transience of an American’s immortality. And, his extraordinary achievement and participation will now forever be regarded as a bellyacher’s opportunity.
As I was saying, it is pretty rubbishy out there right now.
He was not like a prop. He was a prop.
One supposes sister Duniway will serve as the new dunny or point of public relief atop the mount.
Injustice anywhere…..
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2021/06/portland-man-who-pleaded-guilty-to-setting-fire-near-police-precinct-gets-5-years-in-prison.html
https://katu.com/news/local/man-accused-of-robbing-and-raping-woman-held-on-2m-bond-streeter-hillerich-gary-wayne
Besides the elusive first name I suspect it to be the same man.
If it were he the rape was so ugly and brutal he surely should not be back on the street fighting for social justice
so soon?
Our recent visitors from Texas indicated how much black lives really matter among those centrally concerned.
Thanks, Larry.
They are not the same guy, but I suspect they are related because the last name is so unusual.
Fortunately, Gary Wayne Streeter-Hillerich is still housed at Snake River. Supposedly his release date is 2037, but who knows with all the legislation being passed that benefits criminals. Today, the state Senate passed a bill making it easier for criminals to expunge their records — as if nothing happened. (Other bills passed this session include restrictions on when booking photos can be released. The Oregonian already censors booking photos. Black activists have long complained that it contributes to racial bias.)
Gary Wayne Streeter-Hillerich’s rape and kidnapping of a woman he followed after she exited a bus was especially vicious. Since he’s black I have to wonder what his victim’s race was. Did he choose her randomly, or was this a hate crime? Naturally, since he’s black the question isn’t raised in any of the news coverage. Maybe I should write him a letter and ask.
By comparison, state legislators would probably think that Gavaughn Streeter-Hillerich is a Boy Scout. He only set a fire near an occupied police building.
If these two men are brothers, what does it say about the people who raised them?
Thank you for the clarification.
I’d much rather be wrong than have that woman’s attacker on the street.
Moreover, my connecting the two was on evidence sloppy.
According to Olive:
Portland Police will no longer pursue minor traffic infractions and will limit car searches.
The AP and the Oregonian will “move away” from posting mugshots and identifying suspects by name for crimes determined to be minor or bizarre.
The O’s editorial board says the path to police accountability is a messy one. References assault charges against police officer.
Christ, no wonder they no longer take unfiltered comments.
Bottomly is a rather mealy-mouthed looking person. Well, I guess it’s more correctly an expression for those preferring the euphemistic, but if it has a physical look that woman’s got it.
Portland media have done their part to contribute to the city’s decline. No leadership all the way around.
In honor of Juneteenth, OPB ran this incredible piece of racism:
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/06/19/darrell-wade-black-mens-wellness-health-race-10-questions/
It begins with an over-the-top statement: “The American pastime of lynching never ended — the foliage evolved.”
Later, there is this — “Fortunately for Black people, what they’ve always had to help them adapt, navigate and survive the journey to liberation is: Black people.”
No. What has really helped black people in America is white people. Black Africans immigrate to America in far greater numbers than black Americans exit the U.S. for Africa. Compare the life spans of blacks in America vs. blacks on the continent of Africa. See who has it better.
Charles Murray has a new book out called “Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America.” This is a not a reality that Therese Bottomly or the subjects in the OPB story will want to face.
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/identity-crisis-politics-race-wreck-america-charles-murray/
Murray’s is an icy accuracy.
I think you’re too kind to these women. You know the saying, “The hand that rocks the cradle…”
These women have failed as moms. They’ve raised weak kids or “littles,” one of the stupid names they use. They want the government to raise their littles while they tend to personal growth.
When they’re old, they’ll point to their grandkids and brag they have it all. I don’t use the word “Mom” on my resume. It’s not an accomplishment. It’s a work in progress forever.
I won’t blame my kids and husband if the career isn’t a glorious success. I won’t blame my job if my home life isn’t perfect.
I had an argument recently with someone about this subject, a woman who’s proud of her status as the first of her kind in her business. Her son is a mess. I guess he’s still a son. He did his part for George Floyd.
Whose hand rocks the cradle in America?
On the anniversary of George Floyd’s death, I went to observe the protest outside the Justice Center. After the police broke it up when some of the protesters started engaging in vandalism, a 55-year-old black man with a bullhorn tried to calm them down.
He told me he tried to be an elder to them.
“They will listen to me. I’m black.”
He offered two theories on what was wrong with the protesters: “They were raised in foster care.” And then, “Those kids weren’t raised in two-parent families.”
I will always think that some of those mothers, just like some of the protesters, were looking for excitement during a summer when recreation was limited. Rocking the cradle indeed.
This community offers no leadership. I spoke with a PPB friend of mine this week who confirmed that the new directive to no longer stop cars for “minor” traffic violations was revealed to officers by Maxine Bernstein via the Oregonian as opposed to official channels. As a “leader” can you express to your subordinates any more clearly that you really don’t give even a single shit about them than informing them of a fundamental change in a generations-long working condition not in person but via the news reporter who has for a generation aimed to fuck them over?
When I asked him what it meant to have a major work condition altered out from beneath him, he answered: “just another Monday.”
To express how bad this is, keep in mind Chief Lovell did not change policy, it is still expected that uniformed officers will stop objectionably dangerous suspects for minor offenses. This means:
If a stop is made and nothing happens (maybe the stop curtailed the bad behavior) the stop might be considered out of policy and racist and thus the cops will have messed up because nothing bad happened.
Also, if the officers could have but chose not to make a stop for a minor violation, after which which the suspects became “criminally involved” it might be deemed objectionably reasonable that whatever action happened after the non-stop could have been prevented and thus the cops will have messed up because something bad happened.
Join Portland Police! It’ll be great! Joanne Hardesty assures you.
Wednesday night Hardesty was a guest at the monthly Citizen Review Committee, one of Portland’s police oversight groups. There is also Portland Committee for Community-Engaged Policing (PCCEP). Both of these groups are comprised of community volunteers.
Hardesty updated the CRC on the newest police oversight group, approved by voters in the November election. It will be comprised of paid members who have “lived experience” with police encounters and will have an executive director with a paid staff. This committee will have subpoena powers and the ability to mete out discipline. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few felons end up on this oversight group.
Of course, the all-volunteer CRC is wondering about its future. The leisurely way things work in Portland, it will be roughly 18 months to two years before the new group is up and running. If they are anything like the CRC and PCCEP, they will spend hours cogitating on what a cop should have done in situations where the officer had to act quickly.
Portland has a history of activism directed at policing. Apparently these activists haven’t noticed that there is now an entire area of law practice devoted to suing police, and watch-dogging the cops is a media specialty. Then there are citizens armed with cellphone cameras looking for a cop behaving badly. It’s not as if no one is watching the police.
These activists — even Hardesty — insist they are not cop-haters. It almost feels like a class issue. They act as if cops are three-fifths human, and the rights and lives of criminal offenders take priority.
Exactly. It’s in the Constitution. Not.
(The Constitution.org, Understanding the 3/5 Compromise)
It is almost like Portland is enacting a systematic self-annihilation. But, nobody wants to talk about it.
I had to call the cops the other day. Three very young people showed up, two of whom were women, one of color. Gawky young guy. A fourth officer was the woman was in charge. She was lean, closing on 40, and worked quietly doing what had to be done.
The four cops all struck me as nice people who were there to help. I spoke most with the young black woman. Seemed like a nice and able person. They all, except the woman in charge who didn’t show or talk much, seemed amazed at the unrestrained hate directed at them and confused and bewildered a little by its intensity.
With regard to Hardesty, seldom does one’s appearance so accurately reflect the character and soul as does that child’s withered bitter self.
Just read a plaintive letter on the O from some citizen who’d come across a fellow croaking alongside the Springwater Corridor. All I could think was, “You ain’t been downtown in a while have you, lady?”
One day I was confused and thought several months of your column had been deleted. Started to panic: no place for a citizen to register his views online. Then, I figured it out and calmed down.
That was pretty smart of the O, killing the reader response bit.
A bitter child, yes. Hardesty is carrying a 30-year-old (at least) grudge on her shoulders. That’s how long she has been going after the Portland cops. They are not perfect, but neither is her tribe.
Police are allowed to use force for a reason. The Callahan shooting has always troubled me. Many of the other shootings that Hardesty insists on revisiting were justified. Even the Quanice Hayes’ shooting, which the city should not have settled.
Hardesty could be in a precarious place now. She has won. She better show good results. If not, she risks being a one-termer. If I were Hardesty, I would be praying that no Portland cops end up dead on my watch.
I’ve been away from this site for a while. I have a part-time job doing research and analysis, and sometimes it keeps me very busy. Lately, it has been one of those times.
Early Sunday morning I spoke w/an absolutely filthy vagrant who was charging her telephone atop a parking garage.
I don’t recall how it came up, but she told me that the mass shooting the other night had been committed by one black man in company with another. She also said that the murdered woman had broken up w/the shooter and was black, too. A Stormy Romance the motive.
Claimed that that night she’d applied direct pressure to a leg wound until someone else applied a tourniquet. Wasn’t it strange she asked that she’d done the same for another recently shot Portlander, also shot in the leg and on the same side?
Funny old world. Whatever the truth of the murder and collateral chaos, the indigent woman’s tale rings truer than the freight of crap Maxine and her editors put out in Monday’s Olive.
The vagrant’s story makes as much sense, and at least she wasn’t required to get a meaningless comment from Ceasefire Oregon.
I suspect that Maxine’s stories draw a lot of attention and interference from editors, particularly when anything related to race is involved.
She quotes Royal Harris asking if the response to the shooting would’ve have been different had it been a young white woman who died. He didn’t like city officials’ perfunctory, “We need to do something.”
He made more sense when I heard him speak May 22 at a “March Against Murder” in North Portland. Then — talking about violence among young people — he said, “These are my wayward kids we did a bad job raising.”
One thing that has not changed since last century when I covered gang shootings in San Bernardino is the poor marksmanship of the shooters. Shooting just to be shooting.
Upon further discussion I’m pretty sure my vagrant’s claim of helping w/the leg wound is fantasy.
While I realize Ms Bernstein’s professional competence, that story was crap. Having never worked in a newsroom (but I’ve seen one on TV) I’ll accede to the claim of editorial interference.
But, good god, rubbish, rubbish, fraction of fact, rubbish, rubbish on infinitum