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Camouflage-clad paramilitary vigilantes have been terrorizing Portland, Oregon, grabbing people protesting racism and police brutality, pulling them into unmarked minivans and driving off. These roving shock troops, with no insignia or badges, proved to be federal agents from a slew of agencies, ordered to Portland after President Donald Trump issued an executive order on June 26th, a month and a day after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police. Trump’s order, “Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence,” was a rambling diatribe against the massive, diverse protest movement that has swept the country in the wake of Floyd’s murder and the police killings of Ahmaud Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and so many more.
Juxtapose these fallen innocents with the statues Trump is desperately trying to protect: Confederate President Jefferson Davis; General Robert E. Lee; John C. Calhoun, the 7th vice president of the U.S. and a strident defender of slavery, and Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision denying citizenship to African Americans. Add to these the Southern military bases named after Confederate officers, which Trump has declared will not be renamed under his watch: Benning, Bragg, Hood and others.
As more Confederate statues and shrines to slavery and genocide have fallen, so too have Trump’s poll numbers. In response, he is putting into practice his frightening penchant for authoritarianism, unleashing a clandestine shadow army on the citizenry, criminalizing protest as he struggles to inflame white supremacy. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic surges through the country, and Trump is utterly failing to provide essential ... Read More →
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