How strong are the protests still going? I've been hearing mixed reports about them dying down.
Yes and no. It depends. There hadn’t been protests in East Portland until this last few nights, there aren’t anymore at the Justice Center, and the crowds are still in the hundreds nightly. That’s on par with, say, late June. It’s dramatically lower than the Federal Building Protests or the first week of protests, about a tenth the size, but it’s hard to maintain that kind of a crowd every night when the media has said the problem is over.
In other news, riot declared at the Police Union for the second night in a row. Not sure the reasoning, normally they wait for some damaged to the building, typically a small fire or a broken window (once it was them who broke the window by throwing someone’s phone at it). They might actually require an attempt at such a major crime to be committed to declare a riot, so this might be technically illegal.
Edit1: Yeah they took eight minutes to go from unlawful assembly to riot. That’s weird as they haven’t posted why they escalated so quickly, which is atypical (they might be legally required to). Now, they do declare a riot over basically every protest at the Police Union (tbh, if they hadn’t continued to do so I imagine the building would be stormed or gone by now), but they usually do the whole song and associated dance first. Probably gonna face a few lawsuits over tonight.
Also, this is just pointlessly rude.
Edit2: So this is uncool. They also arrested one of the women attacked during the MAX stabbing, during which multiple men died for defending her and another woman from a white nationalist. It’s particularly notable because the dude was a Joey Gibson fan and Joey kept doing events in Portland on the anniversary of the stabbing.
On another tangent, Joey Gibson and his organization Patriot Prayer committed a planned attack a little over a year ago on a bar popular with leftists. He and his boys came equipped with nightsticks and other weapons and paralyzed a woman seated facing away from them by hitting her in the spine. Joey Gibson maintained a regular text correspondence with the police, who even warned him that his friend Tiny (leader of the PNW branch of the proud boys) would have to tone down his violence (which consisted of ambushing people from a pickup, beating them, then driving off) or they might have to arrest him. The text messages between Joey and the police are a matter of public record. Another matter of public record, though against his own will, Portland’s worst son Andy Ngo’s recording Patriot Prayer’s planning of their assault while he laughs, video he refused to release until legal authorities demanded it because it made it clear he was a fascist stooge.
