Riots have broken out in a score of cities, “vandals,” “thugs” and “traitors” battle soldiers, throw rocks small explosives and fire at them, burn down government buildings, are denounced by government leaders as evil and are threatened with arrest, violence, imprisonment, and deportation.
Supporters of the government are beaten, chased out of town, tarred and feathered, and have their shops broken into and destroyed, their homes set on fire, their property defaced with graffiti and rebellious slogans.
The thugs and terrorists were among the first to understand the power of street protests in America. They were the guerilla fighters of the American Revolution.
We know their protest as the Boston Tea Party.
The protesters were almost alls outliers – kids, blacks, immigrants, poor people, and young people, laborers, and artisans who had no access to the influential people who made decisions about their lives.
Since they couldn’t vote or didn’t feel their votes would count, they took to the streets and sparked and fought a revolution.
The historians say people who forget their history are doomed to repeat it, and we are repeating it. Americans have forgotten their history, too spoiled, greedy, and distracted to remember where we came from.
It took a bunch of brave moms, veterans, dads with leaf blowers, and the idealistic young to remind us of what it means to be free.
Portland doesn’t hate America; it feels like our President hates America. President Trump has promised to “clean up Seattle.” He has created a nightmare instead.
Portland may just be our new Concord, the town that saves it.
It is eerie how much the current street protests in our country match up with some of the first ones in the first revolution. We celebrate it all the time and pay lip service to it, but most of us have lost touch with what it means.
Those federal agents are reminding us.
These protests are hard to watch, sometimes violent and disturbing. Welcome to your seat at the Revolution.
These outcasts, outliers, and yes, thugs in 1773, also challenged the world’s most powerful military at the time in a long and arduous battle for independence.
The wall moms might just do it again.
What sacrifices have we lazy and spoiled Americans had to make for our freedom in modern times?
The Portland moms are making some daily sacrifices, and the veterans, and the dads, nurses, and all kinds of ordinary people are joining them. Very few of them appear to be thugs who hate their country.
It’s quite a sight to see these suburban moms and dads put on their masks, get into their SUV’s and taunt men with machine guns in green camo and gas masks and head for the nightly and dangerous battles raging in Portland.
If you pay any attention at all, you can see that these are the people who love our country, the ones fighting for it, right or wrong. Trump has a long track record by now accusing people of being just what he is. It’s an old distraction tool, but it’s getting old.
The federal soldiers bore a striking resemblance to the cruel but clueless redcoats, who walked blindly into one impossible situation after another and never grasped the new environment they were fighting in.
These modern green coats thought they could drive around a notoriously independent American city and pull people off the streets, push them into vans and haul them office, never even bothering to identify themselves.
But the rebels today are a uniquely American rainbow and mix of mothers, fathers, former soldiers, yuppies and boomers, African-Americans and Asians, and idealistic and destructive young men and women. They don’t seem to be intimidated in the least.
What I described above was the weeks and months after the Boston Tea Party of 1773, and the Quartering Act of 1765 when British Taxes and efforts to invade local communities with soldiers in need of housing and food launched what we now call the American Revolution.
When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, they sought to require colonists to purchase stamps for virtually every kind of document: legal, church, political and commercial documents, passports, dice and playing cards, books, newspapers.
Even advertisements were subject to the tax, which had to be paid in hard currency. None of this revenue stayed in the colonies; it would all go back to Britain.
Maintaining foreign colonies and occupying soldiers was expensive, whether across the ocean or the country in Portland and Seattle.
Those blundering moves by the British King were among the earth’s most misguided efforts to dominate and subjugate independent people. It let to 15 years of conflict that included the American Revolution and led to the colony’s independence.
Great Britain lost everything it fought for; they had plenty of guns but no moral weight. In Portland, the moms and the veterans have all of it. Moral weight is the fuel that drives Revolution, not re-election plotting.
Revolutions are not easy, quick, or straightforward. Perhaps one needs to live on a quiet farm to see it. But there are too many echoes from there to now to miss if you are paying attention.
The people we see in Portland, Seattle, and a dozen other cities – the evildoers, according to the President and his soldiers – are the people our history books call patriots.
Those are the statues worth fighting for.
We are so very proud of them when we praise them for their courage while trying to burn down British government offices and beat up tax collectors. Still, we find them to be “terrorists” and “thugs” when mothers, veterans, sons, and daughters rush into tear gas and worse every night to protest what they see as authoritarian and illegal intrusions into their communities.
These protests are not alien to America; they are America. And they are about the very same thing: the right to a foreign agency to enter our communities without permission and arrest our citizens.
President Trump does not read much history, and neither, it seems to many of his followers and supporters. Presidents are supposed to call for peace, not conflict.
It is fascinating to see these so-called “thugs” and “terrorists” broaden their base every day and draw more support – and plenty of condemnation – form all over the country.
This and the pandemic are the big twin stories of this election. Neither of them works much in President Trump’s favor. The pundits will tell you every day that there’s plenty of time for a turn-a-round. I don’t believe that I think there’s very little time for a turn-a-around and no chance this poor man will change for more than an hour here or there.
President Trump was desperate for a way to win re-election when he sent those troops into Portland. Instead, he has now managed to focus all that anger on the federal government and its power instead of just their local police.
All over the country, protesters are marching against the arrogant invasion of Portland. And the other cities slated for more federal agents all across America.
The department of Homeland Security is short-sighted, they are blackening their purpose and reputation, in a time of tightening budgets, they will pay for it.
Trump was hoping to provoke racial tensions and disorder so he could “save us” from them, but the hornet’s nest he unleashed is very different from the one he intended.
The “mom’s” movement in Portland has spread to cities and suburbs all over America, another powerful new social agent for change has emerged. Trump doesn’t have it in him to actually invade and conquer an American city.
We just don’t do the things dictators need to do to control and “dominate” a city. And without that will, invaders are just treating water.
Many new ” Wall Mom” chapters have teamed up with Black Lives Matter – now the most significant social movement in American history.
They both intend to protest both police brutality and the brazen federal overreach, so similar to what the British did in the 1700’s you would think his far-right supporters would have grasped it right away.
Trump has created a vast, and unprecedented social movement focused directly on him and his policies weeks before a presidential election. He lives in the Dark Ages of America, and of his angry psyche and mind.
Beverly “Bev” Barnum, who will one day be celebrated as a true patriot and one of the organizers of the first “Wall Of Moms” in Portland, says the videos of federal agents hauling a young man into an unmarked minivan inspired her to march.
She immediately linked her group up with Black Lives Matter and found some common cause. Believe me when I tell you that if I were running for President in American in 2020, I would not want those moms and Black Lives Matter protesters targeting me all over the country 100 days before an election.
The collaboration between the mothers and Black Lives Matter will stand out as one of the pivotal moments of a political campaign and election that is transforming American politics right under our noses, whether we can see it or not.
“Mothers have a responsibility to protect human rights,” Barnum told a reporter. “Mothers run to help when they see someone drowning or falling off a bike, she says, and the same idea applies to police violence against Black Americans.”
Is there anything more American than Bev? The image of the mothers coming forth to protect their children is a powerful image and symbol for Americans. Trump has nothing to match it.
I have a hard time seeing Trump’s efforts to label her and the mother moms as thugs and terrorists working. Another hole for him to dig for himself.
Like Trump’s unwanted invasion and “domination” of American cities, he is deeply unpopular in most of them is almost a mirror image of the bungled efforts of the British to “dominate” and “coerce” the American colonies into submission.
Opposition to the King and the Stamp Act took many forms, from resolutions and petitions to street protests, which were frequently targeted at royally-appointed and imported (also without permission) tax collectors.
Eventually, all of the Stamp Masters in almost all of the colonies resigned or fled, making the Stamp Act impossible to enforce.
The hated British “Quartering Act” was also reminiscent of “Operation Legend” in Portland, a move by President Trump that will also be reviled in history.
The Quartering Act, also passed in 1765, required the colonies to house and feed British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies, or in houses, local inns, and livery stables if barracks weren’t available.
That act also touched off massive and often violent protests that destroyed both lives and property.
But look at the comparisons.
The British had a King. The United States has a President who thinks he is a King and acts like a king.
His use of federal officers to politicize the racial protest underway is about as wise and likely to succeed as the Stamp and Quartering Acts that helped found our country. Trump’s arrogance and disregard for democracy has launched another one.
The protesters: historians have written about crowd protests in America before the Revolution. Crowd actions were an integral part of colonial life.
Gathering with one another, ordinary people used the threat of violence – and often, actual violence – to force business owners and political leaders to do what they believed to be just and fair. They were often castigated as thugs and marauders.
Many colonists felt they had no participation in the actions taken against them and taken against their will. In colonial society, and for many years in all of America, only white men who owned property could vote or get elected to public office.
This system excluded the very same groups that are marching in Portland and cities all over the country now – women, immigrants, formerly enslaved people, students, free African-Americans, and young men who worked as soldiers, indentured servants, and jobs that required physical labor.
The revolutionary protesters targeted businesses in particular, winning many over to the struggle against the British by threatening them with boycotts or worse.
In the wake of the Me Too and The Black Lives Matter movements – the moms up next – some of the most important corporations and institutions in America – the NFL, Coca-Cola, Nascar – have joined forces with protesters.
They are pulling ads from the shows of racist commentators, banning confederate flags, and encouraging athletes to protest police brutality and racism.
When Trump abuses and threatens democratic practice and tradition in such a blatant and unthinking way, he also awakens every other group that feels aggrieved, ignored, or neglected.
My sense of him is that he typifies the image of the isolated New Yorker that knows nothing of the country he is sworn to protect.
The irony is that this in reverse is precisely how Trump got himself elected – by channeling and inflaming white men who felt they were being excluded from political power, ignored to the advantage of immigrants and people of color and aggrieved at people they perceived as snobs and elitists who looked down on them.
The angry white men – and some aggrieved white women – got him into the White House, their anger, and his consumed his presidency.
Trump is still campaigning only to those same people, but in the process, he has inflamed and aroused almost every other ascending and important social group in the country.
Because he hates to read or listen, he probably doesn’t know that the groups he ignores are growing in number much more rapidly than that the white men who are declining in numbers and struggling with suicide, drugs, and unemployment.
Sadly, they have been betrayed once again.
And almost all of the people Trump is rallying to rise against him live in the cities he wants to “dominate” or more and more, in the suburbs where he is losing so much support.
Politically, this makes no sense at all.
Psychologically, and if you read Mary Trump’s new book Too Much and Never Enough, it is inevitable. Trump, she points out, is unable to strategize, change, or listen for more than a few minutes. And I admit now, he is dangerous.
It took me a good while to see that.
Her book is being affirmed almost every day. It is the new Bible for understanding Donald Trump.
There are many things to connect what is happening in Portland today with what happened in our country hundreds of years ago.
The opposition to the British decision to militarize the conflict before the Revolution rather than to negotiate was similar to the opposition to the federal troop “surge” underway.
Like the other King, Trump didn’t ask for permission to send troops to Portland, didn’t talk to governors or mayors or ordinary people. You can’t occupy an American city in that way and expect to get away with it because you think you are all-powerful.
That is closer to tyranny than democracy.
In Portland, if you look closely, you will see a lot of signage protesting “tyranny,” signs that have not been seen in this country since the Revolution.
So many of the same ideas apply.
The Revolutionary protesters were mostly guerillas, roving crowds that move freely, struck unexpectedly, and use every tool available to them to stand up to soldiers with armor and heavy guns.
The British, like the federal agents hiding out in the Federal Building in Portland, showed the world that standing armies have little chance against roving bands of dedicated patriots and street fighters.
Military specialists say it takes tens, if not hundreds of thousands of soldiers to invade and conquer a city. It can’t be done from the basement of a federal courthouse.
The protesters in Portland grow in size by the day, now marching against the misuse of federal forces, police brutality, Trumpism, and the Presidents increasingly authoritarian gestures.
They are using signs, leaf blowers, all kinds of eye drops and clothes, masks, shields, and even firecrackers.
Trump’s outrageous decision to send heavily armed officers into communities that will violently resist him and them will almost certainly and tragically lead to injury and even death.
As the British learned, that is just wrong. It can’t work.
A real monster – Hitler – would
Are these protests the acts of violent and out of control mobs, or are they more than that?
I see something much more significant than that. Still, I also see something very American, people just waking up to what’s happening in our country probably don’t realize how much of an American tradition these protests are.
And how powerful they can be.
The best book I have ever read on this subject is “1776, by David McCullough,” if you want to understand better where we came from and where we are, I strongly recommend it.
Although many of us are shocked, even horrified at the seething divisions and anger in our country, nothing in history or politics is ever really new.
We’ve been there before; we will be there again.
That’s the toll one pays for living in a democracy. It’s a mess, but it’s better than any other mess.
Portland has become our new Concord and Lexington.
Get ready for the revolution.
It is about more than Portland. Much more.
These moms are some of our new American heroines. Should I see them, I will stand in their honor.
Thanks, Jon. Your political writing helps to bring clarity to the misty fuzziness of most news reporting.
Totally right about self-serving news services, only what can be edited down to fit between commercial breaks is aired.
PBS seems to be about the last publicly available source were stories last more than 3 minutes.
Please keep writing, Jon.
I walked through the protestors last night in downtown Portland, and saw with my own eyes what’s going on. What I see is rather different than what you describe.
I see a lot of overprivileged white folks having a block party while social signaling about how great their morals are. They’re trying to burn down the Justice Center and blaming the police for not letting them do it. They’re shooting mortars and bottle rockets, not just some little fireworks. They’re throwing bottles and rocks at the police line. The police warn them repeatedly before using tear gas to push them back. If they didn’t, the fences would get crushed and the police would get swarmed and the building would burn.
Most people in Portland don’t want this to happen. Some of the businesses who are posting BLM posters are simply smart enough to cater to the terrorists; stores without BLM posters are sure to get vandalized. Stores who loudly social signal have a much smaller chance of being wrecked.
The illusion is that most of Portland is up in arms against the evil government. The reality is that (as usual) a viciously-vocal minority is shoving their viewpoints down the throats of less aggressive folks, and declaring war against the police.
I’ve often been ashamed of my city, but these last 2 weeks have brought levels of disgust and horror I’ve not previously experienced.
Some of the protesters *are* convinced that they’re fighting for a good cause. But a great many of them are there to party and wreck stuff with the rest of the mob, and they have a plausible moral excuse to do so.
If 1 in 10 protestors spent a day volunteering at a homeless shelter or donating to a disadvantaged minority organization, *far* more good would be done. But hanging out in a mob competing for screen time and chanting about “fixing things” is much, much more rewarding.
Thanks, PJ, an interesting and useful message, I appreciate your posting it. I’m wondering what you think about the federal agents being sent to Portland to “clean things up?” Is it a good idea? Was it handled well?
I don’t have reliable info on federal agents. The various media reports seem to be very sensationalized and biased, and it’s not something I can see with my own eyes very easily.
I suspect that people who are upset with the protesting & rioting are pleading for relief against them. I’d also imagine that Portland is in the spotlight and the federal government is trying to relieve the stress being pumped into the city by its angry residents. I think it’s a bad idea to give people whatever they’re demanding once they start burning stuff down; rewarding terrorism seems likely to produce more of it.
Is the federal response a good idea? *helpless shrug* Was it handled well? *helpless shrug*
All I’ve got for these questions is hesitant opinions formed on whatever snippets of truth are hidden amongst the “our side is correct!” media feeds, sorry… your guess is as good as mine.
Thanks for replying Joe, I appreciate your tone. I think every thing we see and read these days is sensationalized from Fox News to Cnn to the papers. That’s the nature of the time we live in. I don’t really make judgments based on what the media says, that would be folly. I make my judgments on the basis of what I see. I don’t like what I see.
I appreciate your thoughts about the behavior of some of the protests, but it’s the job of the city and state to guarantee domestic security. The constitution gives that right to the states. Sending in those heavily armed agents is an awful mistake to me, I don’t care what the media says.
From his own comments, it’s clear that the President is politicizing the police and the disturbances. I don’t think I need any special insight to see that. I notice, Joe, that you are very clear and pointed in your disapproval of the protesters, but very vague and shoulder shrugging when it comes to the other side of it. You seem to know precisely what’s in the heads of the rich white kids, but have no clue about the federal officers and no opinion. You strike me as a person with lots of opinions.
I’m not big on hesitant opinions myself and I don’t guess. There’s always plenty to criticize when these things happen, I feel badly for the position the police have been put in in Portland, but I don’t need to guess. A President should be trying to heal us, not dominate us.
Portland Joe’s message is exactly consistent with what my friends who live in Portland are describing to me as well. Thank you, Portland Joe, for offering this clarification.
Best,
Anne from Montana
How interesting, it’s the exact opposite of what my friends are telling me. Like everything in America, there are so many different ways of looking at things..
There’s a difference between protesting and burning down the very building that doles out justice. My understanding is that the protesters, and I’m using that word loosely, are trying to burn down a federal court house. Correct me if I’m wrong but court houses actually dole out justice to the aggrieved. So this is less about justice (as they are burning down the very symbol of justice) and more about rioters wanting to take over and dole out their own set of rules and laws. How did that work out in Seattle? Within a week three murders and the EMT couldn’t even get to the victims which died. For the majority of America, Portland is looking like a place that is filled with a bunch of haters, privileged, non-justice seeking unless its our own rules that benefit us, idiots.
Yes, 90% of my Facebook feed loudly opines what you’re hearing, Jon. Those with differing opinions know better than to voice them in Portland. I am not brave enough to speak up; your article was a refreshing chance for me to proffer an alternate viewpoint without being chewed out by a mob and Unfriended in droves.
It is indeed. This is something I have been thinking a lot about lately (and I like the statements you have made in your subsequent post on conscience). I think (rhetorically) it so often depends on what one’s originating viewpoint is, and that has a lot to do with our upbringing and past experience. I had a wonderful literature teacher in high school who used to eye us archly whenever we debated various positions on the interpretation of the day and admonish, “Remember, dirty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Hearing that old statement turned inside out always stopped us cold and made us look at things a little differently, something I find myself recalling almost daily lately. It’s especially hard now; we are not all operating from the same set of “facts” these days; every time I go to a primary source (reading or watching an actual transcript or personally attending a newsworthy event or whatever), I invariably find that it is quite different than what has been sensationalized by the media (on either side of the fence). I fear that the journalistic ethic has failed us in recent years, as it is increasingly hard to rely on news reports that are so often driven by sensationalism in search of clickbait numbers for advertising return. I am coming to the conclusion that the truth often lies somewhere in between and is usually not nearly as “sexy” as they’d have us believe. Plus we have the subjectivity of our own experiences molding our values and interpretation of same. This is why I feel it is so important to focus our energy on meeting different opinions halfway. Maybe this is a unique opportunity for all of us to grow as we continue to question our consciences (though it is so much easier not to, and just to assume we are right, whatever our position). I appreciate this discussion.
Dear Jon, l appreciate your posts as they fill left by the ‘conventional’ media. Thank you for all your time and effort, I will forward the link of your website to The Guardian newspaper (my main source of news) which has sadly neglected its duty on this account. We also want to add that in the 1700s the hostile ‘other’ was a foreign power; in the present time, the hostiles are not foreign but they have alienated themselves to an extent that you could not really refer to them as Americans anymore in terms of their ideals. 2ndly, in the 1770s the people who got hurt on the other side were mostly foreigners, today the people who get hurt on the other side are your neighbours and fellow citizens.
Please stay safe – best wishes, Alex
Thanks Alex, they are not foreign but they are hostile…I don’t want to be published anywhere but on my blog..
This is in response to Portland Joe’s comment. I would like to write in more length and detail but it’s hot and I’m tired. I live in Bend, three hours east of Portland but I lived in Portland for 20 years and know it well. My grandson was in downtown Portland Fri night and brought back videos along with his own personal story. It was crazy and chaotic but not what you describe and not all Portlanders share your sentiments. There is a lot going on here and Jon reports beautifully on the whole picture, Portland and beyond. Sorry Joe, I’m not a fan of your perspective, it’s inaccurate and arrogant.
Thanks Wendy, Joe was the first person from Portland to see it that way, and I thought it was an interesting point of view. The Portlanders I hear from tell a very different story than he did, and I know Portland well and have a lot of friends there. I appreciate your writing, a shoutout to your grandson…this is sad stuff for America..
Hello, Jon…
I don’t know the goals of all the peaceful protestors, but I agree with their right to be there. And I abhor what those “little green men” are doing.
Who are those green men? The White House is able to avoid controversial use of the armed forces and their reserve components by drawing from vast federal law enforcement resources, mostly in the DHS (Immigration, Customs, Secret Service) and DOJ (FBI, DEA, ATF, Bureau of Prisons, and the U.S. Marshals). The first Portland forces were not regular border agents, but the Border Patrol’s SWAT Team that carries stun grenades and undergoes Special Forces-type training such as sniper certification.
I finally read the book 1776 earlier this year. And found it startling. After being bottled up in Boston, superior British forces soundly routed the rebels from NY and NJ. Enlistment periods were expiring and the rebel forces were dwindling. But an ill-equipped core of genuine patriots was loyal to Washington and the American ideal. Still, the notion of a Trenton was beyond imagination. Washington earlier had proven flawed, and a plan like a Christmas raid across the icy Delaware was so risky that even the disciplined Hessians discounted it. No chance. . . but it succeeded anyway. The power of “moral weight”?
Donald in Arizona