“I didn’t escape USSR to put up with the same crap here.”

by Laura O. Foster

Last night I protested in Portland against Trump’s sending unmarked — and unwanted — federal troops, abrogating the power of our own state’s governor. These goons, who behave less like an orderly, trained peacekeeping force and more an unruly collection of testosterone-infused thugs — have attacked peaceful protestors and thrown people into vans without identifying themselves or probable cause, bringing to living color the specter of a totalitarian state.

Some of the peaceful protestors, whom Trump is calling “lawless anarchists”

Donald Trump often goes too far, and this time his lurch toward authoritarianism is so alarming I could not stay silent. What he is doing is sowing a message of chaos that will allow him to:

a) deny the legitimacy of the November 2020 election if he loses,

b) further deepen the rift in our beloved nation by labeling us red or blue states — and describing blue states as failed and chaotic, and

c) expand and normalize use of militaristic federal authority, which he can then continue to use for his own divisive purposes.

Walking toward the memorial to POC killed by cops

This trouncing of individual state’s rights is in direct contradiction to his cowardly hiding behind individual state rights and authority in abandoning leadership of the COVID-19 pandemic.

So Portlanders: get out there. Make a poster, walk the streets, join the protests. Do you want to be that person who in 30 years is asked by a young relative “why didn’t you do something?” when you saw the country sliding into authoritarianism? Then go. Now. Tonight.

“I didn’t escape USSR to put up with the same crap here” — says one protestor on his sign