[custom_adv] A woman wearing nothing but a black face mask and a stocking cap strode toward a dozen heavily armed agents attired in camouflage fatigues, lined up across a downtown Portland street. [custom_adv] The unrest in Portland is “worse than Afghanistan,” President Donald Trump said this week to justify using federal forces against protesters.Julia De Santis has never been to Afghanistan, but she can’t imagine it’s as congenial as Portland, even under current circumstances, she told Street Roots. [custom_adv] [custom_adv] De Santis, who moved from New Jersey to Portland last year, said she doesn’t recognize the Portland described by Trump.She and her boyfriend drove through downtown one night shortly after Trump compared the city to Afghanistan. [custom_adv] “We were listening to a political current events podcast that we like,” she said. “They were talking quite a bit about Portland. This is a liberal-leaning show, and they were even describing Portland as a war zone.”Yet Southwest Morrison Street seemed strangely unravaged. [custom_adv] “It was sort of eerie, driving down Southwest Morrison — totally silent, clean and empty — while they described the situation,” De Santis said. “Of course, the scene a few blocks away at the Justice Center would have been totally different, but I think people all over the country are getting an image of all of Portland being a hot, hot mess right now.” [custom_adv] Portland activist Clarice Keating regularly joins the Wall of Moms, a group of mothers who form a human barricade to protect protesters from federal agents. Even though Keating is in the thick of things, she said she realizes that things are not all that thick in terms of geography. [custom_adv] “You can’t even tell from a block away that there’s something odd going on,” she said.Events do turn decidedly intense at night in front of the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on Southwest Third Avenue. The building is now boarded up and covered with the often-obscene graffiti that spreads slightly to the surrounding neighborhood. [custom_adv] Protests throughout the world, including Portland, began in the wake of the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Minneapolis police Officers Derek Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao have been charged in the killing of Floyd, who was Black. [custom_adv] Activist Julianne Jackson, of Salem, told Street Roots that Portland protesters seemed to be losing some momentum when Trump sent in federal agents, many of them from the Border Patrol Tactical Unit of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. [custom_adv] The New York Times reported that the border agents, who have been using tear gas and physical force against protesters, are often not trained to respond to riots or mass demonstrations.
