Portland's weird, effective resistance
Hi there! In October, I'm hoping to hit 70 paid subscribers to Cascadia Journal. For just $5 per month you can help me continue to publish these weekly essays about how Cascadia becoming more autonomous and resisting fascism. Plus, I also round up news, environmental reporting, and arts coverage from across the bioregion. Let's keep it going, thanks! --Andrew
We live in strange times, and the people of Portland are responding with their trademark whimsy. Despite US president Donald Trump's best attempts to portray the City of Roses as a "war-torn" "hellhole," folks who live there are demonstrating that these are lies – lies intended to bolster his authoritarian efforts to deploy the National Guard in cities that oppose him and his tyrannical policies
Portland, the city known for keeping it weird, showed up in full goofy force at the Portland ICE facility as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem cosplayed a cop and glared down at a lone protester in a chicken suit.
Whether it's the Antifascist Frog or a posse of cowboy-riding chickens, the inflatable cartoon suit strategy is brilliant: mocking, playful, and clearly nonviolent. It's in the same genre as a choir of queers playing "Pink Pony Club" on kazoos in response to Sean Feucht's right wing Christian nationalist rally in Seattle this summer.
It fails to give them what they want: images and video of protesters fighting back when the feds provoke, cops hog-tying those protesting ICE's massive and indiscriminate immigration crackdown.
But make no mistake – as silly as these protests are, what we are confronting is serious and dangerous and cruel. As ICE recruits from local police forces and right-wing militias, it's building a $150 billion infrastructure of masked thugs and concentration camps.
Just last week, in a Portland suburb, a masked agent abducted a US citizen and held him at Portland ICE facility for happening to have brown skin. He's filed a discrimination lawsuit. These sorts of "Kavanaugh stops," essentially racial profiling, were given the the green light by a recent US Supreme Court ruling.
What's happening in Portland and Chicago, and previously in Los Angeles, is part of deliberate strategy by Trump and his puppet master Stephen Miller, to stir up chaos and violence in the United States and then respond with even stronger authoritarian measures.
This week Miller went a little too far in describing his fascist playbook, slipping up and talking about how Trump has "plenary authority" in an interview on CNN. Realizing he'd shown his hand, in a bizarre moment Miller suddenly stopped talking and looked blinking dumbly at the camera as the interviewer had his crew cut to a commercial.
Plenary power or authority is "complete and absolute power to take action on a particular issue, with no limitations." Plenary power was granted to Adolf Hitler with passage of the Enabling Act of 1933 in the Reichstag, ending what was known as the Weimar Republic and solidifying fascism in Germany.
Miller and Trump have indicated they may invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to grant them even more authority to deploy US armed forces and the National Guard. They're clearly looking to stir up an imaginary insurrection and solidify fascism in the US.
Add to all this a bonkers roundtable at the White House this week on what the feds say is the greatest domestic terror risk to the United State, the dreaded, imaginary ANTIFA™ organization (which if they'd bother to read anything about anarchism, is decentralized resistance to... fascism). Never mind that more than 75 percent of all deadly violent domestic terror attacks since 2001 has been committed by those who identify as right-wing.
Among the right-wing deplorables who spoke at the White House – as Trump struggled to stay awake – were Jonathan Choe, Seattle-based right wing troll, Andy Ngo, the Portland social media instigator and friend of Proud Boys, and former Seattle journalist Brandi Kruse who in all seriousness said that supporting Trump made her more attractive.
But the most instructive and terrifying speech was that of alt-right activist and self-described "operative" Jack Posobiec. This is a man who at a CPAC rally last year openly spoke of "ending democracy." During the roundtable, Posobiec talked about ANTIFA™'s history, including its origins as a resistance group during... the Weimar Republic in Germany. Gotcha. The bad guys were the antifascists opposing the Nazis. Glad we're clear on this.
As fun as these Portland protests against creeping fascism are, and as goofy as all the costumes at the upcoming No Kings protest will be on October 18, we are in a deadly serious moment right now. Once fascism is established, it's very hard to root out. Here in Cascadia, we're responding with inflatable animal suits, but we also must respond in great numbers with active, noisy, nonviolent resistance. Now is the time to speak up for autonomy. If Congress doesn't reverse course and remove Trump and restore democratic norms, we're left with few options, and one is Oregon and Washington's peaceful separation from the United States.
Andrew Engelson
We can achieve this, if we have to, not with violence but with our strength in numbers. We can march, we can organize widespread general strikes, and we can call for a referendum on separation.
And we might wear a unicorn suit and dance to Pink Pony Club while we're doing it.
Oh, and go Mariners.
--Andrew Engelson
