Portland’s working-class deserves more — not police intimidation against free speech
Portland DSA co-chair Brian Denning challenges police intimidation of workers calling for more
On Saturday, November 9, residents of your city rallied outside Revolution Hall to respond to the national and local elections.
I saw school teachers, postal workers, bus drivers, nurses, students, retirees, servers, baristas, city workers, Amazon workers, Intel workers, landscapers, nursing home workers, construction workers, adjunct professors — union members, members of local churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques, three news teams, and at least one recently-elected member of Portland City Council.
There was broad engagement of the working class — the people who make this country function and run. This is how you realize the goal of any enlightened society: democracy. Civic engagement makes our city stronger, and more resilient; two characteristics Portland will require in the months ahead.
We came together under the banner, “Workers Deserve More,” which includes a call for building union membership, a 32-hour work week, and supporting working families with child care costs, among other planks of a platform responding to the needs of working people. The tone of the event expressed a strong consensus against mass deportations, against abortion bans, and for ending the illegal transfer of US arms to Israel.
According to the National Lawyers Guild’s legal observer, the Portland Police Bureau deployed a dozen each of foot police and bicycle cops, two spotter planes, and an armada of marked vehicles around the perimeter.
For a police department with perennial complaints about short-staffing despite its record $295 million budget, it is ludicrous to deploy that level of armed manpower to a rally of 120 people. It is a clear political choice by city leadership to impose budget cuts on most city services while the PPB budget continues to balloon.
Deploying dozens of armed police to this rally was an attempt to intimidate Portland’s residents exercising their right to political speech. Was this level of police action requested by the City Council or the Mayor? Does the out-going City Council or Mayor support Police attempting to intimidate their constituents exercising their rights to political speech?
While we’re on the subject, I’d like to call out the political topics so radical they merited an armed force of 30 riot-ready police and accompanying aircraft:
Protecting abortion rights, protecting workers’ rights, and an opposition to mass deportations —demanding the US government follow the multiple federal acts and laws prohibiting weapons being exported to countries engaged in war crimes and genocide — to stop exporting arms to Israel.
Is it ‘radical’ to ask the federal government to follow the laws of our land? Is demanding that the US not be complicit in an ongoing genocide such an alarming position in our city, that is requires 30 militarised officers with firearms, tasers, pepper spray, and body armor?
If, in the coming months, there’s a demonstration about health care, will the ratio of police to participants be one armed officer for every two Portlanders? How about climate change or LGBTQ rights? Does that merit a 1:3 ratio of demonstrators to cops? Equal rights for women — do you call the National Guard in for that one?
It turns out that many of the people of Portland find interacting with armed officers of the court, who have qualified immunity and a history of inexplicable violence, to be an experience to be avoided, whenever possible. But don’t tell the police that — they might just spend the next four years pretending that they’re being oppressed again. Portland, however, knows better…
Your constituent,
Brian Denning
Portland Democratic Socialists of America Co-Chair
rank-and-file Teamster, Local 162
