West Coast Cities Are Letting Drug Addicts Kill Themselves

At the Washington Examiner, "Liberals in the biggest cities on the West Coast have made it easier for drug addicts to die from overdoses based on the fallacy that letting drug addicts destroy their own lives is some form of compassion."

Andy Ngo, Unmasked

At Amazon, Andy Ngo, Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. 

What Comes Next for Portland? (VIDEO)

At the New York Times, "After a Year of Protests, Portland Is Ready to Move On. But Where?":

PORTLAND, Ore. — Defund the police? City leaders in Portland tried it. A unit in the fire and rescue bureau, one of the first of its kind in a major city, began this year taking some 911 calls about people in crisis, especially those who are homeless.

Instead of police officers with flashing lights and guns, a paramedic and a social worker would drive up offering water, a high-protein snack and, always and especially, conversation, aiming to defuse a situation that could otherwise lead to confrontation and violence. No power to arrest. No coercion.

“Having someone show up and offer you goods rather than run you off is different, and people respond to it — it softens the mood,” said Tremaine Clayton, a burly, tattooed veteran of 20 years at the fire and rescue bureau who helps run the program.

But this spring, just as the project was preparing for a major rollout into more neighborhoods, there was another plot twist: The new policing alternative was itself mostly defunded. The city decided on a go-slow approach, and the promised $4.8 million expansion evaporated.

Portland, the Oregon city of bridges, bike lanes and left-leaning idealists — beloved, abhorred and caricatured in just about equal measure — is wrestling mightily with the question of what it means to make a city safe and, as it gradually opens up from the Covid-19 shutdowns, to feel safe, too. It is an issue that many American cities are addressing as the economic and societal disruptions of the past year linger and resonate.

Violent crime, especially homicide, has spiked in most urban areas during the pandemic, and many police departments are facing new scrutiny about training and bias since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis a year ago.

But here in the nation’s 25th-largest metropolitan area, with about 2.5 million people, there is an additional factor that ripples through every public policy choice, and that even the city’s top prosecutor said has to a degree warped the debate about what to do to rebuild a city that Portlanders want and love.

A hardened core of street activists, many of them professing opposition to authority in general, has dug in and shows no signs of going away. (Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, has asked people to stop calling them protesters, but rather what they call themselves: anarchists.) Their numbers are now down to perhaps 25 to 75 on any given night, compared with hundreds in late 2020 and the many thousands who marched last summer in protests after Mr. Floyd’s murder.

But they have shown themselves at times to be violent — one was charged with attempted murder after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the police — destructive of property and highly adaptable, using social media tools and other strategies to divert the police from the targets they select.

Direct actions are promoted on social media with the phrase “No gods, no masters,” a 19th-century anarchist term that indicates a rejection of all forms of authority. More traditional protesters from Black Lives Matter and other movements who try to curtail violence are now ridiculed as “peace police” by the anarchists, who mostly consist of young, white men.

Demetria Hester, a member of Moms United for Black Lives, continues to push for defunding the police but disagrees with the current call for dismantling the entire political system. “Breaking windows is performative,” she said. “That satisfies them at night, but they don’t have a plan.”

Some prominent Black leaders have been formally distancing themselves, with some calling the anarchists’ rejection of gradual progress just another symbol of privilege that Black people do not have.

“Being able to protest every night is a white privilege, being able to yell at a police’s face is a white privilege,” said Gregory McKelvey, a prominent Black organizer who ran the mayoral campaign last year for Mr. Wheeler’s opponent, Sarah Iannarone. “Most Black people across the country do everything they can to avoid cops.”

Still, Mr. McKelvey has empathy for those who feel that taking to the streets is their only outlet. “These are people who have felt like they’ve had no agency or power in their life or in the political system,” he said. “They want to feel powerful, and when you can have the mayor talking about you every single day, and hundreds of police officers show up to fight you every day, you feel more powerful than when you’re sitting at home.”

The protests have led to vicious finger-pointing over who was to blame for the serial destruction that has left so many downtown storefronts shattered and covered with plywood.

 

Andy Ngo Needs a Bodyguard (VIDEO)

I responded to Mr. Ngo on Twitter earlier: "Maybe time to hang it up for a bit? Write another book? I don’t know? Get out of Portland for a while?"

The man cannot continue to do his coverage of Antifa all alone. He needs at least a bodyguard, if not a full force-protection squad surrounding him when he's out doing his thing. He will be killed. He says himself he's had a couple of dozen of death threats, and it was just a year or two ago the he was beaten to an inch of his life. He's moved back to Portland to care for his parents, but hey, his parents won't have a son too much longer if he keeps it up. Like I suggested, maybe it's time for him to pass the baton? Write books? Let someone else take up the mantle of on-the-ground reporting like this? 

I don't know? Life's too short. 

At Ingraham's last night:

'My daughter has already noticed that the folks in her circle who are most into ‘activism’ of various sorts are mostly the ones whose careers and lives seem to be going the worst.” And this is certainly not a coincidence. Political “activism,” as promoted by the Left, is entirely destructive in its goals. An eternal war against an unacceptable status quo appeals to malcontents and misfits...'

That's Glenn Reynolds, quoted at the Other McCain, "The Enemies of Happiness."

Portland's antifa scum as a case in point:

Trump Supporter Killed by Violent Democrats in Portland (VIDEO)

At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "One Person Dead in Portland After Clashes Between Trump Supporters and Protesters."

And Gateway Pundit, "4Chan Users Appear to Have Identified Portland Rioter Who Shot and Killed Trump Supporter."

Bear Spray

Watching the street-fighting videos this last couple of days, I noticed that the Trump supporters always have bear spray. The canister's are high-powered projectile devices. If you're hit in the face you're probably needing medical attention, dang!

People have had it with blocking streets. https://t.co/6FOabaIlVJ

— Kathleen McKinley (@KatMcKinley) August 30, 2020

Riots and Demonstrations from Portland to Jerusalem

From Caroline Glick:

Over the past several years, public discourse in the United States has seen a lot of new lows. It saw another one this month when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to federal officers in Portland, Oregon as “stormtroopers,” that is, Nazi Brownshirts.

In a tweet on July 18 and in subsequent remarks, Pelosi accused the federal forces deployed to Portland of “kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti.”

Pelosi’s allegations would cause a political earthquake – if they were true. But they aren’t true. And the fact that she slandered federal officers as Nazis is a deeply disturbing testament to where the Democratic Party – of which she is the senior elected official – stands today and what its intentions are.

For the past two months, the progressive city of Portland in the progressive State of Oregon, has been the scene of chaos and rioting. The liberal media have misleadingly characterized the riots as “peaceful demonstrations.”

Night after night, hundreds of “peaceful demonstrators” have vandalized and destroyed stores and other businesses, transforming downtown Portland into a war zone. Over the past five weeks, the focal point of the violence has been the federal courthouse.

“Peaceful protesters” from Antifa and other radical groups have been attacking the federal courthouse in Portland with incendiary devices including pipe bombs and commercial grade fireworks. Federal officers charged with guarding the courthouse have been blinded with lasers and attacked with stones, metal balls shot from slingshots, bricks and two-by-fours, among other things.

The rioters are backed in their efforts by city and state officials as well as national Democrats who have castigated federal forces protecting the courthouse as “occupiers,” the “Gestapo” and of course “stormtroopers.”

As for the alleged “kidnapping” of peaceful protesters, local journalist Andy Ngo explained this week that Pelosi’s statement channeled Antifa propaganda.

Ngo told Fox News, “That’s an Antifa talking point that is being repeated by sympathetic media.”

He explained that federal officers charged with protecting federal property are using plainclothes agents in unmarked vehicles to peacefully apprehend leaders of the violence. This is a routine, entirely legal tactic which Ngo explained is only being castigated now is because “it is quite effective.”

On the face of it, as Democratic politicians, Pelosi and her colleagues in Congress and Oregon should support the federal forces trying to end the riots. After all, like New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Los Angeles, Portland is a Democratic city. The businesses being destroyed are owned by their voters.

So why are Pelosi and her partisan colleagues and their media adjuncts instead depicting the rioters rendering downtown Portland a war zone as “peaceful protesters” and slandering the law enforcement officers defending federal property as Nazis?

The obvious answer is politics. The Democrats support the rioters because as they see things, the longer chaos reigns in the streets of America’s cities, the better their chances of defeating President Donald Trump in November.

The Democrats have a number of resources that the Republicans lack and the riots bring them all to bear. They have fanatical progressive activists angry that Bernie Sanders isn’t the nominee but willing to burn America.

They have wall to wall support from the media from NBC to the New York Times to Facebook and Twitter.

The Democrats have limitless funds to maintain the violence and mayhem indefinitely. This week, Alexander Soros, George Soros’ son announced that the family foundation has earmarked another quarter billion dollars to Black Lives Matter. And the Soroses are not alone.

As the past four years of Trump-Russia mythology and legally baseless, politicized prosecutions and investigations have shown, the Democrats control much of the so-called Deep State which controls the levers of the permanent bureaucracy.

The Trump-Russia collusion narrative largely disintegrated under the weight of evidence and the absurd impeachment process over the past several months. And with its decline the Democrats began casting about for a new cause.

They found it with the coronavirus pandemic. In one fell swoop, the virus from China swept away Trump’s fast-growing economy with record low unemployment across all ethnic and racial groups.

With schools abruptly closed and jobs abruptly lost the optimistic America of 2019 became the destabilized, poor, frustrated and insecure America of 2020.

Yet, despite the best efforts of the commentators, support for Trump was not falling apart, at least not enough to ensure an electoral victory for Joe Biden. And Americans were beginning to figure out a way through, as the rising stock market indexes indicated.

But then came the riots. The proximate cause of the riots and protests was the police killing of George Floyd. But their context was the pandemic and the elections in November. The riots gave the Democrats a way to galvanize their radical progressive base (on the streets, in Congress and in the media) around their favorite issues – race and identity politics.

For the Democrats, the best part of the riots is that unlike the pandemic, for demonstrators and their media flacks, it is easy to make the case that Trump is to blame.

Trump’s in charge and America is burning. Trump’s to blame. Trump’s in charge and there is racism in America. Trump’s to blame.

If Trump quells the riots, he will be guilty of police brutality, (with stormtroopers) – thus proving the point. If he fails to quell the riots, he is an ineffective boob. And so, with a bottomless pit of money, the riots will continue, at least so long as the Democrats feel they benefit from them, and they haven’t figured out something else to do...

Still more.

'Largely Peaceful,' Translated to English, Means Violent

It's Michael Barone, at the Washington Examiner, "Intensifying Into Violence":

60 days of demonstrations in cities like Oakland, Portland, and Seattle are described as “largely peaceful."

Any “peaceful demonstration” capable of “intensifying” into setting fire to a courthouse was never really “peaceful," writes @MichaelBarone.

https://t.co/Xk11wTy3R8

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) July 30, 2020

"Protestors in California," tweeted ABC News, about an incident in Oakland, "set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified."

If you'd presented your ninth-grade teacher with that sentence in your weekly writing assignment, she might have taken out her red pen and asked you, "How does a peaceful demonstration intensify?"

This sentence, however, was written not by a ninth-grader but by an adult, a professional journalist working for one of the world's major television news organizations. It was not an accident. As Modern Age editor Daniel McCarthy noted, "George Orwell could not improve on this."

Any "peaceful demonstration" capable of "intensifying" into setting fire to a courthouse, damaging a police station and assaulting law enforcement personnel was never really "peaceful" in the first place.

As The New Criterion editor Roger Kimball wrote, "the overriding criterion for choosing which narrative to plug" is which "will do the most damage to Donald Trump and Republican prospects in the November election."

The narrative that serves that purpose is that the demonstrations that broke out after the May 25 death of George Floyd are peaceful, and the demands of many demonstrators to "defund" the police are a reasonable response with no downside risk. Video footage suggesting the contrary has appeared sparingly, if at all, on broadcast news, CNN and MSNBC...

More.

Podcaster Nancy Rommelmann Won't Cave to the Mob (VIDEO)

There's gotta be thousands and thousands of these stories out there these days. Don't back down to the mob. They're never satisfied until your blood soaks the streets.

At Prager University:

Andy Ngo on 'The Story with Martha MacCallum' (VIDEO)

Following-up on my earlier post on Antifa's heinous attack on Andy Ngo.

Ngo appeared earlier with Martha MacCallum, and you can see that he's impaired, obviously in the very earliest stage of recovery. What a guy.

Andy Ngo

I've long thought this dude's a bad motherfucker. I quit doing my on-the-ground reporting after I was targeted for violent attacks by ANSWER Los Angeles. I won't do an event unless I have my own security detail, and I'm not hiring anyone. It's not worth it to me any more --- I've paid my dues. I don't think Andy should be going out without his own burly security contingent. These Antifa goons will kill him.

It was totally viral over the weekend, and Michelle Malkin put up a GoFundMe page.

https://t.co/B8Gh4KQxFS

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 29, 2019

Attacked by antifa. Bleeding. They stole my camera equipment. No police until after. waiting for ambulance . If you have evidence Of attack please help

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 29, 2019

On way to hospital. Was beat on face and head multiple times in downtown in middle of street with fists and weapons. Suspects at large.

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 29, 2019

In the ER. pic.twitter.com/spe5N4nzVl

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 29, 2019

BREAKING: New Angle Shows Antifa Thugs Who Battered Reporter Andy Ngo Were PREPARED FOR BATTLE -- WORE ASSAULT GLOVES during Beating @MichelleMalkin @MrAndyNgo @Jimryan015 @pnjaban
https://t.co/n1Olm5D4wd via @gatewaypundit

— Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) June 30, 2019

SICK. CAIR Portland Leader Attacks Michelle Malkin and Mocks Andy Ngo after he is Beaten and Robbed by Violent Antifa Thugs @MichelleMalkin @MrAndyNgo https://t.co/65lp01Uphl via @gatewaypundit

— Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) June 30, 2019

Help #PROTECTANDYNGO - Donate here ======> https://t.co/Cw5IwMY04U

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) June 29, 2019

Reporters and activists pile on to either mock or attempt to explain away the Antifa attack on journalist @MrAndyNgo in Portland. https://t.co/pWTsmOBpOB

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) July 1, 2019

Where were y’all? https://t.co/KU2QG284ZI

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) June 30, 2019

Thanks to all for the outpouring of support for our @Quillette colleague @MrAndyNgo. What happened was horrible, but at least it's caused a moment of reckoning for the journalists who've acted as pro-Antifa mouthpieces till now. Here's our @Quillette editorial about Andy's ordeal https://t.co/xCn2lqd2ZC

— Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) June 30, 2019

The Montavilla Initiative

I'm a bleeding heart on homelessness, mostly because the leftist media gets the story all wrong, all the time. As noted previously, the bulk of O.C. homeless have been regular white working-class folks, busted down after the 2008 crash. It's not all Latinos and other minorities. Go to Anaheim and see for yourself.

In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "Neighborhood advocates or vigilantes? A group in Portland makes life tougher for the homeless" (via Hot Air):

The Montavilla neighborhood is a place just about anybody might want to live in.

It has an “almost suburban” feel, a city website notes, but it’s near downtown Portland, with a population that’s more diverse than the city as a whole. Homes range from pricey modern to modest bungalow; businesses of every stripe do a bustling trade.

Last year Montavilla made Lonely Planet’s list of the 10 best U.S. neighborhoods.

It also broke apart over homelessness and rising crime.

Like many American cities, Portland struggles with homelessness. What’s the solution to getting people off the streets? What’s the right balance between compassion and safety? Why does the world’s richest country have so many people living in tents?

Last month, Portland-area voters funded $653 million for affordable housing, on top of $258 million in 2016. These are major investments for a city its size. But relief may be years away.

In Montavilla, the debate over homelessness has taken on an edge in the last two years as a neighborhood patrol has marched up to the line of vigilantism — and, some say, crossed it. Experts say similar groups have sprung up in other cities, including Long Beach and the west San Fernando Valley, as a conservative, tough-love response to the problem.

In June 2017, the Montavilla Neighborhood Assn. passed a resolution asking the city to “cease further sweeps of [homeless] camps,” which could be “unconstitutional and human rights violations.”

That fall, a new board of directors was voted in that included Micah Fletcher, a survivor of last year’s infamous stabbings by a white supremacist on a light rail train. Around the same time, however, a new conservative nonprofit, Montavilla Initiative, formed as an alternative. Battle lines hardened.

Montavilla Initiative began doing its own foot patrols; the city-partnered neighborhood association stopped doing them.

Interactions between citizen patrol groups led by Montavilla Initiative and the area’s homeless are now at the center of the neighborhood’s divide. On the one hand, local officials and homeless advocates accuse Montavilla Initiative of harassing vulnerable homeless people. On the other, leaders of the nonprofit say homeless encampments foster crime, and they’re just trying to make the neighborhood safer.

Multnomah County official Kim Toevs said Montavilla Initiative members harassed people who use the county’s largest needle exchange site, part of a program that has operated for 22 years in the neighborhood. It offers addiction counseling, exchanges millions of syringes annually, and gives out naloxone, proven to save lives by halting overdoses.

The county had to hire extra security after seven visits by the group, officials said.

“What we see here, about [their] behavior, harassing our clients, and making them feel stalked and scared, is hateful action,” Toevs said.

Ibrahim Mubarak, executive director of a homeless advocacy group, Right 2 Survive, said Montavilla Initiative members are “running havoc on houseless people,” slashing their tents, throwing cold water on them, following them around. “They’re all about getting [homeless] people out of the neighborhood,” he said.

Mubarak later acknowledged, however, that he had not witnessed the incidents himself, and had no proof that they were committed by Montavilla Initiative. “This is happening in the neighborhood to those people, but we don’t know for sure that it’s Montavilla Initiative,” he said.

Of 15 homeless people interviewed for this article, many said they’re aware of what they call the “neighborhood watchers.” One voiced support, but most said they were afraid of them. They don’t seem to differentiate between the new, Montavilla Initiative patrols and the ones the neighborhood association used to do...

More.

'Whiteness History Month' at Portland Community College (VIDEO)

At Campus Reform, "Portland Community College to devote an entire month to 'whiteness'-shaming."

Maybe some of this SJW business will die down once O's out of office. At least, one can hope.

And watch, at KOIN News 6 Portland:

High Winds, Cold Weather Batter the Pacific Northwest (VIDEO)

At KOIN 6 News Portland, "Heavy winds wreak havoc across Oregon and Washington."

And at CBS This Morning, "Rain and snow target millions in the West":

Many parts of the country are getting hammered by powerful weather systems during Christmas week. It’s raining in the East and the South, but the worst weather is in the West. Powerful Pacific storms threaten millions with rain and snow, while some areas in northern California are already being hit with snow. John Blackstone reports from Mill Valley, California.

Still more, at KCRA News 3 Sacramento, "Heavy rainfall moves into the Foothills Monday afternoon," and "Snow causes major delays on Sierra roads."

Tarek and Christina El Moussa, Stars of HGTV's 'Flip or Flop', Cancel Events in Portland After Protests by Far-Left Rent Control Alliance

Big mistake.

If there was ever a cool inspiration for entrepreneur ship and business hustle, it's Tarek and Christina. They're really cool.

At Instapundit, "BLUE STATE IDIOCY: Stars of HGTV house-flipping series cancel events in Portland after angry residents claim seminars will only worsen the city’s ‘rental crisis’."

'Peaceful Protesters' Disrupt Ceremony for 100-Year-Old War Veteran

At Instapundit, "LIFE IN OBAMA’S POST-RACIAL AMERICA":

This is bullying for the sake of bullying, by racists. It is designed to intimidate, but it is likely to have the opposite effect. It has also completely undermined what looked like a substantial bipartisan consensus on police reforms.

Well, not among the Margaret Hoovers of the RINO right, but still.

More at Fox News, "'Give Me a Chance': WWII Vet's Medal Ceremony Crashed by Protesters (VIDEO)."

PREVIOUSLY: "Violent Leftists Shut Down Ron Wyden Town Hall in Portland."

Violent Leftists Shut Down Ron Wyden Town Hall in Portland

All they want to do is shut things down.

Damn thugs overran the place, and that was it.

At Oregon Live, "Wyden town hall disrupted by 'hands up, don't shoot' protests."

And at Progs Today, "CHAOS ERUPTS As #Ferguson Protesters Shut Down Sen. Wyden Town Hall – Threaten to Beat Security Guard (VIDEO)."

As security tries to gain control and close the door, a big black mofo rams his foot inside as a door stop and threatens, "I'll Break Your Jaw Old Man!"

Well, so much for MLK-style civil disobedience. These people are violent anarcho-communists!

Communists Call Cops, Shut Down 'Right-Wing Blogger' at Portland State Open Public Meeting

This is excellent.

I know how the guy feels. I remember when ANSWER's Richard Becker got in my face when I went to take his photo at Los Angeles City College in 2009: He screamed, "What right-wing organization do you work for"?!! Later, the ANSWER thugs hit me with flag poles when I was covering their protest against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2010. I think they'd forgotten about me last year, when I covered the ANSWER march protesting police brutality in Anaheim.

But man, these goons up in Portland are even more over-the-top.

At the Salem-Keizer Sentinel, "Communists Shut Down Press: 'WE DON’T ALLOW RIGHT WING BLOGGERS TO TAPE OUR EVENTS'."

And at Truth Revolt, ""You're a f*****g piece of s**t!" — Socialist University Group Tries to Eject Blogger for Filming Public Meeting."

It's "right-wing blogger" Dan Sandini of Daylight Disinfectant.

Great work: