In case you wondered what a war ravaged city looks like, here are some samples from my inbox over the weekend. Just repeating the term war ravaged gives me goose bumps, of course, given what we see in our daily views of Gaza city and yesterday’s repeat attack on Kiev. But that is the term the President used to justify sending the troops to Portland, Oregon, Posse Comitatus Act be damned.

In addition to people sending their photographs of PDX or the memes they devised to make fun of a dire situation, I will attach the mails or pronouncements received from our Senator and the Oregon Attorney General.

Oregon and Portland are now suing to block Trump from deploying the state’s national guard, calling it an unconstitutional abuse of power. So far, the Pentagon followed through on Trump’s order on Sunday morning, calling up 200 members of the state’s 6,500-member National Guard contingent. (Ref.)

I saw duck guy yesterday afternoon in person, when I was at a small protest in front of the ICE facilities in SW Portland.

War ravaged? It was a typical PDX affair. A mix of people, some hundred or so, who ranged in age from 12 to 92, by conservative estimates. All levels of ability, all kinds of cheerful costuming.

A woman swung a burning sage bundle to clear the evil from the air,

and dogs gave out free hugs.

People dressed as angels distributed ACLU fliers informing you about your rights,

and organizers donned safety vests to direct traffic.

Police biked by, but soon sought out shade, escaping the afternoon heat.

4 lonely ICE goons trotted around the building only to disappear after 2 minutes behind the gates. Some chanting, some music from boom boxes. An understandably irritated neighbor who had to live with the noise across the facility shouting her disapproval, upon which the speaker turned the sound of his microphone lower.

Signs ranged across the spectrum,

the Epstein connection fluttered on lamppost and was glued to the walls of buildings.

The people, a true cross section, not a particular block, showed up, sending courage and solidarity to the immigrants trapped behind the boarded-up windows of the building. I was thinking how easy it is for us to joke about the stupidity of calling our city war ravaged, when for them their entire lives have been upended, with no certainty what the future will hold and nothing but misery in the very present.

Masked ICE showed up, once the streetlights were on.

Here is a timeline as posted by historian Heather Cox Richardson on 9/27 in her Letters from an American.

“Trump also posted: “At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists. I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Zane Sparling, Fedor Zarkhin, and Zaeem Shaikh of The Oregonian/OregonLive compiled a timeline of protests against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland. They noted that the last arrest of protesters by Portland police was on June 19, bringing the total to 25, and the last arrest by federal officers was on July 4, bringing the total to 22.

After a Labor Day protest downtown, more than 100 people marched to the ICE building and set up a makeshift guillotine. Federal officers responded with tear gas and pepper balls. On September 4 the Fox News Channel aired a story about the Labor Day protests, but mixed in clips from 2020 showing protesters burning the base of the Thompson Elk Fountain and a federal officer pepper-spraying a protester. The next day, Trump said he was considering federal intervention. “They’ve ruined that city,” he said. “It’s like living in hell.”

On September 17, Portland officials said ICE had violated its land use agreement by holding detainees for longer than 12 hours, opening the door for the city to force ICE to move. Two days later, The Oregonian/OregonLive published a video of federal agents hitting nonviolent protesters and using chemical spray on them. Portland mayor Keith Wilson called for a full investigation; Trump said people in Portland are “out of control and crazy,” and vowed to “stop that pretty soon.”

On September 22 the president signed an executive order designating “Antifa” as “a major terrorist organization,” and three days later he called demonstrators in Portland “professional agitators and anarchists.” The day after that, September 26—yesterday—Democratic members of Oregon’s congressional delegation, including Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and representatives Suzanne Bonamici, Maxine Dexter, and Andrea Salinas, visited the ICE facility. They called out the violence against protesters and said they were “not at all satisfied with the answers and the evasion” they got from ICE agents about their treatment of detainees.

In response to Trump’s announcement that he was directing Secretary Hegeseth to send troops, authorized to use full force, to Portland, Senator Wyden—who has led the push to force the Treasury to turn over Epstein-related Treasury records of at least $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions to Senate investigators—posted a video of the ICE facility Trump claims is under siege. There were no people there at all.

“My message to Donald Trump is this,” Wyden posted: “we don’t need you here. Stay the hell out of our city.”

And here is Rebecca Solnit with a short humorous missive teasing the situation.

It remains to be seen, if the administration’s provocative and accelerations tactics will goad enough enraged people into the kinds of violent encounters that can be used to justify ultimate goals of dispensing with constitutional rights. It is, however, not always an easy balancing act between reactions that show the will not to normalize the use of military on our streets, and those that are undisciplined enough to confirm – so far unsubstantiated – claims of violence.

Here are some suggestions what people can do when observing Feds operating:

– Call PIRC (Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition)) if you believe you see ICE or masked individuals: (888) 622-1510
– Document vehicles and assailants.
– Attempt to get the name and DOB of the person being detained.
– If you are white or in a position of privilege warn people and vulnerable businesses in the area.
Reminder * if they refuse to identify themselves and their agency you are also well within your rights to call 911 and report them. Oregon is a sanctuary state and all Portland Metro DA offices have confirmed their precincts are not complying with Trump’s immigration orders.

Music today is a song of hope from different hard times, the Great Depression, sung by a PDX homegrown talent, Esperanza Spalding.

And here she is in a wonderful NPR Tiny Desk Concert from some years back.