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I was surprised to learn at Meeting for Worship last Sunday, that one of the Friends there was there because he'd been called to Portland on short notice owing to the fact that his son had been incarcerated on charges of assaulting an officer. The trial is still pending, and the son has since been released.
Although I don't know Jacob personally, I was aghast by his housemate's account of the theatrics employed to show off the type of bully-state that wants to assert itself as running the establishment.
The FBI was all kitted out in SWAT style costumes, flashed their guns around, and refused to engage in proper paperwork (by showing the warrant or whatever). Jacob had apparently done something forbidden versus an ICE agent six weeks prior, but we don't know what.
Excerpt:
At around 9 a.m. on Friday morning, July 25th, Jacob and I looked out our bedroom window to see a flood of armed officers race into our driveway and charge at our house with assault rifles. We quickly put on the first clothes we could grab and heard pounding and screaming on our door. Because everyone in my household is a safe, caring person, I was convinced they had the wrong house and couldn't understand what could warrant this kind of threat to our lives. Jacob attempted to ask through the window if the police had a warrant, and they responded by aiming laser reactive targets on his body, threatening his life.
I told Jacob to open the door because I feared we would die if we continued to ask for a warrant. Jacob opened the door with his hands up, empty-handed, and I and my roommate followed. We were screamed at, handcuffed, and put on the street in our underwear. There were about 20 FBI agents surrounding our house in unmarked vehicles, and several local Portland police officers. Jacob was put in the back of a car. I could not speak with him. We were not shown a warrant at this time.
Quakers are strongly biased against use of violence but "assault" does carry such a connotation in ordinary language. Unless we're talking "verbal assault"? Is that a crime, or free speech? We're done with free speech by now right? Resisting authoritarians has by now been criminalized, even though that's what made this country great.
Protestors who gathered across from the Hatfield Justice Center, me one of them, in photo journalist mode for my peeps on Facebook, were mumbling about wanting body cam footage so we could judge for ourselves what this "assault" event was like.
Whatever it was, the bully-state certainly wanted to escalate. Their goal was intimidation, and to get applause from those viewer-voyeurs who always enjoy the spectacle of armed thugs striking fear into the hearts of privileged white kids who think they're entitled to resist authority. It's time to put all those "college kids" in their place and ship them off to Vietnam like all the "working class" kids, to use some anachronistic Boomer Era terminology.
Another goal may have been to spark some sort of violent protest, thereby justifying opening another front against west coasters, after sending in the US military -- so-called "posse comitatus" is dead in the water, a floating corpse, by 2025 -- to quell the agitated crowds in LA.
As I wrote in an email, using voice-to-text while waiting at a bus stop:
I’m pretty sure the feds are trying to spark some kind of violent response so they can crack down LA style using Israeli Gestapo techniques. Their base loves to see Portland being “quelled” as Trump put it The last time they tried this during the Joker Riots. It’s a kind of gladiatorial event from the point of view of the cable news people. Good for ratings. Beat up Portland. More news right after this word from our sponsors.
The entire nation is familiar with the militarization of the police forces as the congress prepares for a crackdown against the populace that might happen when they decide to draft us into NATO or whatever hell they have planned (something by the RAND corporation no doubt -- always a source of disaster scenarios).
Funny addendum: later the same evening, I watched Fun with Dick and Jane (the original Jane Fonda 1970s version -- a comic light-hearted prototype of Breaking Bad) with a friend. The joke about how "Jewish Gestapo" is an oxymoron comes up in the script, followed by a picture of Moshe Dayan in that aerospace headquarters basement. But I'm one of those who makes distinctions between zealous authoritarian nationalists, and religious practitioners (a Venn Diagram), so no oxymoron intended.
