In Portland (Oregon), each day brings its share of images illustrating the lingering tensions between the police sent to the scene by the federal government and the demonstrators, who have been protesting for weeks against police violence and racism: a woman dancing, a bouquet of hydrangeas in her hand, stopped by a group of men in paramilitary uniforms bearing the “Police” logo; the city’s Democratic mayor, Ted Wheeler, suffocating from tear gas; a completely naked woman, legs apart, pushing back a cordon of police officers … Or even this “mother wall”, a row of women of all ages dressed in yellow or orange T-shirts, wearing bicycle helmets, trying to protect the demonstrators of the assaults of the police.
The clashes, accompanied by arrests and detention in unmarked vans, led, Friday, July 24, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to warn the United States against a “disproportionate use” of strength and possibilities “Arbitrary detentions”. Thursday, an American judge had also prohibited the federal police forces present in the city to attack journalists, specifically targeted the previous days.
As protests after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Minnesota, under the knee of a white police officer on May 25, gradually dried up across the country, the predominantly white population of Portland continued. its mobilization, sometimes punctuated by excesses. It is this point of fixation that the American President Donald Trump seized, ten days ago, to experiment his new policy aiming at ensuring “ Law and order », A slogan now at the heart of his electoral campaign.
Heightened tensions
For several days, his campaign team has been broadcasting political advertisements describing urban violence and exaggerating the calls to cut police budgets, launched by some demonstrators. The US president has never recognized the largely peaceful nature of anti-racist protests. “We had to go to Portland because they are anarchists “, Again justified Mr. Trump, Thursday. They wanted to destroy the tribunal, a wonderful federal tribunal. So we went there and we were very, very hard. “
On the spot, the arrival of unidentified police forces from several federal agencies, some militarized and little trained in maintaining order, on the contrary, exacerbated the tensions. And the daily scenes of police repression could, in the long term, have the opposite effects of the expected image: that of a responsible government, controlling the situation.
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