A former Navy sailor impassive under the blows of batons and tear gas jets, a completely naked woman sitting on the ground, motionless, legs spread, facing a cordon of heavily caparisoned security forces, a “wall of Mothers’ dressed in white, interposed between anti-racist protesters and other security forces: The intervention of federal forces to end unrest in Portland, Oregon, fuels controversy.
The street clashes are coupled with a virulent quarrel: it pits the local authorities, mostly Democrats, against the federal state, which considered it legitimate to intervene to help restore order. The mayor of the city, Ted Wheeler, and the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, believe on the contrary that this uncoordinated irruption exacerbates the tensions, and requires the departure of these forces.
Criticism has redoubled following arrests of protesters by unidentified elements of the Department of Homeland Security deployed in Portland. These demonstrators were placed in unmarked vehicles, questioned and then released. The former believe that the tenth amendment to the American Constitution prohibits the federal state from intervening in an untimely manner in state affairs. The libertarian senator from Kentucky Rand Paul, yet a Republican, shares this point of view. On the contrary, Donald Trump’s administration ensures that the federal state is empowered to intervene unilaterally to defend federal institutions and federal buildings, without having to beg for the green light from the states concerned.
A diversionary maneuver
The Portland tensions come after criticism over the tough federal handling in Washington of protests sparked by the George Floyd affair, a dead African American suffocated by the knee of a Minneapolis police officer as he lay on the ground, handcuffed . Monday, July 20, Donald Trump announced that he was going to send federal forces to other American cities without consultation with the municipalities, which happen to be Democrats. “We’re going to have more federal law enforcement agencies. In Portland, they did a fantastic job ”, he assured. “In three days, they put a lot of anarchists in prison », Added the president.
Massive and overwhelmingly peaceful during the first two weeks of June, the demonstrations became much rarer. As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to befall the United States, the President attaches great importance to them in his speeches, mixing these demonstrations with the endemic violence that exists in certain large American metropolises, including the city of Chicago, considered ” worse than afghanistan », Monday, by Donald Trump.
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